Bard Mastery: The Most Misunderstood Support Class

The Bard Mastery: The Most Misunderstood Support Class

Table of Contents

• About me
• Build
• Bard Core Build
• Core Engravings
• Skills
• Guardian Tune
• Rhapsody of Light
• Serenade Bubble - A misunderstanding about the DPS Meter and 'Uptime'
• Spec?
• Bard’s #1 Downside
• Conclusion

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If you are new to support, please refer to Nexus’s new player guide:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kSW7RwOU3XozHwkqqf4Z95OABIxTN593MwxQjT9mcK

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About me

Hi, I'm Cracine, an NAW player from Australia. I’ve played the game a lot throughout the years and felt like Bard was one of the most misunderstood classes so I felt like I should write down my thoughts about the class.

Here are some of my achievements, for credibility:

• Demon’s Roar (Deathless Inferno Valtan)
• Addicted to Delight (Deathless Inferno Vykas)
• Mayhem Shadow (Deathless Inferno Kakul-Saydon)
• Phantom Monarch (Deathless Inferno Brelshaza)
• Lightning Dragon Slayer (First Clear Caliligos in NAW)
• Thaemine The First (First Clear NAW)

I hope you gain some insight from my writings. I originally wrote this document as a guide, but later just decided to write my thoughts about the class. You can skip the Engravings section, maybe check out Drops/Explosive as I have some neat insight.

Build

!Bard Build Screenshot

Bard Core Build

I only put 6 skills. The last two should be chosen flexibly depending on the raid.

Core Engravings:

• Magick Stream
• The Adrenaline of supports - Magick Stream is 20% Mana Regen and 10% CDR at Relic.
• The Relic Book is +3% CDR, so it is the most important to get.
• Casting skills give you a stack, and it caps at 10 stacks. It is important to stack Magick Stream before entering the raid so you can start with 10% CDR.

Awakening

Expert

Flex Engravings:

• Heavy Armor
• 106% Defense at relic level. It’s important to survive on support since dying is fatal for the raid.
• Support’s also have less mandatory engravings so you can fit Heavy Armor without losing anything critical. If the engraving would save you once in a long prog, it is well worth it.
• Vital Hit Point
• 37% Stagger Increase. If a raid needs stagger, then bringing Vital Hit Point (VPH) is very potent in improving the clear rate.
• Make sure to run Sound Shock + VPH, as a percentage increase, it’s important to have a strong baseline stagger that you can multiply. Bard’s stagger is very loaded into Sound Shock, so if you don’t run it, you have no stagger at all even if you run VPH.
• Bard has the strongest stagger out of the three supports if you have the correct build.
• Note that Vital Hit Point also scales whirlwind grenade, so be sure to bring it if needed.
• Drops of Ether
• This engraving provides minor damage buffs through producing ethers on the ground. There are 5 ethers, Wind Orb (Movespeed), Defense Orb (Defense), Mana Orb (Instant Mana), Strength Orb (Attack Power), Flash Orb (Crit Rate).
• The efficacy of this engraving is a little poor. In most contexts, splitting orbs between 4 people means the performance is quite bad.
• I used DPS meter to see the average uptime of the orbs and it mainly translates to a 0-1.5% dmg increase for classes that can’t utilise the crit and 0-3% dmg for classes that can.
• It’s quite overrated but if you solely care about doing more damage, then it’s one of the only options.
• Max MP Increase
• Bard as a class needs to deal with a caveat of mana. This engraving is one option, but definitely not mandatory. It’s mainly if you don’t want to deal with the cost of eating food, or you need to drop Conviction + Judgement for something like Overwhelm runes.
• Explosive Expert
• Explosive Expert gives +5 Dark Grenades at Relic level.
• This engraving is not bad and is comparable to Drops of Ether. In some contexts it is stronger, namely, the fight needs to last long enough for everyone to run out of darks, but short enough to not diminish the value of your extra darks. Overall, it translates to similar damage to Drops of Ether, but usually performs slightly better.
• In a 20 minute raid, it’s a 1.5-2% dmg increase but also buffs the other team.
• Crisis Evasion
• Crisis Evasion has poor perception and is associated with bad players but it is far from it. Unless you are confident in your ability to die 0 times across an important prog, it is effective in increasing clear rate. Your survivability on support is very important, as dying effectively ruins the run and causes a restart. I would definitely recommend crisis during progression when first doing a new raid.
• At relic level the cooldown is 8 minutes, which can save you multiple times in a long fight.

