[4.1] FFlogs Guide: Singing to the Top
By Seu Hana
Introduction
Hi! I’m Seu Hana, currently a bard main on Leviathan. While I don’t think of myself as one of the premier or best bards in the game, I’ve spent a lot of time helping new bards look over their logs. Usually that process involves identifying their mistakes, explaining it to them in a cohesive manner, and then offering them potential solutions. Having mulled over many of their logs for criticism, I noticed a number of consistent patterns that I thought would be important to bring to light. FFlogs in general can be difficult and daunting to sift through for newcomers and this guide aims to explain how to navigate your logs and thereby improve your play by isolating weak points in your rotation. I hope this guide is useful and helps you become a better player overall, as many of the concepts I introduce in this guide can be applicable to other jobs. Please note that while this guide was made in Patch 4.1 the information is all still relevant, minus the raid examples, as Bard has not changed since then. However, I will no longer be keeping this guide updated unless I choose to return to FFXIV.
Bard 101: Your GCDs and the Priority System
Before we get into more complex topics, we need to discuss Bard’s priority system first. This priority system evaluates everything on a GCD to GCD basis. It also helps identify which GCD has priority over another if a scenario arises where you may need to use over the other. For instance, Iron Jaws is listed at the top because maintaining your DoTs has priority over the rest in almost all scenarios. The GCD priority system is listed below in order of most to least important.
Iron Jaws
Refulgent Arrow
Straight Shot
Heavy Shot
While this topic seems extremely trivial, most of the issues new bards have stem completely from dropped dots, missed Refulgent Arrows, and Straight Shot falling off. All of these mistakes will continually add up and especially if you drop dots for an extended period of time. Do note that since Bard is not a strict rotational class, minor mistakes will not impact your dps in a large way at first, but extended periods of dropped DoTs, or not keeping up your Straight Shot, will.
There are a lot of reasons why it is important to start at the basics, but the biggest reason is highlighting uptime. As a ranged player you are not bound by melee or casting restrictions–you have free roam from nearly every direction of a boss arena. You should always be pressing your buttons simply because you can. Your DoTs and GCDs make up a large portion of your dps, so never stop using them!
Topic 1: DoTs
The bulk of this information can be easily found in the “Damage Done” tab of your log and is often the first set of mistakes I look for when a bard asks me to criticize their log. Below is a screenshot of one of my O1S runs, url provided here: https://www.fflogs.com/reports/Ljx1hPHKFZVkmJDy#fight=29&type=damage-done&source=59
Regarding your DoTs, there’s really only a few specific areas to pay attention to.
I highlighted the two key parts of the log that you need to pay attention to. The upper two DoT rows indicate DoT ticks–essentially how many times the actual DoT did damage. The two that are below indicate how many times you actually casted the respective ability. Notice that I only used Stormbite and Caustic Bite once each, meaning that I had kept the DoTs up for the entirety of the fight, and only used Iron Jaws to refresh them.
Another area you can look for is under the “Uptime %” column, where Stormbite had 98.76%, and Caustic Bite had 97.90%. In my experience, so long as you did not have to refresh your dots manually, your uptime % should be >95%. Anything lower usually implies that you dropped DoTs for an extended period of time. Keep in mind that in O3S, you will apply DoTs on the adds, so your casts for Stormbite and Caustic Bite will be greater than 1.
In general, dropping DoTs is an extremely easy mistake to identify. However, if you notice that you consistently drop DoTs on a specific fight, I would suggest you go to the top right of your FFlogs tab, and click on Timelines.
This will bring up a comprehensive timeline of your damage assuming you are still in the “Damage Done” tab. It should look something like this:
I highlighted the key takeaways to this page. At the top, you see both Stormbite and Caustic Bite’s uptime. The line resembles how long the DoTs are ticking. If there is a gap in the line, it means that you dropped DoTs for a period of time before picking them up again. The two lower circles highlight when you actually pressed the GCD. Keep an eye out for gaps and extra casts of Stormbite/Caustic Bite when troubleshooting your parse.
This is a log from my first kill of O1S where I dropped DoTs once. Notice that the line for Stormbite and Caustic Bite stops abruptly and then picks up a few seconds after. I noticed I dropped my DoTs almost instantly and in general, if you drop your DoTs, they should be picked up as quickly as I did here. If your gaps are longer, you need to pay more attention when you’re raiding. Dropping DoTs isn’t the end of the world but if it is for an extended period of time, your entire game plan is ruined because of how our procs are tied to our DoTs critting.
Also keep in mind that the longer your DoTs tick the more damage they will do. It’s a very simple concept but one that many people overlook when actually doing a fight. A lot of bards will tend to Iron Jaws early when they have no reason to do so thereby losing a hundred potency for each missed DoT tick. For this reason, in a vacuum you will always want to refresh your DoTs at the 0-1s mark. If you refresh at the 0s mark, your DoTs may disappear momentarily for a few moments before reappearing again afterward if you were properly on time.
Of course, a lot of that is also based on comfort and should be a gradual thing as you get better with bard. Dropping DoTs is a lot worse than refreshing DoTs as close to the end as possible, but unless you do push to extend your DoTs for the maximum duration, you will be losing dps overall. Early Iron Jaws add up as they replace potential DoT potency and Heavy Shot potency.
