I know I’ve already posted a bunch of other bard guides (and probably will post more good ones that I find in the future xD) but I wanted to write up my own guide on it to give you my own in-depth opinion and advice for playing the bard job. I am by no means an “expert” on the bard class, but I have been playing as a bard for as long as I’ve played this game and have google searched ‘Bard dps’ far more times than I’d like to admit. My aim in writing this is to share with you all everything that I have learned in my experience playing this class and hopefully, help anyone reading this improve at the class that I love ^.^

WARNING: WALLS OF TEXT APPEAR BELOW

The Basics

Terminology:

For ease of writing, in this guide I will be using some terms that, if you did not know what the meant, most of the advice in here would fall on deaf ears.

Cd= Cooldown. That period of time where you cannot use a skill and it is recharging.
Gcd= Global cooldown. The shared cooldown timer for most of your abilities.
Off-gcd= The skills that are not on the shared timer
Dot= Damage over time. Skills that leave a bleed/poison effect on the target.
Proc= a rng element that gives you either an instant recast to a skill, a bonus effect to a skill, or makes the skill free. (procs may work differently for other classes. I haven’t leveled other classes enough to know xD)
Tick= I will mostly refer to this for each time a dot does damage, but it also applies to mana regen, hp regen, and auto-attacks.
Pots= Potions.

Stats:

I will go into more detail on this later, but as a basic overview, the stats you should focus on are Weapon Damage and Dexterity first, then (in no particular order) critical hit rate and determination.

Skills:

Heavy shot: A basic attack that also has a 20% chance of making your next straight shot crit. On gcd

Straight Shot: A slightly weaker attack, but applies the straight shot buff which increases critical hit rate by 10%. IMPORTANT. On gcd

Wind Bite: Attack with weak initial damage but applies a stronger dot on the target with an 18 second duration. On gcd

Venemous Bite: Attack with stronger initial damage, but a slightly weaker dot effect with an 18 second duration. On gcd

Bloodletter: An attack with the same potency as heavy shot. Off-gcd, 15 second cooldown… kinda ;)

Misery’s End: A bard’s strongest attack. Only drawback is that it can only be used when an enemy’s health is under 20%. Off-gcd, 12 second cooldown

Repelling Shot: A weak attack that sends you jumping backwards. USE WITH CAUTION, can lead to hilarious f-ups. Off-gcd, 30 second cooldown.

Blunt Arrow: A weak attack that applies the silence debuff. Off-gcd, 30 second cooldown.

Flame arrow: Creates an AoE field on the ground that does DoT damage for a duration of 30 seconds. Off-gcd, 60 second cooldown.

Quick Nock: Short range aoe attack. Least expensive TP wise. Gcd

Rain of death: Long range aoe attack. Most expensive TP wise, can proc for a free quick nock, adds a worthless debuff (evasiveness down, damn nerfs >.<). Gcd

Wide volley: Long range aoe attack. In the middle TP wise, can proc for a free rain of death. Gcd

Shadowbind: Binds an enemy for 10 seconds. You can ignore this for most situations.

Buffs:

Internal Release: Increases Critical Hit rate by 10% for a duration of 15 seconds. Must be cross-classed from pugilist (level 12), but if you have unlocked bard, then you have already learned this skill. 60 second cooldown.

Raging Strikes: Increases damage by 20% for a duration of 20 seconds. (amazing) 120 second cooldown

Hawk’s eye: Increases DEX by 15% and ensures all attacks hit for a duration of 20 seconds. 90 second cooldown

Blood for blood: Increases damage dealt by 10% and increases damage received by 25% for a duration of 20 seconds. (be smart with this one) Must be cross-classed from lancer/drg (level 34). 80 second cooldown

Barrage: Adds two extra auto-attack per tick. (hits 3 times) for a duration of 10 seconds. 90 second cooldown.

Battle Voice: Doubles the effectiveness of songs (with the exception of swiftsong) for a duration of 30 seconds. Effect does not extend to the user. 5 minute recast.

Quelling Strikes: Lowers enmity gained for 15 seconds.

(There are more buffs you can cross class as a bard, but none of them are worth their salt. I will cover cross class skills below to explain why.)

Songs:

Swiftsong: Increases movement speed of all nearby party members. Cannot be used in combat. Does not drain MP.

Mage’s Ballad: Refreshes the MP of all nearby party members. Drains mana, but at a slower rate than other songs. (for obvious reasons).

