Need Help with Bard Extra Skills

I'm sort of new to the game and I was wondering what Additional Skills from other classes that I should pick up to maximize DPS. I'd like to hear from more experienced players! Thanks in advanced and I would be glad to be directed to anything else related to Bard DPS 101s and such.

-FFA

I don't know every job skills by heart so there is probably other skills but here's four that I feel comfortable with on my bars:

Lancer lvl 22: Invigorate (gives 300 TP, 2 mins cooldown)
Lancer lvl 34: Blood for Blood (increase damage done by 20%, increase damage received by 25%, lasts 20 seconds, 1min20 cooldown)
Pugilist lvl 8: Second Wind (Self-heal for 450 cure potency that varies with attack power, 2min cooldown)
Pugilist lvl 12: Internal Release (increase crit chance by 20%, lasts 15 seconds, 1min cooldown)

Anyone else feel free to add, im curious.

Every Bard should have the above 4 skills. Blood for Blood is a pain to get but well worth it.

The 5th slot is up to you

I'm a little wary on Blood for Blood just because of the damage received increase. We are pretty squishy already. Yes I know how to run and shoot but still.

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Originally Posted by Syndication

I'm a little wary on Blood for Blood just because of the damage received increase. We are pretty squishy already. Yes I know how to run and shoot but still.

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You just need to be careful when you use it. There are some times when you really, really don't want it up (any of the Primal's ultimate abilities, Titan's Tumult skill, etc.) And obviously don't use it if you've pulled agro.

The skill, however, is phenomenal. It's a good DPS boost and very helpful.

Mantra's not a bad idea for the last spot, you just have to spend some time leveling MNK.

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Originally Posted by Xaphire

Mantra's not a bad idea for the last spot, you just have to spend some time leveling MNK.

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When I find some free time to unlock Mantra, I'll probably wind up switching between it and Keen Flurry depending on what I'm running. Mantra for things where that 5% healing can actually really matter, and Keen Flurry for anything where pulling aggro doesn't mean everyone dies. . .

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

When I find some free time to unlock Mantra, I'll probably wind up switching between it and Keen Flurry depending on what I'm running. Mantra for things where that 5% healing can actually really matter, and Keen Flurry for anything where pulling aggro doesn't mean everyone dies. . .

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Pick up fleetfoot instead of keen flurry. Our parry is awful, and fleetfoot is far superior.

Mantra is only 5% heal for 15 sec every 2 minute. Not worth it.

Featherfoot as the 5th slot is the most viable. Thanks to our high dex, we have a natural high dodge. This allows us to kinda off tank (with our high threat generation and no position requirement, we are the best dps to off tank).
As an example, On garuda HM, I would off tank one of the two add while using a DPS a buff (for threat increase) and Featherfoot.
You can also dodge many other skill. It is overall a very good skill.

What about the idea of using feint as a debuff for the fifth slot?

Personally I like Feint for the slow, and while I use it now, it will likely be my 5th. It makes kiting somewhat easier

only Lancer and Pugilist's skills can be added to Bard's skills right?

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Originally Posted by blessed

only Lancer and Pugilist's skills can be added to Bard's skills right?

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as far as I can see, yes. but I am only lvl 44 bard so I might be wrong.

While I agree that Feint can be a great skill when you are solo grinding, realistically in dungeons/raids it doesn't seem to fit into the rotation well and the DR makes it less than desirable.

That being said, I definitely echo what others have stated. Blood for Blood is amazing because, as with Raging Strikes, it is a great CD to have, especially when singing to override the 20% damage debuff.

Invigorate is great for those long fights and you don't have Army's Paeon up.

Internal release is great, because who doesn't love more Crit ontop of our already high percentages from gear and having the Straight Shot buff up.

Second Wind is great to have some Self Healing to take pressure off of your healers when AoE occurs.

My final choice definitely goes to Featherfoot. If for some odd reason you pull agro or something spawns and is beating on you, having the extra evasion on top of the high dex gives you the ability to not have those attacks pummel you into the ground.

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Originally Posted by teknotaz

as far as I can see, yes. but I am only lvl 44 bard so I might be wrong.

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well, it's a bit confusing. i'm level 42 bard right now, but the only cross class skill that i can use is from pugilist class.

Blood for Blood
Featherfoot
Invigorate
Internal release
Second Wind

Those 5 skills give you literally everything you need at endgame.

Edit: Feint is a terrible skill btw. Anything that can melee you, you should be circle-strafe kiting in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Rythless

Blood for Blood
Featherfoot
Invigorate
Internal release
Second Wind

Those 5 skills give you literally everything you need at endgame.

Edit: Feint is a terrible skill btw. Anything that can melee you, you should be circle-strafe kiting in the first place.

