Disclaimer: Numbers I put in are all made up, but it's to give you an idea of what things may look like!

I've been getting asked about Bard a lot lately, felt it was probably time to start making a guide about it.

About Bard and Other Things
Bard is not at the bottom of the barrel DPS that everyone thinks it is. When Bard first got nerfed at the tail end of 2.0 and early 2.1, Square Enix simply normalized their damage. What this means is that Bard was overwhelmingly strong when they came out to the point where any person who can at least press a single button can do massive amounts of damage without trying.

Unlike other classes initially, there wasn't a lot required to maximize damage.

A good Bard is comparable to Dragoons, Monks and Summoners and they will never lose to a Black Mage in a race of DPS. (As of 2.2)

Buff Rotation
I have three explanations for how to maximize damage on Bards. There is a "Full Buff" rotation, "Partial Buff" rotation and "Split Buff" rotation.

Full Buff
A Full Buff rotation is generally what you do initially. A round of combination of buffs look something like this:
–– Flaming Arrow - Free DoT Damage
–– Straight Shot - Increases your CRIT
–– Internal Release - Increases your CRIT
–– Bloodletter - Starts your cool down for resets
–– Blunt Arrow - Free Damage
–– Venomous Bite - For Bloodletter Reset
–– Raging Strikes - Damage Up
–– Blood for Blood - Damage up
–– Windbite - For bloodletter Reset
–– Hawks Eye - DEX Up
–– Barrage - Massive Auto-Attack Damage
–– Repelling Shot - Free Damage
–––– Note: Use Bloodletter and Straight Shot as they proc regardless of buff position

Partial Buff
A Partial Buff rotation is used on cooldown regardless of whether it can be used with something else or not. What this means is that you don't wait. You use everything available any time it is available.
–––– Note: Partial Buff rotation is good for fights that you can maximize the entire timer of that buff. Fights such as Titan Extreme or Nael Deus Darnus are not great fights for Partial Buff rotations. The "Partial Buff" rotation is the sole reason why your damage is generally lower than other DPS, because you're never maximizing your damage.

Damage Graph: Full Buff vs Partial Buff
To explain the differences in Full Buff rotations against a Partial Buff rotation is best described as peaks. With a Full Buff rotation, you'll have bigger peaks and then a long period of controlled damage.

Partial Buff rotation will have smaller peaks with a stronger period of controlled damage.

However, this is where Partial Buffing is not great. In fights where a boss becomes invulnerable via jumping or dashing, your buff is used and becomes wasted, thus your controlled damage will fall off.

Full Buffing ensures that you're at maximum damage for periods that matter and then fall off during periods where it doesn't matter.

In a sense, Full Buffing makes it so that you never waste your buffs.

Split Buff
Honestly, all this means is you're holding buffs and using some of them, but not all of them willingly.

For example, there may be periods of "Burst" you need, but it happens so fast that you can't use all of your buffs, only some of them.

You could end up doing a rotation that looks like the following:
–– Internal Release
–– Raging Strikes
–– Blood for Blood

–– Internal Release
–– Hawks Eye
–– Barrage

You're basically making one set of skills hit for tons of damage and you're making another set of skills not as strong, but you buff your auto attacks damage and you shoot 2 additional shots per auto attack.

Equipment
I can't repeat this enough, but there is technically no "Best in Slot" for a Bard because there are two controversial builds for Bards and it's dependent on what you're doing.

Crit vs Skill Speed
There are two fundamental builds for Bards: Crit and Skill Speed. I'll argue the case for both, and I'll let you determine the benefits of them.

Crit
This isn't necessarily your best stat. In all honesty, the reason why this is subjective is because of Bloodletter. You can reset Bloodletter for free based on whether the damage off of Venomous Bite or Windbite has crit or not. In a sense, you can end up having 5+ resets within the duration of either DoT.

There are two requirements for this build to work:
1. Stacking Crit.
2. Accuracy is absolutely REQUIRED.

There are a couple of cons to this build.
It requires you to sacrifice some Dex, Determination and Skill Speed. Basically, what this means you're lowering your damage to increase the frequency in which you hit the top end of your damage.