Foe’s Requiem: Lowers the magic resistance of all nearby enemies by 10%. Drains mana.

Army’s Paeon: Refreshes the TP of all nearby party members. Drains mana.

Cross Class Skills:

As a bard, you can cross class skills from both the Pugilist (Monk) and Lancer (Drg) classes. You have about 9 skills to chose from, but not all of them are good choices, and some of them should be considered mandatory.

Internal Release: Mandatory- Stated above in buff section. Critical hit rate is important, and you should already have this skill anyway (need pugilist level 15 to unlock bard, internal release is unlocked at level 12)

Invigorate: Mandatory- Instantly restores 400 TP. Requires Lancer level 22. TP management will be discussed more in-depth later, but you should not ignore this just because you have paeon. 180 second cooldwon

Blood for blood: Mandatory- Explained above in buff section. Requires Lancer (Drg) level 34. Now, if you’ve known me for a while, you will know that I was bad and was stubborn about leveling lancer for this skill. Don’t follow my example, get it. It is better to have than pretty much any of the remaining skills you can cross class, which should make it mandatory if you want to a really good bard.

Second Wind: Recommended- A decent self heal. Unlocked by pugilist pre-15, so it should already be in your arsenal. It has saved my life on multiple occasions, and I wouldn’t go anywhere without it, but you don’t absolutely need it if you prefer one of the other buffs over it. 120 second cooldown.

Feint: Stop being bad- Don’t use this. There is no reason to waste a cross class slot on this skill. It is on the gcd and has only 120 potency. It applies slow, but that is not your job. There are better classes for that. Lancer level 2.

Keen Flurry: Useful- increases parry rate by 80% for 20 seconds. Bards only get access to two “defensive” cooldowns. Both have kinda similar effects, so pick your poison if you feel like you need a defensive cooldown. Lancer level 6. 90 second cooldown

Featherfoot: Useful- increases evasion by 15% for 10 seconds. The other “defensive” cooldown. Instead of parrying (which still allows you to take damage) this increases your chance to dodge the attack completely. So again, pick your poison with this vs. Keen Flurry. Could absolutely be useful, but rng like dodging is not exactly what you want to be relying on for survival. Pugilist level 4. 90 second cooldown.

Haymaker: No- An attack with a potency of 170 that applies the slow debuff, but can only be used after you dodge an attack. Two problems with this. 1, It is on the gcd. 2, why are you being hit? You shouldn’t be holding aggro in the first place, dodge your marked aoes. Sure, some raid wide damage can be ‘dodged’ if you are lucky but you have a much better skill to use for when the entire party is taking damage. Pugilist level 10.

Mantra: Useful- I love this skill. Increases HP recovered by curing magic by 5% for you and all nearby party members. Sure, it is much better when used by the monk (because of trait) but it sure is handy to have and fits in nicely with your other support abilities. This is the better option for unavoidable damage as it eases the burden on the healers a bit. 5% is not a whole lot, so you shouldn’t feel obligated to go out of your way to get this skill, it is the monk’s job anyway. Pugilist level 42. 120 second cooldown.


I personally use Internal release, invigorate, blood for blood, second wind, and mantra. But the last two skills could just as easily be replaced by keen flurry and/or featherfoot. I just prefer having more options for healing. Feel free to experiment with whatever you want, just no haymaker or feints. Ever. If I see you using them I will slap you on the wrists >:C





Combat:

Overview:
Now that you have a rundown of all of the skills available to us bards, lets see how we should be making use of them. Us bards are not pure damage dealing machines like black mages or ninjas. All of our attacks have low potencies. Even our weapons are specced to do less damage than other classes (the paladin i110 weapon has only 1 less physical damage than the bard i135 weapon!) However, we have many advantages in combat that make us able to compete with the more heavy hitting classes. We can maintain 100% dps uptime even while dodging aoes or performing difficult mechanics. While other classes may be forced to stop for a bit, we can keep pew pewing away. We also have a bunch of off-gcd attacks with short cooldowns, so you can almost always be firing something. We also don’t have any limiting factors to our dps like a monk’s greased lightning. So even 1 or 2 skills out of place wont completely destroy your dps.