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yeah....featherfoot.

this guy is a moron. anyone who says feint is bad obviously hasn't read the skill. its not just movement speed that is slows. its cast speed too. pretty amazing for AK and any fight where bosses....cough, ifrit....need to be interrupted or have long casts because it makes them longer. so any group without a dragoon can have it up for those times. im not saying take it all the time, but its definitely situational for maximizing party damage and reducing tank damage.

also why would you take featherfoot in the first place. its 15% on a stupid long cooldown, might as well take haymaker in case you do get swung at a couple times and pull off a dodge, since we already have naturally high dodge.

Are you guys sure that Feint slows movement speed at all? Heavy is the effect that cripples movement speed.
I was under the impression it didn't affect cast speed either, just auto-attack.
FFXIV - Slow (status effect)
If that's the case, then without the lancer trait to increase it's duration, it doesn't seem to be worth taking under ANY circumstance.

Personally, I think I'm going to be running with:
Featherfoot
Second Wind
Haymaker
Internal Release
Blood for Blood

Simply macro Haymaker to supercede Heavy Shot any time it's up, pop Featherfoot and spam Haymakers (if it's not an AoE situation). Makes a lot of off-tanking mechanics trivial.

Depending on the situation, I might swap out Second Wind for Invigorate... but it seems like any time I find myself needing TP, others do too and I'm already singing Paeon, which solves my TP issue...

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Originally Posted by Bardo

Depending on the situation, I might swap out Second Wind for Invigorate... but it seems like any time I find myself needing TP, others do too and I'm already singing Paeon, which solves my TP issue...

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get 50, once you get a piece or 2 of skill speed you will see yourself needing invigorate. if your groups have that bad of a time dps'ing paeon isnt going to help you since most fights at 50 are somewhat of dps races. no one uses paeon at 50 because everyone who needs tp as a resource has invigorate. (maybe HM garuda, but that's only if your group has bad aoe and really needs your aoe.) Also, feint slows cast/movement speed, most websites don't have updated spell descriptions.

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Originally Posted by Bardo

Depending on the situation, I might swap out Second Wind for Invigorate... but it seems like any time I find myself needing TP, others do too and I'm already singing Paeon, which solves my TP issue...

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Wait, since when are we affected by our own songs?

Feint is a dps loss. 10 second uptime means reapplication every 4 GCDs. It is certainly a skill that DOES help the tank, and I'm sure its of use in bahamut's coil if it is even applicable to the boss.

But in every situation a lancer is better off doing it than you, since it lasts 20 seconds. I have yet to see a lancer apply it in any group I've been in, and I've had no trouble. So it doesn't seen necessary.

If your group is having trouble with survivability, yes it will help. But frankly the vast majority of fights are DPS checks rather than survivability things.

Just ask yourself, do you keep up rain of death constantly? Its the same concept.

Whether we like it or not bard is a dps class, and support is secondary to pumping out dps.

Also as to our songs affecting ourselves, yes, they do. Even manasong (notice how it drains slower? its not because its intrinsically slower, but its because its restoring your mana as it drains it).

Not sure what being 50 has anything to do with it, but I have more skillspeed than you do. :X 380 vs 352... I'm still just about the last DoW in any group that runs out of TP, so I'm really not sure I agree with your sentiment on invigorate.

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Originally Posted by Shunye

Also, feint slows cast/movement speed, most websites don't have updated spell descriptions.

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Got any proof of that? Would certainly make it much more useful if it did, but from my kiting tests it doesn't seem to affect movement speed at all.
(And I honestly have no idea how to definitively test if it affects cast speed)

Find an enemy that attacks pretty slow then use it on him, or I'd be willing to bet the combat log has timestamps. Just see the difference of when they are hitting.

Bardo is correct that SLOW and HEAVY are two different things. Slow is attack and cast speed (I noticed a difference in boss AoE cast times), while heavy is movement.

As for invigorate, its a must.

I do not know what the other DoW's in your group are doing...but the math is pretty obvious.

Lancers, almost all their attacks are 60 TP. 70 TP every 20 seconds or so for buffs.

For us, its 60, 70, 80. Every ~20 seconds, we need at least 1 70 (more with straighter arrow procs), and 2 80's. Much more if multidotting. Lancers also have better invig (500 vs 400).

It might not seem like much (10, 20 more), but this is over a period of 120 seconds (Invig cd), and TP regen is designed that it is almost exactly 60 TP every 3 seconds, so you will stabilize with 60, which means lancers are much closer to stabilizing than bards.

Pugilists have attacks that cost 60, 50, and are even MORE efficient.

Bards are by far the least efficient DoW dps.

This goes back to the whole "i don't see the point of invigorate" thing, I'd much rather be not singing for another 400 TP. Unless of course it's needed, but like panda said the other 2 classes that rely on TP are much more stable in the long run.

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Originally Posted by Rythless

Blood for Blood
Featherfoot
Invigorate
Internal release
Second Wind


Those 5 skills give you literally everything you need at endgame.

Edit: Feint is a terrible skill btw. Anything that can melee you, you should be circle-strafe kiting in the first place.

