So you want to master Bard? 3.5

[chrissun]

PS : This guide assumes that you already know the Bard job adequately and caters to Bards who wants to reach that extra miles.

Mastering Bard
Minuet Weaving
Now, there is a lot of controversy surrounding the Bow Mage and whether it really increases the damage overall by letting Minuet ON all the time.
The answer is NO, keeping Minuet all the time is not the most effective way to play your bard. Your auto attack deals more if compared to the 30% increase in damage.
Let's take an example.
In bard's filler phase, we will only use heavy shot. Thus, we will take heavy shot as our reference to the calculation
Heavy shot normal potency is 150. With minuet, it becomes 150x1.3 = 195 potency

Now, the potency of an Auto Attack is your Weapon Delay/3*Weapon Damage. For a 270 weapon, Bards will get 77.01 potency from their auto attack. (which is basically your auto attack stats beside the weapon damage stats)
Therefore with minuet off, bard deals 150+77.01 = 227.01 potency
*Calculation might not be accurate because I might oversimplify it by not considering how much AA we can do per GCD. But you get my point.

The solution is to weave in and out of minuet in a battle. However, failing to weave properly will result in a significant dps loss. But where does this dps loss come from?
3 sources of possible dps loss due to unsuccessful weaving :
1. DOTs falls off
2. Empyreal arrow not used on CD
3. oGCD (Flame arrow, Sidewinder, Repelling shot, Blunt Arrow, Blood letter) deals less damage outside of Minuet.

Thus, before weaving, we'll need some ground rules.
1. Sidewinder and Flame arrow must be under minuet (Blunt, Bloodletter, Repelling doesn't have to be necessarily in minuet)
2. Use Empyreal arrow on CD
3. Only use Iron Jaws to refresh DOTs.

I propose an easy way to manage these risks of dps lost. Allign Empyreal Arrow and Iron Jaws together. Empyral Arrow has a cooldown of 15s and DOTs last for 18s. Theoretically, with this allignment, we clip our DOTs tick for 3s. (4s if you have more than 650 ss, because your empyreal arrow CD goes almost to 14s).
Thus, by this allignment we can modify the bard's rotation to become something like

Empyreal Arrow - Iron Jaws - Filler - 2s before Empyreal Arrow is up - Minuet on - Empyreal Arrow - Iron Jaws.

After that, you can’t immediately turn off minuet again because it has cooldown. But u know what's beautiful? It's 15s too! So you will know you can turn off minuette again when you do another Empyreal Arrow - Iron Jaw. Now, with so many bard openner out there, the most perfect openner if you want to start weaving by using this allignment is an openner by Krietor Senpai
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DJ1bYFtXnE
or you can see the full detail here
http://valkyrie-ffxiv.guildwork.com/...ard-bard-guide
in the 3.3 Double EA, 2 GCD Off-Minuet.
In my opinion, this openner is the easiest to learn, lines up perfectly with Ninja's 3rd GCD TA and deals lots of damage without less possibility of pulling aggro even if you are not using quelling (I'm lazy liddat).

You will notice that his openner ends with Barrage Empy - Iron Jaws. However, you will not be able to off minuet immediately since it's on CD. No problem, start weaving at your next Empy - Iron Jaws. Hell, you can start weaving when minuet cd is over.

So the rule of thumb is :
Use Empyreal Arrow as your beacon.
For me, after Empy, I will instinctively use Iron Jaws and off/on Minuet.
Also, if you are saving up a proc for straight shot, what I do is Empy, Iron, straight shot then I off Minuet. Can't waste that free 30% increase for straight shot crit. Also, when minuet is off, try to save straight shot proc until you turn on minuet again. However, don't hold it if you need to renew your straight shot buff. I even use it if i get a straight shot proc out off the first 2 heavy shots when minuet is off.

Personally, I use a macro to manage this much easier. The macro i use is as follows

/macroicon "Empyreal Arrow"
/ac "Empyreal Arrow"
/ac "bloodletter"
/ac "Heavy Shot"

This is to make sure that even when I turn minuet early, I wont just be standing still waiting for empyreal arrow to go back off cd.

That is all I have for now. Next time, I will talk more about optimal buff allignment and maybe some calculation of dps loss from clipping 3s, etc.

Happy weaving (not the clothcraft ones)

[Cetonis]

Respect for the effort, but your handwaving of BL, BA and RpS is a poor idea.

As I understand it, what you're effectively describing is a scenario where you toggle off WM for 12-second intervals, in between EA+IJ pairings. Our gain by getting the four auto attacks is 308p.

With modern crit values, the odds of a given DoT tick proccing River of Blood are around 1 in 3. Given that over a 15 second cycle, you're guaranteed at least one BL, your average BL count over the 12 second span is 1.5.

(That's an underestimate too, as I should be accounting for the tick during EA+IJ and am not because it'd be a small migraine adjusting for certain factors there.)

So for now we'll say you lose 225 x .3 = 67.5p on average on the back of River alone. On your five GCDs, assuming no SS proc (there usually will be one), you lose 222 more potency. Add in 9p x 1.3 = 12p on the DoT clip, and we're down 301.5p, just on baseline / underestimated stuff.

