Bard Guide for Lost Ark

Looking to be that life-saving teammate that your Lost Ark buddies can’t do without? Then, the Bard class is your best bet. Like music is food to the human soul, the music from the Bard’s Harp gives all kinds of buffs to their teammates. The Harp of Lost Ark Bards delivers fatal musical notes to enemies and life-saving buffs to teammates. While Bards are renowned for their supporting abilities, they do not do much in terms of damage. However, their supporting abilities make them sought-after members of Lost Ark teams. If you want to play a class that gives you the ability to be the literal lifesaver, then this Bard Guide for Lost Ark is for you.

Bard’s Characteristics and Identity Skill

First off in this Bard Guide for Lost Ark, we’ll go over her Identity skill. The Bard is one of the two Advanced Classes under the Mage class. They wield Harps to cast supportive spells on their teammates and themselves. As the major supportive class in Lost Ark, it isn’t hard to see why most teams always have a Bard in their ranks. While they’re not big on dealing damage to foes, their supportive spells are quite important for a team, especially when playing extremely difficult content. However, you must be very conscious of your environment when playing as a Bard, as they have very squishy HP.

Unlike the other support class (Paladins), Bards are more focused on keeping the team alive with their heals and buffs. If you’ll love to play as that magician with the healing touch, then the Bard is a perfect fit for you.

Although their damage-dealing ability isn’t that great, they can still occasionally deal a good level of damage. You should know that you need to at least hit these skills to be able to fill your Identity Skill Meter (explained below), which helps buff up your healing abilities. To hit these skills, you need to be close to your foes before executing them, as most of the skills in Bard’s arsenal have a small AoE. Hence, this limits the amount of damage you can do from afar. 

Just like your attacks have short AoE, the buffs for teammates also have a short range. Hence, it would help if you were close to your teammates before casting your healing spells.

Like every other Advanced Class, the Bard’s Identity Skills are the Serenade of Courage and Serenade of Salvation. To access either of these skills, the Bard has to fill up the Serenade Bubbles by dealing damage to enemies. There are three bubbles to fill. However, you can activate the Identity Skill even after filling just one bubble. However, the number of bubbles you fill determines the percentage increase on the buffs you’ll provide to your teammates.

Now, going back to the Identity Skills, the Serenade of Courage increases the Attack Power of your teammates while the Serenade of Salvation helps to restore teammates’ health over time. The Serenade of Salvation is the preferred Identity Skill among Bard players since it has the most effect on teammates. In most cases, teammates have their own Attack Buffs, so using the Serenade of Courage seems unnecessary.

With the Bard Class, you can start filling up your Serenade Bubbles immediately after exhausting them. This gives you an advantage over those who have to wait for the customary 20-second cooldown period.

Bard’s Skills and Tripods Guide

After Levelling, your Bard character should have 19 skills, including the Normal and the Engraving skills. Apart from unlocking these skills, you’ll also have unlocked their Tripods by investing points into these skills. Their Tripods grant you access to more damage and increase the damage to your skills.

However, you only require 8 of these skills whenever you’re playing. This section will review the most relevant 8 skills (and their Tripods) to use when playing as a Bard, regardless of your playstyle.

• Sound Shock: Unlocked at Level 10. This skill uses the Harp to create musical orbs which do explosive damage when tossed at the enemies. This skill is also a good debuff as it increases the damage done to the boss by 10% during Raid content. The best Tripods for this skill include Maintained Explosion, Rapid Fire, and Quick Prep. Maintained Explosion helps do damage over time with the debris left from the orbs, while Rapid Fire helps create two orbs from one attack increasing the pure damage from the attack. Sacred Shock marks out foes and increases your whole team’s damage done against them.

Stigma: Unlocked at Level 10. This skill makes the Bard create a pulsing musical circle in the selected area, which deals damage over time. The best Tripods for this skill include Sustain Enhancement, Pain Brand, and Brilliant Stigma. This combo increases the hit rate of stigma and the skill’s duration. Swapping out Pain Brand for Melody Increase also helps fill up the Serenade Meter faster.

