What's a good bard build nowadays?

[krimsonrane]

About to TR my assassin into a bard. I do a lot of soloing and would like something that can run R2 or so. I was thinking about a Tiefling Scoundrel as the race just to save the time of going from 1-15. Any suggestions? (EDITED. I plan to stay at cap a long while, so endgame is what I'm looking for)

[Bjond]

The Bard sub-forum is pretty active. There are lots of great bards with a wide variety of builds they can discuss. There are melee bards, ranged bards, and caster (shouter) bard builds. They all play differently and which is "best" depends far more on personal taste than anything else.

If you're chasing a Heroic PL for completionist and "just want it over asap", shouters are pretty much as fast as sorcerers for the heroic levels. They just mow everything down all at once (and that was before they were buffed).

[krimsonrane]

The Bard sub-forum is pretty active. There are lots of great bards with a wide variety of builds they can discuss. There are melee bards, ranged bards, and caster (shouter) bard builds. They all play differently and which is "best" depends far more on personal taste than anything else.

If you're chasing a Heroic PL for completionist and "just want it over asap", shouters are pretty much as fast as sorcerers for the heroic levels. They just mow everything down all at once (and that was before they were buffed).

I'll look there. Thanks.

[kmoustakas]

Pure spellsinger can be very good with aoe clearing entire rooms. Just remember to grab the free 100 temp hp from warchanter if you plan to run any reapers

[fatherpirate]

a good bard build?

like pure bard? good luck with that ... lol
jk, not a bard player ... am sure there is something workable out there.

[Hobgoblin]

word of warning, if you tr into an iconic scoundrel and are planning a caster - every single spell you ever cast you play the fiddle sound..... and its so annoying

[Kaliya]

word of warning, if you tr into an iconic scoundrel and are planning a caster - every single spell you ever cast you play the fiddle sound..... and its so annoying

Shocked me the first time, didn't know what was going on. Happens with clickies, scrolls, everything. Rolled a regular ole Tiefling Bard on HCL and missed teh fiddle but TR'd back into Scoundrel and got it back.

Love the fiddle.

[cmckronos]

About to TR my assassin into a bard. I do a lot of soloing and would like something that can run R2 or so. I was thinking about a Tiefling Scoundrel as the race just to save the time of going from 1-15. Any suggestions? (EDITED. I plan to stay at cap a long while, so endgame is what I'm looking for)

The ice/warchanter build with its mix of swashbuckling and fatesinger destiny is still very, very lethal. It wound up being one of the more favorite builds I have played.

[krimsonrane]

The ice/warchanter build with its mix of swashbuckling and fatesinger destiny is still very, very lethal. It wound up being one of the more favorite builds I have played.

Thanks! I'll look it up.
I couldn't find anything I liked out of the 2-3 post u51 builds in the subforum.

[Wizard1406]

The ice/warchanter build with its mix of swashbuckling and fatesinger destiny is still very, very lethal. It wound up being one of the more favorite builds I have played.

The build sounds fun, but isn't this super squishy? Can all mobs be frozen or are some immune? How difficult is it to get your DCs high enough, especially epics and legendary (legendary mobs have super high fort saves!)

[Riffolk]

Just wanted to offer a few thoughts, my main was a PDK 18 Bard/1 Fighter/1 Cleric for a while and I think they make for a solid solo build as well as melee dps and raid buffer.

The build sounds fun, but isn't this super squishy? Can all mobs be frozen or are some immune? How difficult is it to get your DCs high enough, especially epics and legendary (legendary mobs have super high fort saves!)

#1. Warchanter bards have the potential to be moderately tanky thanks to Core 4 temp HP, Uncanny Dodge from Swashbuckler, and self-cast displace and heals.

#2. Reapers cannot be frozen but I usually use Otto Irresistible Dance + Quicken. But IMO most mobs can be frozen including many constructs and undead which resist a number of other forms of CC.

#3. Playing as PDK with Cormyrian Knight Training makes freeze DCs incredibly high (into the 120s on a high investment toon), my CC was landing reliably.

I was thinking about a Tiefling Scoundrel as the race just to save the time of going from 1-15. Any suggestions? (EDITED. I plan to stay at cap a long while, so endgame is what I'm looking for)

Quick note that a lot of the items from the upcoming raid look fantastic for melee bards.
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...-U53-Raid-Loot

If you're flexible on race I'd recommend 3 different options:

1) PDK as mentioned above. (If you don't mind the doofy look).

