It's all about that Bard, 'bout that Bard, no treble.

note: the collour pink is used because the artist-icon is pink. ty.


Introduction


Ello, since I have been getting more and more pm's and
ingame whispers with questions about the Bard-class, I have decided to make
some kind of guide how to play a bard. Please note: If you dont like me in
general, if you dont like the bard in general or if you think you are better
than me, stop reading already, ty. A short overview what to expect:

1 The class called bard
1.1 Basic Knowledge
1.2 Keybinds

2 Gearing up, tuning the sound
2.1 Different sets + Manastones
2.2 Stigma skills

3 Bard as power DPS
3.1 Bard's role in all kinds of instances
3.2 DPS Rotation

4 Bard in the world of PVP
4.1 Duels - Please let Disharmony not be your first skill to use
4.2 Survivability
4.3 Bard with his friends - Group PVP

5 Conclusion

1 The class called Bard

I started playing bard as soon as it came out with the 4.0
patch. It must have been like November/December 2013. Back then I played ranger
as main, and to be quite honest, I was not that good at it, certainly not in
pvp. The bard came for me as a solution, not only because it was new, fresh and
interesting. There was no cheap way of learning the class. No decent guide, no
tips/trick, the guide was not known yet to its maximum value. I had to find it
out all by myself, that was actually the best training I could have had as a
bard. It takes a while before you really understand all the skills and the real
value of those. One explanation for that is that the Skill Descriptions are not
correct. I did send in a ticket half a year ago, it was forwarded, nothing
changed, thanks for the heads up, Gameforge. Anyway, my first advice would be:
take half an hour, read all the skills again.

A few examples of skills not properly translated:

- Paralyse Skill: The skill says something like
"paralyses the target for 5-8 seconds", which is not true at all. It
should be something like: "paralyse the target for 5 seconds, after a 8
second delay".

- Resonation Melody: Same story, its a Delayed blast. It
hits one time after like 6 second delay, why the skilldescription makes you
think its a DoT.

And so there are more examples where you can see that after
a year+, the mess is still not fixed, what actually annoys me, but enough about
that. I always tell myself that it must be more horrible in the 23987 other
languages Gameforge has to translate in.

1.1 Basic Knowledge

Bard is a Magic Class. It uses a harp to deal damage with. A
harp has a ranged auto-attack (like!). A bard is in the Top5 of Damage classes,
if you play it a bit keen. Basicly, everybody knows by know a bard can
heal/restore mana. All nice that is, but healing mana takes a lot of time, you
can heal 4k mana in 4 seconds. Bit more if you count pots in and the 1m cd big
mana skill. Anyway, think about this, before the bard came to atreia, every
class was able to maintain their mana, with the introduction of bard people got
lazy and will see you for the only ability to give mana. Be smarter than that.
The mana skills are for yourself, let other people fix their own. Only
heal mana when targets got drained (see PvE bard later in this post..). A bard
is powerful, DPS wise, Survivability, CC. Dont be a support class, be a bard.

1.2 Keybinds

I'm not sure if my keybinds will help you with any of your
gameplay, but I'll give it a shot. Because if you are a bit keen on keybinds,
you can be a lot quicker with the important skills to save yourself. Put the
most important things on easy keys arround WASD (if that is what you move with,
like me). Do with it what you want, I will save you from my dps keybinds, but
the most important shizzle to keybind in my eyes are:

E : Self Dispell, 8s cd

Q : Movement dispell, the on-the-spot-dash

R : Attackspeed buff

Shift R-F-V : Covered Silence (S+R: March of bees, S+F: Msup
debuff, S+V: Silence Chain)

Shift R-F-C : Covered Bind (Same as above, but with
Breathtaking Blast on S+C)

1 : Remove Shock

F : Greater Healing Potion

Z : Manaserum/Recoveryserum (yes, use serums, potions take
too long for bards)

Middle Mouse button: AOE Sleep (Life-safer!)

Well, I have keybound almost every skill, but thats
everybody's own style. This is just an example, but please keybind all the
above things whereever feels comfortable for you. 9 out of 10 times you
dont have time to click the skills above to save yourself. Like I said, not sure
if this adds anything to this 'guide', but yo, its for free!

2 Gearing up, tuning the sound

Lets talk about it; the gear, the socketing, the enchanting,
and lets certainly not forget about stigmas, but that could be the shortest
part of this, Bard basicly only have one interesting tree.


