FFXIV: How to Play Bard at Level 50

In this page, here are suggestion of how to play bard for bard enthusiasts, including the basic skills you might use, what you should do or what you shouldn't do.

 

Some people realize that Bard is the easiest DPS but the laziest as well. You have two classes of skills, GCD and Off-GCD skills. GCD skills are beholden to the Global CoolDown timer (hence the name), as in you can only use one GCD every 2.5s (or a bit less if you have added skill speed). These include Straight Shot, Heavy Shot, and your damage over time skills Windbite and Venomous Bite. Off-GCD  skills can be used at anytime, but have individual cooldowns that prevent you from spamming them. These include all your buffs (Hawk's Eye, Raging Strikes, Internal Release, etc), Bloodletter, Blunt Arrow, Repelling Shot, Flaming Arrow and so on. While they are "instant cast" in a sense, they do have an animation time to wait through, so you can't just facesmash the keyboard and use like ten skills in half a second. You will need to learn how to start choosing and prioritizing your oGCDs much more than you need to at level 50.

 

Then below are what you should do and what you shouldn't do. 

 

What you should do: 

1. Get your cross class abilities unlocked. Second Wind, Invigorate, Internal Release, Blood for Blood are pretty much essential.

2. Keep an eye on your healers MP. Not often but sometimes you'll be doing content with a new healer that doesn't know how to manage their MP effectively, so a Mage's Ballad when they're low can be a huge help and sometimes prevent wiping.

3. Use Battle Voice often, don't be afraid to use it. The cast time was recently reduced making it possible to use far more often than before, I.e. multiple times in a single fight, instead of only once.

4. Keep both DoTs (Windbite, Venomous Bite) up as much as possible. Keep Straight Shot up as well.

5. Ties in with above: Use Bloodletter as often as you can. Having both DoTs up will increase the rate the cast time is reset (Trait: River of Blood), and having Straight Shot up, will also increase crit rate, which affects this.

 

What you shouldn't do: 

1. Forget about Foe Requiem being active when entering a boss room or elsewhere. It can unintentionally pull aggro, and wipe a party.

2. Use Repelling Shot in arena's where the edge/falling off will kill you without consideration for where you'll be afterwards. If you're not mindful of where you're going to end up, you can also end up pulling more enemies, or land in mines and traps (PotD).

 

So after seeing these, do you feel clear about the bard? Or you get other ideas? Any demand like FFXIV gil, power leveling can be meet on our website. Any problems about your orders can also be solved. Choose us and get your orders.