Letter to all bards about Mages Ballad

[saber_alter]

I said ,"Sorry this is too slow for me , take care bye."

Then I spent 15 minutes working on this thread hoping other Bards learn that Mage Ballard is actually an ability they have even tho most actually don't use it ever.

i'm sorry, but i'm not going to drop my DPS by 20% to compensate for your ineptitude at tanking when there is a perfectly good black mage who's damage i can buff, thank you very much.

either learn to use riot blade, or stick with warrior, Kthanks.

[MartaDemireux]

i'm sorry, but i'm not going to drop my DPS by 20% to compensate for your ineptitude at tanking when there is a perfectly good black mage who's damage i can buff, thank you very much.

either learn to use riot blade, or stick with warrior, Kthanks.

Ballad still allows the BLM to DPS harder than with Requiem due to allowing Flare to be used more frequently. For Wanderer's Palace Speed Runs (for ease of numbers I'm not counting AF/UI, spell speed gear or abilities that can only be used once per pull that both rotations would see equal gains from (swiftcast Flares basically)):

Over 2 BLM rotations:

With Ballad up: Fire3>Flare>Bliz3>Fire3>Flare>Bliz3 will produce 1400 potency of damage in 22 seconds. In that time 9 Wide Volleys will produce 792 potency of damage. That's 2192 potency over 9 GCD's (243 potency per GCD). 2192 potency in 22 seconds is roughly 100 potency per second. The BLM needed to cast 6 times.

With Requiem up: Fire3>Flare>Tpose>Bliz2>Bliz2>Fire3>Fire2>Flare>Tpose>Bliz2>Bliz2 will produce 1679 potency of damage in 28 seconds. In that time you could get about 10 Wide Volleys and 1 Rain of Death off for 1200 potency of damage. That's 2879 potency over 11 GCD's (261 potency per GCD). 2889 potency in 28 seconds is roughly 102 potency per second. The BLM needed to cast 11 times.

What we see here is that Ballad allows for the BLM to deal about the same damage in less casts leading to faster kill speed overall. If both rotations were to go for similar lengths Ballad would pull ahead. Once we factor in Skill Speed and Umbral Ice/Astral Fire Ballad will pull ahead even more due to needing to cast more Fire II's under Requiem and Astral Fire greatly favoring higher potency spells. Under Astral Fire we see Fire II getting 180 potency (80 increase) versus 468 potency for Flare (208 increase). (I'm going to go over the math again now that I have more time to include AF and UI bonuses/restrictions)

Additional benefits to this are that it allows a tank to spam Flash to maintain hate without question and allows a WHM to cast Holy in between Cure's without the need to look at their MP. It should be noted that with more Flares being cast you will be generating more enmity which does indeed require the tank to be using Flash on cooldown. With Ballad already applied you save an additional 3 seconds between pulls as well.

tl;dr: In WPSR with BRD & BLM, BRD should full time Ballad (outside of boss fights, Requiem for boss fights), BLM should cast Fire3>Flare>Bliz3 (repeat) for the best DPS. Ballad also allows Flash and Holy spam.

[saber_alter]

-snip-

hmm, i'll try running ballad next time i do a speed run for WP (monday maybe). to see if it makes a difference with the Healer/DPS.


but on a completely different note, the tank should never be asking for ballad. riot blade generates enough MP to keep up flash spam without the use of ballad (no one is getting the benefits of it, so no one should be ripping hate off because of it)

[Grailer]

hmm, i'll try running ballad next time i do a speed run for WP (monday maybe). to see if it makes a difference with the Healer/DPS.


but on a completely different note, the tank should never be asking for ballad. riot blade generates enough MP to keep up flash spam without the use of ballad (no one is getting the benefits of it, so no one should be ripping hate off because of it)

I disagree, once PLD runs out of power the riot spam isn't fast enough . You get 1 flash spam every 6.5 seconds . Any BLM with decent gear can outdamage that , They would have to hold back .

Read OP's post one more time, dont try to reason whit that person, couse in other Words his/her skills are so limitid, that doing WP whitout a Brd cant be done.

A good bard would keep ur Heavy aoe and TP comsuming skill up and running (helping atleast), but if u go whit this tank, u cant get it, couse MP song need to be up from start to end -.-

Lol I never said use it continuously for entire run. Where do you guys read this stuff ?

There is argument that running it continuously allows BLM to do more damage which I never said .