Lets start off with showing my own sets. I show you my basic pvp and pve set:

My PVP Set (MB/MR Composites)

My PVE Set (Full MB, MA on 2.1k buffed) (click on pve, in the left-bottom corner)


2.1 Different sets + Manastones

Before I'm gonna tell that you should go full magicboost, I
first want to point out the most important stat for bards: ATTACK SPEED. Bard
is 80% non-cast skills, and the casts you have are 2s max. You should be full
attackspeed, as full as possible. That means: use attackspeed scrolls. And use
the 50E attackspeed gloves, which you can buy in the Abbys and most likely on
other places.

So, on lower lvl, pay the ap/medals to get attackspeed gloves as
soon as possible. Really a NEED for bards.

So with attack speed gloves, the scroll, you are on a fine
base of atk-speed, but it even gets better with an attack-speed harp. Now, in
here you have two choices, but they are both endgame, so it wont help you on
lower level. There are three harps in game with atk-speed. Get one of those
ASAP.

1) AP 2-star officer Harp [143 Cera medals], ofcourse THE
fuse for your PVP weapon.

2) Unique Dynatum Harp [Mythical AND Eternal] - Good fuse
for PvE, good stats on mythical, decent stats on eternal, spam RST for those
harps, really worth it!

3) Lvl65 Mythical Crafter Harp [UG design], please dont even
try, but my craftingsoul got smashed anyway by this craft. I started a craft
with 30 attempts, gathered for 3 months+, but you need 4 procs before you get a
6-slot weapon. And yes, out of those 30, I failed. And that hurt. So rather get
Dynatum!


NOTE: (Tip from the replies) Ofcourse, dont't fuse these harps with eachother. You want the attackspeed harp to be a fuse, the main weapon mostly still has Cast Speed. If not, then make Cast Speed as a fuse, you want both stats, obviously.

Enough about Harps, lets talk about the rest of the gear.

Well, Go Magicboost, capiche? It doesnt sound that
difficult, right? On lowerlevel be sure you have 1 part of gear (out of the 5)
socketed with Macc, and you will be fine. On endgame gear, not really much Macc
is required. If you are on 2.1k macc for PvE (without Chanter) thats more than
enough. Im running a 5-part Hyperion set [+1 part swb, ty, 200 runs kata...]
and I think I have 3 macc stones in my full gear. With Food and the passive
Buff called Magic Boost Mode that will be more than fine.

Go for Strife accessories to start with, they have nice Macc
on them. Keep them untill you have farmed Silverine/4-piece UG set/3-piece Kata
set.

So, thats basicly all you need for PvE. 2.1k macc, and rest
MB. With the set I descriped above I have arround 2.1k MA and 3.9k MB without
chanter. Ofcourse with Chanter it will get me to the MB cap in 4.0 content.
Please, don't bother with HP sets (yes, met those bards..). As stated before,
you are not a support class, you are a strong DPS, as long as you believe it
yourself.

Now for PVP, it depends a little bit. Macc is more important
here than it is in PVP. As I am gonna state later in the PVP section, the bard
comes in handy in nuking plates/leathers, so go full MB with a 2k macc base.
You wont get resists at all, unless your opponent didnt understand their way of
gearing up. So, Im am running a full MB/MR Composite 2-star officer set. Why
MR, you would ask, would MA not be smarter to use for Compo? Well, I dont think
so. First reason is that MB/MA lvl 60 stones cost arround 40kk-60kk each, and
however im full Composite, im not THAT rich. And tbh, if you go full MB/MA
Composites, you end up with like 2.2k-2.3k MA. Now, what advantage is that going
to give you, compared to the 2.0k-2.1k I run with? You are still not able to
hit any MR-Cleric/Chanter. So instead I chose for MB/MR. I end up with like
3.9kMB and 2.2-2.3kMR.
Now, endgame PVP opponents will hit through this MR
anyway, its not for them. But believe me, with all the bad geared people on
sieges, I resist 50% of all the magic attacks, launced on me. Especially in
Xform, when im also using MR food etc, I resist a lot which increases my
survivability a lot. I have had a lot of critics on my MB/MR set, but I totally
love it. I do have a MA-set (rank 1 ap) to be able to hit MR-players though.
Thats luxury, but ye, you kinda need it when you want to beat clerics in arena,
or sleep them in Coop, or whatever, you name it.