Topic 2: Refulgent Arrow
Refulgent Arrow is your strongest potency skill and will also be your ideal Barrage target. It being tied to Straighter Shot introduces a few nuances that may be difficult for new bards to identify which warrants the inclusion of this section. The most common mistake is that in the heat of the moment, young bards may fail to utilize Refulgent Arrow properly and instead press Straight Shot out of habit or because their Straight Shot buff is falling off.
There are a number of ways to rectify this situation entirely but I will cover that specifically in the Wanderer’s Minuet section as it pertains to that song. However, like DoTs, you can identify your mistakes very easily under the Damage Done tab.
The key takeaways from this screenshot is under “Casts” and “Hits.” The Casts column designates how many times you physically pressed the GCD. The Hits column designates how many times the skill actually “Hit” the target which can be used to see how many times you Barraged either skill. In this case, I Barraged 2 Refulgents and 2 Empyreals as indicated by a +4 to Hits for both skills.
Refulgent Arrow usage boils down to RNG so it is crucial that you make use of it every time the opportunity presents itself. In order to check this on FFlogs, make sure that your character is still selected, and then click the Buffs tab.
This piece of information is what’s most important. I had 18 Straighter Shot procs, and 18 casts of Refulgent Arrow, meaning that I wasted none of my procs on Straight Shot. There is only one instance where you might legitimately use Straighter Shot for increased DPS (UCoB Phase Transitions), but in every other scenario, if you encounter a situation where you have to refresh Straight Shot because you need to refresh DoTs the next GCD, you messed up, and need to be more aware of your surroundings.
Assuming that you do end up in that solution, I would advise the following assuming that you have an RA proc, Straight Shot is falling off, and DoTs are falling off.
By doing so, you will maintain Straight Shot on your Iron Jaws, not waste your Refulgent proc, and refresh Straight Shot. This follows the priority system I introduced previously. Of course, this situation should not occur under optimal play because your Straight Shot and Iron Jaws will not be synchronized together under most circumstances.
One last thing to keep in mind is that in an ideal situation, Barrage will always be used with RA. Our rotation makes it so that we will sometimes choose to Barrage EA instead, as a way to avoid losing a usage of Barrage entirely over the course of the fight. This also keeps Barrage lined up with Raging Strikes. This information is covered more in depth inside the Minuet section, but if you are just starting out, always try to Barrage RA or EA, and never anything else. Always try to make sure your last Barrage in an encounter is always RA’d as you will not get another usage!
Topic 3: Straight Shot
Straight Shot is your most crucial personal buff as it is a damage increase to both your GCDs and a crit buff for the rest of your crit mechanics. It is third on our priority list however, as maintaining DoTs at all costs is by far the most important, and wasting a Straighter Shot proc on Straight Shot instead of Refulgent Arrow is a dps loss.
It is also important to see how well you kept Straight Shot up over the course of the fight. To view how well you kept Straight Shot up over the course of the fight, simply go to your Buffs tab, and it should look something like this.
If you click on “Straight Shot,” it will take you to another graph, which will give you specific timestamps on when you dropped Straight Shot.
Any large gaps in your uptime indicate a mistake in which you dropped it for a period of time, most likely because of deaths or negligence. It is fine to drop Straight Shot for a few seconds, mainly if you get a RA proc as Straight Shot is running out, but any longer periods of time are a direct impact to your dps especially if you used Iron Jaws without Straight Shot. Remember that Straight Shot benefits your autos and other potential procs, and missing the crit buff on those will add up!
To determine if there were any situations where you used Iron Jaws without Straight Shot requires a bit of extra work than before. To start, you will need to go to the Cast tab.
Click on your name, and then click on “Iron Jaws.”
You should now see a graph that tracks all of the times you pressed Iron Jaws. Click on the “+” sign at the bottom right. This effectively “pins” your graph and starts a new one to compare. You should now see something like this.
The top graph is the graph that is now “pinned,” and the bottom graph is whichever graph you have open right now. Click on the Buffs tab once more and then click on Straight Shot again. Your graph should now look like this.
Hooray! Now you have a direct comparison of when you used Iron Jaws and if your Iron Jaws were under the effect of Straight Shot. If you do have several instances where either skill was used improperly, try dragging across the graph and looking for yourself at what went wrong at the GCD level. Usually, the solution is identical to Refulgent Arrow optimization: Iron Jaws first, then Refulgent, then Straight Shot. Letting Straight Shot fall for a single GCD is not awful, but as mentioned in the previous section, should be avoided entirely if playing optimally. If you follow your rotation perfectly, your Straight Shot should almost always fall off after your next expected Iron Jaws. Iron Jaws usage is dependent on raid buff timings, but if you are in progression and lack coordinated raid buffs, then that is a good rule of thumb to follow.
Closing Thoughts on 101
These three topics are the fundamental basics to performing well as a Bard player and should be of utmost importance if you are just starting on Bard. They are the foundation to everything else you will be building on so learning to identify these issues early on ensures that you can improve with ease as we get into the more complex topics of bard. I neglected to include Heavy Shot because Heavy Shot optimization largely warps around pressing it more often and squeezing as many GCDs as possible in a fight, which is not something you should worry about at first. With this in mind, let’s move on to Bard’s most iconic feature in Stormblood: songs.
