When do you need Mage's Ballad?

[GeekMatt]

SCHs will almost never need Mages Ballad. As an AST/WHM I don't like to see Ballad played unless
1) I asked for it
2) I died
Or 3) It' a standard part of the fight for your party, such as A1S when The Opressor jumps and you're not DPSing anyways.

Ultimately you can't please everyone, and you don't need to try. I've accidentally depleted my MP to near-zero in dungeons and I didn't hesitate when the tank to pulled the boss, it just meant I had to take it easy for the first portion of the fight. Other healers will panic when they hit 30% MP, but that's the healers problem.

[Velox]

I put ballad up when a healer gets raised and also, most of the time when they ask for ballad it's a bit too late.. as soon as I finish casting it healer is dead.

If a healer dies, you should already start casting it, even before they accept any rez. Not only is the raiser taking an MP hit, but the raisee only has like 100 MP when they revive and can't heal themselves, so yes they will die unless the other healer heals them up before the next mechanic.

The other uses for Ballad are situational, but a healer dying is the only time when you should always have it up.

[cgbspender]

1300/1500 mp usually. Below this, I might need. At that amount or above, I dont. By the time I fall from 13k to 2k, I saw it coming. Either I dps'ed, or the party was awful. In either case, my mp managing skills are up.

[Yeol]

I'll keep that in mind

[Knahli]

I'd rather take the chance of playing it when the healer is confident and still has their recovery buffs rather than making them anxious or playing it too late to compensate for their relative inexperience/skill level.

[zuzu-bq]

You'll feel better the needs of an emergency Ballad if you play healer for a while. Except if you're Summoner, Mage Ballad is needed is moments of mana pressure or on "cooling down" phases. You can play it during a boss jump/transition to prevent the healer's mana to drop or cast when something unexpected happens that require healers to use more mana (death of a player, death of one of healers usually makes the other healer to spend even more mana).

For dungeons if you've a WHM/AST spamming Holy/Gravity play it between pulls! They'll love it.

[Roxas_Andrade]

Actually I don't play current endgame (Alex Savage) content and I have to say I don't expect Ballad at anytime. Not that I don't trust the bards or anything, but I trust in my owns skills to get mp back whenever I need it.

If the bard can spare his mp to stop requiem to do the ballad, Im grateful, but usually I don't need it for the content I run...

[AskaRay]

Depends. I look at the healer's MP and, since I also play healers, I can usually tell if they're going to be in trouble or not.
Like, I may have seen that WHM pop Shroud a bit ago but I know it's not on CD yet, but they're still really low...then Ballad goes on.

Especially if a few people/a healer have died, I'll play it as soon as I see the res stick to them (before they've accepted usually unless they do so asap).

[Knahli]

On an unrelated note, is using Paean on a Warrior worth interrupting your own DPS for? Even if not, I imagine the difference is negligible enough to not care and just make the tank's life a little happier.

[AskaRay]

On an unrelated note, is using Paean on a Warrior worth interrupting your own DPS for? Even if not, I imagine the difference is negligible enough to not care and just make the tank's life a little happier.

Depends... if they give me enough warning then sure. I'm not a healer though I'm not going to be looking at your buff bar. Also if I'm not too busy obviously. A good ideal macro is when they pop the buff. "Five seconds" (like I see many) isn't enough time, sorry.

Also on principle I don't do anything for WARs who have like fifty warnings about when Berserk is going to fall off. It's annoying and you aren't going to be handicapped that long.