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[PMB] Olive's melodic Bard guide~

||… Contents… ||

~Intro~
~Changes in 6.0~
~Talents~
~Rubies~
~Damage types~
~Stats~
~Racial and reincarnation skills~
~Builds Explained~
~Rotation~
~Final words~

Dieser Beitrag wurde bereits 10 mal editiert, zuletzt von »Oliveoil« (wcf.global.shortTimeFormatLocalized)

Hi, this is Oliveoil.

Welcome to my guide, I hope you enjoy reading and maybe learn a thing or two while you're here!
I play on the [F2P] New Frontier Empire side, and I'm from the guild Monsters inc. My character has
gone through class changing for few times, I've changed from Psionicist > Bard > scout
and back to Bard again, no matter what class I try I find myself returning back to Bard, it's fun to play Bard
as it has a versatile skill mechanics which you can integrate into your own play style, and optimise to the max
in this guide, I'll be outlining builds in both PVE and PVP situations.
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Patch notes.
With 6.0 patch, Bard has gone through some changes
and received new rubies which are mainly PVP oriented.


New ruby Ligirophobia: When you apply any control effect
and it fades, a damage reduce effect is applied
My thoughts on this : impressive ruby! especially when combined with Cacophony
stuns and then damage reduce from Ligirophobia pops up = profit
this will fit in just nicely in my Dominion build


New ruby Assonance: This applies an effect on all party members within a 30 yard radius
which reflects X amount of the direct damage back on attackers
My thoughts on this : The damage reflect on this isn't that big of a deal thus not worth
spending rubies on IMO


New ruby Cacophony: Using this applies a random control effect on the target stun/fear etc.
My thoughts on this : As I said above perfect combination with Ligirophobia
however cast time is such a downer the main point of CC-ing is
to be fast and not interrupted while casting... oh well





❇ Main damage skill Dissonance/Disharmony doesn't have a silence effect anymore...
❇ Overture's AKA: dispel, bug got fixed. In previous patches it wasn't working the way
it should as in, heal us while removing Summoners’ Blood Aegis and Mages’ barrier
which is perfect! // time to use summoners in battlegrounds ; o
and it's good to note that “Dragon Nobility” relics give bonus to healing when using Overture
❇ Solo ability affects enemies under Resonance Point first, which is ultra awesome, no more random hits
❇ We have also got the ability to move while using Dancing Blade and Raving Blade
however it comes with a price which is movement reduction depending on rank ...



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❇ Bard skills are divided into different categories ❇





❇ Songs ❇


Elegy > advanced upgrade Cantata: AoE Passive damage song
to activate you only need to click it once
and it runs in the background
it causes a ticking sound damaging
all enemies within 20 yards range



Aria: Stacks up to 20 times
and adds shadow damage to your next chord
Note: Aria doesn't stack while mounted, so if you're trying to stack it up you need to dismount first.



Nocturne: Healing song
that heals you and all members in your party
it's quite useful in both PVE and PVP




Ballade: An anti CC or control song
it grants an effect to you and all of
your party members which blocks one
offensive control spell



Requiem: An anti heal song that applies
a random requiem effect which
reduces incoming healing




❇ Chords ❇



Dissonance > advanced upgrade Disharmony
main dame skill which Inflicts damage to the nearest enemy



Solo: Applies Dissonance/Disharmony
multiple times depending on rank



Power Chord: Single target ability
stacks up to 3 times and lasts for 25 seconds



Timpani: Adds extra range on Dissonance/Disharmony/Power chord
careful when using this spell as it will aggro nearby mobs




❇ Etudes ❇



Acoustic Barrier: Protective barrier
which damages the attacker and absorbs damage received



Romance > advanced upgrade Serenade: Control skill
pulls the target towards you knocking while them down in the process



Dancing Blade > advanced upgrade Raving Blade: Damage skill which
helps regain your energy while dealing damage for 5 times



Overture: Dispels one magical effect from
your target and heals you on succession




Fugue in A minor: Stuns your target
and applies on AoE fear on enemies within 10 yards




❇ Additional talents ❇




Flying Blade: Deals damage over time
in the form of wound for 7 seconds





Muse: Summons an inspiration effect
which reduces your cool downs to half



Protective Tune: In short, Bard's 2nd life skill
it gives you a 2nd chance to stay alive





Musical Notation: Teaches you 4 marches/buffs: March of Astral Power,
March of Ferocity, March of Energy Surge and March of Robust Health
which are very useful for you and your party





Rhapsody: Applies a fervor effect on your target which boosts their HP,
in PVE you will normally fervor your tank, while in PVP it's optional





Encore: Dragon tear ability which resets cooldown
of your abilities except for Encore and Shadow Duette.





