Lost Ark Best Bard Support Build | RPGStash

Lost Ark Best Bard Support Build

Bard in Lost Ark is ranged support that uses a harp to summon sacred songs from heaven to provide their teammate damage buffs, shields, and damage reductions. Aside from Paladin and Artist, this is the squishiest support class in the game that requires decent mechanical skills and perfect awareness during the raid. It's because good support ensures the survivability of their raid party members and helps the DPS class deal more damage to the enemy. This can only be achieved by properly timed damage buffs during a DPS window and consistent sustains (shields and heals) whenever the boss executes a destructive pattern. In this guide, I'll discuss the best support build for Bard.

Raid Skill Build for Bard in Lost Ark

Note: Make sure to prioritize this tripods when you reached the iLvL 1445 since this will be your primary gauge generator.

Identity Skill

Before we get into the gameplay of how to play a bard, you must understand how the bard's identity skill works. This skill is a class-specific ability that can provide (X) heals or (Z) big damage buff. Before you can cast your identity skill to your teammate, you must fill up the gauge called 'bubble.' The bubbles can be filled thrice and boost the effect of these skills:

Seranade of Courage: This is the damage buff that gives your ally a huge boost in the battle. This is fairly effective when you have 2-3 bubbles.

Desperate Salvation: This is an AoE skill that heals you and your ally for 14-24 seconds, depending on the bubbles you spend on this skill. You usually save your bubbles for the damage buff and only heal if needed.

Gameplay

• Your Heavenly Tune and Sonic Vibration are your primary buff skills and don't stack together. Remember to be mindful of your skill rotations for the maximum damage uptime.
• Your Wind of Music is your primary shielding skill for your party members and generates a fair amount of serenade meter. You can use this skill whenever you're both near your DPS and the boss. Also, you can combine it with your Prelude of Storm, which generates a serenade meter.
• Guardian Tune is best paired with Heavenly Tune since it provides a consistent damage reduction buff and a shield once the damage reduction expires. This is a pretty good skill to spam since this will give you and your raid party space and survivability.
• Sound Shock applies a debuff on the boss that increases damage done by 10%. If you're using the conviction judgment rune combo, put the Conviction Rune on this skill. At the same time, put Judgment Rune on your Sonic Vibration.
• Rhapsody of Light is your emergency skill whenever your team is in a bad situation. This is an AoE skill that provides a 70% damage reduction buff.
• Soundholic is your DPS skill and is especially useful for stagger checks in the raid.
• Rhapsody of Light, Sonic Vibration, and Guardian Tune have a Tenacity tripod, which means you would have a push immunity buff that denies some deadly boss attacks.

Stats Priority

Bards only need Swiftness and Specialization combat stats. Swiftness improves your skill cooldown, movement, and casting speed, while specialization improves your serenade meter and buff efficiency. Choosing which stats to focus on is a matter of preference, and both provide equal advantages:

Swiftness Build: This is the easiest build to master since you can spam your skills and won't mind your skill rotation while fighting the boss. This is the most popular build since this is the beginner-friendly build among the two.

Specialization Build: You can easily farm your gauge with this build, and it can provide bigger heals and damage buffs than the Swiftness class. However, this build is not pug friendly since you need good timing whenever you cast your buffs.

Engravings for Bard

Engravings provide benefits that will dictate your playstyle as support. Below are the recommended engravings for support.

Mandatory

Desperate Salvation: This is your class engraving that improves your identity healing skill by 24%.

Awakening: This is a must-have engraving since this will reduce the cooldown of your awakening skill: Symphonia. Symphonia allows you to provide a massive shield and also gives you 1 bar of Serenade meter.

Expert: This engraving boosts your shield and healing effectiveness by 25%.

Other Engravings

Heavy Armor: Since bards are squishy, this is the best 4th engraving to focus on since this will provide you 100% defense.

Drops of Ether: This is a viable 5th engraving option since you will be leaving orbs that can provide random buffs like increased damage, better critical rate, movement speed, and defense.

Max MP Increase: This is quite useful for Swiftness Bard, which runs out of mana.

Spirit Absorption: This is the best engraving for specialization class since this will provide an extra 15% Atk./Move Speed by 15%.

Vital Point Hit: This can be swapped with Drop of Ether if you want to deal more stagger damage to lethal stagger checks in Kakul Saydon and Brelshaza Raid.

Conclusion

Bards are for players with active playstyle whenever playing as DPS or Support. They are squishy compared to the Paladin but provide top-tier damage and defense buff uptime. If you liked this guide stay tuned for more class-specific guides.

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