Swiftness is better because it provides cooldown on your abilities which is your primary function as a bard. At full swiftness this gives you around 20-25% CDR for your damage redux (Guardian Tune) and your shield (Wind of Music). This means if you play properly, your party/raid will have 100% uptime on your defensives compared to a Spec build bard leaving gaps in defensives.
On top of this, Swiftness also gives the same CDR for your offensive utility and likewise gives you 100% uptime on your offensive support abilities between Heavenly Tune and Sonic Vibration.
You may have noticed that the top Bards in KR on Loawa aren’t “full swiftness” so you might go, “but you just said Swiftness is better, you lied to me asshole!”.
That’s because say you had lv7 cooldown gems, your break point is about 1600 Swiftness. At lv8, it’s about 1550, and at lv9 cooldown gems, you need 1450 swiftness allowing you to start swapping over to spec since KR Bards will have lv10 gems across the board.
Been there and tried a t3 specialization bard build, and then built swiftness build, it’s laughable how little difference specialization made and the number of buffs you will give with swiftness quickly makes up for any reduction in the size of the buff for anyone but a slow-gaining high-burst-window class like igniter I think I’m the only dumb sorceress playing igniter because the other engraving is much more rewarding, as bosses really like to move around in this game.
I agree with the spec bard conclusion but I’m pretty sure Igniter is way more popular than reflux at least based on book demand.
It’s just a more rewarding and fun spec from the sorcs I’ve talked to. Big number is enticing and pulling off the big number is fun and intuitive apparently compared to piano reflux.
I’m unga bunga scrapper main tho so my opinion on sorc is pretty non existent
“Breakpoint” is the theorycrafting term that’s used for like a minimum line point where you can swap from that specific stat or it starts to give diminishing returns (you get less value getting more of it).
In this case, if you were using level 7 cooldown gems on your requisite Bard skills and had 1600 swiftness and played properly (you didn’t overlap your cooldowns), you would effectively have 100% uptime on your abilities meaning if you got more Swiftness, it wouldn’t provide a benefit other than a buffer or for comfort (running faster or whatever).
So if you used level 7 cooldown gems and hit 1600 swiftness, you could start swapping over to get more Spec while maintaining that 1600 Swiftness so that while having 100% uptime, you’d get stronger shields/heals.
That’s what breakpoint means in this instance.
You might also see it in discussions for using like Keen Blunt Weapon engraving. I think the breakpoint is ~60% crit (I haven’t kept up with it, so someone can correct me on it) where it starts becoming most effective meaning you’d want to have at least 60% crit before you go all in on Keen Blunt.
Ah ok, I thought you were talking about some kind of CDR softcap. Though according to my math, at 1500 swift (32.21% CDR) and lv10 CDR gem (20% CDR), you still wouldn’t get 100% regular atk buff up time.
Between Heavenly Tune with Quick Prep and Sonic Vibration, you’d have the attack buff with full up time.
The biggest barrier to getting 100% uptime is actually getting people to actually stand in Sonic Vibration for the buff rather than running around like headless chickens
In farm content(When everyone knows boss mechanics, normal pattern, and is overgeared) + with an organized group (Voice comms) Spec Bard is very good you sync your buffs with DPS to burst down the boss even faster.
In Progression and Pugging I prefer swiftness with one spec ring, easier to rotate shields, 1 bubble heals, keep up dmg buffs etc.
I know this topic is about Spec Bard and Swiftness Bard but anecdotal experience had a spec Paladin in my group for Argos we were super over-geared, (Farm content) paladin was 1500, never seen such high numbers, and P2 mini boss died after 1 skill
This is where Paladin is superior to Bard as their dmg and heals are combined they don’t have to choose requires no communications and sync
Assuming 1500 swift 32.2% CDR and lv10 gem 20% CDR.
Heavenly Tune with maxed quick prep is (18-4) * 0.8 * 0.678 = 7.6s CD with 6 sec up time.
Sonic Vibration is 24 * 0.8* 0.678 = 13s with 1 + 3 + 2 = 6s up time.
Heavenly Tune into Sonic Vibration into Heavenly tune, and then you are stuck with a 1 second gap before your next Sonic Vibration comes off CD.
I’m not sure where you’re getting your Heavenly Tune values from?
It’s a base 30s cooldown, with max quick prep -6 seconds. Since CDR goes priority with tripod first, then calculates stat redux, then gem redux, using your values we end up with something like:
30s goes to 24s goes to 16.27s goes to 13.01s. Heavenly Tune has an 8s duration.
The result is that you have 5 seconds of to cover where you cast the Sonic Vibration and when Sonic Vibration is up. Heavenly Tunes is ready to cast again. Rinse and repeat
1480 full spec bard.
Main difference is that you can heal more, shields are alightly stronger, damage buff is stronger.
Slightly less spam of your regular skills
Biggest reason to go spec, a Lot cheaper
Biggest reason not to, you are slower than everyone
Oh oops, looked at the wrong column and was reading wind of music stats for heavenly tune, haha. with 8 second duration then with the proposed scenario does indeed have 100% uptime time with almost 2 seconds to spare.
You will want to read this:
I play a hybrid bard but I still get to have 140% speed from eng + gear(see below). Around 900 spec (neck plus 2 rings) and 1100-1200 swift.
To me it feels like the best of both worlds.
4x3 +2:
Desperate
Awakening
Expert
Heavy armor
Spirit abso +2
With the yearning set (+15% ms) and spirit abso at 2 (8% ms), I land at exactly at 140% ms. This means i got stronger buffs and heals for a tiny bit less CD (8-10% less, but still at 25%) but still fast af.
