Tier 4 Bard Build Guide

Welcome to the Tier 4 Bard Build Guide! Bard is one of the Support classes in Lost Ark. Your role revolves around providing your party with various damage buffs, as well as keeping them safe through Shields, Damage Reduction, and Heals. This becomes relatively easy with Bard since she has many super armor skills that allow her to effectively support no matter the situation.

Outside of that, Bard provides a bonus Counter, and Destruction, to the party. Her Stagger and Counter can be a bit lackluster, but this can easily be improved with a few build changes. Your class engraving Desperate Salvation further improves your healing with Serenade of Salvation (X) making it more impactful.

Raids

Kurzan Front

Ark Passive

Notes

• If you run into significant MP issues, you can consider switching MP Furnace with Standing Striker or Stable Manager.

Skills Setup

• Heavenly Tune and Sonic Vibration are your Attack Power buffs.
• Harp of Rhythm and Sonatina are your Brand skills from Note Brand - you can consider this to be your Synergy if you are familiar with the term.
• Rhapsody of Light is your main damage reduction skill that also provides a shield.
• Wind of Music is your best shield that also provides meter generation.
• Guardian Tune is one of your additional shielding and damage reduction skills.
• Prelude of Storm is your Counter as well as your largest meter generation.
• Symphonia is your Awakening. It generates 1 bar and provides a large shield to your party.

Alternative Skill, Tripod, and Rune Options

Rhapsody of Light can be swapped for Rhythm Buckshot, using Melody Increase, Tenacity, Agile Cast, and Galewind.

• This will cost you your Damage Reduction, it should only really be taken if you are struggling with normal patterns as your main Counter Prelude of Storm will be used constantly to generate meter.

Sonatina can be swapped for Sound Shock, using Maintained Explosion, Sacred Shock, Rapid Fire, and an Overwhelm.

• This will cost you some meter generation and Destruction but can greatly help with Stagger.

Heavenly Tune

• Tough Tune - Will lose some increased defense, but grant more Attack Speed to your party, a great option for experienced content and specific compositions.

Guardian Tune

• Agile Cast - Will speed up the animation, a great way to increase the fluidity of your rotation once you learn boss patterns.
• Mind Enhancement - Significantly reduces mana cost, making this easier to consistently use if you are struggling with mana problems.
• Agile Defense - Significantly increases the uptime of your shielding by allowing you to weave in Wind of Music between the gaps. This is a great option once you become comfortable with the class and have the mana to sustain it.

Ark Passive

Skills Setup

• Heavenly Tune is your self-buff skills that also provides a strong area of effect for clearing mobs.
• Sonatina, Soundholic, and Prelude of Storm will be your best skills for dealing with elites.
• Stigma, Sonatina, Sonic Vibration, and Prelude of Death are amazing skills for clearing mobs.
• Oratorio is your Awakening. It is amazing for clearing bosses, elites, and mobs.

Recommended Engravings

• Preemptive Strike
• Contender
• Raid Captain
• Cursed Doll
• Magick Stream

!

Warning

This build is optimized and meant to be used only in Kurzan Front. For Ebony Cube please use a Raid build.

Bard excels at providing high uptime Attack Power and Brand buffs to the entire party, while also having reliable Damage Reduction, Shields, Heals and some contribution to Utility checks.

Her identity functions around building meter to fill bars. These bars will increase the effectiveness of Serenade of Courage (Z) or Serenade of Salvation (X) depending on how many you use.

• Serenade of Courage (Z) provides 5/10/15% increased damage for 8/12/16 seconds. We want to use 2 bars because it has the highest average performance. However, there will be many times when you will have 3 bars and that is fine.
• Serenade of Salvation (X) provides an AOE heal for 4/6/8% of Bard's HP for 8/12/16 times lasting 14/18/24 seconds. Due to her Class Engraving Desperate Salvation we want to only use 1 bar heals for max efficiency.

Bard Identity

Your gameplay revolves around supporting your party through various damage buffs, as well as protecting them from dangerous attacks. Here's a breakdown of how you can fulfill that role. Bard additionally can suffer from severe mana issues, so make sure you are capitalizing on Max MP Increase, Focus runes, food that provides “Combat Resource Recovery” such as [Masterwork] Artisan Garlic Steak Meal, and looking at the tripods you use.

Goddess of Blessings + Passionate Dance

Goddess of Blessings and Passionate Dance act as a replacement for the Yearning Set. However, unlike Yearning, these effects apply in a 25m area around you, removing the need for teammates to stand beside you to receive them. Maintaining these buffs is one of your highest priorities, and they should always be up from the start of the fight until the end.

Attack Power Buffs

This buff allows you to increase your party's Attack Power by 15% of your Attack Power, as well as granting +6% Attack Power overall. It is applied through Heavenly Tune and Sonic Vibration. It is significant to understand that both of these skills apply the same buff, and it does not stack. You should maintain this buff as well as you can throughout the fight, by keeping an eye on your buff bar and alternating between these skills when the buff is about to expire.

Brand

This debuff causes the target to receive +10% Damage from your party. It is applied through Harp of Rhythm and Sonatina. Since Harp of Rhythm is stationary we use our second brand to fill in gaps when the boss moves to maintain more consistent uptime. You should be able to maintain Brand throughout the entire fight by keeping an eye on the enemy's debuff bar and using your Brand.

Identity

Her Identity has two different use cases, which depend on the situation. Remember your Identity will use all of your bars so you always want to be planning what to do depending on the fight. You should only be using Serenade of Salvation (X) when your team is relatively low and only using it at 1 bar due to the previously stated interaction. Serenade of Courage (Z) should be used as much as possible if your team is healthy. You generally want to use 2 bars as it is more efficient on average, but there will be many situations where you can build more meter or have a great burst window lined up. This is where 3 bars can shine and should be used.

Hyper Awakening Technique

Aria is an incredibly powerful buff. When cast, it grants your party +10% Damage for 10 seconds, and +20% Hyper Awakening Damage for 30 seconds. Normally, you should be using this skill as often as possible, but occasionally, you might decide to hold it briefly if a specific window comes up where your teammates would cast their Hyper Awakening Skills. This varies from encounter to encounter, and identifying these windows is crucial to mastering the use of this skill.

Shields, Damage Reduction, Healing

Bard's kit benefits from several ways of protecting your party.

• Guardian Tune - All party members within range receive 30% damage reduction, then when it expires receive a shield for 30% of Bard's HP.
• Rhapsody of Light - All party members inside the area of effect receive a shield for a portion of the Bard's maximum HP for 3 seconds and take -75% incoming damage until the skill ends, or they leave the area.
• Wind of Music - All party members within range receive a shield for 30% of Bard's HP.
• Symphonia - All party members within range receive a shield for 100% of the Bard's maximum HP.

Gems are another significant aspect of your build, as they directly impact the damage and cooldowns of your skills. You can equip up to 11 gems at a time. Here are the ones you should focus on to maximize this build's potential, listed according to their priority.

Engravings are a core part of your build. You can equip up to five at a time, freely swapping between them.

Recommended Setup

• Awakening
• Magick Stream
• Expert
• Heavy Armor
• Max MP Increase

Bracelets provide beneficial effects to yourself or to your party members depending on the rolls they have.

The primary goal is to get the main stats used by this build - Swiftness and Specialization. After that, you should be aiming for Special Rolls to get more damage. Please note that this system is heavily reliant on RNG, and you should not expect to get much more beyond your main stats early on.

The recommended Elixir Set for this build is Luminary.