Bard Sling Songs and Arrows

Sing a triumphant song. Motivate your team to victory. In Final Fantasy XIV, the Bard’s purpose is twofold: fill the chaotic abyss of battle with beautiful music to encourage yourself and others, and rain as much razor-sharp hell as you can on your enemies. In this FFXIV Bard Guide, we’ll look at both sides of that equation, as well as everything else the lyrical and powerful Bard class has to offer.

Sounds like a good time? Let’s take a look at the Bard with the FF14 Bard Guide from High Ground Gaming.

Quests for the Bard Class

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Consider how difficult it is to shoot a bow precisely while while singing a song. Honestly, no matter how pitch-perfect your shower singing is, you won’t be a Master of the Bardic Arts straight away.

In Final Fantasy XIV, every Bard starts off as a simple Archer. Whether you create a new character as an archer or join the Archers’ Guild, you must first master the bow, the most important instrument in your toolkit.

Maintain your class missions. After completing the Level 30 Archer quest “The One That Got Away,” go on to “A Song of Bards and Bowmen.” After completing the quest, you’ll get a gleaming new Soul Crystal containing the Soul of the Bard. It is here that you bid your modest Archer existence farewell and join the fascinating realm of the Bard.

It’s time to expand your horizons.

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Maintain your class missions. Isn’t that something I’ve previously said? The most powerful Bardic powers will be delivered to you via them from now on. The first Song, Mage’s Ballad, will be given out when “A Song of Bards and Bowmen” is finished, with the remainder to follow. Class quest rewards include Rain of Death (Strong AoE damage off-global cooldown), Empyreal Arrow (Burst damage off-global cooldown), and Iron Jaws (Reset DoT times).

Keep up with your class missions, it can’t be stressed enough. Whatever class you’re playing, they’re the keys to unlocking the kingdom.

As a Bard, I’m taking up the DPS role.

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The Bard is a DPS class, which implies that your primary objective is to devastate the battlefield. But, by including certain essential party-buffing abilities, it also emphasizes the more cooperative character of all classes in Final Fantasy XIV.

The trick to performing the Bard is to follow the following formula:

• Start getting your DoTs up after the Tank — possibly a Dark Knight — has aggro on a mob.
• Begin a song after you have a good number of DoTs. It should start procing nearly instantly.
• Reset your timers as required with Iron Jaws, then begin showering holy fire down on anything with an enemy-colored nameplate.
• Off-global abilities like Emperyal Arrow and Bloodletter may be sprinkled throughout your cycle of global cooldown skills.
• Rinse and repeat until you and your group are the only ones left.

Song Singing, Spell Slinging

Positioning is crucial as a DPS class. Make use of flanking to increase your damage output and efficacy. You’ll also need to be weaving in and out of the assault telegraphs to avoid being one-shot. You don’t have to worry about pausing a spell to reposition since several of your abilities are instants. To keep the damage flowing, keep floating over the battlefield, dumping DoTs on newcomers while resetting the rest with Iron Jaws, and slamming your targets with interwoven cycles of your global cooldown and off-global abilities.

Second Chance, your own pocket healer, can also assist you manage your own health pool. Not to mention Troubadour, which reduces damage taken by 10% for you and your party, and Nature’s Minne, which boosts healing potency by 20% for yourself or a friendly target. You can relieve the Healer of some of the moment-to-moment pressure and keep everyone in the battle if you use these skills wisely.

Bard is the ultimate example of a class that’s “simple to learn but tough to master,” thanks to friendly bonuses, healing-related abilities, and basic burst damage. You can go through a lot of FFXIV’s content by playing Bard with only the basic damage rotation and Netflix on a second monitor. In endgame gameplay, however, taking an active approach to playing Bard, such as putting Nature’s Minne on the party members who need it or concentrating burst damage on the largest danger in the room, might be the difference between success and a wipe.

But that’s enough with the summary. Now it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty of your talents as a Bard, beginning with your songs.

Bard Rotations & Core Skills

We’ll concentrate on the Bard’s rotation and the talents you’ll use the most in your travels in this section of our guide.

Warm Up Your Vocal Cords

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In the preceding part, we discussed a few crucial skills. Your songs, as you would expect, are central to your persona. Mage’s Ballad, Army’s Paeon, and The Wanderer’s Minuet are the three major songs you’ll learn. Each one delivers a little amount of damage while also buffing you and the rest of the party in different ways.