The Magic of Bloodletter:

Before I start with the bard rotation, I need to talk about this. As I see it, the bard’s rotation hinges on bloodletter. At level 48, you get the trait “River of Blood”. This is the reason I can’t do my low level roulette as a bard any more. With this trait, whenever the dot effect of either Windbite or Venemous bite crits, there is a 50% chance that bloodletter will instantly come off of cooldown. Simply put, when your dots crit, you have a very high chance of being able to immediately cast bloodletter regardless of whatever cooldown time was remaining. You should never have to wait 15 seconds for your bloodletter again^^. This trait can allow bards to have some pretty crazy burst dps if they are in RNGesus’ favor. Getting 5 bloodletter procs in a row is almost orgasmic when it happens, and it can happen more often than you would think. This trait makes crit rate a very important stat for bards(even a bit more than determination, which is a straight damage increase).

The “Rotation”:

I say rotation in quotes because bards don’t exactly have a set rotation. Instead, it is a priority system of managing your buffs, dots, and timers. The rules for this priority system are as follows:

1. Keep Straight Shot Up: Always keep this buff up. 100% of the time. No exceptions. Refresh it when it is at ~3 seconds.
2. Keep bloodletter on cooldown. You never want to miss a dot tick by having bloodletter just sitting there. Every tick missed by keeping bloodletter sitting there is another possible bloodletter you could have missed. Don’t miss out on bloodletter. Keep it on cooldown. Consume bloodletter procs as soon as you get them**
3. Keep your DoTs up: Windbite and Venomous bite should have near 100% uptime. You always want them ticking. Apply them both one after another. I prefer to do Windbite -> Venemous bite, but I cant give you a specific reason why I favor one over the other. If their timers align with straight shot, refresh straight shot first. Reapply dots when they are at ~3 seconds. (Steps 2 and 3 could also be thought of as 2a and 2b, because since bloodletter is off-gcd, you could possibly apply a dot and immediately use your bloodletter before it has a chance to tick.**)
4. Consume straighter shot procs when they come up. Only reapply straight shot early if you get this proc.
5. If all of the above are down/applied, heavy shot spam until something needs refreshing/consuming.

**IMPORTANT NOTES**
-You want to avoid delaying your gcd as much as possible. As a bard, remember: ABF- Always Be Firing. Sometimes you may want to delay a bloodletter to use a heavy shot/straight shot/etc to keep your gcd ticking. However, learning when and when not to do this comes with experience, you have to get a feel for the length of the animation delay and time between your dot ticks. Dot ticks happen roughly every 3 seconds, but nobody is perfect, and delaying it for 0.5 seconds or missing a bloodletter (god forbid o.o) isn’t the end of the world.

-Weave off-gcd attacks in between your gcds. With the animation delay, you will most likely be able to get 2 off without delaying your next gcd ability depending on skillspeed. With the exception of bloodletter, all of the skills above are on the gcd. So while doing the above, weave your buffs and other off-gcd skills in between to keep keep firing!

-Don’t forget about Fire arrow, Blunt arrow, or Repelling shot. That’s free damage that is off-gcd. Keep those on cooldown and weave them between your gcds. However, exercise caution with blunt arrow and repelling shot. Don’t waste blunt arrow if you know you need to silence something (on the rare occasions you can -_-) and make sure repelling shot wont get you or someone else killed. It is very embarrassing to jump off the cliff when fighting titan or to send yourself flying into twintania’s fire wall…. (we’ve all been there. Any bard who says they haven’t had an embarrassing repelling shot moment is a liar). Fire arrow should be kept on cooldown in any case.

-Don’t underestimate auto-attacks, they make up a large percentage of our dps. So as tempting as it may be to run circles around those unfortunate black mages who have to stand there and wait for their silly cast timers, don’t. Flares are scary, so don’t piss off your black mage, but more importantly: AUTO-ATTACKS STOP WHEN YOU ARE NOT FACING YOUR TARGET. Auto-attacks happen like dots, they hit at certain intervals (in this case, a stat on your weapon will tell you how long in between auto-attacks) and if your back is turned when the time for the next attack comes, you will miss an auto-attack. Don’t miss out on damage you could have done, face your target^^ Sometimes you will have to turn your back or face away from an enemy to dodge an attack, and that cant be helped, but make sure you are facing your enemy when you can.
*If you can do it safely, you can toggle the target lock to keep yourself facing your target while strafing. This does restrict any backward movement, so don’t do it if it will get you killed ;)


REMEMBER: ALWAYS BE FIRING!! \O/


http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/97/97d6c8b71752c9222d9baab62fe1e5d8e454b03fb5dab6472be39876a1e44253.jpg

**DISCLAIMER**
Excuse my rambling in this next section. I tried to get all of the information possible into it and it may become kind of complicated and not formed into the most coherent way possible.