Skills

Heavenly Tune (1/2/1)

Please take Courageous Tune on Bard. Possibly due to unfamiliar wording, there is a poor understanding of this tripod. This tripod translates to 35.4% DR (Damage Reduction). It also has many other upsides like:

• Raid Wide, DRing both teams
• Stacking with other forms of DR due to being a separate multiplier (AP Reduction)
• Can reduce damage from grabs where DR is ineffective - players that are grabbed by certain patterns can’t receive DR, but reducing boss damage works.
• Comparing Sunsketch, Heavenly Blessing and Heavenly Tune, Bard’s AP DR is:
• Highest Efficacy, At 35.4% DR, Artist is 35%, and Pally is 20%.
• Longest Duration, due to Courageous Tune lasting 9 seconds whereas the others last 8 seconds.
• Lowest Cooldown, due to Heavenly Tune having a Quick Prep Tripod. With 1850 swift, lvl 8 gem, relic magick, luminary, it translates to a 10 second cooldown, whereas Artist’s Sunsket ch is 11.25 seconds and Heavenly Blessing is 15.01 seconds.
• This means it has extremely good uptime, at 89.96%, whereas the others are a lot lower in comparison.
• However, do note that you must land the skill on the boss to apply AP reduction. It’s a caveat for how strong the skill is, and skilled Bards will always ensure it lands.
• The alternative tripod to courageous tune that most people take is Tough Tune, giving 8% Attack Speed. However, the skill at base already gives 8% Attack Speed:

Bard has the highest attack speed uptime out of all the supports, even without Tough

Tune.

At 1690+, the amount of players not running Courageous Tune is illegal, and it doesn’t make sense considering Artist’s Tripod is taken more, with worse DR, Duration and that it only affects 1 team.

Bard:

Artist:

Wind of Music

Wind of Music gives 30% Shield for 4 seconds. It also has a quick prep on the first row, increasing the uptime noticeably.

It is the same shield strength and duration as Hopper, and has lower cooldown due to quick prep for the first tripod.

There is an alternate tripod on the last row. Superspeed Cast (commonly called “WomWom” or “Bwong Bwong" for the sound it makes), which removes the shield but increases gauge generation. A lesser known downside of this tripod is that it increases the base cooldown by 6 seconds.

Due to this cooldown increase, the gauge generation of this tripod is a lot less than most players think. The best metric to value this at is the gauge generated per second.

The DPS meter can track these values and tell you the exact amount generated.

With 1 bubble being 10000 gauge, these are the values of each individual skill with 0 spec and no runes. The image above shows that Prelude generates 1495 gauge for one cast, Shield WoM is 844 and WoMWoM is 2028. However, the most important metric is meter/sec, as WoMWoM is 2.5 seconds longer due to the tripod.

At worst, if you hypothetically only had two skills, prelude and WoM, WoMWoM is only around 21.77% more gauge. As you add gauge generation from other skills, the difference gets smaller and smaller.

This compares the two differences between meta builds for shield WoM and WoMWoM. A big caveat of shield WoM is that you need to press it more often due to the lower cooldown. A 1 second buffer was added to all the cooldowns to lessen the impact. Overall, it still shows that WoMWoM is only around a 11-15% gauge increase for the overall build.

If WoMWoM is 15% more gauge, if you were to heal (1 bubble) every 6 bubbles (e.g. 2x 3 bars), where running Shield WoM would mean you didn’t have to heal - Then there was no purpose to WoMWoM, it is objectively worse and now you’re down a shield.