Bard 201: Singing Properly
The songs that Bard got in Stormblood are a unique concept that functions both as a dps tool for yourself, and a minor dps buff for your group. For these reasons, it is absolutely crucial that you always keep your songs up and rotate them properly to achieve the maximum amount of dps. Currently the accepted rotation for songs goes as follows:
- 30s of Wanderer’s Minuet
- 30s of Mage’s Ballad
- 20s of Army’s Paeon
The song rotation changes for AoE pulls and certain in-fight optimization, but since the difficult content of FFXIV stems around savage fights, which have only had single boss fights since a2s, this rotation of songs should be the go-to if you are learning new content. The reason our song rotation hinges around 80s instead of 90s is because of Raging Strikes as well as Paeon being the weakest of our three songs, thereby making the ultimate goal of our rotation to be maximizing Minuet time and minimizing Paeon time.
Topic 4: Enhanced Empyreal Arrow
Before we actually can talk about songs however, we need to focus again on a foundation, which is Enhanced Empyreal Arrow.
This passive is huge and gives a lot of additional power to Empyreal Arrow to the point where it is worth delaying your Empyreal Arrow by a few seconds every 80 seconds. Let’s break down what exactly this passive means first.
Essentially, if you are singing a song (which you always should be doing), whenever you use EA, you will also gain a proc of the respective song. For instance, if you are in Minuet and you use EA you will gain a stack of repertoire on your Pitch Perfect. Likewise, you will gain a Bloodletter proc in Ballad, and a repertoire stack for Paeon. This effectively gives EA a greater potency amount and a reason to min/max it per song usage.
In short, because EA is a 15s cd, you want to use it twice per song but only once during Paeon because Paeon has the weakest repertoire effect. With our current crit rate we will most likely have three stacks of repertoire by the 20s mark and naturally any stack over four is a complete waste thus making a second use of EA extremely worthless. Furthermore by saving an EA during Paeon you also ensure that your Minuet has two EAs as Paeon’s lower recast time tends to mess with EA timings if you do not hold the second EA. Here’s how the songs look like now, with these assumptions in mind:
In Minuet, you have Pitch Perfect as your proc if one of your DoTs crit. EA gives you another stack of PP, generating an additional amount of potency for you for free. The amount of potency generated is different based off how many stacks of PP you already have, but there is no real reason to hold EA unless you already have 3 stacks. In every other scenario, it is a gain!
Similarly in Ballad, every EA you use generates a Bloodletter proc, meaning that every EA is giving you 130 potency for free.
And lastly here’s Paeon, who only gets one EA because it’s the ugly sibling of the three. Maybe one day its stacks will be better and give free Refulgents or something.
One thing to keep in mind is to always keep track of your procs, especially in Minuet. Triple weaving is not necessarily a bad thing for Bard, especially if you are to lose a potential proc if you do not triple weave. Our OGCDs are stronger than most of our GCDs, which is why triple weaving can be worth it and is covered specifically in the next section.
Now, if you put all the songs together, you will have the following rotation:
Looking at this you can see that there is a specific number of EAs every 80 seconds assuming you do not extend Paeon. For this reason, you can effectively quantify the amount of EAs you should be using to the number of songs you sang. For instance, if you sang 5 Minuets, 5 Ballads, and 4 Paeons during the fight, you should have:
5*2 + 5*2 + 4*1 = 24 Empyreal Arrows
Naturally you may alter the number of Empyreal Arrows used based off specific fights, which I will cover in the Paeon section later, as they usually involve extra usages of EA inside Paeon. All this is easily findable in FFlogs right inside your casts tab.
This is again the O1S parse from before. If we go by our normal EA math, I should have 20 uses of EA. However, my raid group chooses to pop raid buffs at 4:30 because this was a speed kill. I extend one Paeon for 30s instead of 20s in order to put more of my Minuet inside our raid buffs. Because of this, I use one extra EA inside Paeon, leading to 21 EAs instead of 20.
Mathematically, I may have lost an entire EA if we kept going, as by around the 5:35 mark, I should have been able to use 22 EAs over the course of the fight. (Total Seconds / 15). For this reason, you only delay EAs in Paeon, and nowhere else.
You can even go more in depth than this, and make sure that you divided all of your EAs properly by clicking on the blank space to the right of “Empyreal Arrow.” Then click on Paeon, Minuet, and Ballad respectively.
Your graph should look like this. Scroll into the document if it’s too small. On this graph, red is EA, green is Minuet, blue is Ballad, and teal (?) is Paeon. Notice how in most cases, Paeon only gets one EA, except for one instance at the 4:00 range, where I chose to extend it so that my Minuet would line better with raid buffs. Shoot for a graph like this before anything else, as this is the “macro” part of Bard. The following sections cover the intricacies inside each song.
Topic 5: The Wanderer’s Minuet
Minuet has a lot of different things that you go out of your way to ensure that the things you do inside the phase go smoothly. These 30s will be where your dps spikes and where you will most likely complain about poor RNG and low crit openers.
