Working On XMLs And Gearsets

I've been trying to work on my bard's xml so I can be in top working condition when Seekers of Adoulin hits this week. My biggest questions right now (though I'm sure there are going to be others) are the following...

What gear should I be looking at (and in what combinations) to get Song Recast Time and Song Spellcasting Time down to a minimum? We have a lot of options between mundane Haste and Fastcast to the more exotic Song spellcasting time and Song recast time, but I know that sometimes, gear choices are non intuitive.

What's the best way to script it all into an XML - A single gearset or possibly multiple gearsets that get swapped around? Or maybe something I'm not even thinking of? I'm not the best when it comes to XMLing, but I can at least learn fast.

ItemSet 282933

People still sub nin for brd?

Nopee I do occasionally for some lolz but if I wasn't subbing NIN I'd use a shield in that slot.

Could I get some clarification then? What particular augments are on the Zenith slacks (I'm not familiar with the range or selection of augments that is available for abjuration gear).

Is this the very best a bard can do? So is -Song Recast Time gear just fancy looking but not useful in minimizing song recast time, or at least not as useful as pure fast cast gear?

For most cases, recast gear isn't a huge deal as most of the time you don't need to back to back spells unless you are buffing multiple parties and even then it's usually not limiting, though I do use a good bit in my sleeps so I can recast horde II faster. It's quite easy to cap recast.

Fastcast is the important part since it helps you cast faster which helps you get songs up faster. Capped song casting time gives your 8 second cast songs a 1.6 sec cast time which is lovely particularly when you have Daurdabla and need to do 3-4 songs.

So essentially, stack on Fast Cast, and then add in Song Spellcasting Gear for slots that don't have Fast Cast?

Now another question, in terms in reducing cast time, is 1 Fast Cast = 1 Haste = -1 Song Spellcasting Time?

Haste does nothing for fastcast.

1% FC = 1% song casting time

So use whichever one is higher in each slot.

Also the augment on the zenith is 4% song casting time iirc.

Orvail might be better than Zenith +1 for casting now.

The Orvail Pants page suggests 5% fast cast.

We did some testing and it most likely 5% but we didn't do extensive testing to confirm for 100% but I can say it is better than zenith.

I'm lost why wouldn't I want to /nin on bard so that when I get hate in the middle of sleeping, using elegy, casting marches and get extra hate due to the new messed up hate mechanics I can have enough time to go to my Horde Lullaby 1 and 2 macros in low man situations.

Or at least a chance to survive some AoEs during a Colonization Reive with bunnies or grasshoppers