Bard, Corsair Rotation

Yar, I've never done this before so I asked around and looked it up, this is what I stole and decided to share it with everyone.

Bard rotation in its simplest explanation means an alliance of DD's is set up with a Bard in each party, the Bard sings his or her songs in the first party, drops and moves into the second party as quickly as possible. They then repeat the same songs and drop party once more, moving onto the third party where they will sing the same songs again.

If you can keep this cycle up and do it with any kind of speed you will have a very happy alliance of DD’s that will hit harder, more accurately and faster as they will have 6 songs active at any time as long as the rotation is not broken and the BRDs don’t mess about singing the songs.

The above also applies to Corsair. I play both Bard and Corsair, and to be honest, in general the party buffs are "almost" the same (I'm not gonna get into that subject right now). The real difference I see in a rotation is that Corsairs rolls last 5-6 min depending on merits, and Bards last 2-2.5 min depending on instrument used. But, Corsair have to wait 1 min between rolls, and Bard are instant. So, it seems important to have all the same job in the rotation or its gonna get really hard to do (I'm sure there is a way tho).

Corsairs can also DD in between rotations but Bards in a single cycle (i.e a short fight such as a TP burn Kirin) they will use Troubadour and Nightingale before using Soul Voice at the beginning of the rotation, then drop and rotate through each party, singing the same songs in each one before dropping out of the last party and letting the DD’s do the killing, they do this for as many cycles as is needed, only usually using Troubadour/Nightingale/Soul Voice to defeat the boss.

Using Troubadour/Nightingale/Soul Voice before this will make your DD’s turn into a group of blood-lusting piranhas that are capable of destroying many mobs in a fraction of the time it would usually take!

The setup. (gonna use the term BRD for both Bard and Corsair in order to keep it simple)

The first thing to do is to identify your BRDs and PT leaders.

For the PT leaders I’ll just call them “PTlead1”, “PTlead2” and “PTlead3”.

For BRDs we’ll follow the same idea so “BRD1”, “BRD2” and “BRD3”.

Someone needs to make the BRD order prior to starting whatever event you plan to do. It is important that the 3 party leaders and the 3 BRDs know what order they rotate in so they can adjust any macros before starting the event. For longer fights such as Einherjar macros are almost
essential but even on single rotation fights they WILL make your life substantially easier.

The order of invites should look something like this:

PTlead1 will start with BRD1 then invite BRD2 and then BRD3
PTlead2 will start with BRD3 then invite BRD1 and then BRD2
PTlead3 will start with BRD2 then invite BRD3 and then BRD1

Or in shorthand:

PTlead1 : BRD1 >> BRD2 >> BRD3
PTlead2 : BRD3 >> BRD1 >> BRD2
PTlead3 : BRD2 >> BRD3 >> BRD1

Each BRD is given a set of songs to sing, so BRD1 might sing Minuet III and Minuet IV, BRD2 could sing Sword Madrigal and Blade Madrigal, and BRD might sing Advancing March and Victory March. If a BRD has merits in a specific song get them to sing that song. As long as each BRD is given a ‘set’ of songs to sing (minuet/madrigal/march) that’s all that matters is that they stick to those songs. (Its Diff here for Corsair, since you can't roll a roll that is active you have to all roll the same 6 rolls in the same order, 2 per party. This will give alliance 6 diff rolls on them.)

So now you’ve decided BRD order and which songs to sing that’s the easy part out of the way.

It is important that the party leaders invite the correct BRD in the order decided earlier and that the BRDs let the party leaders know when they are ready to be invited. If this doesn’t happen it can end up with 1 or more BRDs out of rotation or worse, out of a party altogether. In the middle of a hectic Einherjar it’s not always easy to remember what was agreed so setting up your macros before heading in is almost essential to the success of the rotation.

BRDs should set up a macro to /tell each party leader when they are ready to be invited and party leaders should have macros ready to invite them. I always think party leaders only really need 3 macros, one to invite each of the 3 BRDs, but BRDs will need a few more, as they will need a macro to /tell each party leader they are ready for an invite as well as a macro to join the party and a macro to leave it.

The macros.

Keeping to the order is slightly more tricky in the heat of an Einherjar run but can be made easier by (from a BRD point of view) to take a full macro bank and fill it with the following ‘simple’ macros:

Macros:

PTlead1
/tell PTlead1 etc

Join
/join

Leave
/pcmd leave

Helpful macros.

/pcmd add - Invites the last person who sent you a tell.
/pcmd add "Name" - Invites the person in quotations.


For a Soul Voice zerg, I have a single macro on my number 5 set, that looks like this:

/ja 'Soul Voice'
/wait 1
/ja 'Troubedour'
/wait 1
/ja 'Nightingale'

Just to add for what BRD should be doing what song in a rotation. The marches should go to the BRD with most Singing+Wind Skill being that there is no ceiling really for the amount of haste march gives. The higher the combined skill the better obviously. Minuet has a pretty low cap and I am not really sure about Madrigal. My BRD has 0 merits though cause I hardly play it outside of getting merit points for rdm and war.