To begin with, let’s look at the transition from Paeon into Minuet. It should look something like the following sample transition.
You must make sure that your Minuet and Raging Strikes are in sync with one another. This also ensures that your two EAs inside Minuet will also receive the Raging Strikes buff. And naturally, the most obvious reason for this is because Pitch Perfects utilize RS the best out of our possible procs. Minuet comes first because of the chance of getting a proc.
Straight Shot should be used at SOME point, ideally before RS. The reasons for this is twofold. The first is the more obvious one: by making sure SS is used prior to RS, you trade a possible SS inside RS for an HS, thereby leading to a potency increase.
The second reason is the real reason you want to use SS here. Recall the rotation I indicated in the previous topic. In reality, Minuet’s rotation has an add-on, because of Barrage. It should really look more like this.
Because RS and Barrage have identical cooldowns, you want to pair these two together all the time. This is to both ensure your Barrage falls under RS and that you do not lose a usage of Barrage over the course of a fight.
Naturally however, the ideal Barrage usage is with RA. You only want to use it with the second EA inside Minuet as a last resort. Therefore, we enter the “fishing” phase of Minuet, which is short for “spam HS and hope you get an RA” phase. Ideally, your Minuet rotation should look something like this.
The general rule of thumb is before you go into Minuet, check both the cooldown of Barrage and the remaining time on SS. If SS is longer than the remaining time on Barrage, feel free to transition without a SS. If it is lower however, use SS so you can ensure that you don’t drop SS and you won’t feel awful about not having SS up for a few seconds while you’re attempting to fish.
There’s no real way to check if you’re consistently doing these solutions as it is very much on the fly decision making. One roundabout method involves using pins like we did in the SS section in order to make sure that your Barrage, RS, and WM are all timed together. Go to the casts section and click on the “+” sign for Minuet and Barrage. We aren’t doing EA here because Barrage may be used with Refulgent, and it would be needless clutter on your graph for this scenario. Your graph should look like this:
Now navigate back to your buffs and pin RS. You can also pin SS if you want to check if you’re putting up SS consistently before Minuet. Now click on “Graph: Separate,” and change it so that it says “Graph: Main.” This way, you can clearly see how long RS is up for.
Now go back to Casts and click on the GCD you want to focus in on. In the graph below, I chose to click on SS.
Here you can see when you used Minuet, when you Barraged, how long RS lasted, and when you used SS. You can click on EA or RA if you want to focus on either of those as well. This should give you a good idea of how you are prepping your WM phase.
With the main rotation out of the way, there are also a few things we need to keep in mind for Pitch Perfect. PP is a unique skill in that it uses stacks for damage and also relies on crit RNG to gain said stacks. This introduces a few intricacies and thresholds for it that will exist in very specific scenarios. In general, you will want to PP at 3 stacks, and that’s often as far as you’ll go unless you have a DRG and a SCH. If you have both, things get interesting.
These two buffs are what change PP pivotally. With our BiS set we have around 34% crit rate factoring in SS buff as well. If you add both of these crit buffs, we get around a 64% crit rate, which is a reasonable threshold for both of our DoTs to crit. What this means is that PP has a reasonable chance to gain two stacks instead of one for every DoT tick. Because of this, under the effects of both Battle Litany and Chain Stratagem, you will want to PP at two stacks instead of three. This threshold will change as we get more crit over the next few patches but for right now, you need both Battle Litany and Chain Stratagem to use this strategy.
The last bit of PP optimization comes from a scenario where you have three stacks at around the tail end of Minuet (0-6s). In this scenario, you should proc sometime at 4-6s to prep for a possible another PP stack at the 1-3s. Since PP has an innate cooldown (thanks Square), if you PP too late, you may completely nullify the chance of using your last stack. With how strong PP is, this is actually a big deal if it happens consistently. Don’t forget to use PP at 1s if this scenario does not occur though as your repertoire stacks do not carry over into Ballad!
That covers the gist of what you need to know about Minuet. Remember to keep two EAs inside of it, and sync RS and Barrage with it as well!
Topic 6: Triple Weaves and Ballad
Ballad by itself is not a very complex song and it plays very similarly to ARR and HW Bard. There is very little optimization involved with Ballad, but the main area I want to highlight is triple weaving inside it.
But Seu! I thought you should never go above double weaving ever!
While it is true that most classes never go above double weaves, Bard has an incentive to triple weave from time to time because of the strength of our OGCDs and the weakness of our GCDs. In fact, these situations tend to pop up a lot and most notably in Ballad. There are a few very specific scenarios and they both pertain to Ballad and Minuet.
This scenario is pretty obvious: You’re preparing to Barrage EA, but PP decides to gain its third stack. If you use EA immediately you’ll lose a potential proc and for that reason you must triple weave. This is a natural consequence of RNG and can’t be helped. It is advisable to do this as you’ll otherwise Barrage a HS or lose a PP proc. You can’t physically avoid the triple weave here and you will definitely clip your HS which isn’t a big deal in this case.
The second is a much more specific scenario. Assume that BL comes off cooldown naturally right as you’re about to use EA. In this case, there are two options. The first is to triple weave BL EA BL together between one GCD. The second, is only doing BL EA, and then doing the second BL after the second HS.
