Question on BRD

[Duskmourne]

Yeah i didn't mean to turn this into a stroke your epeen thread. I was just curious if bards were still wanted/useful in end game lol

[Ooshima]

My blm would say otherwise. Bards are capable of high damage but are not at all highest burst damage or top dps.
Your making it sound like you do higher dps then even Monk or Ninja....

I do however agree that Bards are fine as they are

It is actually debatable, depending on what is the number of seconds you are taking into account of the burst.

BLM's initial burst, with F1 crits or just one F3 proc crit will easily spike the first 10s DPS to over 1,000 but it dies down easily because you only have 5 F1s and you enter UI3 very soon. Meanwhile, BRDs can maintain that respectable 700-800 DPS for the first 15-20s, then about 600 range entering 30s.

Either BLM or BRD will claim the top spot on initial burst but BLM does die down faster than BRD before your Ninja catches up.

[Kitkat]

Brd isn't as OP as they were at 2.0 mainly due to b4b nerf that took place. They can still spike high relatively fast due to buffs, but as far as over all DPS due to song utilization (and subsequent -20% debuff) as well as lowest weapon damage compared to EVERY other job including healers.

Equally competent and geared DPS that are Mnk, Drg, or Nin will easily out damage you over time. That is just how it is, but when it comes to having to switch to Adds or constantly move it helps us stay up near them at the least and if you really want.....due to TP song/Foe any additional/sustained damage they do while you use these songs technically count to your contributed DPS.

Even with the lower WD and Debuff I still enjoy brd because I'm a ranged DD at heart with Nin being a close second favorite. The job does have it's utilization, but it is not top of the DPS charts when played against competent and well geared DPS. I have not problem being a support class...I just wish SE would either get ride of the -20% debuff or at least scale our WD to be the same as other DPS since they are so keen to keep us categorized as such. I'm not even going to get started on the damn LB.....

[Snugglebutt]

The number of people playing bards will drop significantly when machinists come around in my opinion. Not just during the period when machinist is the new toy to play with but also afterwards I doubt many will go back to bard. Most people picked bard I believe not for the measly three support skills it has or even the preference (not requirement and not needed) in training parties for raids but because it was a ranged DPS with high mobility and that is what made it a fun class to play for most with 'fun' being the most important factor in anything people do in games.

I am not saying some people did not pick it for those other things but I seriously doubt most did...so when this new machinist ranged DPS class using guns not bows comes out also having high mobility, provided is not ruined by turning into another support hybrid in my opinion then I imagine bard numbers will drop a lot. It would be nice to just have a ranged physical DPS just like how BLM is a ranged magical DPS instead of having all ranged physical DPS classes twisted into support roles. BLM is ranged magical DPS and SMN is ranged magical DPS with support, would have machinist as ranged physical DPS and bard ranged physical DPS with support.

I think more than almost all other classes, bards are picked/raged on for the highest number of things...tanks might get raged on if not tanking well, healers picked on if not supporting well, most other DPS classes picked on if not DPS well but bards picked on when not DPS well and not supporting well too. So I hope machinist is just a pure DPS class. Also helps add variety if pure DPS so can pick bard if want to play a ranged DPS/supporting class and machinist if just want a DPS class without the support role. My fear is they will add a mere couple support skills to machinist just so they can justify proclaiming it a support role and nuke it's DPS with debuffs like with bard instead of finding more appropriate ways to balance it's mobility.

[Boss_Koivula]

I didnt feel like browsing the forums more than 3 pages, so I will post my question here.

I've been using this as my opener: SS (BL,RS), VB (xpot of dex,BfB), WB (HE,IR), HS (Barrage). After that I refresh the dots while I still have all my buffs up and weave in any bloodletter procs or Repelling Shot/Blunt when they are up. Is there something I should change to squeeze out a little more DPS? On our FCoB runs i'm always second when we look at the parse, a little behind our ninja. But I don't know if thats because the others suck or what, but I feel like there's room for improvement.

[Eumenide]

I didnt feel like browsing the forums more than 3 pages, so I will post my question here.

I've been using this as my opener: SS (BL,RS), VB (xpot of dex,BfB), WB (HE,IR), HS (Barrage). After that I refresh the dots while I still have all my buffs up and weave in any bloodletter procs or Repelling Shot/Blunt when they are up. Is there something I should change to squeeze out a little more DPS? On our FCoB runs i'm always second when we look at the parse, a little behind our ninja. But I don't know if thats because the others suck or what, but I feel like there's room for improvement.

got some things that could help you there. First of all you want IR up BEFORE you apply your dots since the higher crit=more BL resets, secondly dont use xpot+another oGCD together, the animation of the xpot is so long that if you use another oGCD with it you will delay your next GCD, also use wind bite before venomous bite.

My opener:
8s pre-pull: Foes+BV
4s pre-pull: Quelling->HE->Raging
Bl as tank pulls
straight shot->B4B+IR->WB->X-pot->VB->barrage+blunt(BL instead if reset)->heavy->flaming+blunt/BL->heavy->repelling+blunt/BL->heavy->potent poisoning potion (use BL if it resets) clip the dots @6s left to make sure they get all the buffs

then after the opener you go in to a priority system that looks like:
straight shot>dots>straighter shot>heavy shot with weaving in BL and buffs and clipping your dots @ 3s left

you can also look into delaying your some of your buffs like delay the second B4B a couple of seconds so it lines up with HE+barrage
IR is about to go off CD= delay reapplying your dots by 1-2 seconds to get IR buff on them etc.

[siverstorm]

Yeah i didn't mean to turn this into a stroke your epeen thread.

Welcome to the dps forums

[ZephyrK]

Yeah from what I've seen, there are tons of BRDS.... I'll probaly roll ninja, they look pretty fun and appear to do solid dps while bringing some utility.
I knew things had changed, but I thought i would ask. I just remember rolling two BRDS cause of their damage and songs. Thx!

This made me chuckle. Play what you like, but I think you'll be disappointed if you choose ninja over bard because of over population. I took a break between 2.2 and 2.4 and fully half of all bards seemingly became ninjas.

[Maero]

Nah there is still a huge amount of Bards, past few St runs i have done have been mostly all Bards as of late, lol
Play what you have more fun with but also i would suggest to have both geared and leveled up, never know while doing coil if your group may need a melee or ranged, so be flexible
If you will run coil and Primals, etc. that is

[Boss_Koivula]

got some things that could help you there. First of all you want IR up BEFORE you apply your dots since the higher crit=more BL resets, secondly dont use xpot+another oGCD together, the animation of the xpot is so long that if you use another oGCD with it you will delay your next GCD, also use wind bite before venomous bite.

Yea i´ve seen it takes a while to pop xpot+buff so whatever skill im gonna use next has to wait for a while. Gotta get rid of that.

you can also look into delaying your some of your buffs like delay the second B4B a couple of seconds so it lines up with HE+barrage
IR is about to go off CD= delay reapplying your dots by 1-2 seconds to get IR buff on them etc.

Yup. Thats what i´ve been doing so far. And yeah, I use WB first but my brain had some lag while posting with mobile. I even forgot Flaming Arrow.. But thanks for the tips! Gonna train on a dummy and beat it to myself to use IR early on instead and not use xpot with another buff.