To all level 50/end game Bards

How is it? Is it fun? :P

How useful are we in parties? Are we competitive DPS (or are we just support?)? Are we useful/needed/sought after for 8mans or are we better off replaced with other DPS classes?

Give us your experience/insights :D

Also, do we look pretty? Do we have good looking armor sets? :P

Our DPS is amazing and more consistent than any other. We can freely dodge aoes and attacks while continue attacking. Nobody else can.

Mages's Ballad is extremely useful endgame. White mages can run out of MP quickly from needing to heal an 8 person party. Without us, they're screwed when low on MP. It would be very difficult to beat HM Titan without a Bard. Song of the Requiem can really add to the dps. 10% increase to pretty much any magical attack. Black Mage doing 500 per cast? Now he's doing 550 per cast for the next minute.

I'm 36 and haven't used Mage Ballad yet because fights are long enough to wear the healers out. How is the song used? Do you keep it up the whole fight until you're low on MP or do you pop it when they need MP?

You only play it when they need it. And yeah, I never had to use my songs until endgame. None of the main story stuff is hard enough to need them.

odds are that if the tank loses aggro it's going to be one of two classes. A healer, or a bard. Bards are considered by many to be the strongest DPS in the game, when their songs are not playing. The only reason you might want another dps over a bard is because bards lack a damage dealing limit break, which are necessary for some fights. Since end game content is usually 8 man raids however there is always room for 1(if not more) bard(s)

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Originally Posted by rzr22

I'm 36 and haven't used Mage Ballad yet because fights are long enough to wear the healers out. How is the song used? Do you keep it up the whole fight until you're low on MP or do you pop it when they need MP?

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The only time you normally need to use mages ballad is when a healer dies some how, and that should never actually happen, but if it does, that ballad can help recover a fight in 8 mans.

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Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

You only play it when they need it. And yeah, I never had to use my songs until endgame. None of the main story stuff is hard enough to need them.

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How often do you switch between the ballad that helps with MP and the other ballad that helps with TP?

Almost never if you go 22 with lancer and get invigorate which is 400TP.Only fight i remember using it was Garuda HM that you need to aoe the adds that drains yor TP a lot but with battle voice on you dont need to use army's paeon more than 10-15secs and you catch up the TP you want for your normal rotation

We are also apparently the only dps class that people feel justified in yelling at because they were on the other side of the entire raid group and didn't "hear" your mp song, etc. It doesn't happen often (because frankly if you are doing your job right it shouldn't happen often) but be prepared for backseat harpists. You can argue about proper positioning, yadda yadda, but rest assured at some point someone is going to run out of something and it will be your fault (even if you were helping out another class with a song they needed.) *shrug* Guess it's nice to be needed.

Overall I'm having a blast, love the class.

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How often do you switch between the ballad that helps with MP and the other ballad that helps with TP?

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You can preemptively use mage's ballad if you see your party members mp bars start to get low. Since you can't see people's tp bars however it's up to your party to tell you if they need it.