How To Improve As Bard — Dawntrail 7.1

Many new Bards wait for one song to fall off before starting the next one. This naturally leads to having 1-2 seconds of songless time between songs - this adds up, and it is not good for your DPS output. When in doubt, do not be afraid to move to your next song with 0.5-1s left on the current one.

Just because you can be 25 yalms away from the boss at all times does not mean you should be. Most AoE heals have a limited range, and missing one that the healer is relying on can lead to death. Try not to wander out much further than the rest of the party.

This takes practice, but it is very common for newer Bards to be slow to use their Heartbreak Shot procs during Mage's Ballad. The song gauge will flash when you get a proc, so you can either look at that or your hotbars.

Nature's Minne and Troubadour are good skills to help with periods of heavy healing and damage, respectively. Make sure you keep an eye out for good places to use them.

The same goes for being aware of debuffs that The Warden's Paean can prevent or cleanse. (These will have a white bar above them)

As a physical ranged DPS, you have 100% uptime on the boss any time it can be targeted. This is a benefit, but only if you leverage it no matter what is going on in the fight.

With the amount of attention that Bard's rotation requires, it can be easy for players to get caught spectating mechanics and forgetting to stay on top of their damage output. This is normal when learning a fight, but it should be the first cause to suspect if you find your damage lacking.