The amount of gauge increased is not worth the loss in shield. You should only play WoMWoM if you are specifically looking to push highest damage in a parse run of some kind.

Rhapsody of Light

Out of the three supports, Rhapsody is the strongest by far.

Rhapsody is:

• Lowest Cooldown
• Lingers the Longest (3 seconds) whereas Artist is 2 seconds and Paladin is 1 second.
• Fundamentally, using Rhapsody is different compared to the other two supports. You have to proactively use Rhapsody similar to a shielding skill. Artist and Paladin have to hold the skill more as it is critical DR and an important pattern may come so it should not be wasted.
• However, Bard has Guardian Tune as backup critical DR.

Guardian Tune

Guardian Tune is the second best skill in the game after Heavenly Tune. Most players use the Endless Protection tripod on the 2nd row (X/1/X).

The skill at base gives 30% DR for 8 seconds, and Endless gives a 20% shield for 8 seconds after it ends. I recommend most players to take Endless, as it’s easy to use - just use it off cooldown.

However, I prefer Powerful Protection (X/2/X). It gives 26% more DR to the skill, totalling 56% DR. This is insane effective HP, and it becomes a pseudo rhapsody that is unconditional (you can’t miss). You do need to change how you play though, it has to be actively used as DR, similar to rhapsody.

You can see the Effective HP table below. If you had 300,000 HP. GT increases it to 681,818. This is effectively invincible for many patterns, and it becomes a pseudo invincible to save your life. If you pressed it off cooldown, it would be 64% uptime. For perspective, 64% of the raid you have the same effective HP as Awakening/Symphonia.

If you run this bigger DR, it’s critical that you don’t stack Rhapsody and GT. The DR does not stack, and the highest is used. If you alternate Rhapsody and GT you can permanently keep your team’s effective HP between 650,000 and 1,200,000. It takes a while to get into the understanding that GT makes your team effectively invincible, and getting into the habit of not stacking them is crucial, to avoid being punished for having nothing.

Even if you aren’t full HP, it still beats shielding options by a lot until you are very low, at which point every player would use a potion.

For visualisation purposes, with GT, this is what your effective HP would look like if the game showed it.

Effective HP Analysis of all the supports

Assuming that the support and DPS receiving shields/DR has 300k HP. These are the values of the defensive skills on support.

Across the board, the DR options in the game provide way higher effective HP than shielding options.

Notably:

• Wind of Music has better uptime than Hopper, due to having a lower cooldown, the shield strength and duration are the same.
• Heavenly Tune has the strongest AP DR across the three supports.
• Guardian Tune provides insane effective HP.

One caveat of DR vs shields is that shields protect your HP whereas DR doesn’t prevent HP loss. However, in Lost Ark, when the game is most difficult (namely, during hard progs), fundamentally, you die/restart to patterns that one shot you/deal critical damage. Namely, Thaemine G3/G4, Act 2 and Act 3 all have critical patterns that deal major damage. Very rarely do you get chipped to death/run out of pots. That design has only existed for Akkan/Kakul, where shields were quite effective.

In comparison to a Bard with WoM shield (which has similar/better efficacy than Hopper), Artist has 3 more shield sources, Sprinkle, Fading Sunlight, and Illusion Portal.

Sprinkle is quite poor in real raid, on paper the shielding and uptime is quite good, but across all the logs I’ve seen, the real-raid application of the shield is quite bad due to how the skill works.

Ignore the numbers on the skills in this image as it varies for each player and their team. I’m mainly using this image to show the effectiveness of Sprinkle.

Also you can see that the shielding of the rest of the class is minimal. The only shielding Artist has over Bard is Illusion Door + Fading Sunlight, and you can check other people’s dps logs to see that it is not very impactful. Illusion Door is roughly a ~60k shield, and Fading Sunlight is ~40k. Both are at a pitiful ~30-35% uptime, and you can easily get one shot through these shields.

How to cycle AP correctly (you are doing it wrong)

On Bard, using AP is fundamentally different to Artist and Paladin.

It is important to Heavenly ASAP off cooldown, this is more Mana, more DR, more ATK speed, and more unconditional AP.

