LF BRD : a solid opener + rotation

[HyoMinPark]

followed that link to the openers. I mained bard for a good while till my company need a tank. that opener is garbage. Foe's requiem ONLY helps spell casters. It does not help monks, dragoons, ninja's or tanks to DPS much. People seem to miss the tooltip "Reduces all enemy magic resistance by 10%." If you wan't doing magic damage, than you're wasting MP and your own damage by putting this up. Poison from venomous bite isn't magic and the only magic damage bards do is the little bit from windbite. not worth throwing your MP around for 10% increase for just you. Bards are meant to be ranged support, you have to weight which songs to use and when. if you waste your MP for minimal boost to only your damage and your healer needs mana for some reason, you have no MP to help. Things to think about

If a group has decent players, there will always be a member that Foe's can benefit: healers. Healer DPS is no joke, and it is a thing. And why not give them Foe's? Foe's does not lower your DPS in any shape or form. Only Mage's Ballad and Army's Paeon lower your damage dealt by 10%. And a decent bard will play Foe's for a DPSing healer. If, by some reason, they need to switch to another song in the middle of Foe's, it's entirely possible. That's part of being a good BRD: using your songs, and knowing how to handle situations were you may need to interrupt one song for another. MP regen is decent enough to give you MP later on if, for some reason, you have to play Mage's or Army's. Chances are that you will not have to play either during the first minute of the fight (Foe's lasts roughly 70-75 seconds), so you're free to play Foe's. A bard who does not sing is not worth anything.

Foe's also does affect some of a NIN's ninjutsus, as well as a few attacks that DRK has (Dark Passenger, Unleash, Abysmal Drain, to name a few). BRDs don't benefit from Foe's at all. We may have cast times now, but we aren't "casters." None of our skills deal magic damage.

I need to understand where I'm going wrong and i think is on the second raging strikes and hawks eye.

Bards have a pretty decent buff alignment. Make sure you have Internal Release cross-classed, in addition to Blood for Blood.

In your opener, you are basically going to blow everything: pop every buff to get that lovely burst that Bards have. After that, the alignments for buffs and skills are very easy.

-- Every 60 seconds: Internal Release, Flaming Arrow, and Sidewinder should all be coming off cooldown. Always pop IR before you Sidewinder in hopes for a lovely crit (and make sure both your DoTs are up! :3).
-- Every 80-90 seconds: Blood for Blood will be off cooldown. HOWEVER, you want to hold on to it until Hawk's Eye is also off cooldown. You then pair them together, along with Barrage (90 second cooldown), and Barrage + Empyreal Arrow. Always, always, always use Barrage with EA. For sub-54 content, Barrage your Heavy Shot, but for 60 content, always EA. If your Barrage is coming off cooldown in less than 15 seconds, just hold EA until you can Barrage, rather than have to wait.
-- Every 120 seconds: Raging Strikes is coming off cooldown. And so is Internal Release, Flaming Arrow, and Sidewinder. Pop RS + IR, and then Sidewinder and hope to get an even better buffed crit.

You should always repeat those buff/skill alignments. There may be a time where all your buffs are off cooldown, and in that case, I usually do my opener again, and then go back to following the buff clock. Your buff should always be on cooldown, as well as Sidewinder, Empyreal Arrow, and Bloodletter. Also, during each sets of buffs, they should last long enough for you to refresh your DoTs with Iron Jaws, and get a set of buffed DoTs. Some bards will clip early, and try to get double buffed DoTs during buffs, which you can also do. But all your buffs last long enough that IJ will fall somewhere in them while they're active.

Couple more tips: Don't pop buffs if you have weakness, or if you are having to sing Mage's Ballad/Army's Paeon. Wait until weakness wears off/you aren't singing anymore to begin popping buffs.

Without seeing your rotation, I can't really tell you what you may be doing wrong, since I don't have a timeline of the skills/buffs you used to follow. But hopefully those tips can help you out a bit. :3
I'm no 95 percentile Savage raider, but I am a fairly decent Bard. So I feel confident in giving you these tips, even though I've never set foot in A12S.

[Mature]

-Always double Iron Jaws during HE+BfB, once at start and just before buffs fall off?

Yes to everything but this one. Are you saying i need to apply iron jaws right after poison and wind? Then do it again before it finishes?

[Kitfox]

Yes to everything but this one. Are you saying i need to apply iron jaws right after poison and wind? Then do it again before it finishes?

Depends on what kind of opener you use. Afaik, there's a double EA opener, then there's double IJ opener, which one you use depends on the fight and party composition. However, during the fight after your opener you want to get 2 IJ into each HE+BfB window for extended buffed DoTs. So after your buffs come back from opener, you pop them again, immediately refresh DoTs no matter the duration left, do your Barrage and what not, and IJ again before buffs fall off.

At least that's what my static MCH/BRD tells me.

[Mature]

Without seeing your rotation, I can't really tell you what you may be doing wrong, since I don't have a timeline of the skills/buffs you used to follow. But hopefully those tips can help you out a bit. :3
I'm no 95 percentile Savage raider, but I am a fairly decent Bard. So I feel confident in giving you these tips, even though I've never set foot in A12S.