The Bard Opener:
The opening rotation of a bard is very important to your DPS. With a total of 5 offensive buffs available to you at one time (6 if you use/count pots), bards can pull some crazy dps in the first minute of the fight. Not only does it set the pace for your dps, but it also will determine your buff alignments and when each will come off cooldown.

Note that there are many different openers out there, and (as far as I know) theory crafters have not found a solid “Best” opening rotation. So if mine doesn’t work for you, find another one that works better for you and commit it to muscle memory. However, your opening rotation should fill out each part of this checklist after at most four gcds:

-Have you gotten straight shot up?
-Have you applied at least one buff (not including SS) to your 1st dot?
-Have used your bloodletter before your dots start ticking?
-Have you applied more buffs to your 2nd dot?
-Have you applied barrage with every buff active?
-Have you used fire arrow?

If your opener accomplishes all of these by the 4th gcd, you’ve done good. Just follow the priority system from here while weaving off-gcds and bloodletter procs.

This is the opener that I use:

Odd numbers are off-gcd, evens are gcd

3 seconds pre-pull: 1. Foes requiem (if magic dps is in party)
2.Quelling strikes (trust me, your tank will love you)

1. Bloodletter->BV**** (if foes was used)
2. Straight shot
3. Hawk’s eye -> internal release
4. Windbite
5. Raging strikes ->blood for blood
6. Venemous bite
7. dex pot/*bloodletter->fire arrow/fire arrow -> barrage**
8. Heavy Shot/*Straighter shot proc
9. fire arrow ->Barrage/*bloodletter->barrage/barrage-blunt arrow**
10. Heavy shot/*straighter shot proc
11. *Blood letter-> repelling shot (if safe)
12. Heavy shot/*straighter shot proc
13+ Refresh straight shot at 5/6 seconds (if no straight shot procs)
Refresh dots immediately after straight shot.
Consume bloodletter procs as they come up

*If it is up
**For steps 7 and 9, there are three possibilities:
-If using a dex pot, use it on 7 alone as it takes a whole gcd, then on step 9 use fire arrow then barrage
-If no dex pot and you get a bloodletter, use bloodletter and fire arrow on 7 and delay barrage to 9
-if no pot or bloodletter, use fire arrow and barrage on 7
(the idea is to get all buffs up first, not waste any bloodletter, and then make sure to apply fire arrow and barrage with every buff up while not delaying a gcd)


With this opener, you start your bloodletter cooldown early to make room, you get the maximum crit rate for both of your dots to get the most possible bloodletter, all offensive buffs going for the second dot (not including pots), all offensive buffs (including pot this time) going for barrage and fire arrow, and a second set of almost fully buffed dots (internal release will fall off right after you apply windbite and right before venomous bite if done right) After that, you assume the priority system and go from there.


****Regarding Battle Voiced Foe’s Requiem at the beginning of the fight. Only if you wont need it later. It is a long cooldown and I prefer not to use it on an early requiem if that means I wont need it later. I prefer to save it for heavy DPS checks or in dire emergencies, none of which happen in the first 30 seconds of any fight. However, this does not mean don’t use it. Being obsessed with saving often leads to never using it. Only save it if you know you will need it, which you learn from knowing your party members (healers specifically) and/or knowing the fight.
EDIT: If the content you are doing is on farm, burn that BV at the start on foes, if you and your group is still learning, still use foes, but save that BV just in case. When learning content always prioritize staying alive over DPS.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Thank you Raven ❤️ I would rather learn how to be an awesome bard from you and Gen :-)

PART 2:

Song usage:

This is mainly something that is learned through experience, but there are certain things to look for to decide which song to use and when.

Swiftsong: Always nice in a dungeon between pulls. Speeds up the run

Foe’s Requiem: My personal favorite song :D If you have any magic dps (blm or smn, it doesn’t matter) in your party, this song buffs their damage a great bit. And, unlike your other two songs, foe’s requiem does not come with that 20% reduction to your own damage. So this song is perfect for squeezing out that extra DPS you may need to hit a tough dps check, or just to speed up the fight. If your healers are good on mana, no one has asked for a TP song, and you have a caster in your party, you should never be sitting on full mp. Put on foes. Don’t be shy about using your songs, especially foes since it does not decrease your damage. A full mana bar is useless if you don’t empty it ;) You should ALWAYS use this before the pull if your party has even 1 magic dps. You wont need that mana for anything else, and if you need to sing a ballad that early, then there is something seriously wrong…..

