Here are some of my tips / tricks I have learned form great people. I don't clam to know everything and I am always willing to learn and pass the info on! Please feel free to add or comment to this, the goal is to be a bard people would want in their group, and to win = uber stuff... get the girl/guy (what ever your flavor), go to Disney world, be in parade, get the key to the city.. I am batman!... OK way off on a tangent there...like a Boss! Don’t care just /ignore! As you know the Jack of all trades that is known as Bards can be added to any of the groups that make up a raid! This means that you (Bard) will have to adjust to each group to benefit their output. First off (AA’s) Make sure you have the AA’s to boost your groups output (with alt-activate codes): 2nd Spire of the Minstrels -1421 Cacophony - 553 Quick Time - 3702 Fierce Eye - 3506 3rd Spire of the Minstrels - 1422 Bladed Song - 669 Dance of Blades – 359 Funeral Dirge - 777 I usually add socials in creating my own macros, this way you can let your group know that I am activating them and if they want to activate their own to max output! Overall just keeping them informed on what you are doing. e.g. /alt activate 359 /g Dance of blades activated!!! %T called your mama a Democrat/Republican! Second off (other items) Melody - /melody 1 2 3 1 2 3 (longer lasing song in slot one so you can twist more efficiently /melody 1 2 3 2 3) Bard 2.0 ~ enough said there (make a social to let folks know when activated)? Selo’s Kick AA (maxed out I do about 8k damage on average on use refresh time is 30 sec) Most of you know that you can right click on your spell book located on your spell gem and save spell sets (Not going to go further than that . Aura should be on Non Invis run songs can be played but then again Selo's Sonata AA works great. Dirge of the Sleepwalker-3701 Single target AA mez Third off (songs) The basic lineup listed below. I usually add and twist more according to the target or group makeup (e.g. resist song or rune) every bit helps. ** Note you now have lost of spell gems so adjust you melody and save them for quick loads depending on what's needed. Tanks: Aria of the Orator Hykast’s Spiteful Lyric Pulse of Lunanyn Terasal’s Spry Sonata Caster Group: Aria of the Orator Fatesong of Illdaera Daevan’s Aria Arcane Address Melee DPS: Aria of the Orator War March of Illdaera Hykast’s Song of Suffering Arcane Address Necros: Aria of the Orator Fatesong of Illdaera Hykast’s Song of Suffering Arcane Address WIZ / Mages: Aria of the Orator Daevan’s Aria Fatesong of Illdaera Arcane Address How to Burn: (/melody 4 5 6 5) - ** only use when burn is called or you will most likely get eaten! Aria of the Orator Hykasts Insult Lyrins Insult Hykasts Song of Suffering Lyrin's Insult Forth off (Special notes) DOTS – I would not recommend your increase to the true DPS classes far outweigh the damage you can produce with DOTS! (Some raids will allow because of range fight but most likely you will not). As mentioned before preload the spell sets prior to raids and save them so you can load them up quickly if you are moved to a different group. Mini-Chanter, always have your mez (single) and AE in your lineup. AA’s there are more than I mentioned on this post. Questions… don’t be afraid to ask… I ask all the time…. no one knows everything! Open for feedback and or updates! HolaHola
First off, nice guide, I hope people can keep the bickering and arguments out of this and just supply information on bards. I put my comments in red where I felt they applied as well as added some info afterwards. And I want to say thanks, you posted a few good guides today, i'm sure there are people who will get some use out of all of this My typical burn is as such: Hit Epic, Hit breastplate clicky. Start burn melody (that's above), Hit a hotkey that has "Thousand blades, Dance of blades, Fierce Eye, and A Tune stuck in your head" Then hit QuickTime and Cacophony. Then I'll spam selo's kick and when it's my turn for funeral dirge i'll hit that. Also as I mention above, most guilds try to do funeral dirge in rotations to keep to keep it up as long as possible, that 18% melee damage modifier is HUGE. Another thing is CURING, it's a huge part of playing a bard. We are THE BEST single target curers, there are more than a few raids where I like to keep it up and toss them out. In VOA most notably is Pillars our bards do all the curing in white/black. Also, Ghost casts!, it happens. When 2 mana/recast songs are back to back in a melody it will cause a ghost cast of the second one, be patient with it, it will continue the melody. In my burn order i gave above basically every other song casts, I suggest giving it a try on a guild hall test dummy so you can see for yourself before bringing it out and going "WTH?" With that melodies using slots 10/11/12 are prone to bugging out and randomly stopping, so avoid it if you can, save those for things like mezzes/charms/cures that you won't have in a melody. And that's all I can think of atm =b.