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YES! THIS!!! That is all you will ever need.

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Originally Posted by pandabearcat

Pugilists have attacks that cost 60, 50, and are even MORE efficient.

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But with skillspeed and greased lightning, their GCD is MUCH shorter. The sheer number of abilities they use in the same period of time trumps the lower cost.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Invigorate is only 300 TP for off-class, not 400.
If you pop Battle Voice and Army's Paeon, you can regen that same 300 TP not only for yourself but for your entire group in a matter of seconds.

Don't forget about your tank who can't pick up lancer and who's rotation has 60/70/80/90, even 120 TP cost abilities.



You guys are right that you wouldn't want to sing just to give yourself TP, but I simply haven't run into that situation. Any time I've needed TP, so did the tanks/mnks so I would have been singing anyway.

I suppose if your tank is spamming flash and isn't worried about damage and the only other DD in your groups are casters or DRG, then invigorate makes more sense than some of the other options.

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Originally Posted by pandabearcat

Bards are by far the least efficient DoW dps.

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You get in so many bloodletters that your TP isn't really an issue unless you're spamming aoes.

If you do get low on TP and Invigorate isn't up, you can put on Paeon for a few seconds and you've instantly gotten several hundred back. Especially with Battle Voice. A Bard can never be TP starved because of Paeon.

TP is never an issue for me unless I'm going crazy with Wide Volley to kill a group of enemies.

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Originally Posted by Bardo

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Invigorate is only 300 TP for off-class, not 400.

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Invigorate is 400 for off class and 500 for Lancer with the special trait.

Feint should be used by DRG, not by BRD.

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Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

You get in so many bloodletters that your TP isn't really an issue unless you're spamming aoes.

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why are you bringing up bloodletters? they have nothing to do with TP consumption, they are off the GCD and you use them in between your other skills >.>

Haymaker procs quite often with Featherfoot on and can give a nice bit of burst dps especially when soloing, questing, or chasing FATEs, and even during bosses when dealing with adds. I prefer Haymaker over Blood for Blood simply because Haymaker procs often enough even without Featherfoot.

I have the following macro that I found to work very well. *Warning, this is off the top of my head and probably has a typo/error. Not sure if my order is optimal but it seems to work well.

/macroicon "Heavyshot"
/ac "Barrage" <me>
/ac "Haymaker" <t>
/ac "Misery's End" <t>
/ac "Bloodletter" <t>
/ac "Featherfoot" <me>
/ac "Heavyshot" <t>


I usually start off with a Straight Shot, DoTs, then mash this macro button until I see Straight Shot proc or I need to reapply DoTs. I also have a buff macro with Internal Release and Raging Strikes.

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Originally Posted by Kass

why are you bringing up bloodletters? they have nothing to do with TP consumption, they are off the GCD and you use them in between your other skills >.>

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Because bloodletter has no TP consumption. Anytime the animation for it is going, you aren't doing anything that's consuming TP. Thus you're gaining it.

Are you seriously saying that singing for 20% damage reduction is better than just popping one invigorate?

The thing is, lancers and pugilists also have invigorate...and they're also using it (they should be).

No group should ever need the TP song.

Furthermore, you should never waste a GCD on bloodletter.

The reason being that it is literally impossible for you to proc another bloodletter in the 1 second to move to the next inbetween gcd.

While if you use bloodletter in place of a gcd, you push your entire rotation back half a GCD.

Huge nono for dps.

Bloodletter procs have 0 bearing on your tp consumption.

People don't understand how TP works. Anytime you're not using it, you're gaining it. Even a few seconds here and there add up.

A Bard should never have TP issues unless they're spamming aoes.

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Originally Posted by Viridiana

Wait, since when are we affected by our own songs?

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Don't know has it changed but as long as I've been playing, I've been affected by my own songs including Paeon.

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Originally Posted by pandabearcat

Are you seriously saying that singing for 20% damage reduction is better than just popping one invigorate?

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No, that's not what anyone is saying.
What we're saying is that it might actually make sense to ignore invigorate if 1) any time you need TP, you're not the only one that needs TP (for example, right after an AoE burst phase) and 2) you've replaced invigorate with another skill that you're getting a lot of use out of.

From my testing last night, the Slow from feint has diminishing returns...
So the short duration we get without the enhanced feint trait could actually be a liability if there's anyone else who can apply it with a 20 second duration.

Not only that, but the tooltip in-game actually states that it slows Auto attack and spell/skill RECAST time, not CAST time.
So once again... are you guys SURE that it affects casting speed? I'm just not seeing it in my testing.

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Originally Posted by LunarEmerald

People don't understand how TP works. Anytime you're not using it, you're gaining it. Even a few seconds here and there add up.

A Bard should never have TP issues unless they're spamming aoes.

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You must be the one lacking understanding.
Bloodletter has no positive or negative effect on TP. It is only used when you could not be using another skill (That consumes TP). You're not gaining anything you wouldn't be getting anyway.