Help needed with Bard Macros Please :)

My old macros just are not doing enough damage anymore. Does anyone have and are willing to share a good rotation and macros for level 60 Bard?

Thanks ;)

Macros tend to lower your dps, I don't use them on any of my jobs.

A macro I use is to put Battle Voice with the three main songs. No /waits, the idea being you spam the button you put the macro on twice. If Battle Voice is ready, it's used and if not, it's not. Another arguably vital macro is announcing when you use Blunt Arrow. Put a /p then a /wait 1 then Blunt Arrow. This helps when timing Silence actions with other players. As for rotations... you have 2-4 main attacks you're going to be doing with the off-attacks every so often so it's really pointless to macro attacks.

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Originally Posted by Gilraen

A macro I use is to put Battle Voice with the three main songs. No /waits, the idea being you spam the button you put the macro on twice. If Battle Voice is ready, it's used and if not, it's not. Another arguably vital macro is announcing when you use Blunt Arrow. Put a /p then a /wait 1 then Blunt Arrow. This helps when timing Silence actions with other players. As for rotations... you have 2-4 main attacks you're going to be doing with the off-attacks every so often so it's really pointless to macro attacks.

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Another way might be a macro with blunt arrow, then wait 1 and {Just used it.} A wait 1 before blunt arrow might make you miss the ability you were trying to silence in the first place. I love the idea of the battle voice macros though.

Eheh, yeah, had that backwards. ^,^ The /wait is to keep you from spamming chat while you spam Blunt Arrow.

I have a lot of problems getting some of my macros to fire properly, probably latency issues as others have surmised. Best solution, sadly, is to not macro your skills together.

here are some I use:

https://scontent.fash1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...32380837_o.jpg


https://scontent.fash1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...93712445_o.jpg

https://scontent.fash1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...47880541_o.jpg

https://scontent.fash1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...65338368_o.jpg

Here's how my bar looks:

https://scontent.fash1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...56166517_o.jpg

I only use macros because i use controller- it helps to keep me from using too many of the crossbars (I have three that I use as a bard- this one, one for songs and anoher for misc things like my chocobo bars and items). I keep one hotbar on, so I know when my cooldowns are avalible to use.

Ive been told I have decent dps for a bard by various FC members. Maybe not OPBard (Ive seen some bards pull 5k on some attacks), but decent enough to where you wont have any problems with any of the content, so long as you know how to move with wander's on.


(Disclaimer: Ofcourse, I dont know how well these will work when placing latency into the equation. I have the luxury of living "relatively close" to the NA datacenter and I have decent wifi to play the game. I can use these with easy in movement heavy fights like titan ex unsync, and other HW bosses who have alot of aoes in their fight. Use at your own discretion and experiment! GL.)

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Originally Posted by KonaMochi

https://scontent.fash1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xap1/t31.0-8/12068603_10204739707683561_5345650217693712445_o.jpg

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What's the point of the venomous/wind bite one? O_o It's mostly going to default to using VB first since there's no cooldown beyond gcd. Does it work without capitalizing the first letter of each word?

Anyway, OP: I'd recommend steering away from the habit of using macros for most things. The only ones I have on bard are for buffs (Raging Strikes, Hawk Eye, Blood for Blood, Internal Release--all on one macro) because of my bad wrist, but even then they fire off in the wrong order sometimes, and then it ruins my opener. If your ping isn't really low, you also really don't want macros on attacks because they don't take advantage of the game's skill queue system.

I guess if you're not doing savage, it doesn't really matter...In which case, you can still use the misery's end > bloodletter > heavy shot one (or bloodletter after heavy shot...? bloodletter is better to use before heavy shot now with WM, right? My bard is an alt character, so I don't play it beyond roulettes/alex ;; ), but I can't think of anything else that's really helpful for bard.

Here's my list of bard macros:




Yep there you go. I used to have the skills macrod with songs/BV but I gave up on that. No point.
I ALSO use a controller so space is no issue for me...all my skills fit on One main crossbar, one extended crossbar (that's eight slots instead of sixteen), and about half of a second crossbar (songs and aoe stuff)

As soon as you get used to switching (which I don't do most of the time since..... it's either AOEing or I need a song, so rarely) then you are golden.

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Originally Posted by Aethaeryn

What's the point of the venomous/wind bite one? O_o It's mostly going to default to using VB first since there's no cooldown beyond gcd. Does it work without capitalizing the first letter of each word?