2.2 Stigma skills

First: My own Stigma build for PVP and PVE, after that I will try to explain
what the choices are out there to be made.


Click on this fancy link to see my Stigma's

Like I said before, there is not much to choose. The Support
Tree it utter trash. The GroupDispell skill is actually not bad. But 10m cd?
Really? No way that is gonna work. I ran a test in JMR with it though. Since
Bards got Fear-resist, you dont get feared. So if your group (including cleric)
got feared, you can use that 10m cd group dispell to save your party from
getting kicked. But thats really the only use I can think of, for that certain
skill. So in other words: Go full Disharmony tree. I think 99% of the bards are
using that tree anyway, so nothing new there. Lets talk about the extra skills
to take, besides the tree.

I always have the Heal overtime skill with me, nice to put
on a friendly cleric/tank, or to put on yourself. Not an OP skill, but nice to
have.

Then: Breathtaking Blast: NEED. Its binding your opponents.
I hope you all know what binding is. Its certainly something else than
rooting/immobilizing. Its preventing Melee's from using any physical skill.
However, it works on Gunners/Aethertechs aswell, although they dont have
physical skills, but yolo. In my keybinds you also find something about a
covered bind. In combination with the Attackspeed buff, you land the covered
bind (3x insta cast) within a second, which really gives you adventage against
any melee. (watch out for Ranger/Sin/Gunner FE/other resist skills), always
start with some auto-attack+meh-skills to get rid of them. You could replace
this skill with the Emnity reducer for PvE, but I actually never do that. Bard
should not take aggro if you have a decent tank, and if you have PvE-gear.

Next: Snowflower Melody. The skill you get from fortress
rewards. Those bundles you know. Actually I dont like the shield that much. Its
3K shield with some slight healing, but it got 5m cd, which is a little long to
be OP. BUT: its the only shield you can have against magic classes. Bards have
the Shield Melody, yes, but that shield only works for physical/melee attacks.
So trust me, if you want to beat a gunner/sorc/whatever, you really want this
shiny snowflower shield.

Time to choose: If you are a PvE player, you would take AoE
mana here. Nice skill, good in different instances to fill mana of your group
fairly quick. You can also cast it on a target, instead of yourself, buuut,
nice as I am, I atleast always cast it on myself. The other choice is Ironclad
Melody. Which could be called Mini-UD [Unwavering Devotion..]. It increases
your Stun/KD resist by 1k (?) for 8-12 seconds. Really Decent skill when you
inc somebody or a group in group pvp. No Stun = more dmg output, easy right? I
have to admit, I like to run with AoE Mana all the time. Also in JMR/Kamer/PvP
instances AoE mana is appriciated by my fellow groupmembers. I switch to
Ironclad when I have those typical Duel-evenings. So I would vote for AoE-Mana
here, if you are really PvP orientated or just hate to be stunned/KD'd, take
the Ironclad.

3 Bard as power-DPS

3.1 Bard's Role in all kinds of instances

I might repeat myself a lot: But dont be the Manab****, its
a shame that word is blocked on the forum, because for real, the nickname of a
bard is the manabot - or the word for a not-so-nice-lady.

Go DPS, Find out your own rotation (Yes, wait for it, I'll
give my Rotation in a second..). Between the mobs, between the bosses you can
give mana. You dont have to take manabreaks anymore as a group, because a Bard
can fix it in like 20s. So thats nice, but really, giving mana while fighting
bosses is really a waste of your potential high dps. Practise your rotation on
dummies (its worth it, but gameforge: wtb dummies with 4k mb cap, ty.)
Don't
try to weave, I know bard has a ranged auto-attack, but really, for that
200-500 damage, ur not gonna weave. Since the base attackspeed on a harp is
low, its really not worth it.
My tip would be: "Weave with Sound of
Breeze". Weaving with another skill is not really called weaving, but
still, you get what I mean, right? After every 2nd-3rd skill, use sound of the
breeze. Low mana, low cast, decent dps in the long end. And also, it prevents
you from running out of other skills to use. If you dont use Sound of Breeze as
an inbetween skill, you will run out of mana+skills in notime. And yes, then
you are worthless as a bard on dps. You better start healing mana then..

