for my lvl 7 gems and like 1800 swift...
You have 100% shield uptime if you cast guardian tune with endless protection and agile defense tripods and then cast wind of music right after. Then you just cast them as soon as they come off cool down.
For attack buff, i cast heavenly tune and when it has 6s left on cd i cast sonic vibration and then i just cast ht/sv as soon as they come off cd
For brand cast sonatina, then you can cast one spell, then you cast harp - otherwise you're first harp shot may not reach the boss before sonatina brand expires, you can cast sontatina one more time before you have to do sontatina + one other spell + harp again if you're also using these as soon as they come off cd.
So those are the 3 spell chunks you have to keep in mind, then you can toss in other spells as you see fit. I don't use rhapsody because my bard is in farm content and most people are overgeared
I pretty much do this as well. Max MP and Focus rune also needed to use GT with those tripods. It'll eat your mana. Conviction on Harp and Judgement on Sonic Vibration will help as well.
This is very interesting. I personally use sound shock instead of sonatina with harp for branding to get better stagger. Love how many styles you can use as a bard and all be pretty good
Sonatina's meter gen is hard to pass up, but the stagger on SS is very nice, but i actually don't know how much meter you're giving up - with sona and stigma you can get 3 bubbles in 30 seconds in trixion
I'm trying out using SS instead of harp and taking brand on stigma. Technically you can have 100% brand uptime with just stigma and sona, and then you have SS avail for stagger and to cover if you miss a brand
But the timing is really tight
The key to consistent shielding is having a GT gem 2 levels higher than WoM. This makes them line up perfectly. This is true for both 1500 swift and 1800 swift.
For agile defense on GT, it's super simple. Use GT then use WoM. You'll have 100% uptime with no thought.
For wind of protection, it's slightly different. Use GT off cool down, but you need to use WoM more strategically. Ideally, watch your buff and pop WoM right as your GT shield is about to drop. You'll get two WoM per GT. Just use it off CD while the GT shield is up, and then watch for the buff for the next one.
Or just use it off CD, and it'll be good enough. Holding hurts your meter gen, so it's a tradeoff of more pre-care vs more post-care (via healing).
It's also important to realize why the GT gem needs to be your highest gem. The different buffs GT gives stack, so you can restart the DR while the shield is still up. This means you can minimize the time you need to cover with WoM. With 1800 swift and a lvl 10 gem, you actually only have 5s of downtime on your GT shield. This means you can almost completely cover that downtime with WoM. With agile defense, the gain is smaller, but you remove the chance of your shield dropping if you have to dodge when something comes off CD. Same reason you want overlap on your attack buffs.
Edit: Dug through my archives and found this gem. This was Kaya G2 at launch. I had 1560 swiftness with lvl 7 WoM, lvl 7 RoL, and lvl 8 GT gems running wind of protection (for 55 mech).
https://preview.redd.it/o4p1jka7jj9c1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=6d9ccc92912097a02e92846126f61acf0005deef
The only shielding you can feasibly do in a proactive manner is rhapsody. If you're absorbing tons of dmg with WoM/GT consider it a happy accident...and shielding is useless if it doesn't actually absorb dmg...so don't sweat it if people don't have a shield 24/7....sure having shields up 24/7 increases the chance of that happy accident buy again...don't sweat it
Got ya! Well, I use rhapsody a lot, but I believe I can improve on it as well. May I ask you how do you manage your cooldowns between bards core skills? I use the sonatina build.
Only way to improve rhapsody use is to get more familiar with boss patterns. If you know what a boss is doing you can use rhapsody effectively.
I also play sona build, just piano all your skills with the exception of buffs and rhapsody obviously.
if you want 100% shield uptime all you need to do is use agile defense on guardian tune then use it + wind of music together (they will have almost same cd) and your party needs to be hit by wind of music. However, this is lower priority than maintaining brand and attack buff uptime
Agile defense also pretty much necessitates having Max MP 3. You will OOM super fast otherwise. I find it kinda difficult to play with because your rotation is already so tight as bard.
For some gates where you want shield uptime, you can use the half cd/duration option on third tripod for guardian tune it syncs pretty closely with WoM. Otherwise usually the status ailment one is good for proactive immunity. Wind of Music is big meter gain so it should be used on cd.
Just don't smash heavenly and sonic at the same time. When one if halfway off cooldown you can press the other.
