When uh humbled by grace to ride with Geralt of Rivia along came the saw from wonder why move for a silver tongue is army of his Jose de Remo came after me broke down my mic I’m Dr Richard.
Bard Guide – From Basics to Details (FFXIV – Endwalker)
Welcome to another job guide for Final Fantasy 14 and Walker, this time featuring that job which took many arrows to the knee. But finally it is time to shine and shoot some arrows back. So make way for the musician, the epic sub guy, the BART.
As I’m working on these guys, I will try my best to explain systems and mechanics so that even fresh new comers can understand them. But a slight knowledge about the archer or bar is advice. So if you just started with that class, just give it some hours and test it out for yourself.
Most mechanics and skills will be introduced with solid patience and guidance and for those systems that are clear on the second glance that we try to help you out with this video. Just a short disclaimer, I’m not a BART main or theorycrafting expert so take all of this with a grain of salt and make sure to also check out other guides or ask people you trust about the gritty details.
Okay, without further ado, let us jump into the bars pedal system. First of all the bars pedal design focuses more on a priority system which means there are certain aspects that need to be favored over others.
So before talking about the individual stances and skills, remember those important priorities when learning venomous bite on level six already, you’re introduced to the first priority. Keep that active on as many targets as possible, which will be rounded up by wind bite on level 30.
But both of these skills are transformed into stronger versions on level 64 to help you out with keeping them active on your target on level 56 You learn iron jaws that resets the time off your damage over time effects to their maximum value. So use this just before caustic Biden’s don’t bite or that lower level versions run off about five to three seconds before that happens.
However I run jobs is also useful to snapshot dots. That simply means resetting the timer like you always do with that ability. But this time our focus lies on having as many buffs and cooldowns active amplifying or damage output maybe rating strikes better voice or the level 90 rating finally skill or pass from other party members.
Here all the empowerment of these bas are snapshot or frozen time onto the second use iron jaws and will count for the dots over the whole duration until you’re using iron Jaws again. On low levels. This can already be utilized by using venomous bite or wind bite a second time just before your raging strike wears off.
So keep your dogs active with the help of iron jaws and even when you still have quite some time left on that timer. If under many rate buffs, especially your own make sure to snapshot their increased power before pass or falling off. Alright, next up we have to talk about the ABC guideline again. ABC means always be casting and basically refers to the process of always keeping your global cooldown rolling also referred to as uptime.
And as you might know already, there are two categories of skills GCDs global cooldown spells weapons skills that will cause a request time have basically 2.5 seconds and oh GCDs have global cooldown abilities that can be used by this recast timer is rolling. So after using a weapon skill or spell referred to as GCD you want to use one or two abilities referred to as Oh GCDs on the bar this becomes very important due to blood letter being a crucial part of your rotation.
So as many other abilities on top of that your boss song stances or defensive tools for example, so try to always fit these OECD abilities like blood letter in between weapons skills like your dots have a short burst chart or reversion arrow and always try to keep the GCD rolling.
With that being said Our next goal is to follow on the alternation and orangey dependence of heavy shot and straight shot or birth shot and refulgent arrow later on that can be seen as the core rotation of the board where song stances and their different mechanics are layered on top.
So when dots are active and snapshot it is time to use heavy or birth chart according to the level you find yourself in and whenever one of these products their respective link profitec like straight shot or refulgent arrow, choose these instead. The next time you do As heavy as chart, however, inside of our bursting window, we also want to use Berridge, which also grants you one guaranteed product of Refulgent arrow while letting the next weapons skill hit three times in a row.
So our goal here is to use bearish in combination with a product straight shot, or especially refulgent arrow later on. So any product you might already have should be consumed before you hit the beverage button. And as this is an essential part of your burst damage, make sure to combine it with busts like raging strikes or basically all the busts you have at your disposal.
Okay, coming to Song stances on higher levels, you want to have some stances active permanently every time you find yourself in combat, not only because these grant access to certain mechanics of your job, but these songs also buff your party kinda significantly. But let’s start with Mitch valid on level 30. Since end Walker this is your weakest stance but still super powerful.
So at that point, your Archer journey ends to become a BART major ballot is your first song stance that introduces you into the whole system behind it, leading us to the repertoire mechanic that has a chance of 80% each three seconds to grant a bar benefits linked to the song stance you find yourself in four major ballot this leads to reduced cooldown on your blood letter or it’s a wee pond on rain of death.
So using black leather whenever possible in this dance makes sense and on lower levels when this is your only song combine it with raging strikes or other party bus. However, all of this changes when learning armies pay on granting you an increased attack request time or speed by 4% with each repertoire product up to a total amount of 16. So make sure to get these stacks as quickly as possible.
And of course stick to other aspects of your rotation while doing so. While these two are kind of easy to learn and to perform, which I highly recommend to test them out by yourself to know what we’re talking about a level 50 to the bar will unlock wonderous minuet which is your most powerful song stance and which will change your priorities a bit except for keeping dogs active and snapshotting. Of course, on Wondra. Each repertoire tick will grant one stack of Pitch Perfect, a very powerful OECD ability being strongest when used at three stats.
So over the whole course of Wondra you will face many of these products turning this song stance into the most powerful weapon and the one stance he wants to combine all the cooldowns with like raging strikes, better voice and also radiant finale later on, as well as using abilities like Berridge combined with its guaranteed refund arrow Pro.