3.2 DPS Rotation

So, Sound of Breeze. Central point of your rotation. Use it
as a ranger uses Deadshot, as a Sorc uses Refracting Shard or as a Cleric uses
Smite. Put it on an easy keybind (I have it on one of my mouse buttons) and
keep spamming it between your skills. 40% dmg increase guarenteed, because you
run out of mana a lot slower + you dont have skills on cd all the time.

Then, use your debuffs to your advantage. Use your highest
nukes (Disharmony, The Horse, Gust tree, Wind Harmony tree..) in combination
with the msup-debuff. Keep popping your little DoT aswell. Cannot even recall
how that one is called. Im typing this while the server is in maintenance, so
cant check, and too lazy to google, im sorry.. Anyway, that little DoT, is good
for 10-12% of your total DPS on hyperion if you keep popping it. Since we are
on percentages, Sound of Breeze should be like 25%, and Mosky Requiem also
arround 12%.

Also, use Battle Variation! Its the first loading skill you
get, and it seems meeh in endgame dps. BUT, It is a really low mana cost. So
basicly its a 7k-10k hit for like 400 mana. You dont get it cheaper! Also the
loading/casting-time doesnt bother me, because my nukes need to get off
cooldown anyway. So for all the bards who removed that skill from skillbar
(yes, I was one of them..), get it back in and take your advantage!

Dont use your attackspeed buff to DPS with. Certainly not
when you have attackspeedharp. Myself, I always use the attackspeedbuff to heal
my mana back, when really every pot/manaskill is on cooldown. Healing Mana =
waste of time, valuable time which you should spend on DPS. But, if your out,
you need to heal, so use atk-speed buff for it. By far the best use for it,
because in PVE, it doesnt matter if your animation on dps skills is 0.5s or
0.4s.

Now then, healing mana. I told it before on this forum: I
only heal my own mana, unless somebody got drained (for example kata). If the
Tank is hit with the manaskill in kata, he can fix it with a pot (tanks are
lazy in general..), but, if the tank is using serums instead of potions, and he
gets another mana drain within 10s, you might wanna help the poor guy with
giving him some mana. You dont want him to lose aggro, do you? Then, in
instances with more bosses than one, just heal mana between the bosses, if like
a glad/sin -or any other class who is
not willing to weave to keep mana up- is asking for mana, ignore it. Your dps
is most likely higher then theirs. Especially if you see sins facing the boss,
instead of rekting from behind. Oh man, I love perento in general. Have seen it
all.

4 Bard in the world of PVP

4.1 Duels - Please let Disharmony not be your first skill to use

Now, Bards are pro. Not all of them, but the possibilities
with it are endless. Let me start first with saying: Im anti-Paralock. Its as
bad as the SM's Fearlock in duels. I just dont do that kinda stuff. Why duel if
you wanna win in a cheap way. If you wanna play cheap, reroll gunner and get
yourself two 4k dmg godstones, or put 10% silence on your pistol (hello Linxi
-.-). Anyway, So, my duel tactics are without Paralock in general.. [Paralock =
Aoe-Sleep+Paraskill+BigSleep, followed by a covered silence to be keen]. I do
use the para skill btw. But I use it to force players to use their pot. Because
I rather beat people with dps (like Mosky..) instead of other bs. So I love to
start duel with para skill, pot gone, easy duel. Bit cheap aswell? Not as cheap
as paralocking. Okay, per class I will share my duel tactic. Note: Im not
underestimating classes, however, it might feel like it when you read the
following.

Gladiator: Covered Bind, instant. Dont use a movement skill
on that cover, glad have wings-skill to get it off. After those glads are
bound, put mosky on them, kite away, root them and start nuking. Before the
nuking you might wanna put silence on them aswell, to prevent them from using
Second Wind. In general, glads should never be a problem for bards.. Especially
if you take Ironclad Stigma and you dont get random KD with cleaves, it should
be no problem.