• Wind of Music: Unlocked at Level 12. This skill summons a fierce wind that pushes foes back and does damage to those within a 1-meter radius. Apart from doing damage, it also reduces the damage your team takes. The best Tripods for this skill include Quick Prep, Wind of Protection, and Melody Increase. Quick Prep reduces the cooldown duration, allowing more frequent use of the skill. Wind of Protection creates a shield that absorbs damage for you and your teammates. Melody Increase boosts the Serenade Energy generated by attacking foes with this skill.

• Sonic Vibration: Unlocked at Level 14. This skill lifts foes at the target location and smashes them back to the ground. It is a good armor-breaking skill. The best Tripods for this skill include Brilliant Wave, Tenacity, and Wide-Angle Attack. This combo helps increase your team’s Attack Power, grants push immunity and increases the AoE of the skill.

• Prelude Storm: Unlocked at Level 20. This skill makes the Bard summon a storm with a musical tune. This storm inflicts damage on foes and stuns them. The best Tripods for this skill include Wide-Angle Attack, Quick Prep, and Powerful Prelude. The Powerful Prelude reduces the stun duration by a second to allow you to do more damage. The other Tripods increase the AoE and reduce the skill’s cooldown period. You could also swap out Wide-Angle Attack for Melody Increase if you’re angling for more Serenade Energy. However, remember you have to cast this skill when at a close range to your enemies, so you might take a fair share of the damage.

• Heavenly Tune: Unlocked at Level 24. This skill inflicts damage on all nearby foes and increases your team’s mana recovery and attack speed. The best Tripods for this skill include Tough Tune, Intense Tune, and Quick Prep. The Tough Tune helps increase Bard’s attack speed, while the Intense Tune helps increase your team’s attack power. If you like to reduce the damage some foes can do on your team; you can swap out Tough Tune for Courageous Tune.

• Harp of Rhythm: Unlocked at Level 36. This skill makes the Bard conjure a harp that has its free will. The harp shoots a musical note which inflicts damage on foes within a 14-meter radius. The best Tripods for this skill include Summoning Will, Note Brand, and Melody Increase. This combination helps increase the duration of damage the Harp of free will does, upgrades the damage your team does, and increases the Serenade Energy generated. 
• Guardian Tune: Unlocked at Level 50. This skill is purely for survival as it helps reduce the damage you and your teammates (within a 24-meter radius) suffer by 30% for 8 seconds. The best Tripods for this skill include Tenacity, Powerful Protection, and Endless Protection. This combo prevents your team from getting knocked back, reduces the damage your team suffers, and boosts your team’s maximum HP. 

If you want to play as a solo Bard, you might need some damage-oriented skills to help buff your lacking damage potential. It would be best to swap out Wind of Music for Soundholic and Harp of Rhythm for Prelude of Death.

• Soundholic: Unlocked at Level 18. This skill allows the Bard to shoot a ray of blinding light that does damage for 3 seconds. The best Tripods for this skill include Focus Fire, Raid, and Sustain Enhancement. Focus Fire helps keep your rays focused in a direction, but this means you can’t move when executing the skill. So, you should position yourself well before using this. Raid makes you launch the attack in conical AoE, boosting the damage done to foes. Sustain Enhancement helps to increase the duration and hit rate of the skill.

• Prelude of Death: Unlocked at Level 32. This skill makes the Bard play the Prelude of Death tune, which unleashes damage on foes and also causes a temporary debuff. The bets Tripods for this skill include Death’s End, Aria of Death, and Death Amplification. Death’s End causes the temporary debuff while Aria of Death helps increase the damage inflicted, while Death Amplification increases the debuff of Death’s End. If you want to fill up the Serenade Bubbles faster, you can swap out Aria of Death for Passionate Applause.

Bard’s Engravings Guide

Every Advanced Class in Lost Ark has Engravings that grant you special skills specific to that class. You have to complete endgame activities such as Guardian Raids, Chaos, or Abyss Dungeons to get these Engravings. You can activate these Engravings by equipping Accessories, Ability Stones, and reading Recipe Books.

