A Tune Stuck in Your Head is not needed. Additionally, Storm Blade will not outdamage a DoT in a small group. Neither would Arcane. They might in a full group with mostly hybrids, though. A single DoT parses out to be between 10k and 11k DPS. Note: keep in mind that both Arcane and Storm Blade add more DPS to bards than to other classes due to how our mods increase their damage for us only.
Dummy was set at level 118 and 120AC, ran six parses, three with storm blade and three without storm blade. All three times with storm blade playing my dps was actually lower by ~5%. Using the same dummy and only rank 1 dots, because I'm dot lazy. Fire and cold seem to parse the best on the dummies I was getting about 13-14k average on those. Disease and poison seemed to be consistently lower on multiple different combat dummies, tried different targets just to see if it might have been that higher level dummy.
A bit odd to not show DPS from Stom Blade. It should be between 500 and 1k DPS. The DoT parses are in the upper range, but otherwise sound accurate. I'm not personally sure which buffs might increase DoT crit rates. I typically test them with self-buffs only. Anyway, I hope the takeaway for readers as that DoTs are much better than many posters have insisted they are. They are viable DPS options for us and a huge boost when solo, molo, or in a small group. Moreover, they are fantastic options when in a group with two bards along with our alliance.
I do agree that you want 2 hastes, 2 procs, and I would say insult twice. But after those 6, what are you saying is better than the dots for the last 2 spots?
depends on your level. Personally for me since my ranger tanks it's defensive songs (two ac ones) and the much older ac/hate/proc song.
Depending on what your second AC song is, you would probably get more AC from Kluzen's or Second Psalm rather than whatever old song you were twisting.