2) Aasimar Scourge on a toon with many racial AP using light mace (like Mori's Focus from the upcoming raid).
Disgusting crit profile: 15-18 x4, 19-20 x7
While dated, Fivetigers33 R10 bard build still has a lot to offer for insight into high end bard play.
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...20884-R10-Bard

3) Shadar-Kai, given a bard build using a light melee weapon, the new chains attack is fantastic.

Happy to flesh out any of the build ideas above or offer ED/gear suggestions.

[krimsonrane]

Just wanted to offer a few thoughts, my main was a PDK 18 Bard/1 Fighter/1 Cleric for a while and I think they make for a solid solo build as well as melee dps and raid buffer.



#1. Warchanter bards have the potential to be moderately tanky thanks to Core 4 temp HP, Uncanny Dodge from Swashbuckler, and self-cast displace and heals.

#2. Reapers cannot be frozen but I usually use Otto Irresistible Dance + Quicken. But IMO most mobs can be frozen including many constructs and undead which resist a number of other forms of CC.

#3. Playing as PDK with Cormyrian Knight Training makes freeze DCs incredibly high (into the 120s on a high investment toon), my CC was landing reliably.



Quick note that a lot of the items from the upcoming raid look fantastic for melee bards.
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...-U53-Raid-Loot

If you're flexible on race I'd recommend 3 different options:

1) PDK as mentioned above. (If you don't mind the doofy look).

2) Aasimar Scourge on a toon with many racial AP using light mace (like Mori's Focus from the upcoming raid).
Disgusting crit profile: 15-18 x4, 19-20 x7
While dated, Fivetigers33 R10 bard build still has a lot to offer for insight into high end bard play.
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...20884-R10-Bard

3) Shadar-Kai, given a bard build using a light melee weapon, the new chains attack is fantastic.

Happy to flesh out any of the build ideas above or offer ED/gear suggestions.

Thanks Riffolk. I appreciate the advice and offer!

[AlcoArgo]

About to TR my assassin into a bard. I do a lot of soloing and would like something that can run R2 or so. I was thinking about a Tiefling Scoundrel as the race just to save the time of going from 1-15. Any suggestions? (EDITED. I plan to stay at cap a long while, so endgame is what I'm looking for)

Take 1 level of bard and the rest of the levels whatever you like depending on your style of play. Then get a +1 heart of wood and remove the level of bard.

[Kebtid]

There is 2 builds you use.
1 is a mobing build, its built to dish out as much aoe damage as possible, with hard CC and stagger abilities with some movement skills added over your tripods.
2nd is the standard group support build where you focus on shields/buffs and build accordingly.
Hymn disssonance and waittttttt.

You mean in ddo?

Who cares.
Ddo bards are ok in hardcore but thats where their use stops, buffs are severely outdated, their single target dps if melee is garbage, if a caster they dont even remotely compare to real casters.
You can use them as hold bots, but you could do that as sorc and have actual useful dps, better debuffs and..

Bard in ddo is just bottom tier and players playing them are carried by other classes who are in a healthier spot meta wise, literally almost any other class performs better then bards.

TLDR
There are no good bard builds nowadays since the class is extremely out of place meta wise and your best bet is to play a heal/hold bot if you want to contribute.

[dogsoldier]

TLDR
There are no good bard builds nowadays since the class is extremely out of place meta wise and your best bet is to play a heal/hold bot if you want to contribute.

That may have been true regarding caster bards in the past, but it is not true now. Sonic Caster bard is good right now, ever since the divine/bard spell pass https://www.ddo.com/en/update-484-release-notes And the destiny and epic feat support for sonic casters good, better than most. Master of Music is one of the only good Master of feats for instance (boosting Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reverberate). T2 Fatesinger Master the Acoustics, and T4 Very, Very Vocal provide a nice boost to sonic SLAs and Spells.

For caster, either 20 Bard, or 18/2 bard/rogue works well. T5 Spellsinger, T4 Warchanter.

For melee, 15/3/2 Bard/Fighter/Rogue works well. Main tree Warchanter T5, with about 13 points in Swash, 13 Stalwart, rest in Spellsinger. PDK is good for this setup for the cheap 3AP CHA to hit/dmg in the racial tree, plus CHA bonus to tactics for shortswords, longswords, and greatswords. Otherwise, bard gets CHA to dmg in swash, and can pickup CHA to hit from 3AP in Feydark.

