Allods Online Forum

you should be trying to keep temporal acceleration up all the time as it's the best offensive buff, but for this you need quite a lot of swiftness (about 400 if i'm not mistaking).
I highly recommand taking another offensive buff (personnaly i take the stats boost one) (in case you're cc'ed or you die then someone rez you...) in many situatiions you wont be able to keep temporal acceleration for its 15sec but you still need to boost your group so that's where this 2nd buff is usefull.
As for the defensive buff, i've never use the willpower boost one and i don't think it's worth using as willpower is currently pretty useless anyway. The only one left is the bloodlust boost which is a must have. Once again if i'm not mistaking, with the amount of swiftness i have + the cooldown decreasing effect from temporal acceleration, i think i can use it every 30sec or so.
Then also try to learn bosses patterns (for astral) or how the different classes work, so you know when to use your accoustic barrier (right before an aoe from a boss or before a brust from scouts for examples)

hope it helped you

The 2nd defensive buff doesn't increase the willpower but reduce the duration of the controls (with rubies you get immuned to any controls). Useless for pve it's nevertheless highly recommended for pvp. If you have a good group, engineer can keep bloodlust buff while you will try to keep the "courage" one. In order to keep it you will have to alternate between solo (or requiem) and the barrier.
Anyway the combo is not difficult, and next patch it will be easier to keep temporal accel buff with courage. The idea will be to use offensive skills (flying or dancing blade depending of the way you play) between requiem and defensive skills.

Next patch promises a better way to play support bard!

oh lol, should really pay more attention to the skills description, i was almost sure courage buff was kind of useless now .
Thought, if like me you want a support build which can perform in pve as well as in pvp, i think you can't really afford to use talent points to take courage... but for sure if you want one for pvp only go for it.
Also, i recommand playing only with dancing blade and it's rubis, it's the spell which refresh the offensive buff for the longest time and it makes highter (can someone confirm that) and more constant dps (+ it's personal but i feel like the casting time of this spell make the gameplay more satisfying... like you're always doing smth if you see what i mean)
Finaly, Locke you're taking accoustic barrier r3... imo it's too much, 6 talent points for 1 extra sec is just wayy to much

edit : Vickie can you explain what in 8.1 will make bard easier to play? is that really a good new.. i mean, 7.0 patch already made every classes easy as fuck to play imo

Hi Hi nuie here gonna give two things to help you out the first will be a support build using the amount of rubies and talent points you have the second will be tips on keeping buffs alive and the class itself.
1. http://allodswiki.ru/calcnew/#!9!131...3…cijxvm/SWCDZJAP
2. firstly things to note about this build it is strictly for pve content it can have some success in pvp if played correctly but it is missing some key things for that however it is in my opinion a better use of your rubies and talents. keeping offensive buffs up is a matter of spamming dancing blade and defensive buffs is just properly timing your use of barrier as well as your use of requiem though swiftness is nice it is not necessary for this build which is something bards will need to be aware of looking at patch 8.1 swiftness will stop affecting certain abilities. also a note to freestyle as a support at least for pve content your goal is not damage actually even in pvp your main goal isnt really damage its to maintain buffs and provide support to your team both buffing healing and inreasing the damage output of your team. the role is called support for a reason.
anyways nuie out

2Free,
Attacking rhythms will last a bit longer, so if you have 500 CritDmg and 4 fableds this patch (artifact rank 3 next patch) you'll be able to keep TA non-stop without wasting stats on Swiftness.

2Locke,
As Free says it's better to go with Dancing blade rather than Flying blade at least in PvE.

In astral you'll probably need all three buffs because often you won't be able to refresh a buff before rhythm goes off as you'll need to run from one pack of mobs to another not able to use Dancing blade on the way. So you'll need to fill the gaps in with some buff you don't normally use.

Also in PvE it's expected that you'll buff and DPS, so you shouldn't skip talents and rubies that increase your DPS. With your amount of talents and rubies (which is extremely low, you should double-check if it's really all you've got) for PvE I'd take something like this (calc is still in work in progress state, but at least it's new):

http://calc.alloder.pro/#b/9w2sge1r:pfy0…dnmvxb::13ydj3:

Sonata is VERY useful in PvE in both Astral and Raids.

March is useless in PvE, I doubt you would ever have enough rubies/talents to waste on it. In PvP it's still not that good but at least there are some cases where using it can be justified.

If your tank needs Dancing Shadows it's better if you won't go astral with that kind of a tank.

pvp bard support http://pts.allodswiki.ru/calc/#!9!131...…bhsjbq/EXZQALAP

pve bard support
http://pts.allodswiki.ru/calc/#!9!231...…zbttcf/ADCDZJAP

I used these builds on p2p, eu/ru
You can make changes if u want. And probably u can make something diff, cuz i think u are f2p player. Also you dont need more then 150 switftness in 8.0 . And rmbr in 8.1 you dont need swiftness at all. Cuz rebuff timer is 30+ ( when u use dancing blade, you will rebuff party). So your main spell is Dancing Blade, forget about flying blade in support build.