Templar: More tricky than Gladiators. The thing I hate the
most about it, is Ironskin. Ironskin removes all the debuffs and ofcourse gives
massive defense. My tactic is getting 6 debuffs on a target as soon as
possible. With Mosky always as last one, thats the only buff that really
counts. It rekts people bitime. So, always keep shields up to avoid pulling.
Out of shield and kiting away? Premium Anti Shock Scroll will save the day.
Keep rooting/slowing/kiting and count their pulls. (They have 3..) Breakpower
hurts. So if you get KD and templar is decent distance away, use RS to avoid
BP, It really hurts. Templar is harder then Gladiator for Bard. Atleast for me.
Oh and Aether Armour: Meeeh. I switch to Macc set in that case.. but ye,
Templar has some defensive stuff yo.

Chanter: See Gladiator I would say. Its kinda the same.
Chanter needs those KD. If you pop ironclad you are safe for a while and you
can cover bind them as you do on glads. However, chanter has more msup+heals,
so its a bit harder. Use silence after the covered bind and keep kiting. And
remember, Bard is all about kiting. with the low casts+ lot of instant skills,
why stand still? Chanter is not that hard to kill I would say, just might take
a while with spellstopping e.g.

Cleric: MB clerics are not the problem. Just dont get near
the servants, kite away from them. Covered Silence is almost inpossible on
clerics due to Cleanse, so I gave up trying. However, what you can do is Sleep - Breathtaking - Msup debuff - Silence
tree. But then still, since the silence is 3rd on tree a quick cleric already
dispelled the 2 debuffs before the silence hits. Keep rekting mana. Keep using
Silence tree and use the Mana Variation.. The one which takes 3k mana away, cba
looking the skillname up. MB clerics can be a real pain. Especially when they
get to nuke you.. personal tip: Save gust for when you see cleric casting Call
Lightning.. Call Lightning has a longer cast than gust, so if you can stun
cleric before CL, its gg.

Ranger: Well, the sleep trap/arrow are out of play. I cannot
recall rangers sleeping me. We have a sleep resist of a few hundreds, so thats
nice. Ofc, every ranger will go in hide at start of a duel. He will have the
first hit which will stun. I basicly use RS straight away. But leave the RS
buff on you to prevent from getting more stuns on your face. Meanwhile cover
the bind, root, and start with Gust-Tsunami-Discord.. this mostly does the
trick on ranger, they kinda have low hp/low msup. If you have a though guy,
just start the Wind Harmony tree. Cant imagine it didnt die by now. Now this
sounds easy, but actually rangers can be pain. Because if they stunlock you,
you are gone. So you really want to have some stun-resist here by the RS buff
or Ironclad. Also watch out for the Covered silence. You really want to
selfdispell before he hits it, so you can pot the silence. Keen rangers will
then use the Seals arrow. Which is annoying as hell. But ye, you had to escape
the silence, didnt you..

(Assa)Sin: By far the most annoying class to duel, if you
ask me. More and more sins are MR composite now, which is annoying. Also, the
ability to resist 3 skills totally rekts my rotation. Because I want to cover
bind in less than 1s, I dont have time to check whether all my covers landed or
not. Well, you can count on it, they didnt. I basicly cover on sins with 4
skills. But that takes up to 4s already, inwhich you can be perfectly trapped in some
para/stunlock/other rektness. I dont like duelling sins. Bah. And then we are
not even speaking about the dilemma to use RS or not. If you use RS to kite
away, which is logical, then you know 5s later AetherHold is coming, which will
rekt you. (save Snowflower for after you use RS, pop Snowflower after you used
RS and you might stand a chance when you go helpless into Aetherhold..)

Gunner: You have one shot on killing him. Pop Atk-speed
buff, Pop Overtime heal, Pop Snowflower and Cover bind before he covers
silence. If you are covered with silence you can count to 2 before you got hit
by a 4k GS. So ye, be quick with the bind. If you bound them, they have to
switch canon kinda, you can use that time to cast gust, stun them and nuke
them. Put Mosky on them and run away as far as you can get. Mosky will kill
them. Cheap? No, Gunners are cheap.

Aethertech: Actually, I dont know thatmuch about
Aethertechs. I do have an AT myself, but its on perma PVE specs. I do know
their PVP stigs a bit, but not enough to tell what to do. I know they can cover
silence and they can para you for 2s. I would say, keep kiting, keep
slowing/rooting, keep binding. If you keep focussing his mana, his shield
effect will run out sooner rather than later and you can finish the job. It
takes mostly quite a while to kill them, they have a decent selfheal + that
manashield they have. But then again, the one Aethertech you duel in a year..
who cares..