Triple weaving here is one of the biggest finesses of Bard, as there is a very fine line where triple weaving might be a dps loss or a dps gain. You cannot simply triple weave nonsensically as you are actually better off just double weaving everything and potentially losing procs as opposed to losing HS time. Obviously that rationale applies only to the Ballad scenario as the Minuet scenario is a very clear case that makes triple weaving worth it. The main thing to keep in mind for triple weaving is that it is entirely dependant on when your next DoT tick is.
This introduces the concept of either watching your song gauge persistently, or having a mental metronome of when your DoTs will tick next. While the second option is much more independent, you will still have to glance at your song gauge to get a vague idea of when your DoTs are going to tick.
Ballad will normally look like this. Unassuming, and a bland shade of pink.
This is what Ballad looks like when a DoT crits. You can see music notes emanate from it and the entire bar line also glows white for a moment. DoTs operate on a 3 second cycle in FFXIV which means that the next DoT tick will be at 16s. You can do this with Paeon or Minuet as well but I find it harder to pay attention to them as they are based on stacks.
Now with this knowledge we can make an educated solution as to whether or not we should triple weave. If you know that there will not be a DoT tick you should not triple weave and instead delay the BL to the next GCD. If the opposite is true, you should triple weave, in case you get another BL proc (which you will use on the next GCD).
All of this comes with a great deal of practice and does revolve around RNG due to how ridiculously crit dependent we are as a class. Do not triple weave just because it’s cool and you have a few justifications to do so as you may be gimping yourself out of dps like I did in the past. I actually triple weaved too often to the point of losing dps to other bards because I was severely behind in casting heavy shots (which is still your largest source of dps!).
Either way, double weaving and splitting up your BLs is the much safer option than triple weaving carelessly. It comes with a lot of practice, and is very nuanced, but is the key to optimal play. Identifying when to double weave and when to triple weave is absolutely crucial as Bard in summary is literally “play the class, and adapt to unique scenarios as they happen.” Bard is not a rotation based class like many others like MCH or DRG–it is an extremely adaptive class that focuses on scenarios that occur that will change how you fundamentally play.
Considering the complexity of this topic there isn’t really a way to show this on FFlogs and is much more of a “during-raid” type of thing. It’s something to keep in mind of and it will improve your dps if you’re actively aware of this situation.
Topic 7: Stupid Third Song
Paeon is the simplest song to talk about because song optimization basically revolves around limiting Paeon usage. If for instance, downtime allows it, you might completely skip Paeon.
However, the inverse of this scenario is also important, and that’s extending Paeon for the sake of raid buff alignment / Minuet optimization. Notably, O1S, O3S, and O4S have specific portions where you’ll want to extend Paeon. In all of these cases, it is a matter of looking at what other people do with their songs and asking yourself, “Does this make sense for my raid group?”
Extending Paeon is not always going to be the same and is different for every fight. Most cases are associated with downtime reasons in which going into Minuet is not ideal at that specific point in time. For this reason, it isn’t so much as extending Paeon as it is maximizing Minuet. The following section refers to Deltascape as I do not have a lot of logs for Sigmascape yet, but they should get the point across for now.
For O1S, like I mentioned before in Topic 4, you will want to extend Paeon to 30s at some point if you are doing a 4:30 raid buff timing. This of course means that you’re shooting for a kill time before 6 minutes as otherwise you will be losing a use of Litany. I tend to extend it by 10s around the 3:50 mark so that I go into Minuet at the 4:20 mark.
For O3S you will be in Paeon during the third set of Folios in which you will be unable to attack when you stand on some of the books. If you transition into Minuet before you go into one of the books you will lose valuable Minuet uptime and therefore you should extend Paeon. This occurs around the 5:00 mark.
For ExDeath you will want to both skip and extend Paeon during Decisive Battle. The first Decisive Battle ends right as Ballad ends and your Minuet will be up right as he respawns. Therefore, you can use Paeon as simply a 100 potency OGCD here. This Paeon occurs at around the 1:00 mark.
The second Decisive Battle occurs after the first Meteor where you will be in Paeon phase at around 2:30. If you choose to transition into Minuet you will waste a ton of time to Decisive Battle, effectively wasting your procs. Thus, you will extend Paeon to 30s and also go songless for a few seconds. Some of the very top bards choose to go into Minuet here back when they were attempting to skip the second Decisive Battle–in every other case though, you should not go into Minuet.
For Neo ExDeath, you will want to extend Paeon in the same manner as you did for second Decisive Battle, right before Grand Cross Omega. The same rationale is behind this, and is especially important because Omega ends right before the 6:00 mark meaning all of your raid buffs will be up again allowing you to perform a second opener.
UCoB also has three instances of Paeon extension with one occurring during Twintania and the other in Nael. Both of those phases have a 3:00 enrage meaning that ideally you will want to start on Minuet for the next phase because of Litany being available. For this reason, you will want to extend Paeon in some shape or form before going into the next phase. Twintania dies as Paeon ends, as does Nael, so I normally just extend the very last Paeon.
