Feeling disappointed with myself.

[Cynfael]

I won't pretend to be a BRD expert, but if you can manage to always be attacking, keeping DoTs up without excessive clipping, making use of Bloodletter procs, and knowing when (and for how long) to use songs without party members needing to beg for them, all while taking care of mechanics, your overall performance should be fine.

BRD may not put out the big, sexy numbers of DRG or BLM, for example, but being able to run around plinking, even facing the target for a split second to activate an ability and keep running for your life from a mechanic, is a pretty nice advantage in some fights.

[Sessurea]

Keep DOTs up, keep straight shot up, keep flaming arrow on cd.

Next u wanna always be making use of your buffs, get them on cd asap, don't save them (imo ). Cast these buffs between ur GCDs. Also on the matter of buffs, it's good to have some buffs up before using dots, because even if the buff expires, the dot will remain affected until it expires or gets refreshed.

Lastly is your procs. Put Straight shot, bloodletter and misery's end on a separate toolbar, alone even. put it where u can notice it even when you are focused on playing. Don't ever clip your bloodletters or misery's end, I see so many bards do this. Let it breath. These skills are a large chunk of your damage.

I also "got someone to check my dps", and I was surprised at how low it was. bards should hit 270 at i90 and I was doing roughly 220. I started paying attention to all details, not clipping dots excessively/not letting them expire, keeping my buffs on cd, and and trying to grab ever proc I could and I eventually got to 270 on a striking dummy at i90. I thought I was doing great until my dps was checked. THIS is why parse should be made available in-game, but let the carebears keep crying against it QQ

Stick with your bard if you love it. The class isn't as simple as people make it out to be. Easy to stay safe etc, but maximising dps on a bard is no joke. With all it's buffs, dots and procs, it's a lot to take in. Drg is a lot easier than brd imo, as it has a set rotation, but ofc, melee and positionals bring their own challenges and fun too. I play both and love both.

[dday3six]

There are some morale-boosting comments here. I'll give it another go. I just dislike being asked to leave because I'm not pushing above ~180 dps as they say.

A few things to remember about parsers: not all of them are accurate, not everyone knows how to read them correctly, and some people straight up lie about the results. Before you get to up in arms about what someone claims a parser says, make sure that you can trust them to be relaying accurate info to you. Often times when things are going poorly, particularly in PUG groups people look for someone to blame.

With that said, if you are looking to improve your Bard DPS there have been a couple good posts detailing methods. There are also several guides on not only on the forums but through internet which can help.

With Bard the trick is to rarely stop attacking. Weave your off GCD skills with your on GCD ones to maximize every CD.

[Adamantium]

A few things to remember about parsers: not all of them are accurate, not everyone knows how to read them correctly, and some people straight up lie about the results. Before you get to up in arms about what someone claims a parser says, make sure that you can trust them to be relaying accurate info to you. Often times when things are going poorly, particularly in PUG groups people look for someone to blame.

Agreed. Because FF14 doesn't officially support parsers, people turn to third party parsers like ACT, which have various settings to tweak that can unintentionally lead to different results across various players.

I know someone who reads their DPS by uptime on the boss/mob, completely excluding any downtime during the encounter (during phase transitions, for example), as opposed to a lot of other people who have gotten used to other games with addons supported that display DPS as a sum of the entire fight, downtime included. As a result, this person sees higher DPS on their parser than other people do, and has gotten themselves into some heated arguments over it.

[VenuzKh]

I main Bard, and have downed T9. I don't use a parser, so I can't give you any numbers but I can give you my rotations that seems to be working well;

Quellings Strikes
Straight Shot (Bloodletter)
Heavy Shot (Internal Release)
Windbite (Raging Strikes)
Venemous Bite (Blood for Blood)
Heavy Shot (Hawk's Eye)
Heavy Shot (Barrage)
Heavy Shot (Flaming Arrow)
Heavy Shot (Blun Arrow)

This is the rotation I use, but I do use Bloodletter every time it pops, so then the rotation will be pushed forward one step. Other then that make sure to always have your two DoT's up, and the buff from Straight Shot. I refresh them with 3sec left. I also make sure to use every abilty off the global cooldown as soon as they refresh. Also I clip the DoT's by more than 3 seconds if that means they will get the buff from Raging Strikes / Blood for Blood or Internal Relase.

[Jim_Berry]

*UPDATE*

I joined a T6 group earlier. We one-shot. To my surprise, BRD feet dropped...mine. Made me happy.

Finding out I was a sub until their guy return from out of town, they liked me and asked to do T7. I get the Oil and the UAT. I passed on Slayer and Fending items, though.

They take me to T8. With no experience past 5 minutes of the boss from a previous learning session, we got down to 31% on our first try. Probably could have won if I knew mechanics. We only had time for one, so they gave me a linkshell, hoping to continue.

[Jim_Berry]

*snip*

Quellings Strikes
Straight Shot (Bloodletter)
Heavy Shot (Internal Release)
Windbite (Raging Strikes)
Venemous Bite (Blood for Blood)
Heavy Shot (Hawk's Eye)
Heavy Shot (Barrage)
Heavy Shot (Flaming Arrow)
Heavy Shot (Blun Arrow)

*snip*

I use Venomous Bite first since it has the 100 potency for the initial hit versus Windbite's 60 potency. And first as in first round of dots. Last year, I was fine. I remember being schooled to use Venom first, then Wind when Venom's about to expire, then reapply Venom when Wind is about to expire.

Anywho, there's just so many different methods to use that I almost said screw it and would let the new generation of BRDs have the spotlight.

[VenuzKh]

I use Venomous Bite first since it has the 100 potency for the initial hit versus Windbite's 60 potency.

Exactly the reason I use it first, less chance to take aggro. Also it does more DPS per tick, so that is another reason to have it higher on the priority list. Incase boss jumps, you need to switch focus to add etc, its better to have Windbite ticking than VB.

[Jim_Berry]

*UPDATE*
I un-Weathered my Auroral body, legs, and Ring for BRD. She's now iLv103. No upgrades to DRG were made; she's still at iLv95. I decided to use a Strike Dummy for the first time, since people were giving me mixed results when they run their programs.

Using estimates, my BRD's auto attacks were doing ~185 while my weaponskills were about 200-220 per hit. Crits were ~258 while buffed Crits were 275-300. DRG's auto attacks were ~221 while weaponskills without combos were around the 280 mark. With less buffs, DRG still outdamaged BRD.

BRD using Bloodletter while Straight Shot is active after popping all the following buffs gave me 501 minimum with 557 being highest crit damage:
- Blood for Blood
- Hawk's Eye
- Internal Release
- Raging Strikes

DRG using the Full Thrust combo gave me a crit of 1421 damage just using:
- Blood for Blood
- Internal Release
- Life Surge

I'll check this later with Heavy Thrust being active to see if numbers go higher.

Now, I kinda regret spending all that Soldiery, Sand, Oil, Myths, Materia, and Alexandrite on BRD. I was going to get Soldiery weapon for DRG, but now that I'm 11/12 Atma without trying, I may go Zodiac route. That all depends on other things, like if I get a Coil static for BRD or whatever.

[ryuuken]

what weapon(s) are you using for both brd and drg?