Mage’s Ballad: This is probably the song you will use the most. However, you should not be too quick to use it. There are many times when a ballad is not needed, and if you play during that time, you are only gimping your own dps. It takes some experience (or playing as a healer I assume xD) to know when healers will be expending more mana. This includes when they have to rez one or two people, or spam aoe heals when they are already low on mana. Always play a ballad when a healer goes down to help get them back on their feet and getting those heals out. Good healers know how to conserve their mana, but when problems like these arise, it doesn’t matter how good a healer is at managing their resources, a ballad will always help in that case. In fights with some downtime where there is nothing to attack, use that downtime to top off the healer’s mana. You will likely play with various healers with varying mana management skills, so in any pick up group, I stick to the golden rule of 1/3rd mana as a safety net. If on voice chat, a healer will likely call for ballad when needed.


Army’s Paeon: This song is very niche. Due to the fact that you cannot see your party member’s TP, there are 2-3 situations in which you should use it. ONE: Aoe spam. Any time you and other party members are spamming aoe attacks, throw up a paeon so you are all not starved after 7 or so attacks. (For add phases I prefer using foes for the casters, but either works. If there are two bards, coordinate songs) Obviously don’t do this for casters. TWO: When someone asks for it. I have rarely been asked to play a TP song without voice chat. If a dps needs it, let them ask for it, its their resource to manage and it’s not your fault they cant do it xD. THREE. This one I am still somewhat on the fence about. I will typically throw up a paeon when a tank needs to be rezzed because they need to get hate back and I would assume that is hard without TP. I have never really seen a tank ask for one after getting rez, but have never been told that they didn’t need it. So until then, I will continue to do it. The only other time I use it is when I know someone who needs it, me. If invigorate is on CD and you have ~200ish TP, throwing up a paeon to help you along until invigorate is ready can be a lifesaver.

General rules of singing:
Unlike any of your other skills, songs have cast timers, which means when you cast them, you will be able to do nothing for 3 seconds. Or, as a dps would say, you are wasting 3 seconds. Stopping to put up a song is always a dps loss for yourself, but as this is the most important part of a Bard’s job (face it, no one is bringing us along for our good looks…) it is unavoidable. However, to minimize the amount of dps lost by stopping to sing, there are a few guidelines to follow:
1. Don’t stop to sing while any of your cooldowns are activated (Internal release, hawk’s eye, dex pot, etc.) all you are doing is wasting 3 seconds of said cooldowns.
2. Don’t stop to sing if straight shot is about to fall off (~3 secs). Reapply then sing
3. Don’t stop to sing if either of your dots are about to fall off (the leading one at ~3 secs) Reapply then sing.
4. Always try and get a feel of the fight so you know when and when not to sing/ when there is downtime to top off whatever resources are needed.

DISCLAIMER: While it is always good to try and plan song usage around maximizing your own DPS, its important to remember: needs of the raid > your DPS. No one is bringing us bards around for our stellar DPS. They bring us because they just wanna hear some songs. No matter how well you play bard, you will rarely if ever out DPS a well played black mage or ninja. Our biggest strength is raid utility and never skimp on that duty for selfish reasons. That being said, if you can spare the time to save your own DPS, always do it ;)

TP management:

The skills in a Bard’s arsenal all come with pretty high TP costs compared to other classes. In combat, TP regens 60 points per tick (~3 secs). The least expensive skill that we have, Heavy Shot, costs 60 TP on a cooldown timer of at most 2.5 secs (depending on skill speed). If you are following the rules above, you should never be letting your GCD sit around for TP regen. To make the most effective use of TP (and coincidentally, the most effective use of your skills damage-wise) it is important to not reapply your dots or straight shot too early as those skills are far more costly (70 and 80 TP) than a heavy shot would be. If you are rotating properly, you should already be doing this ;) The other important part of TP management is proper invigorate use. As I’ve stated above, this skill is almost mandatory for bards. Without it, we would become TP starved after around 2 minutes or less. The important thing to keep in mind with invigorate is to not wait until you are TP starved to use it. To make optimal use of it, you should keep an eye on your TP when you start to dip below 600. Wait until you get to the point where your regen ticks no longer bring you back up to over 600 to use it(typically around 530/540 depending on straighter shot procs). By using it at ~540 TP instead of ~100 TP, you don’t waste any of the 400 TP regained by invigorate while also starting the cooldown much earlier, meaning that it will be available much sooner for the next time you need it. (and by the next time it comes off cooldown, you will most likely be TP starved or nearing that point)

TP consumption varies from fight to fight as some bosses have less uptime than others, but in most cases pre-final coil, by using your attacks and invigorate properly (and if you aren’t stacking skill speed like a dummy) you should never have to sing a TP song for yourself, and therefore, avoid getting smacked with that 20% damage loss.