On Bahamut you don’t even really use Paeon for the song so much so as use it for the potency. In fact outside of attempting to realign songs because I died, I will never use Paeon during any of Bahamut’s trio for its effect. In my experience Paeon is exclusively used for the 100 potency during this phase largely because Minuet and Ballad can both be used back to back and then properly realigned due to downtime.
On Teraflare you will want to do a RS MB instead of a WM. At two targets and with our current crit rate RoD tends to have a more favorable outcome than PP. Your song order in Teraflare will follow as MB → WM → AP with this logic. This is largely because based on our current crit percentages it is more likely that only one or two of our DoTs will tick (which favors RoD) instead of three or four (which favors PP).
Currently I tend to extend the AP before your second round of openers on Golden Bahamut, which is the one during the fourth Exaflare. This allows more of your WM to land inside of your raid buffs which follows the same logic you would utilize in o1s.
For how awful of a dps song Paeon is, it is still a good filler to realign your other songs if you mess up your rotation. By this, I mean that you should extend Paeon so that the rest of your songs come off CD properly in your 80s rotation. If for instance you misclicked Ballad early, you can extend Paeon so that Ballad has more time to realign with the rest of your kit. The easiest way to see if everything is realigned is the following checklist:
- Minuet is off CD.
- Raging Strikes is off CD.
- Ballad has 30s or less on its CD.
- Paeon has 60s or less on its CD.
Closing Thoughts on 201
This covers song optimization which I think should be the second main topic you should focus on as it directly builds upon your GCD foundation. If you can maintain both your GCDs and your songs properly you can easily perform in the purple range and score oranges with even a mediocre group assuming you’re well geared. The next two sections are much more nuanced and focus on split decision making that should not take precedence over your GCDs or songs unless you’re absolutely comfortable with them.
Bard 301: Raid Buffs and Iron Jaws
Topic 8: DoTs are Stupid
Raid buffs are some of the more min/max parts of the job and to utilize them properly depends both on you as the player and on your fellow teammates. If you aren’t already aware, DoTs “snapshot” whatever effects are on you and on the boss when applied. What this means is that if you have RS on and you use IJ, your next 30s of DoTs all have that 10% increase in damage.
This is incredibly important as we now have new powerful crit buffs to account for in addition to flat damage increases. Below is what I consider to be the tier list in how you should prioritize your raid buffs when choosing to IJ assuming that the previous set of DoTs had no buffs on them.
Tier 1: The Crit GODS
With how much our kit revolves around crit, it’s no surprise that Chain Stratagem and Battle Litany are at the very top of the tier list. With both buffs providing a 15% crit boost, you’ll almost always want to snapshot these buffs twice over the course of their duration. Their strength as crit buffs and their positioning with other strong raid buffs make them extremely desirable.
Tier 2: Crit Runner-Up
Spear’s change into a crit buff has made it an extremely desirable card for Bard now. While still weaker than the Balance for our dps overall, the Spear places higher on the IJ tier list because of its benefit to our procs. Even by itself it’s a 10% crit buff which discounts the fact that it may be enhanced or extended by Royal Road. In general, you can double snapshot a single Spear if it’s enhanced or extended and I personally like to use a trigger for this in speed runs so that I know exactly what it is that’s coming my way. An AoE Spear may not always be worth the double snapshot, however.
Tier 3: Mister Trick Attack and The Balance
These two are the OG buffs that have warped all of FFlogs around them. Trick Attack has an added benefit in that it’s a minute cooldown meaning that it should always line up with your Sidewinder. This may seem like a small deal but it will add up over the course of the fight if you do not capitalize on your Ninja.
The other is the Balance, the card that has symbolized padding everywhere. In general you will not be the receiver of a single target Balance, but if you do, be sure to capitalize it. A single target Balance is equivalent or double the power of RS as well as being longer in duration.
In general, Trick Attack is not very double snapshot-able because of its low duration. Nevertheless, you will often tend to catch it at the tail end of more important buffs like Chain or Litany and it is still a gain over naked DoTs. These buffs in conjunction with another buff however, are definitely worth double snapshotting. I like to call this tier the “combo” tier since it’s generally ideal if they’re paired up with something else to double snapshot them, especially in regards to buffs in Tier 4.
Tier 4: All the Other Crap
These buffs aren’t necessarily bad, they just kind of float under the radar or do not stand out in particular compared to the top three tiers. They’re essentially nice sort of “add-on” to Tier 3 buffs and otherwise do not stand out in terms of snapshotting. They will always be a buff to naked DoTs and should still be caught if you get the chance! Do note that this tier is in regards to AoE Balance and Spear instead of single target.
Summary
So with all the tiers mapped out, I’ll try to organize this into concrete rules of thumb when you’re looking at raid buffs for Iron Jaws.
- Tier 1 should almost always be double snapshotted. The second snapshot should also line up with other minute buffs such as Trick Attack, Hypercharge, Embolden, and Devotion. The exception lies in if you’re going into Paeon as the buffs are wearing off. Paeon doesn’t utilize crit effectively, making the Tier 1 buffs actually worse than a straight dmg % buff in Paeon. It is the only circumstance in which I would not double snapshot these buffs, barring downtime.
