Troubadour Guide (or Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About a Troubadour but Were Afraid to Ask)
Part 2 - Spells, Abilities and Gear
Spells/combat arts discussion, basics on your stuff.
Single Target combat arts / spells
Ceremonial Blade – Damage
Cheap Shot – Stun – Doesn't work on Epic mobs
Dancing Blade – Damage plus resist debuff. Requires Trouby to be behind or flanking mob.
Evade – Deaggro + damage (with AA’s)
Evasive Maneuvers (AA Ability) – Damage plus threat position drop
Messenger’s Letter – (Ranged Only AA Ability) – Damage plus Threat Increase
Night Strike – Damage plus INT reduction – Must be stealthed to use.
Dragonwrath (AA Ability) – Damage plus stun (not on epic) and will teleport the Trouby to the mob if more than 10 meters away
Sandra’s Deafening Strike – Damage plus power drain power from enemy and add to caster.
Singing Shot – (Ranged Only) – Damage plus stifles enemy (if not epic)
Sinister Strike – L&L ability – Damage plus increases, physical mit debuff on enemy and potency and crit bonus buff on caster (with AA)
Turnstrike (AA Ability) – Damage plus self-only AoE blocker
Perfect Shrill – Single target damage. Clears reuse of Painful Lamentations (with AA)
AoE combat arts / spells
Dagger Storm (Prestige Ability) – Blue AoE that directs 12 daggers to hit enemies you are engaged in combat with. If it is only one mob, all 12 hit it, if more than 1, they are divided among the enemies. This is a very powerful damage ability.
Breathtaking Bellow – Green AoE that interrupts, blurs vision and has a chance to knockdown target. Does no damage. Knockdown does not affect epic mobs
Chaos Anthem – Green AoE DoT – does damage, decreases target WIS and INT (with AA). Also with Prestige ability increases WIS of group and does a small HoT for group.
Painful Lamentations – Green AoE – does decent damage and interrupts target but has a lengthy cast time
Reverberation – Blue AoE – Damage + Damage proc for group plus incrementing potency buff for group, based on how many targets the AoE hits
Tap Essence – Green AoE that does damage and provides a small power increase for the group
Hot bar setup screen shot
Raid buffs, Group buffs, and individual buffs and why you use them where.
Raid Buffs
Arcane Symphony – Increases Arcane Resistance of raid by about 2300. More useful now with changes to resistances in latest XPac
Elemental Concerto – same as Arcane Symphony except for Elemental Resistance
Group Buffs
Alin’s Serene Serenade – Decreases Hate for all non-fighters in group
Allegretto – Increases Attack Speed of Group
Allegro (AA Ability) – Increases Casting Speed and Recovery Speed (with AA) of group
Aria of Magic – Damage proc on spell hit for group. Mythical Weapon ability (Ayonic Inspiration) adds +10% spell damage for group to Aria of Magic
Ayonic Inspiration – Mythical Weapon / Epic Repercussions Ability – Makes PoTM affect entire raid instead of group, adds 10% spell damage increase to Aria of Magic, and adds proc that does a small amount of damage and increases crit chance by 12%
Bria’s Inspiring Ballad – In combat power regen. Even mastered, the regen is small and the spell is almost useless in its current state.
Deadly Dance (AA Ability) – Increases potency of group by 0.5% of bards AGI (about 47% potency at the moment) and stay active as long as the Trouby is casting hostle spells. Duration is 30 seconds. Also allows group to move while casting and reduces slow effects.
Dexterous Sonata (AA Ability) – Increases Crit Bonus of Group
Graceful Avoidance – Increases defense of group. Also increases dodge chance and physical mitigation of group (with AA)
Harmonization (AA Ability) – Increases duration of all buffs and debuffs by 10%. Decreases duration of DoT’s and HoT’s by 10%
Historic Storytelling (AA Ability) – Reduces arcane and noxious damage to group by 3%, gives a chance to resist stifling.
Mamba of Blades (Prestige Ability) – Incrementing group buff that increases doublecast chance and attack speed.