[Zellata]

Over 2 BLM rotations:

With Ballad up: Fire3>Flare>Bliz3>Fire3>Flare>Bliz3 will produce 1400 potency of damage in 22 seconds. In that time 9 Wide Volleys will produce 792 potency of damage. That's 2192 potency over 9 GCD's (243 potency per GCD). 2192 potency in 22 seconds is roughly 100 potency per second. The BLM needed to cast 6 times.

With Requiem up: Fire3>Flare>Tpose>Bliz2>Bliz2>Fire3>Fire2>Flare>Tpose>Bliz2>Bliz2 will produce 1679 potency of damage in 28 seconds. In that time you could get about 10 Wide Volleys and 1 Rain of Death off for 1200 potency of damage. That's 2879 potency over 11 GCD's (261 potency per GCD). 2889 potency in 28 seconds is roughly 102 potency per second. The BLM needed to cast 11 times.

You are not accounting for off-gcd skills. While your conclusion could still be correct, the BRD rotation you use as an example is not a normal one (not sure about BLM rotation).

[Machazareel]

You are not accounting for off-gcd skills. While your conclusion could still be correct, the BRD rotation you use as an example is not a normal one (not sure about BLM rotation).

He's mostly right about BLM. My rotation may be inferior idk, but I tend to do Fire3>Flare>Tpose>Bliz2>Bliz2>Fire3>Flare>Tpose>Bliz2>Bliz2. I do this because the increased cast speed from UI3 will also affect the cast time of Flare if done immediately after Fire3, rather than using the halved cast time on a Fire2 followed by a full cast Flare.

His way may be better, though. I haven't really mathed this stuff out, I've just been eyeballing what seems to kill stuff faster.

[MartaDemireux]

You are not accounting for off-gcd skills. While your conclusion could still be correct, the BRD rotation you use as an example is not a normal one (not sure about BLM rotation).

Yeah, I left off-GCD's out because overall I don't think they would change the end result and I'd rather work with smaller numbers. For RoD and QN I primarily left them out because you can't reliably proc them (15% chance) but did include 1 RoD in requiem because statistically in 10 WV you should see 1 RoD and you'd be able to fit in 11 GCD's in 1 BLM rotation.

He's mostly right about BLM. My rotation may be inferior idk, but I tend to do Fire3>Flare>Tpose>Bliz2>Bliz2>Fire3>Flare>Tpose>Bliz2>Bliz2. I do this because the increased cast speed from UI3 will also affect the cast time of Flare if done immediately after Fire3, rather than using the halved cast time on a Fire2 followed by a full cast Flare.

His way may be better, though. I haven't really mathed this stuff out, I've just been eyeballing what seems to kill stuff faster.

I didn't include AF/UI in my numbers (still haven't gone through to math that out yet). The BLM rotation I put for Requiem is based on their natural cast times which should require a Fire II to use up some time before Transpose is ready again. With AF/UI you won't need the Fire II but if you get any spell speed gear or buffs you might find yourself waiting on Transpose's timer and need to fill that time in again.

Not at either of you:
Basically if the fight is going on for a long time due to BRD+BLM being undergeared you'd gain more use from Requiem rotation (possibility in duty finder). But, in a full relic+1 party with everyone in some i90's and lowest ilvl being i70 (normal shouted for speed runs) fights would go exponentially quicker using Ballad rotation due to more Flare uses. Ballad rotation will see higher DPS with the more spell speed you have as well due to having to rely on Transpose's flat 10 seconds.

Edit: I'm now curious if it would be worth it for BLM's to run 2 gearsets: 1 for single target (the crit rate pieces) and 1 for AoE speed runs (the spell speed pieces).

[Zellata]

Yeah, I left off-GCD's out because overall I don't think they would change the end result and I'd rather work with smaller numbers.

I think IR and BfB might change the end result, as those can be used on every pull.

[Machazareel]

I didn't include AF/UI in my numbers (still haven't gone through to math that out yet). The BLM rotation I put for Requiem is based on their natural cast times which should require a Fire II to use up some time before Transpose is ready again. With AF/UI you won't need the Fire II but if you get any spell speed gear or buffs you might find yourself waiting on Transpose's timer and need to fill that time in again.

That may well be true. In my current gear (Relic+1/Full DL) Transpose comes off cooldown shortly before Flare finishes.