A few questions about Bard

Hey! So I recently got into the game and opted to buy a story and job boost for myself, so I could get caught up to a few friends more quickly. I went with bard, as it seemed interesting, and they needed someone who could regularly be available to run with them, that played a ranged class. I was wondering where I could find an up to date guide, most of the ones I find on youtube are over 6 months old, and I'm not sure of the validity of them still, considering their age and I don't know jack about the game itself. So I've come to the forums to see if I can draw on the assistance of the community.

My first question would be, is there a good, up to date (or relatively so) bard guide out there that goes in depth on stats I should look for, rotations, situationals, and the like? Maybe something akin to a job discord, or a subreddit?

If not, is there someone out there who wouldn't me picking their brains to try to learn about the class itself, mostly the previous mentioned information.

Lastly, if someone doesn't want to answer 10,000 questions of a beginner, can anyone out there give me cliff notes on rotations, and I can build from there? I would be happy with any bits of advice given, really, as all I've learned so far is keep my dots up, and spam straight shot, or so that was the advice I was given by friends. It doesn't seem to be very sound, though, as I see a lot of spells I'm not using, that seem fairly vital, but I don't know when the right time to use them is. I get that Battle Song(Shout? Can't recall) is something I should use to open a big dps window, and probably when the boss is most stable which that will come with knowledge and experience, other than that, though. I'm at a near loss of what I should be looking at, what this or that means, and so on. So any advice is welcome in general.

https://www.thebalanceffxiv.com/

This is your one stop to guides and discord for play.

For a TLDR on bard, you rotate through your 3 songs, and then get proc's for different abilities based on your 2 dots critting, depending on what song you're in it can be charges for a big hit, cooldown resets, or attack speed boost. The aim is to always have 1 song active, and you can cut songs short to go back into more desirable songs earlier. Your 3 songs are The Wanderers Minuet, Mages Ballad and Armies Peon. The guide will be more in depth. For Battle Voice, you use it basically on pull, and then when it comes back up again, not that much more to it than that.

Your three main songs are basically stances that you cycle between. Minuet is your strongest, followed by Ballad, followed by Army's.

So the core cycle is 30s Minuet (use Raging here and Barrage under Raging) -> 30s Ballad -> 20s Army's.

Throughout, you want your DoTs running on the enemy with their crit rate boosted from the Straight Shot buff. So keep SS up at all times, and use Heavy Shot as your default GCD.

Because (at 68) Empyreal Arrow gives you a proc, when doing your 80s cycle you'll want to hold off on using a second EA in Army's, so that you can open Minuet with an Empyreal under Raging Strikes, and then the next time EA is back you can Barrage it and sitll be under Raging, if you didn't get a Refulgent (level 70) to Barrage before then.

You also want to avoid, if you can, using EA in Minuet or Ballad when you can't gain a proc, if you're at 3 stacks (Minuet) or have Bloodletter/Rain of Death up (Ballad) use those first before hitting EA. Otherwise, EA, Bloodletter/Rain, Sidewinder and Misery's End should basically just be used immediately when available (with DoTs up for Sidewinder of course).

On bosses / trials / whenever it's not going to pull mobs and cause trouble, sing Foe as much as you can. You do not want your MP to be full for any length of time if you can avoid it. Before pulling a boss, you can be just inside of attack range and still outside of Foe range, so you can sing just before pull. Try to use Refresh after Foes are over, to get to your next Foe more quickly.

That should cover you so far as basics go. Bard hasn't substantively changed since a month or so after Stormblood launched, so any guide from the past year and a half or so is gonna be fine.

This doc has a LOT of info, the class can be a bit complex but you will learn it as you go. Not a lot has changed since 4.0 as far as how the class plays, the gear will be outdated in this doc but that is about it. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...q0IOZU/preview

https://i.redd.it/u95yzzizjm6z.png
This joke image is surprisingly accurate if you want a more condensed guide to get the basics down.