Shadow Duette: Dragon tear ability which summons a twin
that mirrors songs you were performing upon it's summon





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Stat Rubies




❇ Child of Fortune: Increases your Luck
❇ Bully: Increases your Vigor
❇ Trickster: Increases your Vitality
❇ Requiem for Enemies: Increases your Anger
❇ Vigorous Tune: Increases your Determination
plus gives you the ability to move
while using Dancing Blade/Raving Blade
❇ Perfect Ear: Increases your Proficiency









❇ Long Solo: Includes additional applications of Dissonance/Disharmony
❇ Octave Doubling: Increases damage and duration of Power Chord
❇ Astral Blade: Increases damage of Flying Blade and turns it to astral damage,
works great with Funeral March rubies as the later increases Astral damage
❇ Funeral March: Increases Astral damage when Elegy/Cantata is in use
❇ Grand Finale: Performs additional attack upon successful hits of Dancing/Raving Blade
❇ Sharp Chord: Increases critical strike chance of Dissonance/Disharmony, consider using with Loud Timpani
❇ Loud Timpani: Increases damage of Dissonance/Disharmony and Power Chord
❇ Unison: Applies a DoT on the target upon successful hits of Dancing/Raving Blade, Flying Blade and racial ability
❇ Passionate Performance: Increases your damage if your health is higher than 75%
❇ Resonance: Increases your physical damage
❇ Perfect Acoustics: Increases damage of Acoustic Barrier
❇ Second Fiddle: Increases your damage and decreases aggro level
❇ Poetry of Death: while Requiem song is active this ruby adds a shadow damage effect when your target receives healing
❇ Grim Rhymes: Increases damage of your Elegy/Cantata if the target has at least 10 stacks of the Requiem effect
❇ Menacing Tune: Increases your Shadow damage
❇ Assonance: Applies it to your party members, not you! and reflects damage back to the attacker
❇ Modulation: Increases effectiveness of Elegy/Cantata and Nocturne








❇ Exaltation: Grants an Euphoria effect which boosts energy regeneration rate
❇ Melpomene: Increases energy regeneration rate while using Muse
❇ Combat Tune: Decreases energy cost of Dancing/Raving Blade and their cooldown
❇ Temperament: Decreases energy consumption when playing several songs at once
❇ Adrenaline Rush: This ability increases your energy regeneration rate if you receive a critical strike
❇ Inspiration: You receive the Euphoria effect which increases your energy regeneration however, that
depends on your Overture skill if it successfully dispels a magical effect
❇ Consonance: Increases energy regeneration rate when your Nocturne successfully heals you
❇ Loud Chords: Increases range of Dissonance/Disharmony and Power Chord when used with Timpani
Note: Loud Chords doesn't work with Solo
❇ Resonance Point: In addition to increasing Chords range, this skill got more useful this patch because if you read patch notes you will find important note
"Dissonance, Disharmony, and Solo affect enemies under Resonance Point first."
Note: You might want to trigger it first by using Flying Blade on the enemy







❇ Master of Solo: Decreases cooldown time of Solo
❇ Frivolity: If an enemy you pull by Romance/Serenade dies within 15 seconds, their cooldowns will reset instantly
❇ Rock and Roll: Reduces cooldown of Solo whenever you receive a control effect
❇ Forbidden Note: Reduces Fugue in A minor cooldown and cast time
❇ Combat Tune: Reduces cooldown of Dancing/Raving Blade and their energy cost







❇ Lullaby: Puts the target to sleep, the targets HP must be higher than 90%
❇ Cacophony: Applies a random control effect on the target stun/fear etc.
❇ New Idea: Activates a Improvisation ability when your Ballade is on
in addition when your Ballade blocks a control ability you receive a New Idea
effect which stacks for up to 4 times Improvisation spends all stacks of the New Idea
effect inflicting Shadow damage and stuns the target in the process
❇ Dancing Shadows: Turns you or your friendly target invisible to sight
❇ Ligirophobia: Reduces damage of your target, after a control effect you applies on it fades
❇ Punishment for Weakness: Increases your damage to enemies under negative control effects







