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
- Instrument Flute is just as good of a choice as Instrument Drum or Instrument Fiddle. There is no real difference between them, the only difference is in the sound coming out when you use singing skills.
Equipment
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 is the support Saga rotation, designed to heal the entire party effectively. Start with Triumph to boost Max Health and Stamina regeneration which is very important in PVP. Follow up with Joy to grant temporary extra Max Health. Use Triumph again when it’s ready, then cast Flourish to apply Pep to all party members you go through. Finish with Saga, which heals the party and applies the Glee buff, enhancing follow-up healing as it can bounce between targets thanks to Merriment.
- 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 physical power then use Chaos to increase Magical 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.
- Similar to The Apocalypse, this rotation will build up and trigger a Saga version that does even more damage. Use Conflict to boost physical power before using Chaos to also increase Magical Crit Chance for both yourself and other party members. Finally, use Destiny as this increases Physical Critical Chance as well. Once you've used all three skills, use Saga to put down an AOE field dealing high damage but also knock back enemies, so make sure to only use this if you don't plan on having the mobs stacked together.
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 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.