Edit : Sonata removes negative effect from your party. Cd is 15 sec if i rmbr. In 8.1 is 1min. Overture, dispel enemy ( Secret Path - last boss)

Quoted from "mrghostps"

as a support at least for pve content your goal is not damage

This is sooo wrong. Your goal is BOTH buffing up your group and dealing damage. Unless you are happy with being just a mediocre nothing.

Quoted from "mrghostps"

I imagine there is a DPS reduction, but mobility can save your life.

See above. Mobility is pretty high with these rubies: http://calc.alloder.pro/#b/9bwql3248h:0:107:0::13ydj3:

Quoted from "mrghostps"

EDIT: About Overture: when will I need it? Same with Sonata, every positive effect I have seen in astral cannot be removed.

Overture is needed in almost every normal/hard mode raid instance. As for Sonata. I don't do easy astral allods too often, so maybe you can live without it there. But in "hard" astral sectors Sonata is a must-have (Overture is still for raids only though)

Locke,

1. March. In PvE no one needs random buffs. In PvE everything should follow the predefined strategy according to the roles of the party members. There is a use for March in Dominion PvP to give random debuffs, but normally a team should have Psi/Mage to put known debuffs, not random. March has cast time, so when you're casting it you're not doing something else. In PvE you're not dealing damage which is much more important than trying to give some random buff. In PvP you're not dispelling main assist target, which, again, is more important and expected from bard.

2. Dance of Shadows can only be useful if you know for sure about such a case. In any other situations in PvE you are expected to
- keep buffs up
- mass-puri debuffs & dispel buffs from bosses (currently actual example is the last boss in SP in normal/hard modes)
- deal damage

If you're using Dance of Shadows you're not doing something from the list above and those other things are much more important. Leave the survivability task to tank and healer (astral for example is so easy even in hard sectors that ppl go there without a healer; investing in Dance of Shadows is an overkill in the situation)

3. I'd say Nocturne itself is kinda useless. The complexity it adds isn't worth the profit. It could be used to just boost the DPS of the group a little, but I'd go for maxing out own DPS first.

4. There are no CrtDmg rubies for etudes. If you mean Heart Strings then you don't need them coz they increase the Crit Chance and it's already 100% because of Saga rubies.

"Is it worth it to get any of the critical damage rubies for Etudes?"

==> nope, the rubis that make dancing blade (or the others blades) refresh the buffs also give them 100% critical dmg chance

Quoted from "Locke"

This is my current PvE build: http://calc.alloder.pro/#b/al56rdof7l:pf…3ewpvr::13ydj3:

I have 7 talents and 6 rubies left to spend. I'm tempted to stick them in Dance of Shadows as mentioned, but what should I spend them on instead for added DPS? Nocturne?

This is my current PvP build: http://calc.alloder.pro/#b/6eckxxkf:pg8j…3ex8uf::13ydj3:

To be honest I haven't really done PvP in allods since 2014. I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing. Is this viable?

Dont skip tempo rubies, u will need tempo all the time. So take rank 3. In pve build.
About pvp, u rlly need those tears spells. They are so useful for group pvp. And i would use power instead of valiance.

Locke,

I would take something like this or even this, because in PvE ppl usually die from being dumb rather than from enormous damage that you can't avoid. You can see that before you even get to Nocturne, there are more rubies to take.

PvP build seems fine but incomplete. I can see you took rubies that trigger from Bloodthirst/Courage but didn't take the buffs. Like Eddy said you need Tear skills in PvP. You also don't need willpower ruby, but you will most likely need Fury of Shadows rubies.

The thing with PvP is that there are 3-4 different PvP activities and for bard there's no such thing as a PvP build. Because on Domi you play full support dealing virtually no damage and have your swiftness maxed, so you can skip Brutality and Vigor rubies, and maybe some rubies like Fury of Shadows even. But if you go Skirmishes, you'd prefer dealing more damage, but won't bother too much with dispels. If you go 3v3 then it's a bit of both depending on your team. And there is KoE ganking/farming as well. For Skirmishes I would take something like this, but it's hard to decide, you really want a lot of rubies for PvP

It's probably OK to have r2 r3 as you do now if you lack talent points. However in your build you can get extra 5 talent point from either Courage or Bloodthirst. You can't keep both on, because the Rhythm will only work for the latest one. You would want to have 1 of them at r1 just to trigger the effect of rubies. Which would you prefer is up to you, I'd say that if you're willingly sacrificing DPS, then you could nerf Bloodthirst to r1.

In the rubies I'd probably remove the rubies for AoE KD from Romance and put them to plain DPS increase (yes, I'm a dps-whore xD)

Drop bloodthirst to rank 1. Rank 1 is enough with rubies, just pop up double heal. Bloodslust meh .. Courage more important for pvp so keep it rank 3.