❇ Reverberation: Boosts your health when you apply rhapsody to another character
plus increases your damage for each song performed
❇ Protective Rhythm: This ruby decreases AoE damage received while Nocturne song is active
❇ Protective Overtones: Every song you perform increases your armor
❇ Sixth Sense: Reduces critical damage you receive, in addition to increasing your healing received
❇ Invigoration: Allows you sing one extra song on top of the basic two songs,
this lasts for the duration of the combat and you can't activate it without being in combat
❇ High Tempo: Decreases time between ticks of Ballade and Requiem
❇ Ode: Applies an effect to a friendly target which redirects aggro from
targets you pull using Romance/Serenade

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❇ In order to optimise your skills you need to first understand
their different aspects and what they share in common with the rest of your talent grid
there's absolutely no point of me rushing you into build concepts without outlining and evaluating
relationships between different talents and rubies, hence this will help you adapt
my suggested builds to your own play style
thus you will have a better understanding from different perspective than your own ❇





❇These talents are Astral type -precisely looking at the Solo talent-
and when used with the Funeral March ruby, it boosts their damage
at 25% of target's health, so you can time your skills and save cooldowns especially
when you're engaged in a long fight i.e. raid/astral bosses etc
also note: you can't use Dissonance/Disharmony while solo is hitting,
so wait for it to finish and save your energy for the next attack








❇ Poetry of death ruby boosts shadow damage, this is useful to consider when for example
using your Requiem song, consider which songs go along with it depending on your play style
careful though, although Requiem song has a lot of potential there might be better
combination options with songs you want to use, i.e. I wouldn't use it in PVE but
IMO it's a very useful in PVP especially small group fights such as dominion 6 vs 6
but that's entirely up to you as I said










❇ While these skills have Astral element, it's worth noting that Flying Blade
converts to Astral damage when combined with Astral Blade rubies








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❇ Broken Hearts patch brought us a nice change to stats system, we have stats on glyphs now instead of gear
that gives us a great chance to experiment on different stat possibilities and for different situations
without having to be stuck with a certain stat distribution which was the case in the previous patch

❇ To make this easier to understand, I'll be dividing stats
that concern us Bards
into PVE and PVP category








❇ Using these stats is completely situational, as you might have noticed
I've added Blood Lust to this list although it's more of a PVP stat
it sort of work's for both PVE and PVP, because sometimes especially
in raid instances (sometimes) or Mausoleum of sparks you will need Blood lust
along with Vitality, so it's something you should be aware of and keep in mind
how much Proficiency/Vitality/Brutality/Blood lust do you need?
again, this is entirely situational i.e for long fights you need more
Brutality since it kicks in when the target hits lower HP












❇ The same applies here regarding Proficiency/Brutality/Vitality so I won't re-discuss that
I'll focus here more about the defensive stats that you need in PVP
Determination is quite useful in PVP and best combined with Blood lust
remember to always wait until your Determination bar fills to 100% before
hitting your target, that results in getting maximum hits and faster bursts
Determination boosts your healing i.e. Nocturne and your damage, which is why Blood Lust comes in handy
because you need to receive damage before your determination bar activates
thus when your bar hits 100% your attacks are 100% effective and so your Blood Lust will heal you
the more damage you deal under determination's boost or without
Tenacity stat is useful for reducing time in which you receive wounds, around 20-30 Tenacity should be enough

NOTE: Tenacity is also useful in PVE i.e. Astral so keep it around 30
to help you keep wounds to minimum and easier to heal in advanced Astral layers









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❇ You can have all racial abilities if you have Page from the Book of Secrets
which is found in the Boutique, each class offers a different racial ability
but they all share cooldown so you can only use one at a time
and they all last for 6 seconds with 1 minute cooldown
we have also received a new racial from Priden this patch

❇ Priden // Heavy Paw ❇

Inflicts damage and disarms the target

❇ Elf // Steel Luster ❇

Inflicts damage and blinds the target

❇ Kanian // Treacherous Strike ❇

Inflicts damage and immobilizes the target

❇ Xadaganian // Strength of Word ❇

Inflicts damage and silences the target

❇ Orc // Foul Blow ❇

Inflicts damage and stuns the target











❇ I personally use and recommend using Priest's Holy Shield and Divine Foresight
both are useful in PVP and PVE to save you at critical situations