Necros: Aria of the Orator Fatesong of Illdaera Hykast’s Song of Suffering Arcane Address Yea that cold nuke damage focus is very important for necros! You meant Potency im sure. Nice to see i wasn't missing any of the big AA and item clicks on my bard.
Jerus, Good catch on the necro portion of it Fatesong of Illdaera. I was cookie cutting and pasting. I like your burn suggestion I will try it tonight on raid, I will re-order my clicks to match your suggestion. Thanks for the feed back and advice, hope people will add and respond. Again I don't know everything but info sharing makes everyone smarter. And I agree I hate when people focus and point out one thing... If you believe it's wrong state you case and offer a solution, don't just bicker. Again I am always willing to learn more.
and neither do I hehe, I often find myself doing something for months, telling peopl to do it that way as well, then someone comes at me with info and i realize i'm wrong =b. Was that way with my burn order, I always did just the 2 nukes + 2 songs rotated in until someone pointed out that warmarch actually adds more over the 18s than 1 nuke. I just changed that like 2-3 months ago.
Jerus, I just got off raid and using your suggestion on the burn... It made a big difference to the point that i made parse lol.
Big fans of Arcane Address? If the caster group has either a chanter or a druid, I would never use it - chanter's recursion or druid's wildfire are vastly superior for the other casters - and the relatively weak arcane address procs may stand in the way...
Yeah I didn't add it to the mage/wiz part but i did to necro, with enc/druid it's something I substitute out, Pulse of lunanyn, Resist debuffs, or even spry sonata are all decent options in it's place.
I can get 5 songs running all the time. I'm sure i'm not that special. With Aria you need to put it in the twist twice. Like 1,2,3,4,5,2 So /melody Hykast, Aria, Psalm of Pot, Arcane add, Warmarch, Aria. Very rarely will a song drop and if it does its less then 1 sec.
With the exception of tank groups, generally a bard should cover 3x group songs + 1 raid song. As a minimum, that means HoS and mana. Other options are the other debuff chants (think of it this way: one large dd landing from anyone in raid is more dps than you'll add to your entire group with your 4th song choice), 51 largos /18 ddd / 2 cod (our ac debuffs are massive, and greatly underused. Years back I parsed a ~9% dps increase using ddd/largo vs an even-con arena bot. Raid mobs with higher effective starting ac can be expected to provide at least that level of return). If you're with tanks, drop aria. Use Ryken for added stability. Bards add very little to WIZ. No RL should be putting us with them. We work well with NEC and MAG, due to both aria and what we can add to their pets. Thus For pet casters, use : suffering, wm, aria. Potency line for NEC is a joke : +1200 damage across the duration of a dot? Utterly worthless: One of our chants would add similar damage, with the bonus of being a debuff that can potentially benefit the entire raid. Arcane is generally worthless in any caster group: as has been mentioned, it doesn't stack properly with ENC/DRU/NEC or tonics. Nice for pets, potentially, if nothing else to be done. +fire and +cold are both minimal effects. Neither add to ranger dual-element nukes (this is a BUG btw, due to how the effect is constructed, and should be fixed ~ their own element masteries add to both). I almost never use +fire/cold. If you're with tanks, whatever the script, melee it with the tanks. If there are tanking "accidents", it is good to have some agro to enable deft tanking as may be required. You suggest Dance of Blades should be used on burns with TB. Ok, it increases our dps. But you're forgetting the Bladewhirl component (massive resist & dps debuff). This should be done on a rota with FD. It generally should not be used as a personal dps tool in raids. Just how useful is wm when all have Focus buffs already? The % modifier does not stack.
As far as potency and necros, for 1 dot, yes not much, but it works on all magic/fire DoTs which is quite a few when they get stacking. Is it great, no, but is it better than a DOT IMO yes, but as with everything it depends on the situation and the quality of your group members. And as far as Dance of blades goes, you're right it's a solid debuff, but at least in my guild there's not many events where things last that long and are melee'd to get the proc.
If a typical dot lasts 60s (an underestimate), then 1200 over its duration will be 20dps. Best case scenario might be 4 NEC in group each maintaining 6 MR/FR dots with base duration > 18s (ie. not going to happen!). 24 x 20 = 480dps One chant = (545*4.6*1.2) / 6 = 500 dps , before crit modifying effects, and before the debuff is considered.