Raxxyl’s Rousing Tune – Increases AGI, WIS, INT and resists of group
Rejuvenating Celebration – Increases STA, in-combat health regen and adds 5% max health (with prestige ability)
Requiem of Reflection – Provided a chance to reflect a hostile spell. Also increases healing received by 5% (with prestige ability)
Resonance (AA ability) – Increases range of all spells by 5 meters
Rhythmic Overture / Victorious Concerto – See the write up in the Bard AA Tree section.
Selo’s Accelerando – Increases speed (and in-combat speed with AA) of group
Song of Magic – Increases casting skills and focus of group
Self Buffs
Daelis’ Dance of Blades – Increases Max Health (with AA), AGI, Avoidance, Arcane, Elemental and Noxious Resists, and provides a proc triggered off of damage to the Trouby.
Buffs I put on people
Jester’s Cap – Increases Ability Reuse. Also increases Crit Bonus and adds a damage proc (with AA)
Upbeat Tempo – Increases Reuse, Casting and Recovery. Also adds 2 ticks to all HoT’s and DoT’s.
Temp Buffs
Cadence of Destruction (AA Ability) – Increases potency over time (33 seconds) and at the end, does additional damage to target
Rhythm Blade (AA Ability) – Small Damage, Increases Trouby’s Weapon and Casting skills, accuracy (with AA) and reduces resistability (with AA)
Dragon Claws (Prestige Ability) – Increases potency by 25% of base potency for 10 seconds – currently adds about 230% potency to Cooriador
Perfection of the Maestro – Group Buff (or Raid buff with Ayonic Inspiration) that increases INT and adds a damage proc to spells
Quick Tempo (Prestige Ability) – Increases in-combat run speed and allows group to cast while moving.
Requiem (Prestige Ability) – Increases base damage of all abilities by 15% and then increases weapon and spell weapon damage by 30. Additionally adds more weapon damage by 9% of trouby’s base weapon damage bonus.
MoB debuff
Countersong – Decreases the damage of the next spell cast by 100% at grandmaster. Also decreases AoE autoattack of target by 105% for 13 seconds
Demoralizing Processional – Decreases AGI, STR, WIS and INT, weapon skills and magic skills of target. Raises same skills for group (With Prestige ability)
Depressing Chant – Decreases Arcane resistance of target and snares the mob.
Disheartening Descant – Decreases STR and AGI of target and raises the same stats for group (With prestige ability)
Vexing Verses – Does a small amount of damage, Decreases defense, casting speed and drains power from target
Zander’s Choral Rebuff – Decreases all resists and adds chance of damage proc to Trouby’s attacks.
Other Abilities:
Escape – Evac for the group
Lucky Break – Heroic Opportunity Starter
Shroud – Stealth
Bump (AA Ability) – Small damage, steal a small amount of money from mob, then stealth
Bladedance (AA Ability) – AoE Blocker
Bria’s Entrancing Sonnet – charms target for 20 seconds – not usable on epic mobs
Lullaby – Single target mez. Does not work on epic targets
Casting order of combat arts/spells
Pre-pull
Fabled Venom’s Mutagenic Heart Buff
Lucky Break
JCap
PoTM
Pre-RO Buffs / De-buffs – You could argue that there is a more efficient way to organize buffs and de-buffs but my primary purpose in this order is to try to make sure that everything is up for as long as possible while charging up RO. Therefore, my casting order for these buffs / de-buffs is in order of duration, largest to smallest:
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Choral Rebuff
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Decrease enemy mit
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Demoralizing Proc
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Decrease enemy stats / increase friendly stats
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Dishearting Descant
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Decrease enemy stats / increase friendly stats
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Bump / Night Strike
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Decreases INT of target
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Sinister Strike
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Decreases mit / increases pot / CB
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Vexing Verses
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Decrease enemy casting speed, defense
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Rhythm Blade
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Increase Weapon skills
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Depressing Chant
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Decrease enemy mit
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Deadly Dance
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Increase Potency
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Requiem
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Increase Weapon and Spell Damage
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Cadence of Destruction
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Increase Potency
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Eye of Sontalak
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Extra Damage Proc
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Dragon Claws
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Increase Potency
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Dancing Blade
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Decreases mit
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Rhythmic Overture
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Charge up VC
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RO Charge up – Once you start RO, you need to get through as many CA’s / Spells as possible. The order I use is based on the average damage of the ability / casting time. The following order is for a single target:
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Dagger Storm
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Evade
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Evasive Maneuvers
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Dragonwrath
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Reverberation
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Perfect Shrill
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Chaos Anthem
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Ceremonial Blade
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Turnstrike
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Sandra's Deafening Strike
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Painful Lamentations
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Thunderous Overture
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*** By the time you finish Thunderous Overture you should be able to recast Evade and possibly one other CA before RO ends. ***
Tap Essence (Only if Evade is not ready)
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If the target is 2 or more enemies, I will generally use the same order as above except I will move Reverberation to second after Dagger Storm and this will allow me to get 2 casts of it before the end of RO
Post RO / Pre-VC – At this point, I will go back through the buffs / debuffs and recast anything that is back up in order to refresh for the VC and to allow most of the CA’s and spells to come back. I end this phase by hitting VC
Victorious Concerto – Once I hit this, for a single target, I will use the same casting order as the above RO charge up. For multiple linked targets, I will hit all of the blue and green AoE’s first (in the above order) and only hit single target abilities if no blue or greens are ready. For multiple unlinked targets, I just make sure blue AoE’s are cast first before single target abilities.