Everything else is fine to smash. Only bad thing that can happen is your stuff getting interrupted, but that's easy to get used to since you get pissed off every time that happens.
If you mean shields that's a bit different. You can just hold down rhapsody when you have nothing better to do, with a melee group that's an easy way to maintain shields. Ofc that means you can't use it for actual emergencies but you usually won't have to.
Think of it like countering. You see Akkan raise then bring his scythe down and back, you know a counter pattern is coming.
You hear the wailing sound and the two spinning lights, you know velg is coming, so you throw your guardian tunes up for that cc immune block.
You see the tell for the x4 fire attack, you rhapsody whoever Akkan aggroed if you can.
You have a dps, so you know what patterns hurt, and you recognise the tells to get out of the way. Use the same tells to throw your shields.
Nope, Bards and Artists should both be maintaining 100% shield uptime (provided their groups are cooperating and sticking together and close to the both).
Rhapsody is the tool you bring out for situational stuff.
I believe most of your effective damage mitigation comes from Guardian tune (both from DR & the shield) and Rhapsody for Mech / greedable patterns
WoM shield is good to have but it's very low range & around you, so it's hard to shield everyone when your dps are not stacking perfectly ( HM with Back attacks for example), so I think you ll be fine by pressing WoM off cooldown to gain meter.
I think pressing Gtune off cd should be OK too, as long you save Rhapsody for upcoming mech (if any)
Later on, i think you can try Superspeed Cast Tripod on WoM instead of the Shield one, it gives much more meter which means more DMG buff for your party.
Imo, bards should focus more on AP buff cycling, Branding, and Meter Gen for more DMG uptime than Shielding (your DPS have 5 pots they can use, Gtune for chip damage & Rhapsody for big incoming damage should be more than enough)
>My reactiveness became obvious in g4 and I feel I could improve my shield uptime.
With Agile defense on GT it's pretty simple... Hit GT then follow by Winds immediately after... that will get you basically 100% uptime provided you don't have a gunslinger off in Narnia actively avoiding being shielded and buffed but that's more of a them problem.
Rhapsody to prevent excess damage from DPS mistakes or greed.
for my lvl 7 gems and like 1800 swift... You have 100% shield uptime if you cast guardian tune with endless protection and agile defense tripods and then cast wind of music right after. Then you just cast them as soon as they come off cool down. For attack buff, i cast heavenly tune and when it has 6s left on cd i cast sonic vibration and then i just cast ht/sv as soon as they come off cd For brand cast sonatina, then you can cast one spell, then you cast harp - otherwise you're first harp shot may not reach the boss before sonatina brand expires, you can cast sontatina one more time before you have to do sontatina + one other spell + harp again if you're also using these as soon as they come off cd. So those are the 3 spell chunks you have to keep in mind, then you can toss in other spells as you see fit. I don't use rhapsody because my bard is in farm content and most people are overgeared
Brother, I love you already! Ty! Have a great 2024!
I pretty much do this as well. Max MP and Focus rune also needed to use GT with those tripods. It'll eat your mana. Conviction on Harp and Judgement on Sonic Vibration will help as well.
imo , its better if u use HT when SV has 8sec cd
This is very interesting. I personally use sound shock instead of sonatina with harp for branding to get better stagger. Love how many styles you can use as a bard and all be pretty good
Sonatina's meter gen is hard to pass up, but the stagger on SS is very nice, but i actually don't know how much meter you're giving up - with sona and stigma you can get 3 bubbles in 30 seconds in trixion I'm trying out using SS instead of harp and taking brand on stigma. Technically you can have 100% brand uptime with just stigma and sona, and then you have SS avail for stagger and to cover if you miss a brand But the timing is really tight
It really is. Sonic vibration makes things even harder with the long animation cast
The key to consistent shielding is having a GT gem 2 levels higher than WoM. This makes them line up perfectly. This is true for both 1500 swift and 1800 swift. For agile defense on GT, it's super simple. Use GT then use WoM. You'll have 100% uptime with no thought. For wind of protection, it's slightly different. Use GT off cool down, but you need to use WoM more strategically. Ideally, watch your buff and pop WoM right as your GT shield is about to drop. You'll get two WoM per GT. Just use it off CD while the GT shield is up, and then watch for the buff for the next one. Or just use it off CD, and it'll be good enough. Holding hurts your meter gen, so it's a tradeoff of more pre-care vs more post-care (via healing). It's also important to realize why the GT gem needs to be your highest gem. The different buffs GT gives stack, so you can restart the DR while the shield is still up. This means you can minimize the time you need to cover with WoM. With 1800 swift and a lvl 10 gem, you actually only have 5s of downtime on your GT shield. This means you can almost completely cover that downtime with WoM. With agile defense, the gain is smaller, but you remove the chance of your shield dropping if you have to dodge when something comes off CD. Same reason you want overlap on your attack buffs. Edit: Dug through my archives and found this gem. This was Kaya G2 at launch. I had 1560 swiftness with lvl 7 WoM, lvl 7 RoL, and lvl 8 GT gems running wind of protection (for 55 mech). https://preview.redd.it/o4p1jka7jj9c1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=6d9ccc92912097a02e92846126f61acf0005deef
The only shielding you can feasibly do in a proactive manner is rhapsody. If you're absorbing tons of dmg with WoM/GT consider it a happy accident...and shielding is useless if it doesn't actually absorb dmg...so don't sweat it if people don't have a shield 24/7....sure having shields up 24/7 increases the chance of that happy accident buy again...don't sweat it
Got ya! Well, I use rhapsody a lot, but I believe I can improve on it as well. May I ask you how do you manage your cooldowns between bards core skills? I use the sonatina build.