• Mage’s Ballad — Deals 100 unaffected damage; grants Mage’s Ballad to all party members within 30 yalms for 30 seconds, boosting their damage done by 1%.
• Army’s Paeon — Deals 100 unaffected damage and grants Army’s Paeon to all party members within 30 yalms for 30 seconds, improving their direct hit rate by 3%.
• The Wanderer’s Minuet — Deals 100 unaffected damage to all party members within 30 yalms; grants The Wanderer’s Minuet to all party members within 30 yalms, raising critical hit rate by 2% for 30 seconds.

Inspiration from the Bards

As long as you make the most of your DoTs, the songs provide extra benefits or special powers. Venemous Bite/Caustic Bite and Windbite/Stormbite, two of your DoTs, are crucial to energizing your songs. They, like other abilities and attacks, have a chance to cause a critical hit, which we refer to as a “proc.” During a DoT proc, any active song receives a “charge,” which each song handles differently.

• The cooldown timers for the off-global cooldown skills Bloodletter and Rain of Death will be reset by Mage’s Ballad.
• Paeon will shorten the time it takes to cast and recast weaponskills and spells, as well as speed up auto-attacks by up to four charges.
• The Wanderer’s Minuet converts procs into charges for Pitch Perfect, a burst damage ability with an off-global cooldown. Pitch Perfect may stack up to three charges, with each charge increasing the amount of damage it does.

To maximize your DPS, keep your songs up to date and charged with procs. Mage’s Ballad’s free casts, Army’s Paeon’s rapid recasts, and Pitch Perfect’s burst damage all immediately convert to aggro-stealing damage values. Your other party members will also benefit from the buffs’ small advantage. Keep Peloton on your hotbar to summon a flute and perform a short tune that gives you and your nearest party members a speed boost. Don’t you think it’s the little things that make playing an MMO a better experience for everyone?

However, in this FFXIV Bard Guide, singing your songs is just half the fight. The other half is characterized by violence.

Damage per second

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In terms of your core rotation, being a Bard entails not just the ability to sing a mean song, but also the ability to sling a mean arrow. You will, as well. Brutal, cruel arrows that slay your opponents and establish fresh tales that will live on in song.

Your first volley is Heavy Shot, which in Shadowbringers becomes Burst Shot. It gives you a chance to get the buff “Straight Shot Ready,” which has a 20% chance of procing for the former and a 35% chance for the latter.

• Burst Shot/Heavy Shot
• Potency of Attack: 180/250
• The range is 25 yalms.
• 2.5 seconds of recasting
• Additional Effects: You have a 20% / 35% chance of becoming Straight Shot Ready.

Shooting Straight

Straight Shot Ready allows you to cast Straight Shot, which in Shadowbringers upgrades to Refulgent Arrow while still using Straight Shot Ready. However, Refulgent Arrow Ready has a lovely ring to it – a squandered chance.

• Refulgent Arrow/Straight Shot
• Potency of attack: 200/340
• The range is 25 yalms.
• 2.5 seconds of recasting
• Additional Effects: Only available when the Straight Shot is ready.

Raging Strikes is unlocked at level 4, and it increases damage delivered by 10% for 20 seconds with an 80 second recharge duration. When you combine that with Barrage, which can turn any single-target weaponskill into a triple burst attack, you can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time. Did we know that Barrage also provides you Straight Shot Ready? After all, Straight Shot/Refulgent Arrow are weaponskills….

Your DoTs are Venemous Bite and Windbite. At level 64, they become Caustic Bite and Stormbite, respectively. They are the pulsating heart of the procs that fuel your tunes, as we previously mentioned. It’s crucial to keep them going — particularly once they start resetting their timers with Iron Jaws at Level 56 — if you want to win. Sidewinder and Shadowbite, both late-game abilities, grow in potency when striking targets with one and two DoTs.

To complete out your lethal arsenal, mix in some off-global cooldown action with Empyreal Arrow, Bloodletter, and AoE strikes like Quick Nock and Rain of Death.

Maintain a vertical position.

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It’s just as important to avoid taking damage as it is to inflict damage as a DPS. If you find yourself trapped within an attack telegraph or being targeted by the boss, you have a few alternatives to assist you remain in the battle.

Second Wind is a Role Action that restores some of your lost HP. It has a lengthy cooldown and isn’t extremely powerful, but in a pinch, it may be the difference between life and death.