[Kebtid]

That may have been true regarding caster bards in the past, but it is not true now. Sonic Caster bard is good right now, ever since the divine/bard spell pass https://www.ddo.com/en/update-484-release-notes And the destiny and epic feat support for sonic casters good, better than most. Master of Music is one of the only good Master of feats for instance (boosting Shout, Greater Shout, Sonic Blast, and Reverberate). T2 Fatesinger Master the Acoustics, and T4 Very, Very Vocal provide a nice boost to sonic SLAs and Spells.

For caster, either 20 Bard, or 18/2 bard/rogue works well. T5 Spellsinger, T4 Warchanter.

For melee, 15/3/2 Bard/Fighter/Rogue works well. Main tree Warchanter T5, with about 13 points in Swash, 13 Stalwart, rest in Spellsinger. PDK is good for this setup for the cheap 3AP CHA to hit/dmg in the racial tree, plus CHA bonus to tactics for shortswords, longswords, and greatswords. Otherwise, bard gets CHA to dmg in swash, and can pickup CHA to hit from 3AP in Feydark.

It depends on content you run. .


For r10 which is my focus, a bard is a good hold/heal bot if you dont have a good druid/sorc/fsoul for tier 1, a good warlock/cleric/alchemist (could be tier 1 with a sting thrower) for t2 and a good artificer caster (good for pushing raid skulls) and bard fits right there in t3. Maybe missed some idk but bard is definitely the lowest tier amongst casters right now.
Bard is fine for low/mid skulls but anything is fine there.
So my idea of good, is optimal in hardest content and useful in hardest content.
Bard is ok, if you have none of the above.

We did extensive dps tests on lama and i play (when i play since ddo is boring lately) purely casters.

It just is not good considering how good every single other class is, the broken sonic proc is better utilized by any other caster anyways and it will be hotfixed anyways.
Being able to get some kills in low/mid skulls as opposed as before relying on broken game features does not mean the class as a caster is good.
Especially since there are other classes that utilize that feature to a greater effect.

[dogsoldier]

The best reaper casters are known on their respective servers, they don't need to go to the forums and brag about their prowess in every forum post. And they play Sorcs, Alchs, Warlocks, Bards, Favored Souls, and Druids. You don't see as many Clerics because Favored Soul does most things better than a Cleric. The only caster that is in a particularly bad spot is Artificer, they just don't have enough good spells/SLAs. Any high reaper party is better with one bard regardless of the rest of the party makeup.

[Scope333]

There is 2 builds you use.
1 is a mobing build, its built to dish out as much aoe damage as possible, with hard CC and stagger abilities with some movement skills added over your tripods.
2nd is the standard group support build where you focus on shields/buffs and build accordingly.
Hymn disssonance and waittttttt.

You mean in ddo?

Who cares.
Ddo bards are ok in hardcore but thats where their use stops, buffs are severely outdated, their single target dps if melee is garbage, if a caster they dont even remotely compare to real casters.
You can use them as hold bots, but you could do that as sorc and have actual useful dps, better debuffs and..

Bard in ddo is just bottom tier and players playing them are carried by other classes who are in a healthier spot meta wise, literally almost any other class performs better then bards.

TLDR
There are no good bard builds nowadays since the class is extremely out of place meta wise and your best bet is to play a heal/hold bot if you want to contribute.

Tell me you know nothing about bards without telling me you know nothing about bards.

[LightBear]

For melee, 15/3/2 Bard/Fighter/Rogue works well. Main tree Warchanter T5, with about 13 points in Swash, 13 Stalwart, rest in Spellsinger. PDK is good for this setup for the cheap 3AP CHA to hit/dmg in the racial tree, plus CHA bonus to tactics for shortswords, longswords, and greatswords. Otherwise, bard gets CHA to dmg in swash, and can pickup CHA to hit from 3AP in Feydark.

For a melee bard, a buckler with guardbreaking is a must.
If you can spare a headpiece, go for a madness item and add Xoriat Madness: Solipsism.

For ranged, fey and inquiv with super high diplo. You'll often diplo an entire room without having to do a single thing, just make your entrance and talk first!

[dogsoldier]

For a melee bard, a buckler with guardbreaking is a must.

Yeah, Guardbreaking is great. The ML5 Feywild Buckler, Hexbreaker has it, plus a red slot, can put a ML4 snowpeaks aug in it for Freezing Ice too, which will apply to main hand as well.