Bard advanced tactics

[CatholicFan]

Yeah, I thought the auto-attacks occurred regardless of whatever else you were doing. Even if it was the case where you were losing auto-attacks, why wouldn't you just move Barrage to later in the buff cycle? You'd want Barrage going off last with everything else already up anyways, so your argument still doesn't really make sense.

[Wren_Kal]

So, reading through this thread...

Am I the only Bard that uses Repelling Shot every time it's up?

It's a weak but basically free, off-GCD hit every 30 seconds. Seems like a waste not to use it as long as it's reasonably safe to do so (99.9% of the time).

Sample rotation:

- Buffs
- Straight Shot
- Bloodletter
- Windbite
- Flaming Arrow
- Venomous Bite, while running into melee range
- Repelling Shot, get punted back out to original position
- Rain of Death
- Hard-shot spam until something better pops up.

The same can be said for Blunt Arrow in fights that don't require stuns/silences. If you're not using all your off-GCD skills as often as the situation allows, you're losing out on free DPS.

Also -- and this is nitpicking now -- if you're using priority macros, put the off-GCD skills at the BOTTOM and learn to double-tap; or mash if you're lazy -_-.

Everyone seems to put Bloodletter/Misery's End at the top of their macros...which means that a lot of the time they'll be throwing out Off-GCD skills while sitting on a fully reset GCD. This hurts your DPS.

[CatholicFan]

Am I the only Bard that uses Repelling Shot every time it's up?

It's a weak but basically free, off-GCD hit every 30 seconds. Seems like a waste not to use it as long as it's reasonably safe to do so (99.9% of the time).

I hear what you're saying, but this is a really bad idea outside of trash pulls. You want to be at max range whenever possible for most boss fights. The kickback on Repelling Shot isn't nearly to this point. It's tempting, with a Bard's mobility, to do a lot of running around, but players should be refraining from unnecessary movement as much as possible. If you're constantly running forward and back, you're risking putting extra aoe circles within melee range, you're risking activating a back-side attack, and you're probably running out of song range from your mages. The unpredictability of boss fights means this is just a bad idea overall for a measly 80 potency attack.

Edit to add: As for Blunt Arrow, that's not a bad idea as long as you know you won't need it in a boss fight (and I'd say you rarely do).

[Kroktar]

Yeah, I thought the auto-attacks occurred regardless of whatever else you were doing. Even if it was the case where you were losing auto-attacks, why wouldn't you just move Barrage to later in the buff cycle? You'd want Barrage going off last with everything else already up anyways, so your argument still doesn't really make sense.

I have been trying this, with my actual weapon i get 3 auto attacks, i tried doing silly stuff over and over, and i think i always get the 3 auto attacks(9 with barrage)

[OmegaXtc]

The biggest tip I can give is that with River of Blood proccing a refresh on bloodletter when your DoT's crit, you want to make sure you refresh your dots when you have a crit buff on.. such as Internal Release from the monk tree. The DoTs use the snapshot method of calculating how much crit/damage they should have. That snapshot is taken at the moment you hit with the skill. So if you put them on before straight shot, then refresh once you have the buff. If you use internal release, reapply and let them run out before reapplying.

[Zleepyy]

About the whole Internal Release dotclipping you mention there Omega, it sounds good at first, but looking closer to it i don't know if it's actually a dpsgain in theory.

[Zleepyy]

Assuming you do indeed clip the dots right on time, you have to use:

IR:15s-->WB (18s remaining)-->VB 18s remaining (IR down to 12s, WB 15s)--> Wait another 6 seconds before reapplying-->WB (15-6=9, 18-9=9) this means you gain 3 ticks of WB. VB: 18-6=12 (which means you gain 2 ticks of VB). In this last step the internal release is now down to 0s after you reapplied your second VB.

This means in theory that if you do it spot on you gain 3 ticks of "Windbite" and 2 ticks of "Venomous Bite" which could have been used for 2 Heavy Shots instead of a reapply on these 2 skills, so in order for it to be beneficial these 5 ticks combined must have a higher damage output than 2 Heavy Shots in order for it to be viable (I do not count the Bloodletter procc chance because I have no estimates of the approximate procctime and I go on straight facts and not chances).