• Second Wind
• Potency of Cure: 500
• Self-explanatory
• 120 second recast
• Additional effects include a cast that is instantaneous.

Ask your doctor whether Troubadour is correct for you or a loved one who wants to take less injury when grinding. While it doesn’t last long, any damage mitigation is excellent damage mitigation, and when used correctly, it may provide a mana breather to the Healer.

• Troubadour
• 10 percent damage mitigation
• Range: Self, members of the immediate party
• 120 second recast
• Additional Effects: The Machinist’s Tactician and Dancer’s Shield Samba effects cannot be combined.

Last but not least, for 15 seconds, Nature’s Minne increases the potency of healing acts for yourself or a friendly party member by 20%. When a tank is pounded by a tankbuster, drop this on them and watch their health replenish quickly. It does, however, have a 90-second cooldown, so conserve it until you need it. If you’re not casting it on yourself, stay within 30 yalms of possible targets.

Solo and Grouped Bard Leveling

No FFXIV Bard Guide would be complete without a discussion of how to level successfully, whether you’re leveling alone or in a group.

Square Enix courtesy of HGG / Mitch Gentry

Maintain your class missions. They provide valuable experience as well as some of your class’s most significant skills. The Main Story Quests are also perfect for progressing from Level 1 to Level 10 while experiencing Final Fantasy’s signature storyline and feature-length cutscenes. These will be the foundation of any solo leveling path, but like with other MMOs, there’s a lot more material waiting for you if you’re ready to team up.

A well-rounded leveling route for the Bard will look like this in practice:

• Storyline Quest (s)
• Class Challenge (s)
• Roulette of Duty
• Wildcard
• Repeat!

You may fill the wildcard slot with PvP, Alliance Raids, or Challenge Log farming, all of which provide a fair amount of XP if you’re willing to play a few games. You’ll almost certainly finish a few Challenges just by playing. Concentrating on them, on the other hand, may help you grind out the remainder of your XP bar at higher levels while also providing you with short-term objectives to keep you going.

As a Bard, it’s player vs. player.

There are daily Roulette awards and challenges that drive you toward the PvP aspect of FFXIV. And PvP is really a lot of fun, particularly if you’re a class like the Bard who has a lot of burst damage potential. Just keep in mind how flimsy you are and let the tanks go first.

Square Enix courtesy of HGG / Mitch Gentry

PvP gives you unique variations of your class’s primary skills that have been tuned and balanced for competitive play. In reality, though, they work in a similar manner to what you’re used to.

Bard vs. Player

Burst Shot and Empyreal Arrow (now with charges that regenerate over time) are old standbys for burst damage, as are the tunes Army’s Paeon and Wanderer’s Minuet. The buffs operate similarly with adjusted stats, while Burst Shot and Empyreal Arrow are now employed to produce your procs since there are no DoTs.

Nature’s Minne adds Troubadour’s damage mitigation to the mix while maintaining a single-target ability, while Sidewinder and Shadowbite take on a new duty as opening abilities, doing greater damage as your victim approaches maximum health.

PvP-specific skills like Bolt for sprinting and Medical Kit for self-healing are must-haves in your repertoire, and you can spice things up a little with two more abilities from the list below:

• Leg Graze — For 5 seconds, inflicts Heavy +50% on the victim.
• Graze with the foot binds the target for 3 seconds.
• Concentrate — Increases the power of the next weaponskill by 50% within 5 seconds.
• Recuperate – Restore personal HP to 3,000 potency while removing the effects of Heavy, Bind, and Holmgang.
• Peloton – For 10 seconds, increases the pace of the self and adjacent party members.

This isn’t intended to be a thorough list of all your PvP skills as a Bard — after all, this is an FFXIV Bard Guide, not a PvP guide — so you’ll have to check them out for yourself at the Wolves’ Den Pier!

Final Thoughts – FFXIV Bard Guide

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The Bard is a superb DPS class with spectacular burst damage, a “simple to learn but tough to master” rotation with plenty of party benefits, and plenty of leveling rotation versatility whether you’re flying alone, with a group, or throwing your hat into the PvP ring. Keep up with your class missions, as with other classes, and you’ll have a great time with this strong damage-dealer.

Maintain your DoTs to proc your tunes, and you’ll have no shortage of new songs to sing in celebration of your successes.  

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We’ll be guiding the Maelstrom to victory in PvP Frontlines if you need us. We’ll see you in the next chapter!