Spiritmaster: Look out for the covered Silence. Dispell on
the 2nd debuff and be lucky. Also, root the pet and kite away. If the pet is
out of the picture, the shields are gone, a lot debuffs on you are spared, and
you stand a better chance. Also watch your fear-resist buff. SM might dispell
it, so keep an eye on it. You dont want it gone. Its a battle of covered
silence, I reckon. But, dont cover silence it next to the pet, because you will
waste all your nukes on substitution. What I tend to do is cover silence,
root+para on the pet, kite away (they will kite the other way because of
silence..) but if they come back atleast the pet is para'd for like 15s.. (10s
root+5s para) Dueling SM requires timing and brain. They have a lot to annoy a
bard, but we can annoy them aswell.

Sorcerer: Also tricky. Sorc will start with Thunderclap +
covered silence. To get rid of that silence you kinda HAVE to TS on that first
stun. What happens is that you get out of silence, but you have to silence him
meanwhile. Nuke through shield(s) and keep it stunned with Gust and RS-after
skill. But if you dont nuke quick enough the holy Aetherhold is coming. And
then with a few nukes on Yaziel's Wisdom its game over for Mr. Bard. Quite
frankly there is nothing to do about it. Because if you can choose to accept
the first covered silence, run away and save ur skills for the '2nd round', but
a keen sorc will root you after the silence and you have then nowhere to go.
Like I said: Tricky one, but doable. Starting with the big sleep might
interrupt his covered silence.. But you have to chance to get stunned while
casting..

Bard: Boring. Sleeps dont land, so dont even try. Just nuke.
Atleast thats what I am doing. I know that I have move MB then mostly every
Bard I meet. So I put overtime heal on me, Snowflower on, and full nukes..
Also, double tap Sea Variation (also use it on melee's, I almost forgot..). It
rekts the attackspeed, and bard hate that. If the battle takes long, try to
focus his mana, and remove it. But ye, your opponent might to the same which is
annoying. Bard vs Bard is measuring the genitals. The higher MB wins imo.

4.2 Survivability

Shield Melody, Snowflower Shield, Overtime Heal, 2 sleeps,
root, para high dps. Bind skill, Silence skill (wtb 4.8 silence getting insta
cast). Bard has kinda everything it needs. So you have always something to pop,
just think about what you are doing. Dont nuke, but get control of the
situation. Your survivability is high. A bard is not that easy to nuke down in
seconds. Atleast not in officer gear. The only remark would be, Bard's Msup is
kinda low, compared to sorc. Sorc easily has 1.9k msup, Bard has to deal with
1.5-1.6. I could higher it with other accs, using officer food. But I like to
focus my MR instead. Especially in groups/Sieges. Use survivability as your
advantage. Dont be afraid to drop to 50% hp, you know what kinda nukes you
still have left, when the opponent thinks he got you!

4.3 Bard with friends - Group PVP

Really the big plus on bards. I tend to believe that
everybody underestimates bards in first place. If we go JMR, I can tell that I
never have the nr 1 on my head. Mostly have a SM and/or Sorc in team, so they
get targeted first. Bad for them, good for me. Because if im not targeted in
group pvp, im Lethal to all glad/ranger/gunner. I mostly nuke 1 person in a
party down, before a cleric realises he has to heal that target. After that I
focus on binding other melee's. Rooting SM's pet (if SM is not dead by then..),
Silencing sorcs. Then I switch to Macc gear, to take away cleric's mana. After
that my nukes should be back off cd, so back to MB gear (macro's ftw) and nuke
down another casualty.

Heal the cleric when he is feared/silenced/para'd. All you
can do, try to save him/her. Just realise you are the all-in-one-solution of a
group. You can do anything. Heal, DPS, Control. Practise switching between the
jobs and dont forget to use your brain while doing so. Also little warning,
dont macro gear too much while fighting.. how many times I end up with parts of
gear missing..

5 Conclusion

Bards are amazing, but might require some effort to really
play it well. It seems easy (lot of quick skills, easy dps), but to get good at
it requires practice, interest and a bit of brain. I did not even talk about
Bard-Xform yet. I happen to be a Great General at this point and its awesome.
The nukes gets increased, the AOE-DP hit hits like a train and in combination
with the 2 xform skills it can create some space infront of a zerg. Especially
when assisted by other xformers. Also the bard has 4k dp heal, which is awesome
for xform. EZ mate!