- Single target Spear is very powerful and should be double snapshotted in a vacuum, especially if enhanced or extended. AoE Spear is relatively weak and is treated as an add-on to better buffs. The same rules with Tier 1 apply with Spear as it is also a crit buff.
- Trick Attack should always be lined up with Sidewinder unless your Ninja is absolute garbage and can’t put them up in time consistently. Otherwise, you have no reason not to use these skills together.
- 10% Buffs like the Balance, Trick, and Raging Strikes should be double snapshotted if they are in conjunction with other raid buffs.
- 10% Buffs like the Balance, and Raging Strikes should be double snapshotted if you do the first IJ when your remaining DoTs are at 15s or less. This is especially imperative with RS as you will encounter this 15s threshold many times as you transition into Minuet. Trick isn’t mentioned here because of its low duration.
- The remaining % buffs should only ever be single snapshotted, and should be treated as combo pieces for the other, stronger buffs.
Phew! That is a lot to take in, so let’s put it into a visual on FFlogs to keep track of all this nonsense. First things first, go to your Damage Done tab, and select IJ. Now, click on the Events tab on the top right.
Just look at how much useful information there is here! You can see all the buffs that affected your Iron Jaws on the right giving you a firm idea of when raid buffs were used and whether or not they were capitalized on properly. Of course, if your raid group does not care about raid buffs as much as they should, they may be all over the place. Even in that case however there is no reason for you to not follow the guidelines I listed above as they will still be a boon to your dps, regardless of how improperly the raid buffs were used.
Now obviously this graph does have its limits as while it does show you what buffs you snapshotted successfully, it does not show what buffs you did not snapshot successfully. While there is no clean way to display every single cast without looking messy, you can create a format similar to what we did with SS. The difference here is that we will either be looking at your buffs (like SS), or looking at the boss’s debuffs. In this case, I’ll show what you need to do involving your debuffs.
First you’ll want to click on “Enemies,” and then navigate to “Debuffs.” Here you should see all the various debuffs that were put onto the boss. At the bottom of this, you should see stuff like “Vulnerability Up” or “Chain Stratagem.” Click on the debuff you want to look at in depth, and then pin the graph.
Next, click on “Friendlies,” go back to “Casts,” and click on “Iron Jaws.” Now click on “Separate” until it turns into “Main.” Your end result should look like this:
Here you can see that two Stratagems were properly double snapshotted, whereas the second Stratagem I messed up and did not press IJ again after CS went up. In this case, CS was slightly late which threw me off. Ideally, you should IJ again in this scenario because of how strong crit is for Ballad and Minuet (in this case, second CS lines up with your Ballad). Likewise, you can use this method to look at your other debuffs such as Trick Attack, as well as buffs such as Battle Litany.
Always watch both your own buff bar and the boss’s debuff bar as they are imperative to optimal Bard play. Do not forget your previous Iron Jaws either as you may overwrite a very strong crit buff with a mediocre damage % buff by mistake!
Closing Thoughts on 301
IJ optimization is the last main hump I tend to recommend to newer bards that are simply asking, “How do I get better?” By this point, if you can master IJ optimization, you can self-troubleshoot most of your problems. While I do explain two topics I thought were imperative in the following section, there isn’t much else to being “better” at bard other than reacting properly to specific scenarios. You need to identify when raid buffs are going up, if you want to extend Paeon, or if you messed up your DoTs and need to improvise. Bard is not a rotational class–it’s all about adaptation, and if you can do all this, I’m sure you’re already a stellar Bard. The last section will cover abstract portions of optimization and are more conceptual as opposed to “look at FFlogs.”
Bard 401: Final Optimization
Topic 9: Heavy Shot
When I first started this guide, I introduced the concept of “never stop doing something,” because frankly, that is precisely why you are playing ranged: you have the liberty of having no cast times as well as range from the boss, effectively allowing you to always be attacking the boss. This is very key, and if you’ve been doing everything else I’ve been telling you yet still wondering why your dps isn’t up to par, first, identify where you might be losing GCDs.
The reason for where you might be losing GCDs can be from nearly everywhere and is completely fight dependent. It may be not getting a GCD off before you slide in o1s, respecting mechanics (after the fight is on farm) so much that you forget to do GCDs, or in my case, triple weaving too much.
If you’re at this point, it’s self troubleshooting. I’ve provided you with the tools available so use that knowledge to identify where your trouble spots may be for certain fights. The easiest way to see if you’re “where you’re supposed to be” is look up top rank bards, and see how many GCDs/OGCDs they get in a similar time to one of your logs. Chances are, they’ll have more Heavy Shots than you, or more GCDs overall than you, or perhaps something completely different that you should be doing (or not!). What’s important here is knowing what you yourself are doing wrong, comparing yourself to other players, and seeing how they stack against you. Are they doing something different that makes them perform better? It can be so many factors.
An easy way to do this is to use the compare function on FFlogs. I’ll use my 5:14 parse as a comparison with one of Miyuri’s parses when she was subbing for my group (which conveniently had a nearly identical kill time). First, you’ll want to go to the compare window and then click on the “Compare Reports” drop down. Hit “Compare with URL,” and then put in the series of words right after /reports/. You’ll now come to something like this which may include multiple kills if the logs have them. Click on “Show All,” and it should look something like this.