*Note for AoEing, invigorate will probably not suffice if you have to spam AoE, TP song is never a bad idea for mass AoE attacks (unless foes is a better one ^.^)

Macros:

I advise against the use of macros for two reasons:

1.Macros are generally a dps loss for most DPS classes, including bard. The most common use of macros I see is one like this:

/ac “Misery’s End” <t>
/ac Bloodletter <t>
/ac “Heavy Shot” <t>

With this, by just mashing one button (preferably with the heavy shot icon) you will use misery’s end if its up, if not, you will use bloodletter if its up, and if it’s not, once heavy shot is ready, you will use that. While this does eliminate the need to monitor two (kinda) cooldowns, it does so at the price of possibly pushing back your GCD.

2.We don’t have that many skills/timers to manage. If your attention is so divided that you cant react bloodletter procs while managing 3 very similar timers then by all means go for it, but it really is a crutch more than anything.

Tl;dr- Macros make bard super easy mode, but using them can lower your overall DPS


Stats expanded:

For all you stat min/maxers, here are the stat weights for bards after patch 2.4:

WD: 9.429
DEX: 1.000
DET: 0.320
CRT: 0.339
SS: 0.161

When building/planning your stats, remember the basic order of importance:

Weapon damage> accuracy until cap> dex> det/crit > avoid SS wherever possible.

Always use the highest ilvl weapon you can, no exceptions, weapon damage > all
Accuracy is only useful until you hit the cap for whatever you are doing, then it becomes useless

After that, it is important to find a healthy balance between your secondaries while also getting the highest dexterity you can. *Avoid skillspeed as all it does for us is waste TP.

As far as crit vs. determination goes, it is a bit of a toss up for bards. Most other classes favor det over crit because det is a straight damage increase across the board. However, this is where our river of blood skill comes into play. Since more crits = more bloodletter = more damage, getting that crit rate up can cause a dramatic increase in dps for a bard. This doesn’t mean to flat out ignore determination, as determination is almost just as important. Bards should be aiming to get the highest amounts of dexterity, crit rate, and determination as they possibly can. Good numbers to aim for when gearing up are and 500 crit, 300 determination, while your dexterity will vary based on ilvl.

If you enjoy min/maxing your stats, I highly recommend heavy use of this site (if you don’t already o.O) : http://ffxiv.ariyala.com/
This site is essentially my homepage and I have it open in a tab on pretty much every internet browser I ever use xD

I am not posting a BiS list as the true best in slot gear for current content is always a mixture of poetics gear and coil gear. And if the best in slot dreadwyrm gear is within reach for you, why are you even reading this? xD
Instead, I encourage you to find the gear that is best in slot for what is currently available to you. Some pieces are better than others depending on what gear YOU have, which is why the site above is so awesome ^.^

However, I do feel obligated to leave one piece of advice: DO NOT GET THE IRONWORKS CHEST OR PANTS. Unless you are able to upgrade them to i130, DON’T. The i110 soldiery chest is still much better than the i120. And the crafted i110 coat is even considered BiS when penta-melded. While I am also heavily against the ironworks pants as well, these are far more viable than the chest. If you are not willing/able to spend a few million on the kirimu brais (i110 crafted pants), then the ironworks are a viable option (Although I HIGHLY recommend pentamelding the kirimu brais). The pants are fine if crafted ones are not an option for you (although I would still recommend the t8 pants), but every time I see a bard wearing that god-awful ironworks corset of aiming, I cry a little inside ;_;


Conclusion:

As you can probably tell from all of my ramblings, I love playing bard. It is a fast-paced class that revolves around adapting to your situation and being able to quickly decide which skill is best to use, not only for yourself, but for your entire party. It allows you to see much of the battle and be able to survey what is going on and to do the full amount of damage possible even when on the move. It is a very forgiving class that anyone can succeed at, but takes an immense amount of time and dedication to master. I hope that if you made it this far, you were able to take something from what I wrote (other than that I have way too much free time on my hands) and learned something about playing as a bard.