Now you can see the problem. Under the absolute best circumstances, what you're suggesting is effectively break-even on average. When you add in - what if SS procs, what if IR or Litany was on the DoTs, what if BA or RpS are up, what if high SkS - it won't do even that well.

It's relevant for Bards to know that you can do something like this for a cycle when you need to - if stutter stepping just isn't good enough for mechanic x - and it won't completely destroy your DPS. WM-off was common for the A7S merry-go-round, for instance. But it's not optimal in and of itself, and should not be standard operating procedure. It -was- optimal in 3.00 with 20% WM if not for the 3s cast, which maybe helps demonstrate why 3.00 WM was completely asinine.

You seem to take a cue from the fact that Krietor lists a "toggle" opener - however, that's driven more by a desire for less potion clipping, and taking advantage of the uniquely precise knowledge you get of the AA timer in an opener situation (you can WM at 4s and you got two autos guaranteed, which is not true mid-fight). The "Rinchan" opener he has at the bottom there is what most top Bards are using presently, or some relatively minor variation of that.

(p.s. your suggestion of that macro undermines your credibility)
(p.s.s. you can circumvent the post length thing by editing your original post)

[DarkerOrange]

No. This is definitely not how you master bard. This isn't even how your play it to an acceptable level.

I strongly advise that no one follows this.

[kingexellius19x]

What did I just read? Please don't follow this nonsense folks.

[gumas]

I doubt most people can follow this anyway, the moment he said weaving in and out of WM i know this is for like... 5% of hardcore brd out there

Most people i see in this game and not just brd mind you, tend to forgot to reapply or use ogcd skill, basically too many button to press and now you tell this people to weave WM the whole run? Good luck with that lol

[Kyle_Ragnador]

This can reall increase your dps, especially if there are adds spawned. 15 sek menuet, with 2 Times empyric and 13 sek without. But to do his you have to decrease max skillspeed and Give more crit det. Or you entre No tp. Tried and Testen.

Beware you should change crit to 2nd stat since spellspeed rating with wm off changes.

Since a failure will result in dps drop you shouldn't use this.
I Hope Wanderers will be removed in FFXIV 6.0 or 8.0

[chrissun]

OMG! Finally A bard who wants to talk about this, providing solid explanation and reasoning. Thank you so much for your answer.
Most bard will just say KEEP MINUET ON without explaining anything if I asked them about this.

So for now we'll say you lose 225 x .3 = 67.5p on average on the back of River alone. On your five GCDs, assuming no SS proc (there usually will be one), you lose 222 more potency. Add in 9p x 1.3 = 12p on the DoT clip, and we're down 301.5p, just on baseline / underestimated stuff.

I was just done with the calculation.
The DPS gain from 4 AA is 77.01 x 4 = 308p, as Cetonis explained.
*Assuming you have 1000 crit chane, the potency of SS proc under Minuet is 291p and off Minuet is 224p so i get 67p difference.
*Clipping 3s DOTs, I calculate it with the potential to put one more Heavy shot under Minuet thus the calculation becomes Heavy shot - Iron Jaws on hit Potency : (150-100) x 1.3 = 65p
*Let say you proc 1 Blood letter, Blood letter potency off Minuet is 150p and under Minuet is 195p, DPS loss of 45p
Now here comes the tricky part. If you get SS proc, you would only do 4 Heavy Shot. So trying to calculate the worse DPS loss possible, I will use this assumption
*4 Heavy Shot DPS loss 4x45p = 180p
*Blunt Arrow and RpS DPS loss 30+24 = 54p
So it adds up to 411p down instead, in the worst case scenario. Please confirm.

But in the best case scenario, the DPS loss is at 270p

Now, as I said at the very beginning, this guide is dedicated for bards to reach that extra mile. Was it worth it to weave like this or not? After doing the calculation mysef, most probably not. But this is just something that I came up with a few weeks ago and want to see some reaction from the bard community themselves. I also want to point out that bard can turn off their minuet!! Please dont be a black mage and eat AOE, you don't have Manaward LOL. It is also a good habit to practice weaving to push that extra damage.

[chrissun]

(p.s. your suggestion of that macro undermines your credibility)

I use the macro only to test this Minuet weaving. Under normal circumstances, All bard should know never to use this macro because of the possibility that you'll cast heavy arrow under your barrage. This is just to make it easier to get used to and less punishing when mistake do happens.

[chrissun]

This can Reallöhne invr ase your dps, espexially if there are adds Spanned. 15 sek menuet, with 2 Times ramox and 13 sek without. But to do his you have to decrease max skillspeed and Give more crit det. Or you entre No tp. Tried and Testen.

Appreciate the suggestion.
Of course, with more focus on AA, determination will play much a bigger role in the stat weight using this strategy.
The risk of failure is exactly why lots of bard just keep Minuet on all the time. That is why I try to start a discussion and to test whether it is worth it or not to weave Minuet.

[chrissun]

No. This is definitely not how you master bard. This isn't even how your play it to an acceptable level.

I strongly advise that no one follows this.

And why is it not acceptable? Can you give me insights rather than just dismissing it completely?