Thanks egfrith, i'm gonna try to get together iwth a necro buddy to find out exact details, i kinda always assumed there'd be more in the 15-20+ dots each necro casts but it has to be within 86 and 95 and fire/magic so not sure. I think it'll probably be best to default to DoT for now though. What did you mean by ryken's in tank groups btw? if you mean ryken's reckless renewal last I checked it was a very small addition and not working as intended (on the list to be fixed)
I've done a little more digging Criteria are : 86-95, FR or MR, base duration greater than 18s (3 tics), and non-recourse/enhanced effect. On a full burn, a necro will use 9 dots that qualify. But! Only four of those have a base duration of 5 tics (ie. about 60s after extension). The other 5 have base durations ranging between 54s and 100s. Could work it out exactly, but 6 at 60s, as above, seems a slight under-approximation : shall we say equivalent of 7 at 60s? 560dps in best case, once they've piled them all on ~ still not worth it. I didn't know that Ryken was broken, and had relied on the claimed effect ~ anecdotally, guild clerics have noticed the difference, and I have noticed a definite difference when using a merc. So thanks for the warning Are there any parse numbers posted anywhere? If, however, it is fixed, and ends up doing what it claims to do, then it will be silly powerful. I'd have thought that Ryken is most useful for a cleric's panic heals, rather than for standard stuff. A crit fast heal on a nearly-dead tank is worth more than just the hp heal value. No tank says "adding 100ac will reduce my incoming dps by 0.1%", they would say, "adding 100ac will reduce (say) 10% of what would otherwise be max hits to min hits". Adding that ac has massively more than the 0.1% raw hp benefit. In the same way, it is not simply the average 14% improvement in heals that such a modifier would produce, but the additional 21% chance of getting a 120% improvement on a given cast, and thus massively increasing the chance a tank survives the next round, allowing them to be properly topped up again using standard heals. Pulse+Ryken => greatly increased stability.
Thanks for the post Egfrith-AB, I like your suggestions and research... It would be nice if you can updated the song chart above to reflect your research. I am sure Bards everywhere will appreciate it. I know I will ... Once again proving what I always say .. BARDS RULE!!!
Well I haven't parsed it since last betabut at that time it was adding roughly 3-4% crit chance for a max AA cleric. Instead of being a +crit chance, it was a *crit chance if that makes sense. Aristo knows it's not working as intended. THe intent was to have it add a crit chance, much like fierce eye does BUT he wanted this one to have a degredation effect so we would need to upgrade it every expansions, that's where the SPA broke and needs code to work it out. As far as I know it hasn't been fixed yet. Once it does it'll definetly be a staple imo. Another note about heal buffing, Pulse of Lunanyn is also less than advertised but it is working as intended. What most people forget is Healing Adept is a focus effect on healing. Basically when healing say 10k heal, you apply healing adept and it makes it 12k, apply pulse and you have to modify the base to make it 13k instead of 13200. IIRC parses showed the 10% mod to actually be more like 6-7%. Which is why we pleaded to have it and the group mana song combined to make an overall effect taht is worth using. As for noticing a difference with Rykens... can't ignore the plecebo effect. Not saying it doesn't help, just it won't be a noticeable effect if you're just watching numbers so i doubt they can really tell the difference.
Since reading this, I've been experimenting with melody on my boxed bard. After running a 4 twist melody plus Aura for years, I switched to a 6 song twist plus Aura. This is on a mid 70's bard, so the songs may look a little odd. I had to dig quite deep, down into 50's, to come up with 6 useful songs to use: 1) Cantata; 2) Psalm of Veeshan; 3) Storm Blade; 4) Nillipus' March of the Wise; 5) Shield of Songs; 6) Verse of Vesagran. The recast on VoV is the reason for a 6 song vs. 5 song twist. Mastery of the Past is maxed for the level. Without breaking melody due to the structure of my assist macro, I'm getting extremely consistent song coverage for 23 of 24 seconds. My intention originally was to drop back to a 5 song twist once I had a higher level song to replace the funky recast on VoV. After watching it closely for a few days, I'm not so sure now. I may stay with the 6 song twist. I really don't see any practical detriment to dropping a song for 1 second. Any input?
I box a bard a decent amount and was wondering if someone could comment on auras. For example there is the aria aura and song and they sound about the same. In the melee DPS group would you use the aria aura, the song, or both? Why? Same question about mana song. Insight welcome and desired.
you want to use the aria song, I usually stick to the overhaste aura as well as it's "backup" in case songs drop. Aria provides higher flurry and spell mods so it's better than the aura. Aura also gives overhaste to mage swarm pets, so make sure to always have that up for mage groiups, other groups it's just a backup thing.