• Start with Heavenly Tune, and then use Sonic Vibration when Heavenly Tune has a 6 second cooldown. It’s important to Sonic a little early so you can click Heavenly off cooldown without losing any AP uptime.
• Though, throughout a real raid, you’ll need to be flexible with Heavenly Tune, it’s important to create a buffer with Sonic Vibration so you aren’t put in a situation where you’re forced to Heavenly during a bad pattern that can paralyse/cancel your Heavenly Tune.

Fundamentally:

• Heavenly Tune off cooldown.
• At earliest, Sonic Vibration at a 6 second cooldown on Heavenly Tune, at latest, Sonic Vibration when Heavenly Tune has 1 second duration.
• With a Conviction/Judgement proc + really high level gear, you can Heavenly Tune -> Heavenly Tune.
• In real raid, it’s possible that you’ll be put in a spot where Heavenly Tuning instantly could drop some AP uptime (due to overlapping). This happens if you had to delay your Heavenly often due to patterns, which desyncs your Sonic Vibration. At worst case, you Heavenly when Sonic Vibration has a 7 second cooldown.

Team Mana - Providing for Mana for your team

As mentioned above, over clicking Heavenly Tune provides more mana for your team.

Despite that, at base, most Bard players provide less mana than the other supports.

In terms of mana gained in 1 minute, Artist is 6367, Bard is 4171 and Pally (with 60% Aura) is 4637.

However, Bard can take a Leap tree node called Unending Inspiration, which improves the mana generation significantly to 5692. The alternative is Rhapsody of Abundance, which gives 0.3 bubbles per Aria. The meter generation on this is not that high considering the cooldown, and it is definitely valid to take the mana if the party needs it. I personally don’t use Unending Inspiration, but keep it in the back of your mind if you have teammates that need more mana.

Self Mana - Fixing your Mana issues

Bard has to deal with the caveat of Mana in some form.

However, Max MP Increase is not mandatory.

Personally, I recommend eating 24% mana food and going Standing Striker rather than MP furnace as the Brand Power loss is extremely marginal. I also use 1 Focus rune on Guardian Tune, and Conviction/Judgement on Harp/Sonic Vibration. This setup does not run out of mana at all. If you find yourself running out of mana, you aren’t clicking heavenly enough, or are overclicking harp.

If you don’t want to eat food then Max MP is perfectly fine.

Stagger

Bard has the best stagger out of the three supports. However, most of Bard’s stagger is loaded into Sound Shock.

Considering the cooldown of the skill, Sound Shock does insane stagger/second. It is better than Paladin in long staggers, but worse in short staggers. However, even middle length staggers, Bard is still extremely effective depending on the amount of soundshocks you can fit.

There is nothing wrong with Soundholic if you need it to clear the raid. If the raid requires a difficult stagger like Thaemine 4-2 210x or Voldis, then it’s perfectly fine to bring Soundholic. At that point, Bard is uncontested highest stagger, and performs extremely well for burst staggers.

Utility and Solo Soundshock

It is perfectly valid to take utility skills over double brand when the raid needs it. Solo Soundshock is fine and you can have good numbers while taking a utility skill like Buckshot or Soundholic. In a raid that requires counter like Trial Hanumatan, or a raid that requires a tough stagger like Thaemine 4-2 210x, it is fine to go solo Soundshock, and it is not as crippling as most people think.

Here is an example of my uptimes with Solo Soundshock + Soundholic + WoM Shield.

In Brel NM G2, just to prove a point, solo Soundshock + Soundholic + Shield WoM. 3 Bars only so 92%, 87%, 85.2% Moonfall Equivalent.

All of these logs have a T3 Lvl 7 Soundshock gem, T4 Lvl 8 Heavenly Tune with the rest being T4 Lvl 5.

This is an Aegir G1 bus (before the advertising ban). Aegir is a fight where you get inflated numbers due to DR mechs, however, do keep in mind that this was in February before Karma, so the fight is decently long (13 minutes), which means it’s not as inflated as your typical Aegir G1s.