Anyway, this is the end of this tl;dr-piece. I'd like to
hear whether you like it or not. Does it add anything to your current
bard-knowledge. Do you like my writing skills? Do you miss anything in this
'guide' I hate the word Guide, though. Ask all you want, but do it here, cba
answering question in /w during siege. Anyway, Yolooo!

Yo, thanks for your reply and I do see some good points in your post.
However, I dont agree with everything in your post :).

Bard vs. Gunner, done it 9873824 times. In my opinion, bard need 100% cd, without snowflower you are dependent on luck. Dependent on whether the gunner is good or not. If you meet a endgame geared gunner, bard loses. Atleast I do.

Then about DPS. In my legion, within my friends, im kinda outdpsing every class. Now, I know that not everybody plays like me. But I can call about 3-4 bards on elyos perento who do equal dps than me. You will see them nr 1 or 2 in kata dps in decent groups. You will see those bards in top10 dps on DDG Commanders (only sorcs and clerics outdps bards in the long run..)

And yes, Sins and Glads cán do great dps, ofcourse I know. But that my point. People know how those classes can be epic on dps, but people dont know that a bard can really be close to a sorc, just with the right rotation. I found your tie to a cleric comment remarkable, because in my opinion, in big bosses (Runa, Kata, DDG etc) Clerics is in my opinion the strongest dps, and also with the easiest rotation.

I will upload my next kata run on my bard with my dps stats. Maybe I overdid a bit of my percentages, but Im pretty sure my Breeze (or Pulse in NA language) will come on top, together with mosky.
But then again, im not here to prove anything. I just want to show people how I play the bard. A lot of people start it and quit it because they dont see possibilities. Im here to show them after playing bard for 1year as main.

The vamping of the post with images might be a good idea, might get on to that later on, or at next maintenance

Thanks, I like the comments

First, about the attack speed gloves. I think the comment was more meant for newer bards. Get atk speed gloves asap, as it will help you through your way to lvl 65 a lot. Once at 65 there are choices to be made.

For PVP im running full 2star officer set. So thats with cast gloves. I really dont wanna miss the set effect + other stats, which the 50E doesnt have. So yes, my full pvp set is with cast speed gloves.
However, if I switch to my Rank 1 Macc set, Im using 5 parts + the 50E atk speed gloves. My macc set is meant for clerics, and for that some extra atk speed never hurts :).
Then my PVE set is actually also a hard choice. Because why we have atk speed? To be more mobile, to be quicker, to land things faster. If we talk about Kata or other big bosses, I dont really care thaaat much for atk speed, I just go for stats in that case. So yes, at this point I have 5/6 kata set, missing the boots. But since I dont get the 6/6 set bonus, I go 4 parts hyperion with 50E. However, when I wil get my 6th piece, I might switch to full hyperion, but I first will test that over and over to be sure what is best for my dps in the long run.


MB/HP composites. Yes, with the current MR nerf inc, I would wish my set was full MB/HP. But since it isnt, im not gonna change it at this point. But yes, I'd love to have a full MB/HP compo set.

Because you are a better Pve Hero than me, click
Also, im not saying pro-bards can out dps pro-sorcs/clerics
But we can out dps 90% of the server by just playing smart

MB/MA is not worth it for me. Like I said, too expensive.
And it will boost my Macc to 2.3. Then what? with 2.3 im still not hitting any cleric in MR..
So, my conclusion to this is not worth it. But people might wanna go MB/MA, Im fine with that lol, Im not gonna.

Only 7, pff

No thats kinda the problem, bards is kinda the only magic class without Macc buff..
Yes, 100 passive, but thats not gonna make a difference, that just means we can socket more mb instead of ma

Fear/Sleep Resist, dont know really. The way I see it, and you know this, I hardly get slept in JMR, and never feared (only if SM rekts my buff and I dont notice it..). So yes, I would say that im save against SM's, but whether it really stacks (2.3k MR+0.4k Fear Resist = 2.7K Fear Resist) I dont think that is true. Because a SM could have more macc than that and still they dont fear me. So idk.

Yeah, wait for next maintenance, im planning on revamping the guide then.. I also saw a lot of typo's and non-logical sentences
And yes, will also add my gear/sets and my stigma build.