Bard DPS Advice?

[Endelyon]

Recently hit level 70 with Bard and it's my first DPS job at end game so I decided to practice my opener/rotation and ended up (barely) clearing the O2S dummy. However I was watching some videos of Bards with a similar item level who are able to output around 3800-4000 DPS. The most I could get after several tries was 3660 and more often than that it was around 3400 or 3500.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUHARv7hOKo

I've made a video showing the clear and I was wondering if anyone has any tips for me to squeeze out that extra few hundred DPS. Are these higher numbers just a result of a crazy good RNG set or am I doing something wrong? I really appreciate any advice anyone could give me. (Note that the video is not edited, it's just missing a few seconds near the 28-second mark because my Twitch stream decided to restart itself at that moment for no reason)

Thanks in advance.

[Grimoire-M]

The lack of a potion in your opener is one issue. Possibly a lack of melds as well. Keep in mind BRD innately has a lot of variance too. I did see some troughs that could explain the lower value. Try to get as much crit as possible on your gear.

[Endelyon]

The lack of a potion in your opener is one issue. Possibly a lack of melds as well. Keep in mind BRD innately has a lot of variance too. I did see some troughs that could explain the lower value. Try to get as much crit as possible on your gear.

I do have potions, they're just a bit expensive to use for the purpose of SSS practice. I do have all the crit melds I can in my gear but there are possibly some pieces I can replace for higher overall crit (I know Susano's Greatbow has a lot). Thanks for the tip!

[HyoMinPark]

Trying to get the video to load but alas, buffering. D:

What does your opener look like? What does your gear look like? And are you using food at all?

Ideally, you should be stacking as much Crit as you possible can, in terms of gear and melds. Next you should prioritize Direct Hit, followed by Determination, and then Skill Speed last (BRD BiS has Skill Speed at 786—I would suggest aim for 750). For food, Permission Leaf Sushi HQ is the best for bards. I would also suggest investing in Infusions of Dexerity for content—they last 30 seconds so you can actually pop them pre-pull and not have to worry about the issues items have with not queuing up during GCDs.

I use Miyuri Ai’s Opener (well, a slight moderation), which looks something like this: http://ffxivrotations.com/15c4
Foe’s start at 4 seconds pre-pull, then infusion, then open up immediately on “START”.
Where your Heavy Shot spam after Sidewinder is you fishing for a Refulgent Arrow proc. You will replace the next GCD with Barrage + RA if it procs—if no RA proc after the 4th Heavy Shot, you Barrage + EA and then IJ your DoTs before Raging Strikes falls off. Only use Pitch Perfect at 3 stacks, of course. You do not want to hold Barrage for a late RA proc (Barrage should always line up with your Minuet+Raging Strikes window for the added RS potency); nor do you want to Barrage EA too early in your opener (in the event RA procs and then you don’t get your Barrage nuke).

I would definitely suggest looking at this guide. It is an excellent resource for new and veteran bards, especially if you are wanting to get into raiding.

[lulunami]

I agree with Hyomin. Check out Chae's and Cetonis' Bard guide. It is quite wordy, however, but it does go in depth on how to play in many situations. Also, Miyuri's opener is a good alternative opener that works just as well.

One thing I noticed in your opener is that you used Barrage with Empyreal Arrow very early. You should try to hold onto Barrage and fish for Reflugent Arrow procs to use with Barrage. You can get in about 4 to 5 Heavy Shots to fish for Reflugent Arrow before Raging Strikes runs out. You want to delay your strongest attacks a little bit to take advantage of raid buffs like Trick Attack.

Generally speaking, it is important that you snapshot buffs just before they run out. I noticed you did not use Iron Jaws a 2nd time in the opener. I believe you should try to Iron Jaws near the beginning of Raging Strikes and once again near the end of Raging Strikes. In raids, party buffs like Chain Strategem, Trick Attack, Battle Litany, etc. will be running out at about the same time as Raging Strikes. You want to snapshot these buffed dots. 45-50 seconds of buffed dots is quite important in the opener since that potentially gives you more Pitch Perfect and Bloodletter Procs.

