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  1. #7
    Player
    Anova's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Posts
    861
    Character
    Deneb Algiedi
    World
    Leviathan
    Main Class
    Astrologian Lv 70
    Archer/Bard is an interesting mix of dps rotation, skill procs, and healer improvisation.

    A lot of your abilities proc a cooldown reset or a damage buff on critical hits. You will find Archer DPS leans heavily on crit-fishing. Bard gives you abilities that you will toggle depending on what the other partymembers are doing.

    To maximize DPS, you will want to boost your crit rate as much as possible. Straight Shot boosts crit easily and at little cost, but your other crit-buff cds should be used at your discretion.
    You will use a rotation to maintain your DoTs, as they will proc a reset on bloodletter on crits (you acquire these traits later). Maintaining DoTs is crucial to using your main damage ability, bloodletter. Misery's End helps you finish enemies off.
    Heavy Shot crits proc a damage and crit bonus on Straight Shot, while Straight Shot increases your crit rate. Pair these with other crit buffs to increase your damage as an archer.

    Bard changes things considerably with bardsong. Song is entirely contextual. The MP and TP song are obvious enough, but they come with a damage debuff to you. Foe's Requiem is a great song any time you have a caster in the party (doubly so in raids where only 1 bard has to sing for all 24 members to get the benefit because it is a debuff and not a party buff). It increases magic damage dealt to targets and does NOT reduce your own damage. You'll use it more often than MP or TP songs, especially if your party uses aoe in a fight.

    At low level, open with bloodletter. It's good to get in the habit of bloodletter first since you will later receive reset procs to it, and it may happen 2 seconds in to the fight so this prevents you from wasting the proc. Follow this with straight shot (bloodletter is off gcd, so this will be 2 consecutive hits within 1 second), and then use your dots (first wind and then poison). Be aware wind has approx. 6 more sec on its duration than poison when timing your dots. After that, use heavy shot/straighter shot procs and try to time it so you reset your dots every 12 or 18 seconds.
    (2)
    Last edited by Anova; 07-22-2014 at 01:56 AM.

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