Bard - Leveling Build
- Great AoE DPS
- Easy to Play
- Great Utility
- Good Self and Group Heal
- Squishy
Overview
This Leveling Bard Build focuses on leveling alone through the use of multiple AOE abilities that make it much easier to push through the leveling part of Ashes of Creation while still remaining a very useful Support build that can heal itself and others when and if you'd rather play in a group, offering great buffs for everyone while also being easy to play.
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 grinding mobs and AOE farming in order to level up quickly. Either while in a group or solo, this rotation works well in both cases.
- Once you've gathered mobs together using your auto-attacks, the first skill you use should be
Cathartic Melody. This allows you to heal up while doing damage with your following abilities and the song plays throughout the use of other abilities. Next, use 
Maddening Dance to deal AOE damage to all mobs around you before following up with 
Get Off The Stage after stacking mobs together close enough for Get Off The Stage to hit all mobs but also debuff them.
- Finally, use
Fierce Wit to deal fire damage when using 
Quick Wit on the same mobs. Finish off whatever remaining mobs with 
Discordance.
- This simple rotation is used for single target DPS when fighting a mob alone. However, you should also use Flourish to help with kiting when needed.
- Use Discordance first to deal some initial damage and stagger the mob before using Get Off The Stage to trip the mob and making it incapable of attacking. Debuff the target futher with Fierce Wit, tripping them before continuing damaging the CC'd mob with Maddening Dance. Use Quick Wit two times then use
Dark Lullaby to deal high damage thanks to the many debuffs applied to the mob.