The Engravings you pick largely determine your character’s playstyle and in-battle traits. However, you can only access these Engravings when you have played the game to a certain level. For the Bard Class, the two Engravings are Desperate Salvation and True Courage. This section will review both Engravings, their characteristics, downsides, and the best General Engravings for the Bard Advanced Class.

Bard Desperate Salvation

The Desperate Salvation Engraving is the meta choice among Bard players. The reason why this is so isn’t hard to see. This Engraving complements the Serenade of Salvation Identity Skill. This means Bards can use the Serenade of Salvation Identity Skill for longer periods, granting them the ability to give healing buffs for much longer. This helps their team to survive in dire times when playing hard content. Especially when leveled to Tier 3, you become priceless to your team.

At Level 1, you recover an extra 8% of your max. HP after the recovery effect from the Serenade of Salvation ends. At Level 2, you recover 16%, while it increases to 24% at Level 3.

Combat Stats

With this Engraving, you should assign more Combat Points to Swiftness and Specialization. This would help increase your attack and movement speed while decreasing your cooldown periods. This would also help fill the Serenade Bubbles faster while complementing the Serenade of Salvation buffs.

Characteristics

• Increases the duration of the Serenade of Salvation.
• Allows application of healing buffs for longer periods.

Downsides

• N/A

Bard True Courage

The 2^nd Engraving for Bard complements the Serenade of Courage Identity Skill. This Engraving increases the stats line for the Serenade of Courage Identity Skill. This gives your teammates an increase in Crit Rate and Damage.

At Level 1, it increases Damage and Crit Rate by 10%. At Level 2, it increases Damage by 15%, while it increases Damage by 20% at Level 3. However, the Crit Rate remains at a 10% increase for both Levels.

Characteristics

• Complements the Serenade of Courage Identity Skill.
• Increases Damage and Crit Rate stats.

Downsides

• Might affect the team’s survivability in endgame content.

General Engravings

This section will highlight the best Lost Ark General Engravings to work with the Bard’s Unique Engravings. Awakening: This General Engraving reduces the Awakening skill cooldown period of Bard’s Awakening skill. At Level 1, it reduces the cooldown period by 10%, and you can only use it once per match. At Level 2, it reduces the cooldown period by 25%, and you can only use it twice per match. Also, at Level 3, it reduces the cooldown period by 50%, and you can use it thrice per match.

1. Spirit of Absorption: This General Engraving increases the Attack and Movement Speed of the Bard. At Level 1, it increases the Attack and Movement Speed by 3%, 8% at level 2, and 15% at Level 3.
2. Increased Max MP: This General Engraving increases the number of maximum MP Bards have at their disposal. At Level 1, it increases Max MP by 15%. At Levels 2 and 3, you get a 15% and 30% increase, respectively.
3. Expert: This Engraving increases the effectiveness of healing and shields on all team members. At Level 1, it increases the shield and healing effectiveness by 6%, and when your Bard’s HP is below 50%, it adds 3%. At Level 2, the increase is by 14%, and it adds 7% when the HP is below 50%. At Level 3, the increase is 24%, and the additional increase is 12%.
4. Heavy Armor: This Engraving is very vital when playing the Bard class as its huge defensive buffs help complement the squishy characteristic of the Bard. At Level 1, this Engraving increases all Defense stats by 30%. At Levels 2 and 3, it increases Defense stats by 75% and 150%, respectively.  Also, effects that cause Defense reduction do not affect this Engraving.

If you were to pick any three of these Engravings to go with the Unique Engraving, we would advise picking the Awakening, Heavy Armor, and Expert Engravings.