There were some minor GCD clipping parts like triple oGCD at the end (Barrage -> Empyreal -> Pitch Perfect). Try to double-weave two oGCDs at the most. Also there were some parts where you let Bloodletter stay unused for about 3 seconds, which is a potential DPS loss. Try to always keep Bloodletter on cooldown (spam that button during Mage's Ballad). There were also some downtime with the 3 songs. Try to get about 30s Wanderer, 30s Mage's, 20's Army's.

There can be some variance with Bard since you can get low proc rates vs high proc rates. Just keep practicing and try to find possible GCD downtime or missed buffs you did not realize occurred.

[RLofOBFL]

Your dps is actually not too bad, like without food or pots 3600 on a dummy is about right @ your ilvl. Doing all of the above comments stuff my absolute highest was about 3850 @ ilvl 220 on O3 dunmy. One thing I noticed is you didn't fish for a Refulgent proc in your opener. Not much else I can say really, just follow HyoMinPark's fantastic advice.

[Endelyon]

snip

Thank you so much to everyone for the advice! I didn't even realize there was an "art" to weaving oGCDs with GCDs. I will keep practicing. Hopefully between fine-tuning my rotation and gearing up I'll be able to hit the 4k mark soon enough. ^^ As far as not using Bloodletter right away and the downtime between songs that's just moments where my brain isn't telling me what to do next, I suppose it will become second nature in time. I really appreciate this, and I've been reading through the guide, though it's quite long!

[Mature]

So coming back to bard rotation I have a small question:

Why add a second IJ before RS finishes? messing about with the dots?

Example:


4s Pre-pull: Foe Requiem (Refresh + Infusion of Dexterity)
Pull: Stormbite (Bloodletter + Raging Strikes) > Caustic Bite (Wanderer’s Minuet + Empyreal Arrow) > Straight Shot (Battle Voice + Nature’s Minne) > Iron Jaws > Heavy Shot > Heavy Shot (Sidewinder) > Heavy Shot (Bloodletter) > Heavy shot (Barrage + Empyreal Arrow) > Iron Jaws > Heavy Shot

Wouldn't it be better to just do one IJ and keep straight shot at the same phase with storm and caust?

[HyoMinPark]

So coming back to bard rotation I have a small question:

Why add a second IJ before RS finishes? messing about with the dots?

Example:


4s Pre-pull: Foe Requiem (Refresh + Infusion of Dexterity)
Pull: Stormbite (Bloodletter + Raging Strikes) > Caustic Bite (Wanderer’s Minuet + Empyreal Arrow) > Straight Shot (Battle Voice + Nature’s Minne) > Iron Jaws > Heavy Shot > Heavy Shot (Sidewinder) > Heavy Shot (Bloodletter) > Heavy shot (Barrage + Empyreal Arrow) > Iron Jaws > Heavy Shot

Wouldn't it be better to just do one IJ and keep straight shot at the same phase with storm and caust?

You IJ your dots again before Raging Strikes falls off to snapshot them, and that gives you another 30 seconds of buffed dots. You do the same for any raid buffs as well, especially for Enhanced Spear, Battle Litany, and Chain Strategem. The buffed IJ has a way higher potency than a SS use. (IJ alone is 1100 potency—100 initial and then the other 1000 from Stormbite/Caustic).

As for timers, your dots should be refreshed every time you enter Raging Strikes (so upon execution of every Minuet + Raging), and then refreshed again before Raging falls off 20 seconds later for another snapshot, and during periods with a lot of raid buffs (there are different tiers for this—the most important one is what I listed before: Enhanced Spear on you, Battle Litany, or Chain Strategem; others include Trick Attack, Embolden, Brotherhood, and Balance, but they are lower in tier than the first three). So SS timer is not always going to be the same as your dots, nor should you really strive for it to be—you just need to strive for near 100% uptime on both.

[Mature]

I see cause for example I do exactly the same rotation but I don't add 2nd IJ (I already got all dots aligned with Ss) cause it just flows better with Caus and storm dots before going into the next song:

4 seconds left on SS I do:

Straight shot -> MB -> IJ

Straight shot -> BS - IJ

and going for the big one :

RS -> BL -> SS -> WM -> EA -> IJ

that way I know that every time I got 4 seconds left on SS I'm ready to transition into the next song. (Giving me 26sc of SS and 30sc IJ)

That's why I think keeping all dots aligned it's more consistent. Unless I'm missing DPS by throwing IJ in the middle

Hope you get what I mean and that's why I can't work out why using 2 IJs