bards and their ...

[RinchanNau]

I saw a comment about TP songs pretty much never being necessary. If you are maximizing DPS on BRD (t8) you are likely to run out of TP within about 4 minutes even with well timed invigorates. TP song is very necessary for BRD and DRG in such situations. MNK can usually go a bit longer. If you want to conserve in t8 when you're 300 or below you could avoid using a few heavy shots and just use Bloodletter if it procs before reapplying straight shot and your dots. But even then you'll still need to help out your DRG and eventually MNK. And I know my group's tank gets pretty low on TP in t8 as well. Last time we beat enrage by over a minute so we're doing something right. Provided your healers don't need ballad at the same time it's better for the party if you use a TP song as opposed to reducing your rotation. If ballad is required then removing two heavy shots from the rotation may be the best route to maximize DPS while conserving TP.

Another situation where TP song is useful is while you're spamming aoe (t4 bugs, t5 snakes) or during a transition after applying lots of dots (adds and spumes in Levi ex). Or even Brayflox speed runs in a BRD + DRG config. You could be more TP efficient and let the caster (assuming there is one) handle most of the aoe for t4 and t5. But if you're looking to boost your numbers just because you can, TP songs are very useful in these situations. The ability to spam your aoe for much longer is generally greater than the 20% reduction in damage. It'll also allow melee to spam their aoe without killing their TP for the rest of the fight. Very useful if you don't have a caster or the caster, for whatever reason, isn't using their aoe in some random PF group.

In Levi it can be done without reducing your DPS by 20% as you'll generally be able to use your TP song during a transition. When Levi is diving, if DPS is slow, or after 1st set of spumes, if DPS is good and skips phases.