Bard’s Awakening Skills Guide

Awakening Skills only become available when you reach Level 50. They usually bestow amazing powers on Advanced Classes and have aesthetically pleasing mechanics. The two Awakening Skills available to the Bard include Oratorio and Symphonia. Want to know which is the better pick for you? This section helps to answer this question:

1. Symphonia: This is hands-down the best Awakening skill. When executed, the Bard levitates and plays with an angelic choir. Their music gives every teammate within a 12-meter radius a shield that can absorb 100% worth of damage of the Bard’s maximum HP. The music also does damage to foes, causing a 20% reduction in their attack speed, a 30% reduction in their attack power, and a 40% reduction in their movement speed. However, its effects wear out after 10 seconds.
2. Oratorio: When executed, the Bard plays a giant harp and sings with an angelic choir to inflict Holy Damage on foes. At the end of the song, an explosion reduces your foes’ Crit Resistance to any damage done by your teammates by 12%.

Bard Pvp Build Guide

In PvP, we all know most players like to be able to wield as much damage as possible. However, with the Bard, their main purpose is to help their teammates survive as long while doing damage to fill up their Serenade bubbles. If you want to know how to maximize the Bard Advanced Class for PvP content, then you should follow the tips below:

First, you should share your combat stats majorly between Swiftness (70%) and Specialization (29%). You could save the rest for Crit. 

Your best skills lineup would be Prelude of Storm (Tripods: Quick Prep, Wide-Angle Attack, and Powerful Prelude), Soundholic (Tripods: Focus Fire, Sustain Enhancement, Raid), Rhapsody of Light (Quick Prep, Stabilized Light, and Shining Protection), Guardian Tune (Tripods: Mind Enhancement and Tenacity), Sonic Vibration (Tripods: Tenacity, Chain Vibration, and Wide-Angle Attack), Wind of Music (Quick Prep, Melody Increase, Wind of Protection), Heavenly Tune (Tripods: Tenacity, Powerful Protection, and Endless Protection), Prelude of Death (Tripods: Death Amplification, Aria of Death, Death’s End).

The best Engravings would be Desperate Salvation, Awakening, Expert, and Heavy Armor. The best Awakening skill here would be Symphonia. Your go-to skills here will be Rhapsody of Light and Soundholic. These two have short cooldowns and can do good damage to help fill up your Serenade Bubbles. Heavy hitters like Guardian Tune should be reserved for later in the game. You can check out this YouTube video to find a PvP Bard Guide for Lost Ark.

Bard Pve Build Guide

When playing PvE content as a Bard, you can’t escape hordes of foes, especially in Dungeons and Raids. This means you might want to get your attacking and defensive skills straight to prevent getting swatted. With your teammates by your side, the chances of that happening are slim, but you should arm yourself nonetheless.

You should still share your combats stats between Swiftness and Specialization in an 80:20 ratio.

The best skills for PvE content include Sound Shock (Tripods: Quick Prep, Maintained Explosion, and Wide-Angled Explosion), Wind of Music (Quick Prep, Melody Increase, Wind of Protection), Prelude of Storm (Tripods: Quick Prep, Wide-Angle Attack, and Powerful Prelude), Stigma (Tripods: Sustain Enhancement, Pain Brand, and Brilliant Stigma), Soundholic (Tripods: Sound Concentration, Focus Fire, and Sustain Enhancement), Sonic Vibration (Tripods: Tenacity, Chain Vibration, and Wide-Angle Attack), Heavenly Tune (Tripods: Quick Preparation, Intense Tune, and Tough Tune), Guardian Tune (Tripods: Mind Enhancement and Endless Protection).

The best Engravings for PvE content would be Desperate Salvation, Awakening, Expert, Max HP Increase, Expert, and Spirit Absorption. Also, the best Awakening skill to go for is Symphonia. Your main debuff skills here are Sound Shock and Stigma, while Wind of Music is your main shielding skill. You can check out this YouTube video for the most powerful Bard build for PvE content.

Conclusion

When it comes to playing as a support party, no class does it better than the Bard. While their squishiness may be a major problem when playing solo, you should be able to survive with the plethora of buffs they have in their arsenal. If you need the complete Bard Guide for Lost Ark, you need to read this.