Additional Effect: Wind damage over time Potency: 50 Duration: 18s The second of our DoT abilities. Use this when you have trash mobs or when you need to kill lots of enemies in a short space of time.ĭeals wind damage with a potency of 60. However, care must be taking in certain fights mainly Primals with the occasional raid as you may find yourself repelling straight off the back of a platform.ĭelivers an attack with a potency of 110 to all enemies in a cone before you. Before Stormblood this used to deal a small amount of damage and was often used oGCD to weave in between other skills and abilities just for an extra little bit of damage, however with the removal of the damage part of this ability it becomes more of a utility ability being able to remove yourself from mobs, avoiding AoEs etc. Jump 10 yalms back from current position. Now while not earth shattering at lower levels although extra damage always helps, at higher levels especially once you have unlocked Mage’s Ballad this skill becomes really useful and one of your most useful. What does this mean, well what it means is that you can use Heavy/Straight Shot or Venomous Bite then while waiting the 2.5s it takes for one of those abilities to be ready again, you can cast this. At lower levels this is one of your most important abilities as it is the first of your damaging abilities (I’m not counting Misery’s End as it is a situational ability) which is off the Global Cooldown (oGCD). Don’t worry about it too much if it’s not.ĭelivers an attack with a potency of 130.Shares a recast timer with Rain of Death. Your standard execute action, nothing much to see, use it when available. The main thing to remember though is no matter what keep your DoTs up, even if it’s at the expense of using a more potent attack.ĭelivers an attack with a potency of 190.Can only be executed when target’s HP is below 20%. DoTs are important to Bards as they allow us to use some of our more special abilities more often. Additional Effect: Venom Potency: 40 Duration: 18s The first of our Damage over Time abilities or DoT. This is often called Snapshotting.ĭelivers an attack with a potency of 100. Where applicable I like to hit Iron Jaws just after activating Raging Strikes to get 15 seconds of boosted DoT damage then refresh again just before Raging Strikes falls off so that you get another 30 seconds of boosted DoT damage. Should also be used pre Iron Jaws as then all DoTs that are refreshed will actually keep the damage increase for there entire duration. It’s cooldown of 80s lines up with whichever song you use in your opener and should always be on cooldown unless you are saving it for a boss fight/burn phase. Duration: 20s What’s not to like about damage being boosted. Now this may not seem important at lower levels apart from a way to increase damage but at higher levels when combined with your job skills it becomes very important. So if for example you have a critical hit chance of 20% (1 in 5) if you apply Venomous Bite while under the effect of Straight Shot then every time your DoT ticks instead of having a 20% chance for it to crit it will have a 30% chance.
The buff of 10% critical hit rate may not seem like much but it not only affects your normal Weaponskills it also affects any Damage over Time (DoT) abilities as well. While Heavy Shot sits last on a Bard’s priority list, Straight Shot sits in the middle (third on mine and most people’s lists). Additional Effect: Increases critical hit rate by 10% Duration: 30s Again much like Heavy Shot a very simple looking skill but one that had to be managed constantly. Additional Effect: 20% chance next Straight Shot will deal critical damage Duration: 10s Your standard Weaponskill, Bard uses a priority list when it comes to what skills to use and while Heavy Shot is at the bottom of that list you will find that you are constantly using it mainly for the Additional Effect, as while at lower levels a Critical Hit Straight Shot may not seem like much once you reach level 70 those proc’s can be used to Refulgent Arrow which is one of Bard’s best abilities.ĭelivers an attack with a potency of 140. If you are after that then check out another couple of the bard guides on Reddit Miyuri’s Guide and Aileena & Cetonisĭelivers an attack with a potency of 150. Also all opinions in this guide are my own and therefore please do not assume this is the only way to play Bard.Īlso please can I just say that this is in way a guide to play Bard as optimally as you can. Welcome to my Bard guide, I hope you find some of the information below useful and any and all feedback is more than welcome.