So instead of doing 150 damage most of the time and 650 damage once in a while.
You'll be doing 100 damage some times and 600 often.
Essentially, this normalizes your damage in that you're giving up damage to do bigger numbers and you make up for the lower damage by causing Bloodletter to proc more frequently, thus increasing your damage potential.

If your top end on a Bard within a 10 minute fight used to be 100,000 damage, it can end up being 150,000 damage.

However, if your crits never proc, you can end up being at the bottom end at 70,000 damage. Essentially, you will, on average over several fights, come out to do 100,000 damage anyways. The point is, you have the potential to do MORE damage.

Which means you need to also make sure your Accuracy is always 100% against all targets because of your lower damage potential. You don't want to miss any opportunities for damage. At all.

The greatest pro to this build is you will burst harder than any other class.

Crit Builds are unstable.

Skill Speed
This isn't necessarily your best stat either. This is also the other side of the controversy. Your source of damage is your ability to constantly hit Heavy Shot at the highest possible speed and utilizing Bloodletter resets if it happens.

There are two requirements for this build to work:
1. Stacking Skill Speed
2. At minimum, hitting 97-98% Accuracy.

The biggest con to this build is your Accuracy and you'll be giving up Crit as well. However, the great benefit to this build is you'll be able to keep Dex and Determination in places where you would normally sacrifice them for Crit and Acc. Essentially, this is the reverse of a Crit Build.

What this means is you'll be doing 150 damage most of the time and 650 damage once in a while and this will hold true for the entire duration of a fight and in general, you could care less whether your Bloodletter resets or not and if it does, great.

Basically, the gist of it is, if you never Crit, and you never get a Bloodletter reset, in a 10 minute fight, you WILL do 100,000 damage at the very least, maybe a little less because you missed. On average, your damage is stable and you can guarantee that you will always do that amount of damage in a known fight all the time every time. Anything more is an absolute plus.

The greatest pro to this build is that your damage can only be better than your average. There is a miniscule chance that you'll do worst if you missed 2% of the time and you never proc, but generally, you will always hit 98% Accuracy and once in a while proc, so you normalize back to your average.

Skill Speed builds are stable.

Why is this important, Crit vs Skill Speed?
The argument is, Crit will do more damage. Yes, it will. There IS no denying it.

Why does that matter so much? Ignorance really.
You have to understand why Bards will argue for one build over the other.

If a 10 minute fight creates a variance of the following:
Crit Build: 70,000 - 150,000
Skill Speed Build: 100,000 - 120,000

Which one would you take?
It really comes down to percentages and luck. 30% of the time on a Crit Build, you'll do slightly better than a Skill Speed Build.
100% of the time, a Skill Speed Build will always output roughly the same numbers.

It comes down to stability. If you play against another equally skilled Bard and you have either build, you will generally see a variance like the above.

At the end of the day, it's all preference with a mentality of taking risks or playing safely.

Flaming Arrow, Blunt Arrow and Repelling Shot
Use these on cooldown. When totaling all of the damage across an entire fight, these three abilities contribute to roughly 10-15% of your overall damage. Use them often.

However, weary of using Repelling Shot at the wrong time. You can cause yourself to die or worst, cause your party member to die. (Raven, I'm looking at you and your Repelling Shot backwards into a Twister).

Songs
Don't worry about songs too much. Use them sparingly and when asked for. A good Bard will use them by monitoring what is happening in the fight. If things get tight in a fight and your Healers are down on Mana, using a Song for them is fine.

There are hardly any applicable situations to use Army's Paeon outside of Turn 8.

The most commonly used ability is Foe's Requiem.
There are two conditions in which I use my Foe's Requiem:
1. Your party consists of at least 2 mages of some sort. BLM + BLM, SMN + SMN, BLM + SMN, what ever that combination may be.

OR

2. You need every ounce of damage possible and you have at least 1 Mage.

Battle Voice
This is more of a tool for crucial moments or difficult areas. If you know a fight has a difficult part for your Healers, it may be a good time to use Battle Voice.

If not, use it with Foe Requiem to cause even more damage.