¶ Red line trait tree
This is a quick guide to discuss red line Minstrel’s rotation and mechanics.
My setup as an example
¶ Terminology & basic mechanics
…buckle up it’s might get complicated 
- Ballad : your basic attack spells, they will give you ‘ballad buffs’ which allows you to cast Anthems. (think of them as resource generators)
As a DPS, your bread/butter Ballad should be Minor Ballad - Dissonance. Ignore Major ballad and use Perfect Ballad when you need another Ballad Buff but Minor is on CD. DPS-wise Minor > Perfect > Major (plus Minor ballad buff gives you 3% tactical damage vs 1% by Major) - Anthem: your offensive & defensive raid-wide buffs - use them all the frigging time! (they require the ‘ballad buffs’ but they don’t use them up)
Anthems of the same tier can be combined (e.g. Lesser Anthem II - Dissonance and Greater Anthem II - War can be combined). The benefit here is once they are combined, you only need to refresh one type of anthem to ‘refresh’ the combined effect! - Coda: finishers, require 3 ballad buffs to be present (‘resource spender’ i.e. they use up the ‘ballad buffs’ so you need to reapply them)
- Cry: Buffs (but also reset the Anthem cool down – use them so that you can apply two Anthems back to back)
- Calls: various damaging skills (ST, AoE, DoT etc) use them whenever available and situation calls for them (e.g. AoE)
¶ Basic DPS rotation - Level 100+
This assumes you are red-line traited, similar to mine above and have some points invested into yellow line, and are playing in Dissonance Stance)
- bubble yourself with Song of the Hammerhand – with Word Spreads traited (from Yellow line), this will give you 10% ST DPS boost
- cast Timeless Echoes of Battle on the mob. (DoT & Debuff)
- cast Dissonant Piercing Cry on the mob (Big Damange + DoT + Interrupt) – this is your bread & butter skill, it trigger a lot of other skill mechanics, just look at this 🙂
- now cast Minor Ballad - Dissonance – this allows you to now cast Lesser Anthem II - Dissonance. This Anthem provides 20% buffs to your Cry & Call damage and 5% Light, Fire, Frost & Lighting dmg to your party!
- now cast Improved Cry of the Chorus (Dissonance) this will reset your Anthem cooldown so you can cast another anthem
- now cast Anthem of the Free Peoples which boosts your DPS
At this point the mob should be already dead, if not, use these skills depending on situation:
- Call of Oromë for range AoE (35m)
- Call of the Second Age for melee range AoE (~10m)
- Call to Fate for single-target Damage
- Coda of Fury for a big damage (this will consume all 3 ballad buffs)
- Reapply Dissonant Piercing Cry if it’s off cool down
- Reapply Minor Ballad - Dissonance to reacquire ballad buffs and rinse and repeat
- Chord of Salvation for quick heals
- Bolster My Courage for a bigger heals but with induction