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It works...on occasion. Even I still have trouble with this one.
I mostly only made it for the influx of new HW abilities and trying to make everything fit on two crossbars.
There are times in where it'll work, with windbit hitting first and then venom, but that's still just a 1/3 chance.
I still keep windbite on the crossbar, just incase it fails.
Works nicely when it does work tho- one less button press.

As for the capitalizing- I do beieve it doesnt matter if it's been capped or not. So long as it's spelled right.
I generally dont have any issues with my macros(aside from the venomwind one.)

I will say the same thing someone here already mentioned.

Macros are not the way to go. They will never be as good as actually using the skills on cooldown and might be viable only for people after injury or with some physical problems (having only one hand etc.).

It might feel a bit overwhelming to play without macros, but you will get used to it quite fast and the outcome will be definitely worth it. I would suggest giving it a try.

Would that include the utility abilities cause all the people saying not to use macros aren't making the distinction. Utility macros enable Bards to let the party know when they've used an ability that's useful to the party or streamline processes. Not all macros are about lazy-mode'ing attacks.

Here's my favorite bard macro/combo.
first use venom arrow normally.
Then the macro:
/macroicon windbite
/ac windbite
<wait.16>
/e DOTS <se.7>

How it works : venom bite lasts 18 seconds. Subtract the 2 seconds it takes between actions (16 seconds left) you'll hear a ping just as venom bite wears off to remind you to use venom then windbite again. And the /e command makes it so only I can hear the ping without clogging up the chat box for everyone else

Its a lot easier than trying to remember to look at the debuff list.

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Originally Posted by Gilraen

Would that include the utility abilities cause all the people saying not to use macros aren't making the distinction. Utility macros enable Bards to let the party know when they've used an ability that's useful to the party or streamline processes. Not all macros are about lazy-mode'ing attacks.

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Yeah precisely this. If you want to stick your whole rotation into a macro then that's definitely a no, but others can make things easier on both you and party members.

I've been trying to come up with one to make windbite/venom/iron jaws combo easier on me but there isn't a good substitute for doing it by hand unfortunately.

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Originally Posted by nexas506

Here's my favorite bard macro/combo.
first use venom arrow normally.
Then the macro:
/macroicon windbite
/ac windbite
<wait.16>
/e DOTS <se.7>

How it works : venom bite lasts 18 seconds. Subtract the 2 seconds it takes between actions (16 seconds left) you'll hear a ping just as venom bite wears off to remind you to use venom then windbite again.

Its a lot easier than trying to remember to look at the debuff list.

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Orrr I could just do that! Never thought of it, thanks.

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Originally Posted by Tigerlilyb

Orrr I could just do that! Never thought of it, thanks.

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Glad i could help :)

Yeah, I think that everyone who said that macros affect your DPS meant only rotation macros and such, but I can speak only for myself.
I have nothing against anouncement macros (unless you have them for every skill and spam party chat all the time, that is completely annoying), I use them only for living dead.

Foe and Ballad macros are kinda useless in raids as every team tries to have only 1 BRD or MCH, but sure in some random parties with 2 BRDs it is nice to know someone else used Ballad or Foe so we don't waste our mana playing the same song (but for that I check party window, so no use for me too, but it might help someone else).

As a warning, once you put your skills into a macro you can no longer 'queue' them (queueing works like this: you press a button while it can't go off due to GCD or animation lock, but it will go off ASAP, only have to press it once). Since brds have a cast time now, macros are going to slow down you down more than they used to. I had to get rid of my old buff macros that combined raging strikes/b4b and hawk's eye/internal release for this reason. Feels bad standing around popping buffs and doing nothing else cause of macro delay lol. Which brings another issue to mind, if you're putting multiple cooldowns together the macro will naturally be slower because it's repeatedly going through invalid lines ("that's on cooldown!" error).

If you don't use /wait there is no delay, you just have to spam one button. I also macro'd my buffs together but there isn't a single /wait in the whole macro so I can use them pretty quickly if I press the button a few times. It's saved soo much space on my action bar. Also helps to use the longest cooldown buff as your micon.

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Originally Posted by Gilraen

If you don't use /wait there is no delay, you just have to spam one button. I also macro'd my buffs together but there isn't a single /wait in the whole macro so I can use them pretty quickly if I press the button a few times. It's saved soo much space on my action bar. Also helps to use the longest cooldown buff as your micon.

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Yeah but Bards usually don't use all buffs at once plus use Hawks Eye, Blood for Blood + Barrage at the same time and then Internal release alone or with Raging strikes.
By having all buffs on one button you are losing enormous amount of damage.

Doesn't matter for normal duty, does matter a lot for raids.

EDIT: So yeah, only usefull macros are anouncement macros. All other are unfortunately working against you. :D