my own 3.0 brd guide thing

HW Bard Writeup

Stat recommendation: WD >>>>>> DEX >>> CRIT > DET > SKSPD

Random nuances of playing the job, new things that you can/should take advantage of:

-If you've played any other caster, you know this already, but there is latency with cast times. The server updates at intervals, and so moving near the end of a cast will not interrupt your cast because the server is waiting to update with whether you're "moving" or not. With a 1.5 cast time and a 2.5 GCD this actually allows you a lot more mobility than people give it credit for, though it is not unlimited mobility like before.
With any "average" amount of ping, say 50-100MS, you can move as early as .4 seconds before your cast completes without interrupting it.

OGCD Priority: BL is so good that it should take priority over GCD, double weave with it whenever it procs as you're using a different OGCD.
Damaging OGCD priority is:

Bloodletter > Misery's > EA > Flaming > SW > Repel > Blunt
There are cases under buffs where they might be  dropping very soon where you would want to use SW/Flaming arrow instead before your buffs fall off.

-DoTs/buff alignment
It's a DPS increase to clip your dots with iron jaws as soon as you pop buffs, whether your dots are at 18 seconds or at 2 seconds. It should be your next GCD whenever you pop shit, though you can wait until they're about to fall off if you're VERY familiar with the fight timings and you know you won't actually lose an extra potential cast of your buffs by holding onto them.

-Empyreal Arrow
Save straight shot procs for it if it's going to come up extremely soon, your GCD won't be pushed back. This skill actually adds a bit more RNG to your DPS because you actually gain a lot of damage if your SS procs are consistently lining up perfectly with EA's cd.


-Stance Dancing
Stance dancing for a single GCD is actually a very slight DPS but the autoattack timer ticks even with WM on, meaning that if you drop WM for ~1-2s right after the autoattack timer just ticked, you won't get an autoattack. Unless you know your timer, you should drop it for a GCD under these conditions, which very rarely are all met at once:
A) you just used a straight shot proc
B) you will not have any damaging off-GCDs coming up for the next 3 or so seconds
C) your dots aren't going to fall off because of it
If you just used an SS proc there's a good 3 seconds before you go back into WM (SS proc -> WM off -> Heavy shot -> WM on) which guarantees you an autoattack.

-Feint
Xclass it. It's good. You can replace a heavy shot with it when you're chaining BL procs out the ass and have other stuff to pop, use it during short movement although I recommend the above about stance dancing in that situation, or use it in burst scenarios where you can't afford a 1.5 second cast time.
A good example is A1 Savage Alarums, I save my HE+BFB+Barrage for them, after I hit mine with barraged EA I use feint + misery's end to finish it off as soon as possible, if you used heavy shot instead you'd have to wait 1.5 seconds, and then a bit more for heavy shot to actually hit, to use misery's end and kill your alarum, by that time Resin Bomb will be a split second from hitting you, also totally eliminating the purpose of saving my buffs for the adds to begin with.

-Rain of death:
Rain of death is actually handy in a raid scenario, if you happen to have geared incorrectly/cannot make up accuracy requirement, you can use RoD to fix that. It also comes in handy during your opener provided your healers use cleric, you have BV foes up, you can use RoD to give your healers a higher hit rating which actually makes for a big difference, much much bigger than the 50 potency YOU lose from replacing BL with RoD.
There are other times in raid where boss mechanics force you to hit frontals, such as during hand in A3 savage the tank has to turn it into you, and nobody really wants to gear accuracy around a short part of a ~2 minute phase of a 13 minute fight, right? But still, missing an Iron Jaws is a disaster.  You can use RoD here to make the best of a bad situation once again.
Another good example is A1 savage, if you target the alarum you are picking up and use RoD, you won't grab both, and debuff it allowing you to run with much less accuracy and avoid misses, but in this case you're hitting two targets so it's a dps increase anyways.

-BL Procs:
They are now a priority over your heavy shot. 2.x bard will have taught you pushing your GCD back is the devil, but you have to do it. An instant 150 potency is just better than 150 potency with a cast time, but also you can miss bloodletter procs if it procs again during those cast times. I double-weave with BL when it comes up with flaming arrow or Sidewinder, even with empyreal arrow.

HOW TO DUNGEONS:
Dungeons are easy but of course everyone has to do them and obviously wants them to be optimal.
DoT everything, and on big pulls dot 2-3 mobs and spam RoD. If your tank picks up mobs with Unleash/OP/Flash, use quelling strikes and dot some of the mobs up with WM off during the run. Depending on your other DPS/overall group DPS you may not want to spam quick nock even on BIG pulls, because multidotting with rain spam is just a lot more TP efficient.


ALSO I use Krietor's opener. OGCD in brackets:
Pre-Pull

BFB + Hawk's Eye + Raging Strikes
Precast Empyreal Arrow
PULL
Rain of Death, Straight shot [IR]
Windbite [Pot]
Venomous Bite [Flaming Arrow]
Heavy shot [Sidewinder]
Heavy shot [Barrage+EA]
IJ [BL+blunt]
Heavy shot [Repelling]

Depending on skillspeed and the amount of BL procs you get (assuming you're double weaving the procs), your GCD might line up weird to where you're mid-cast as EA comes off CD, and your buffs generally drop off before iron jaws if that happens. I replace the 2nd heavy shot with feint and do feint + barrage + EA whenever that happens, but there are multiple ways you can adjust to make sure all your buffs stay up for IJ.