If the fight continues beyond VC, I just make sure that buffs / de-buffs stay on the mob and cast the above damage abilities in the order above. For very long fights, you may be able to do a second RO/VC cycle. If so, try to do the buff / debuff cycle again prior to the RO charge up.
Gear / adornment choices
Quickly a gear discussion becomes a discussion about hard and soft caps, stat conversion, reforging and adornment choices so let’s talk about it from that perspective. For details on stat caps and conversions, check out the Wikia page here . When gearing up my priorities are:
- Get DPS to as close to 600 as possible. It is a hard cap so anything over 600 is wasted
- Get Ability Reuse as close to 100 as possible. It is a hard cap so anything over 100 is wasted
- Get Casting Speed over 100. It is a soft cap so anything over 100 gets converted to Spell DoubleCast Get Haste/Attack Speed over 200. It is a soft cap and excess Haste over 200 gets converted to Flurry.
- Get Multi Attack over 120. This will guarantee you strike twice 100% of the time. The returns diminish GREATLY past this point as a 1200 (10x increase) in MA will only allow you to strike a third time on 75% of your hits.
- Get Recovery Speed as close to 100 as possible. It is a hard cap so anything over 100 is wasted
With raid gear, adornments and reforging, you should be able to get to this point and have a lot of places you can still improve. You will probably not be able to hit the cap (or there is no cap) on the rest of these stats, so I basically get them as high as I can in this order:
- Potency
- Crit Bonus
- Spell DoubleCast
- Flurry
- AE AutoAttack
- Crit Chance
- Ability Mod
One note about resists. Currently resists are only available in 6 slots (the 2 rings, 2 earrings and 2 bracelets). Current recommendations for high end group zones is 120k+resists and can be as high as 150k+ for raids, so you should try to get as much resists as possible from those pieces of gear and adorns.
Other special pieces of gear I use:
Eye of Sontalak
and
Fabled Vyemm’s Mutegenic Heart
have abilities that I use while changing RO.
Other Items:
Raid Food – Stewed Pepper & Brokenskull Private Reserve
Gnostic’s Elixir of Deftness
Mount – Indomitable Pteradon – AoM Signature Quest Line reward
Deity
Bristlebane – I chose Bristlebane a long time ago when you only got AGI and STA from the pet. Now that the pets give all stats, I might should rethink this, since most of the miracles are pretty useless in raids.
Macros you use
- I will macro instant cast abilities with other abilities to reduce the “click time” and make them truly instant-cast. For example, In my casting order, I have a macro that:
- Uses Fabled Vyemm’s Mutegenic Heart (Instant)
- Lucky Break – Heroic Opportunity starter (Instant)
- Jester’s Cap
- I have a second macro that:
- Uses Eye of Sontalak (Instant)
- Dragon Claws
- Perfection of the Maestro – When casting PoTM, my macro also uses “/potm Coor” which triggers Raid Hub to know who is casting it and to help cooridinate when we have multiple Trouby’s in the raid.
- I have a button on my hotbar that is /target (Ex. /target Liepha) that I can always use to retarget if I get taunted off for any reason.