But the story or poem doesn’t end here on level 54. You also get access to Imperial arrow another ability to be used in between weapons skills, which also grants a guaranteed proc of repertoire and level 68 So make sure to use this as much as possible, but try to avoid overwriting a maximum of three stacks on Pitch Perfect or when blood lead has the full stacks available already.
All in all this means wonder for bursting windows as your start into battle with the full duration followed by mage spell it with reduced duration of 34 seconds followed by army’s pay on with a full duration and repeating all this once you enter wonder again, just maybe favor the last two stances for AOE situations but they’re very close in that regard since and Walker.
And if you think this is well enough to make a job interesting to play already, you’re indeed right but on top of that the bot gets a solid voice gauge upon reaching level 80 that is filled each time your repertoire mechanic procs while also granting access to the powerful weapons skill Apex arrow which is stronger the more your sole voice gauges filled when using it.
And upon reaching level 86. You also proxy the blast and already effect when using Apex arrow on sole voice gauge levels of 80 or higher, which will grant access to the mighty blast arrow being an even more powerful weapon skill.
So make sure to at least have a sole voice gauge points available when using Apex arrow. Unfortunately, you cannot use one of these weapons skills with Berridge. But if at any point Square’s redesigning disability last arrow will become the new option to be combined with that powerful Triple Attack.
Nonetheless, after its initial use, that mostly happens during mages valid make sure to fit these two attacks into your burst window as much as possible to align them with raid boss as well as your own. And before coming to a we damage and dungeons.
Let us talk about some other OECD abilities that are an important part of your kit like Sidewinder, for example, which unlike in shadow bringers isn’t amplified by the amount of dots on your target anymore. So just use this in between weapon skills whenever it is ready and try to have one of these ready for your bursting windows.
Of course like the other range physical DPS jobs the bar also features a party mitigation tool in the form of troubadour which should be used against raid wide damage or to support healers wherever they might need a helping hand, which becomes even better with nature’s Minh that is a selective healing amplifier on a target party member or self that mostly can be used to empower healing on a tank and become super helpful in dungeons or when healers have to fight against massive incoming damage.
However, the most unique skill is the wardens pay on removing a detrimental effect from Target party member or self and if no effect is active at that time will protect them from the next effect applied and as being the only job that is not a healer with such an ability make use of this to remove one Ever negative effect you may encounter and push out some communication with your healer that you are indeed aware of this skill and will help them out in cleansing your party or even protect the frente target from receiving one effect in the first place.
Furthermore, we also got repelling shot that will let the bar jump 10 Iams backwards and can be used to avoid one or the other AV spiraling around the boss’s hitbox. But most of the times just taking a straight walk makes more sense.
All right, last but not least, your cooldowns while raging strike simply buffs your own damage significantly and battle voice amplifies DIRECT HIT values of you and your party radiant finale is a bit more complicated. Using this and receiving the most out of it is bound to how many songs dances you have activated before with a maximum of having used all three songs dances before using radiant finale, which means each circumstance you enter increases the power of radiant finale by 2%. The trick here is use this with only the 2% Buff wants to fight stars. But then afterwards, Every wonder as minuet burst will carry the full 6% off with it.
So always use this ability in Wondra regardless of your Codex, which also means make sure to use this after you enter into some stance to grant a full bonus and not waste 2% of its potential. On a we damage things are way more straightforward than they have been in shadow bringers or before, just apply as many doors as possible.
While the tank is still pulling packs together and afterwards keep spamming quick knock are laden spied on level 82 On three or more targets. Both of these attacks can proxy petabyte being a more powerful a we attack and following on the birth chart refulgent arrow idea which also counsel bearish making shadow baits stronger but not granting a guaranteed profit so you need to pocket manually.
And when it comes to reapplying dots as these have a very long duration, it is not worth it most of the times and whenever three or more targets are available, you should focus on dealing damage with quick knock laid in spite or shadow bite.
While always fitting in rain of death in between these weapons skills instead of blood letter. The only tricky decision still remains with apex and blast arrow as these are way more powerful the more enemies they hit.
So try to get your sole voice gauge as high as possible while not losing possible targets before that my rule of thumb is to stick with 80 So voice gauge at least two also progress arrow and if you cannot get this done in one pack, take the gauge points with you to the next fight. Just for fights with two targets. Make sure to apply dots to both and keep them active as long as possible. Just not refresh the duration on targets that are about to die very soon.
Okay, last but not least gear and melting materia. Like always favorite weapon damage over all else and then try to get your item level as high as possible while sticking to a stat priority of critical hit over direct hit equal to determination over skill sweet. Some people claim that determination is even better than direct hit but due to battle voice affecting DIRECT HIT values, I actually believe it’s the opposite case.
However, if you also want to gear up for switching over to machines from time to time, going straight to determination after having maxed out critical hit values is also very solid option. Just make sure to avoid Skill Speed as best as possible, as it is the weakest subset right now.
And even though DoD damage is increased by it, it falls short compared to the other options. Alright, that’s it for the bars, at least from a basic overview perspective. So if you still have some energy left, check out my rotation video found in the description or by clicking this little button in the top right corner.
Or check out the extensive guides on the balance or other theorycrafting resources. And of course, if you have any questions or tips about certain things mentioned, leave some words in the comment section. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, keep loving Final Fantasy and toss a coin to your Witcher.
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