ARC: Heavy Shot vs Straight Shot

[Odd]

As Ernesto said it adds a 10% buff to crit chance for 20 seconds.

But don't use heavy shot next.

Straight Shot>Bloodletter>Wind Strike>Venomous Bite>Heavy Shot. Spam Heavy Shot after that, Bloodletter/Misery's End whenever available, and keep dots up on applicable fights (boss fights where there's still time for full duration dots). Keep Straight Shot up as well. Omit whatever abilities you don't have yet, but still follow that order.

A VERY useful macro for Bard is this:
/ac "Misery's End" <t>
/ac "Bloodletter" <t>
/ac "Heavy Shot <t>

If you just use this macro it will always use whichever one is available first. So at the start of a fight, the first time you hit this it will use Bloodletter. Then apply your dots and continue hitting it. As long as Bloodletter is on cooldown, it will use Heavy Shot, until near the end of the fight, when it will use Misery's End. To sum it up, as long as both Bloodletter And Misery's End are on cooldown/unavailable, Heavy Shot will be used.

[vanityobscene]

As Ernesto said it adds a 10% buff to crit chance for 20 seconds.

But don't use heavy shot next.

Straight Shot>Bloodletter>Wind Strike>Venomous Bite>Heavy Shot. Spam Heavy Shot after that, Bloodletter/Misery's End whenever available, and keep dots up on applicable fights (boss fights where there's still time for full duration dots). Keep Straight Shot up as well. Omit whatever abilities you don't have yet, but still follow that order.

A VERY useful macro for Bard is this:
/ac "Misery's End" <t>
/ac "Bloodletter" <t>
/ac "Heavy Shot <t>

If you just use this macro it will always use whichever one is available first. So at the start of a fight, the first time you hit this it will use Bloodletter. Then apply your dots and continue hitting it. As long as Bloodletter is on cooldown, it will use Heavy Shot, until near the end of the fight, when it will use Misery's End. To sum it up, as long as both Bloodletter And Misery's End are on cooldown/unavailable, Heavy Shot will be used.

So you advise against taking the time to DoT on small foes? I just tried out the macro with stuscott's addendum and it was like night and day, especially given I play with a controller. Kiting and using the D-pad at the same time is too damn annoying.

Thanks, ErnestoGiovanni, Odd and Stuscott!

I'm only on the cusp of level twenty with the ARC at the moment. It's taken me a lot longer to level because I've been smashing the crafting / gathering at the same time to try to curb some of the cost of equipment (and my desire for high quality gear between unique sets and aetherial drops). Between my healer and myself we have all out necessities covered without having to fork out gil. It just costs labour time, haha. It'll pay off though, not just for our war classes but for our pockets.

[Odd]

So you advise against taking the time to DoT on small foes?

I personally don't use DoTs on anything that will be dead before 15 seconds is up. But V.Bite is still quite powerful, so I know some Bards who always use it after bloodletter, regardless.

It's actually more beneficial to put Heavy Shot first in that macro - if Heavy Shot is last, it causes a delay each time you press the macro. With Heavy Shot first, you can spam the button and your ME and BL procs will still come up when ready and cause no DPS loss or delay.

Thank you for the reminder! Somebody actually told me this a long time ago but I totally forgot!