Jesus thanks a lot. I'm gonna have to change my opener to blow everything up. I'll give an update later on

Could you please let me know if you don't mind how many seconds left you get on 12s dummy so i know where I'm aiming at. (No food or pots please)

Thank you

[HyoMinPark]

Could you please let me know if you don't mind how many seconds left you get on 12s dummy so i know where I'm aiming at. (No food or pots please)

Thank you

I cleared the A12S dummy with 10 seconds left to spare. No foods, no pots. Gonna do it a second time, because I was a bad bard and let my DoTs fall off once. ;_; (In my defense, however, it's 7am and I haven't slept yet. XD)

ilvl 266
Crit 1172
Det 480
SkSp 823

However, I don't posses any Alexandrian gear because I have been lazy and not farming pages from A9S for the necklace/belt. And I keep saying I'm going to go in and finish clearing A10S (never got to the one night I was with friends because I kept lagging out every pull) and try my hand at A11S (I want those bard pants ugh). So my gear is not BiS; just a pseudo-BiS that I made with the gear I had available and the stats I prefer.

[Mature]

@hyomynpark

This is my rotation http://ffxivrotations.com/nw6

I missed IR on that rotation (I use it before applying RS)

[HyoMinPark]

@hyomynpark

This is my rotation http://ffxivrotations.com/nw6

I missed IR on that rotation (I use it before applying RS)

So you go for a more double IJ opener. I've done double EA for a while now (sort of modified Kreitor's opener), but I will probably try the double IJ one soon to see if my "crystal ball" tells me my damage is higher or not (plus, I kinda feel like rearranging my opener anyways). My GCD is short enough to get IJ off right before my buffs start to drop, so I'll have the initially applied buffed DoTs, and then a second set of them for 18 seconds afterwards.

I also don't toggle my Minuet because I just prefer to keep it up all the time, but that's just a personal preference. I tried toggling before and just didn't like it, so I don't toggle. I mostly rely on stutter-stepping to move if I have to. Also lucky Bloodletter/Straighter Shot procs help too, as well as using my other oGCDs and giving myself a little room to move. I think I do a pretty good job dodging stuff, though.

I pop my buffs slightly different than you do. Pre-pull goes something like this for me (if the tank is nice enough to give me a 10 second countdown):
10 seconds: cast Foe's and have it ready
5 seconds: Battle Voice
4 seconds: Quelling Strikes
3 seconds: Hawk's Eye
2 seconds: Blood for Blood
1 second: Raging Strikes
Start: casting EA.

I used to pop my buffs earlier and start casting EA, but then I ended up with aggro because the tank wasn't ready, or didn't hit it fast enough, so I got to have a friend for a few seconds lol. In the case of Diabolos Hollow, more like 2 seconds before he plastered me all over the floor. I weave in IR between Windbite and Venomous Bite (a very old habit back from the days when I was a baby bard, because sometimes I would be pressing buttons too quickly, and Venomous Bite wouldn't go off, so I put IR between the two DoTs, and it eliminated that issue).

I use food sometimes if I remember to/have any on me (HQ Baked Pipira Pira), and I don't use pots. I tried to weave them into my opener before, but it just felt too clunky and I could never find a good spot for them, no matter how many times I rearranged.

Again, I'm not a super savage raider. XD I enjoy the challenges of Savage, and I enjoy pushing myself to improve, but I don't expect myself to be 95 percentile. I have my standards and if my "crystal ball" shows that I'm above them, then I'm satisfied usually. :3

[Mature]

Cheers for the advice!

When you say double IJ you mean cause im already casting at start wind and poison? Or you meant double EA? Because the only time i use IJ is the at the end of my rotation.

[Kitfox]

Could you please let me know if you don't mind how many seconds left you get on 12s dummy so i know where I'm aiming at. (No food or pots please)

I don't know if this is any help since my BRD is only ilvl263 with Zurvan Bow but:

ilvl 263 - Zurvanite Bow
Acc 699
Crit 1016
Det 588
Sks 723

SSS A12S: 7-13 seconds left

This was with double EA opener because double IJ is only better with NIN's Trick Attack, if I remember correctly. One thing you can do is hold HE, BfB and Barrage for the second Raging Strikes because you can't fit a 3rd use within SSS time window, though it seemed to be around the same by doing double IJ in HE+BfB and then double IJ again in RS. You can also replace any Heavy Shot with a Bloodletter to get the most out of the procs. I don't know if Feint before EA is worth it, but I was doing that when I didn't have a SS proc, probably a slight gain against the Heavy Shot GCD clip.

[HyoMinPark]

Cheers for the advice!

When you say double IJ you mean cause im already casting at start wind and poison? Or you meant double EA? Because the only time i use IJ is the at the end of my rotation.

My bad, I thought I spied a second IJ in there. XD I should probably get some sleep. :P

I'm trying out a new Double IJ opener that doesn't toggle Minuet on and off (because I just... ugh, I dislike that). According to my "crystal ball" I did about the same damage in a 3 minute parse that I did when I did the SSS A12S dummy (albeit, that one was 10 seconds short, and I also got very lucky with crits and procs). I'll probably do some more experimenting when I get up later. Gonna see what I can hit with and without food and compare them both...decide if I want to change my current opener or not. My burst was higher with the double IJ opener, even with Sidewinder being mean and not criting for me.

I really need to get unlazy and get some Alex gear. Sure it won't mean anything once SB hits, but it will last me until level 65-66. Plus, I have nothing else to do really. XD Already got all my birbs. I've been playing AST so much that my bard is feeling a little neglected. So why not try to optimize her a bit more. :3 Especially if I want to get into a static for 4.0 rather than just running it with friends when they're not with their static(s). XD