Bard on raids

[Saulot]

Few questions, grouping on a bard, AEing, soloing, fear kiting, I have it down for the most part. Recently started raiding on a bard on raids though, probably still have a lot to learn, so any tips would be great.

-When running with a healer group normally I do 3 songs, Jonthan's Inspiration, level 54 cantana and level 32 chorus. Also do resists (aes) or shield of song (unresistable AEs) as needed.

-With Melee heavy groups I use 57 rondo for atk, or 54 celerity for haste + cantana for regen + ervaj for overhaste + (sometimes) chant of battle for stats. I assume epic haste proc makes 54 celerity mostly unnessesary?

-In the case of healer groups on mana intensive fights I either do cantana + chorus + chorus, then back to cantana (solo bard in group) or if the other bard is doing cantana, I chain chorus as quick as I can. In these fights I don't bother with melee because a) I'm a bard and b) making sure they get mana ticks is more important than landing my dazzling, while weak, melee.

In the necro group I let cantana run. And do whatever I feel like while they do feeds. I suppose I could throw in chorus here too.

Any feedback on barding on raids would be appreciated. While I'm new to bard raiding I'm enjoying it more than any class I've played, and want to make sure I'm getting the most mileage out of my song choices.

[Daldaen]

So regarding Ervaj, it is type 2 haste.

This means it stacks with Type 1 haste (spells like enchanter VoG/Epic or Celerity or Bard Epic proc) as well as worn item haste. However it will never exceed the 100% haste cap, only Type 3 Haste (Luclin song) does that.

So for example a Ranger or Rogue with their epic (40%) and VoG (58) has 98% haste. Ervaj here is only adding 2% haste to reach the 100% cap.

A player with a 40% epic haste or 41% PoSky/Hoshkar Haste with the enchanter epic clicky haste (66%), will already cap out at 100% and Ervaj does nothing.

Ervaj is mainly a benefit when you're melee are dealing with 31-36% style hastes + VoG (or worse), when you can actually get most of the 10% haste adding on. But for high end raiders they will be using 40% haste with 58-66% buff haste and nearly capping themselves making the song not worth 1 of 15 precious buff slots.

All groups - Resists if necessary for the fight. All AE DMG scenarios having Canatata can help regen over time (Regrowth + Cantata + Fungi is a huge regen potential on certain sustained AE fights, it saves casters tons of mana healing).

In cleric groups yea the 55 Cantata + 2 of the lower level mana feed songs and repeat for your CH Chain clerics. Definitely stay near them don't go off meleeing it's not worth them missing songs.

Melee heavy groups you shouldn't need Chorus of Celerity. Enchanters should have SoS or VoG on all your melee and those spells don't stack.

Necros all they need is Canatata.

One thing you didn't mention was Occlusion. Using Occlusion + Puretone or Occlusion + Drum adds a solid 20-30ish debuff of MR/FR/CR. Primarily this debuff increasing the speed you land a slow or cripple on magic vulnerable mobs. This saves lives on some raids. Usually a raid will designate 1 bard for this role to make sure the mob has the maximum MR debuff to allow slows to land.

Also worth mentioning for Main Tank groups, a Psalm + McVaxius combination adds something like 30~ damage shield to the main tank with epic. Over the course of a 5-10min fight on an unslowable mob that 30 damage shield accounts for something like 10,000 DMG. Damage shield is the single highest DPS on raids. Warriors with their melee + DS (if they stack it properly) account for the largest sum of damage aside from a charmed pet.

Lastly at the very high end (AoW, Tunare, Vyemm, Vulak style fights), having the CHA Song rolling on your main tank group increases the fire rate of Divine Intervention. This spell can save raids because a main tank death leads to a chain reaction of several DPS deaths until a new tank is established.

[Calibix]

If your strictly mana battery, it's worth noting that Cantana > Chorus x4, repeat, puts out the most mana regen. You can try to sneak in a 5th but depending on fizzles you don't really want to miss having Cantana not up for the next server tick.

And like Daldaen said, don't bother meleein unless your in range. Stay by your group members. And its honestly better to just instrument swap if your not epic anyways.