I highlighted a few things to look at here. The key thing to note is where the blue and purple circles are. The purple circle is the parse your log is being compared to, and the blue indicates parses from your original log (which may indicate multiple kills). In my case, I’ll be clicking on the 5:14 blue circle to ensure that my log is properly compared to the 5:12 purple circle.
It will end up looking like this. Head over to the Damage Done tab and then click on the two bards you are comparing (likely yourself and someone else). In my case, it’s me and Miyuri.
You now have a direct comparison between the two parses, and where you may have had less or more casts than the other bard. When looking at GCDs, be sure to compare all of them, meaning not just HS, but RA, IJ, and SS as well. Your songs are also important to look at as there may be different things they are doing that lead to different results. Miyuri’s log and my own are extremely close in regards to GCDs and sometimes it may even be a matter of proc RNG that led to a better parse. In this parse I did not triple weave at all, which explains why Miyuri had more BL procs but less HS procs than I did.
The best way to compare is to click on a cast and then look at how they are spread out over the fight. Maybe there’s a portion of the fight where you aren’t GCDing for some reason. One easy thing I can put out in that screenshot is that Miyuri has one more Paeon than I do because she uses the last one at the last second for a free 100 potency. Do keep in mind that if you do not have a similar kill time, you can drag across your parse to cut into a section similar to the parse you’re trying to compare to. While this is not a perfect solution, your GCDs should match for the most part.
This is the type of self troubleshooting you need to do at this level for not just lost GCDs, but also various extremely small nuances that can increase your dps. You’re at this level, and you are more than capable of performing it–you just need to know where to search for it. Thus for that reason, the only legitimate advice I can give is the following:
PRESS YOUR GODDAMN BUTTONS.
Topic 10: Foe Requiem
You know, this is another abstract subject because of how Foe works and because using Foe by itself is definitely a dps loss for yourself, as the 3% gain is not going to make up for the lost Heavy Shot.
What people fail to recognize is how strong Foe Requiem actually is for the group, and by simply using it at full mana, you are already giving your team a large amount of raid dps. I recently came across this site that I found useful at painting a mental image at how much raid buffs actually contribute. The link is here, and you can plug in any of your FFlogs easily and it will show you your raid dps contribution in an instant.
Just look at how much Foe contributed–half the amount that Trick Attack / Hypercharge provided, and exceeding how much your crit passive ambiently produced. It’s a powerful buff that should be fully utilized (do note that the site calculates crit as flat damage percents estimates, so they are slightly inaccurate).
But then of course is the ever present question: “Why should I give something that’s affecting me negatively?” The catch here is that it really isn’t affecting you negatively, in fact it’s going to improve your dps (which is why I imagine you’re even reading this guide). By giving more dps to your group you increase their dps which also increases the speed at which you kill the boss. This then increases your own dps as a shorter kill time almost always means higher dps.
Then there remains the matter of how to use Foe properly which has spawned a lot of debate with new versions being tested for specific encounters. I’m sure for 4.2 we may see completely different things as well, but I’ll highlight what I personally do, and what I think is the norm for most groups that run double ranged.
The Opener: Pretty self explanatory. Everything’s lined up, and you Refresh after your Foe is done.
1 Minute: Use Foe about 6 seconds before Trick Attack. Machinist Refresh should be used right after your MP ticks to 0.
2 Minute: No Foe here. This rotation opts out of a 2 minute Foe in favor of a 4 minute one. The 4 minute one naturally lines up with your Minuet as well, which is a major boon.
3 Minute: 3 minute with Litany. Refresh again after Foe is done.
4 Minute: Same deal with the 1 Minute mark, only this time a lot more buffs are aligned properly. It also very conveniently lines up with one of your Minuet phases!
5 Minute: Poor lonely Trick Attack.
The 6 minute mark repeats from the opener, and this should provide a good visual for how Foe might be used in a double ranged comp. If you’re running with a caster, it might be better to forego using this method and instead rely on Foeing every 3 minutes, while using Refresh before using Foe. This extends your Foe time, but compromises chances of another Foe usage before your mp naturally ticks. Also be sure to ask for Mana Shift at around the 3rd or 4th GCD!
There are a few other variations of Foe that can be used, but I personally am not very well versed in them, and they are mostly experimental from my understanding. If you want a more in depth look on MP ticks and Foe usage, I would suggest looking at the other guides in the appendix as they both go into it very well.
Final Thoughts
Welcome to the end! I hope this guide has helped you in some way shape or form. If there’s any one take away I can give you, it’s that Bard is one of the most reactive classes in this game. Every fight can be different if things are not planned accordingly and you can’t simply “do the rotation” and expect to get results. Mistakes will always happen, whether it’s your fault, or your group’s fault for misaligning raid buffs (or dying). It’s not a series of button presses that you can do every single time–you have to understand that every DoT tick, or variation in raid buff, can change how you play. Be ready to adapt, because that is really how you will become a better Bard for current and new content to come.
Frequently Asked Questions
Appendix:
Aileena Chae’s and Sana Cetonis’s Comprehensive Guide
