Bard - PvP Build
- Great AoE Healing
- Easy to Play
- Great Buffs
- Great Mobility
- Squishy
- Can be boring to play
Overview
This Bard PVP build focuses on managing CC and providing CC against enemies for your team to capitalize on and take down quickly. However, the Bard also offers incredible buffs for the team alongside strong AOE heals and sustain alongside movement speed increase and mana regeneration. The Bard is truly the center of any PVP party regardless of group size.
Skills
Feel free to ignore Skill unlocking order as there are too many different situations where you might need different skills at different levels depending on the content you do.
Instrument Flute is just as good of a choice as 
Instrument Drum or 
Instrument Fiddle. There is no difference so choose whatever you like and don't mind hearing the entire time you play.
- Depending on what group you have, you want to swap betwee
Pensive Melody and 
Menacing Melody if you have two bards or more in the party/raid during PVP scenarios. You want to speak with the other bards and see if they want to play Pensive Melody or Menacing Melody. Additionally, you can also test out 
Cathartic Melody to add lifesteal to group members and make it so they heal themselves, helping a lot with group/raid sustain during PVP. 
Mesmerizing Dance is another very powerful skill if you are in a very aggressive PVP group as it stuns enemies affected by Stagger but require you to be close. This can be swapped in if you are playing Bard aggressively and have plenty of bards using 
Nimble Dance.
Equipment
The Greatsword is fine but you can also pick 
Glorybound Laurelbound Great Mace as a very good weapon.
for You can use Graveplate set instead of Sunbastion to have an easier time gearing up as Sunbastion has high requests to craft. You can also replace the Rosethorn pieces with Seafoam. 
Anchorite's Stole is another good option if you can find it and afford early but make sure to still get 5 pieces heavy.
Weapons
Stamina
As a Bard, avoid investing in 
Sustained Guard first, as you typically rely on skills like 
Flourish to stay mobile rather than blocking. Your main strategy focuses on dodging and sprinting. Start by prioritizing 
Escape Velocity to increase your sprinting speed in combat (default key **C**). This is crucial later on, helping you kite enemies during cooldowns or quickly escape danger.
Next, put points into 
Recuperation Training and Evasive Maneuver to boost your dodge evasion rate. These upgrades also unlock 
Springstep, which improves your mobility by increasing your dodge distance.
Finally, allocate any leftover points to **Guard Training** to reduce stamina costs when blocking (default key **E**). Adding 
Mental Fortification can also be helpful, as it lowers your chance of being crowd-controlled (CC’d) while blocking, which can be useful in certain situations.
Rotations
- This is the main rotation you should use when PVPing and trying to keep a group alive throughout the fight while also offering large amounts of buffs and denying enemies that may try to push in.
- Start with Pensive Melody to gain good mana regen for yourself and your party before using Flourish to increase
Shielding Dance range, healing and shielding your team as they deal damage. Follow up with 
Anthem of Alacrity (AOE) to boost their damage before using Nimble Dance to constantly remove debuffs from your group, greatly improving group overall EHP (effective health points) as enemies can no longer keep debuffs active on your team.
- Use
Lovely Serenade (AOE) to further heal your party before using 
Hymn of the Mind (AOE) & Pensive Melody to restore your party's mana and make it easier for them to keep the pressure on.
- This rotation requires Mesmerizing Dance or help from party members. There are two ways of doing this catch rotation as well.
- Start with
Chilling Lament to slow down the enemy followed by Mesmerizing Dance to lock them down and 
Fierce Wit once two debuffs are close to ending, tripping them for extra CC.
- While this setup requires some skill changes, it is very strong for moving around with the group, helping with quick movement on the battlefield while other parties might be much slower than you as you can move about as fast as mounts. Use
Epic Melody and 
Fortissimo to boost movement speed then use Flourish on cooldown. Make sure to sprint the whole time too as Epic Melody offers Stamina Regen.
- Use this rotation to boost party and your own damage while also placing down an AOE flame field that does constant damage. Just like the other
Saga combos, you want to use your skills in the right order. Start with 
Conflict to get the first buff, increasing power then use 
Chaos to increase Critical Chance for both yourself and your party members. Once the Conflict cooldown is over, use it again before using Saga to trigger The Apocalypse.
- This is the support Saga rotation, being an effective way of healing up the entire party. Start with
Triumph to increase Max Health and Stamina regeneration before using 
Joy to apply temporary extra max health. Once ready, use Triumph again before using Flourish to apply Pep to all party members. Finally, use Saga to both heal and apply the Glee buff, improving follow-up healing.
- This is normally a desperate move to help the party regain mana. You want to get 3 blue buff stacks before using Saga to buff allies and make it so when they do regular hits, they regain mana. The most important part however is to let your party know in chat that Saga is up. Saying "Saga" in party chat is normally enough for people to understand, but you might have to explain how it works first. In PVP this isn't normally needed as you need to have your party hit something to build up mana, but you can use it if really needed eventhough your shotcaller would normally wait for the regular mana regen using Pensive Melody and Fortissimo.
Marionette: This is the perfect skill for self-peeling and to deny enemies from bursting you down. In small scale PVP, Marionette can be used to stunlock a target and make it easy for your team to channel powerful abilities like 
Snipe or 
Lightning Strike uninterrupted, bursting down the enemy with ease.
Clever Retort: Your main interrupt skill, this skill is used to interrupt channeling enemies like Mages using Lightning Strike or Rangers using Snipe.