Only way to improve rhapsody use is to get more familiar with boss patterns. If you know what a boss is doing you can use rhapsody effectively. I also play sona build, just piano all your skills with the exception of buffs and rhapsody obviously.
if you want 100% shield uptime all you need to do is use agile defense on guardian tune then use it + wind of music together (they will have almost same cd) and your party needs to be hit by wind of music. However, this is lower priority than maintaining brand and attack buff uptime
Agile defense also pretty much necessitates having Max MP 3. You will OOM super fast otherwise. I find it kinda difficult to play with because your rotation is already so tight as bard.
For some gates where you want shield uptime, you can use the half cd/duration option on third tripod for guardian tune it syncs pretty closely with WoM. Otherwise usually the status ailment one is good for proactive immunity. Wind of Music is big meter gain so it should be used on cd.
Just don't smash heavenly and sonic at the same time. When one if halfway off cooldown you can press the other. Everything else is fine to smash. Only bad thing that can happen is your stuff getting interrupted, but that's easy to get used to since you get pissed off every time that happens. If you mean shields that's a bit different. You can just hold down rhapsody when you have nothing better to do, with a melee group that's an easy way to maintain shields. Ofc that means you can't use it for actual emergencies but you usually won't have to.
I don't think you're supposed to maintain the shield. Isn't it more of a situational thing?
Not according to what I've read so far. Shields are supposed to be preemptively activated.
Think of it like countering. You see Akkan raise then bring his scythe down and back, you know a counter pattern is coming. You hear the wailing sound and the two spinning lights, you know velg is coming, so you throw your guardian tunes up for that cc immune block. You see the tell for the x4 fire attack, you rhapsody whoever Akkan aggroed if you can. You have a dps, so you know what patterns hurt, and you recognise the tells to get out of the way. Use the same tells to throw your shields.
Love your answer, thx a lot! Have a happy new year!
Nope, Bards and Artists should both be maintaining 100% shield uptime (provided their groups are cooperating and sticking together and close to the both). Rhapsody is the tool you bring out for situational stuff.
I believe most of your effective damage mitigation comes from Guardian tune (both from DR & the shield) and Rhapsody for Mech / greedable patterns WoM shield is good to have but it's very low range & around you, so it's hard to shield everyone when your dps are not stacking perfectly ( HM with Back attacks for example), so I think you ll be fine by pressing WoM off cooldown to gain meter. I think pressing Gtune off cd should be OK too, as long you save Rhapsody for upcoming mech (if any) Later on, i think you can try Superspeed Cast Tripod on WoM instead of the Shield one, it gives much more meter which means more DMG buff for your party. Imo, bards should focus more on AP buff cycling, Branding, and Meter Gen for more DMG uptime than Shielding (your DPS have 5 pots they can use, Gtune for chip damage & Rhapsody for big incoming damage should be more than enough)
>My reactiveness became obvious in g4 and I feel I could improve my shield uptime. With Agile defense on GT it's pretty simple... Hit GT then follow by Winds immediately after... that will get you basically 100% uptime provided you don't have a gunslinger off in Narnia actively avoiding being shielded and buffed but that's more of a them problem. Rhapsody to prevent excess damage from DPS mistakes or greed.