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❇ Now that you understand everything about Bard - hopefully- as I've explained in my guide
you should be able to make your own build that suits your play style, you can also use my builds
as a reference or a starting point to what you're looking to achieve in your build
I'll also explain each build and why I used certain talents, rubies etc.
lets start off with a complete beginner's leveling build







❇ As you're a new Bard trying to level your character, you need to focus on two main things
survivability and fast effective damage dealing, the longer you're in combat the less
chances you will survive for long, as you can see I took Romance in this build why?
Romance helps you pull mobs towards you without aggroing a whole lot which results in instant death obviously
secondly I focused on main damage dealing skills such as Cantata, Dissonance, Solo, Dancing Blade
however bear in mind that Cantata is an AoE skill so watch your step! careful when using around a bunch of mobs,
also Solo is a random hit skill, unless you have enough rubies to reach Resonance point which makes it
first hit only the targets with the Resonance buff, new bards can easily find themselves in massive trouble so hopefully
these few tips will help you avoid any unnecessary mirra spending and burg trips !
lastly, I took Nocturne and Protective Tune in this build to help you self heal and survive longer, plus Musical Notation
Which gives you all the buffs for example you need Seal which increases your health bar, added to that all the armor and
Vitality rubies, you can also see the main damage rubies, all the stat rubies and energy
these are the ones you have to focus on for now until you gain more talent and ruby points, happy leveling !











NOTE: Used 72 Talent points and 64 Rubies

❇ PVE multiple target [ AoE ] build:
As you can see, this is a full AoE mass DPS build, I maxed out on all the important damage skills
plus aoe rubies, damage boosting rubies and most importantly, energy rubies
you can't do any DPS if you're out of energy half of the time, so focus on those first
if you need a reminder, read back up as I've explained all these rubies in detail in the Rubies section








❇ PVE Single target build:
This build is more aimed at long fights such as raid bosses etc.
ignored all AoE rubies because you won't be needing them in a single target
took Nocturne in this build as an extra support song, as you have noticed
I'm using 3 songs in this build, hence I'm using Invigoration ruby to activate Nocturne
as a 3rd song beside Cantata and Aira, or accordingly turn off and on as required
I've also added extra energy rubies in this build which are the Consonance rubies
it grants you Euphoria effect with 100% chance upon successful healing of Nocturne
great ruby IMO and very useful in long fights where you constantly consume energy











❇ General PVP build:
Control/heal oriented build with focus towards cooldown reduction rubies,
energy rubies, range rubies, damage rubies and the new damage reduction rubies Ligirophobia
this build is suitable for daily battlegrounds etc.
but for Dominion group fights, I'd drop Cantata and take Ballade/Requiem instead plus Nocturne
and also would take extra control rubies beside AoE fear, which is Cacophony
in addition, the range ruby Resonance point as it's great at controlling which targets are hit
by your burst skill Solo so it's not used in vain just to hit a random target








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SINGLE TARGET

>>>>>>>>


I start my attack with Flying Blade followed by 3 stacks of Power Chord, Solo and then Muse
After that I use Disharmony while Muse is active making sure to keep an eye on Euphoria effect
then cast my Muse, managing energy takes practice and is key to achieving maximum DPS
After my Muse fades and I have no energy left, I use Raving Blade to regain energy followed by
Flying Blade and Solo while watching out for my target's HP as Flying Blade and Solo works best at 25% of target's HP since
we are using Funeral March rubies and Flying Blade / Solo are burst Astral damage skills
at the end I use Encore to reset all cooldowns and rinse repeat






AoE MULTIPLE TARGET

>>>>>

In AoE mobs I cast Muse first if no Euphoria is triggered, then use Muse > Timpani followed by Power Chord and
Disharmony, note that Timpani has a buff which shows under your avatar so keep casting and recasting when it fades.
in order to turn your Disharmony and Power chord into an AoE skill you need to use it under Timpani so make sure you're
re casting Timpani ASAP because it only lasts for about 3 seconds
After that I use Raving Blade to regain energy and finish it off with
Flying Blade while keeping a note of target's health, rinse repeat.




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Thank you, see you in game !

Greatly appreciate your time reading my guide, I hope you found everything you needed to know about Bard
I enjoyed working on this guide and I'm glad if I could be of any help to new/old Bards who happen to stumble upon my guide
and find it useful, feel free to inbox me questions here or in-game and I'll do my best to answer them
feedback is welcome and best of luck to all : ]



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