Disclaimer: Bards are absolutely terrible at low lvls. The good news is, the way the class is designed, it scales better into endgame than just about any class.



Key Stats: Mana Per Tick, Casting Haste, Stun Reduction, Fear Reduction

Casting Haste: Casting Haste is as much a quality of life stat as it is for making your stronger. Cast haste effects bard songs and since you should always be singing a song, this means more songs and easier to maintain buffs on you and debuffs on your enemies.

Mana Per Tick: Bards have the most intensive resource management in the game. Your entire survivability and a good portion of your dps requires you to have mana.

Stun Reductions: Bards are great swarmers and in order to do that, you have to have stun reduction.

Fear Reduction: A long fear usually means death.



Gameplay:
Simply suffer through early levels. Hymn of restoration at level 5 and Boastful Bellow at (8?) will help tremendously but you'll still be fairly weak. Any and all mana per tick items you find should be equipped immediately. Once you've got the mana, you can start using charm on top of hymn of restoration for some decent survivability and begin chaining slightly lower mobs.

Continue to stack that mana regen, as you level, new songs means more buffs to maintain. Anthem de Arms will become your bread and butter song, huge haste and attack bonus while also giving haste to your charmed pet.

As you get more mana regen, you can start to maintain desperate dirge and chords of dissonance as buffs that deal damage. Followed by that, you can start using debuffs such and euphonic hym and boastful bellow on more enemies. Or, you can choose to save your mana, and use it to heal yourself with dissension.

Come endgame, you should have plenty of mana to use debuffs on mobs between songs. For survivability, use shield of songs when losing just a small amount of hp and let hymn regen your life. Against large groups, you may choose to simply use dissension.

For bosses, you will need to pull an add for charming purposes. Get all your buff songs going, pull the boss and immediately one other. Switch to the add (some bosses spawn an add on their own), charm the add, switch back to boss and cast consonant chain followed by standard rotation.



Talents
The best build I found: Anthem De Arms, Solons Song, Euphonic Hymn, Restoration, and Shield of Songs (in that order). Remaining points into consonant chain



Sweet Gear Choices
Weapon: Chromaspike. 5 mana per tick, 20 cast haste.
Offhand: Satyr Chalice (10 mana per sec) or Manastone (7 mana per sec + status reductions). Manastone is awesome and can be found early on.
Range: Summoner's Ember, trinkets in general aren't very good, but this thing packs a whopping +10 mana per sec
Lets: Willows Gust, 8 mana regen
Belt: Grimden's Hearty Cord, 6 mana regen, 30 stun reduc
Chest: Steel Carapace, 9 mana regen, 10 cast haste, stun reduction, melee damage reduction
Rings: Nature's Agony, status reduction, damage reduction (awesome rings)
Globes: Wraiths Flesh, cast haste, 4 mana regen
Bracer: Caretaker's Wrasp, 4 mana regen, status reductions
Back: Venova's Wings, status reduction, 12 cast haste
Head: Harlequins Crest, 4 mana per tick, damage reduction.

I use summoners shoulders and mendicant boots because they provide excellent status reductions but I am waiting to perhaps be able to replace them. I currently sit at 90 fear reduc, 70 stun, reduc, 92|78 cast haste, and 61 mana regen.

Thanks for the tips! Having fun playing the bard right now. What is the skill Solon's Song? Was it renamed or am I just blind?

Ha, some of the skill names maintain their old EQ love when they are casted, Solon's Song = Solon's Song of the Sirens which is simply listed as song of the sirens in your skills.

I find low levels fun. A bard, like any good pop artist, just needs to know a few chords to bust out some major hits.

As soon as you hit 7, you get Song of the Siren which lets you charm a frontman to your band and start putting on concerts.

Charm a mob and then pull four more. The charmed mob will take the beating as your Chords of Dissonance melts the crowd's faces.

Once mobs start falling, hustle those tickets to keep those seats full. If you find your frontman burning out from the rockstar life, kick him to the curb like Scott Stapp and find another.

Like TadaceAce said, your mana is your biggest limiting factor. Collect as much mana per kill and mana per tick as you can find for unending guitar solos.

\m/

You convinced me. Now I have to get a guitar and start playing

The bard in action!

lmao... next patch for sure.

ROFL!

LOL - nice!

Dat photoshop is amazing. I'd hook up my plastic guitar and be off to the races.

Didn't know if I should post this question as a new thread, so I'll just ask here. New Bard/Nevergrind player reporting in.
How does Accelerando work? Do I apply that first, and then the other songs or the other way around? I tried looking around but couldn't find anywhere where that was clarified.

hit Accelerando then the other songs, if you mouse over the other songs after you hit Accelerando you should also notice that they show a longer duration. Good Luck with your Bard there fun!

Thank you! When I mouse over the buffs, I don't see any sort of duration timer, so I couldn't check myself. Is that supposed to show up? I've tried looking in the options for such a thing but doesn't seem to exist there. Is there supposed to be a duration there?

Sorry I meant on your hotkey bar instead of the buffs under your health. Posted 2 pics for reference.

you can see that the verses changed so instead of lasting 18 seconds it will last 27 seconds or 3 extra verses.

Hope that helps sorry if I confused you.

actually looking at Accelerando think its supposed to extend for 6 verses instead of 3 may need to double check on that :s.

Oh, okay, that makes a lot more sense then! I almost thought I was missing something obvious.
Buff timers would be pretty nice to add though.

Edit: And yeah, it seems that they only extend for three verses instead of six, for some odd reason.