Note that many people did the build during Thaemine release and Trial Hanumatan and also got good uptimes.

Serenade Bubble - A misunderstanding about the DPS Meter and ‘Uptime’

In T4, you should mostly be doing 3 bubble buffs.

Back in T3, you should flexibly do 2 bubble or 3 bubble since doing only 3 bubble would over generate meter and waste gauge.

However, in T4, we have 4 bubbles, and it’s no longer wasting gauge to use 3 bubble.

Fundamentally, 3 bubble is highest damage, the only time you would 2 bar is:

• You would lose uptime on 3 bubble if you had to build it and then send it, due to a mech.
• It’s a critical mech where many DPSes have high uptime and it’s important to have a buff.

On the DPS meter, 50% Serenade has a lot higher efficacy than 50% Moonfall.

50% Serenade on one player can also be more effective than 50% Serenade on a different player.

This is the case due to a misunderstanding about the meter.

The % on the DPS meter is:

On the DPS player, the % of their damage which had the buff.

Despite there being a slight difference between actual buff uptime and the % ‘uptime’ on the Meter, it does have a correlation.

This table shows that you have the highest ‘uptime’ doing 1 bubble buff. However, the ‘uptime’ doesn’t correctly demonstrate the actual damage that is provided.

This means you can inflate your meter by doing 1 bubble or even 2 bubble.

Note that there are other stats in the game that affect bubble damage, like Ally DMG on rings/bracelet or identity gem. These would affect all the supports the same though, just look at the damage relative.

The meter doesn’t represent the increased damage that the buff provides. Paladin also has more spec scaling than the other two, which compensates for their lower uptime. However, due to Bard’s 3 bubble, they are ahead by a noticeable amount.

A Bard having 50% 3 Bubble Uptime translates to → ~63% Blessed Aura OR ~74% Moonfall

Even with defensive options, Bard still provides the highest damage due to the power of 3 bubble. The % on the meter doesn’t properly indicate its efficacy.

Spec?

Spec is fine in reclear, especially in short raids like Echidna/Aegir or even Act 2 if the lobby is strong. It sometimes isn’t higher damage if the raid has a lot of uptime due to diminished T skill cooldown. It also depends on your uptime, losing AP uptime is never worth it, and is almost always less damage.

In hard raids/progs, or if you want to be more defensive in reclears, then always Full Swift, for more DR/Shield/Unconditional AP/Mana etc.

Bard’s #1 Downside

Bard’s biggest downside is that it’s difficult.

On Bard, most players gets these things wrong:

• They get Heavenly Tune cancelled. The lack of Para Immune is a trade off for how insanely strong the skill is.
• They do not over click Heavenly Tune, you need to press it more than Sonic so you can get more Mana, ATK speed, DR, unconditional AP.
• They do not land Heavenly Tune on the boss to apply AP reduction from Courageous Tune.
• They do not proactively click Rhapsody, and it’s important to click it often.
• They do not think about positioning for Wind of Music.
• They build incorrectly, especially the lack of Courageous Tune.
• They refuse to build utility when the raid needs it. You still have the highest bubble/damage/DR when going Soundshock or Soundholic or Buckshot.
• They do not press buttons off cooldown. One of Bard’s biggest strengths is Quick Prep in the correct areas (Heavenly, WoM, Rhapsody) which translates to lower cooldowns, especially compared to the other supports.

Thank you for reading my insights. I mainly wrote this document to provide some insights into why people don’t like playing with Bard. It’s commonly denoted as the worst support, and in my opinion, is largely misunderstood. In the right hands, I think it is the strongest by far.

How this document is structured and notes

• The document contains extensive discussions on engravings, skill sequencing, mana management, and DPS meter interpretation.
• It includes several images and tables comparing shield vs DR, gauge generation, and effective HP.
• It emphasizes that Bard can outperform other supports with correct optimization and mindset.

Credits

• Thesis author: Cracine
• For further questions, refer to the Nexus new player guide linked at the top.

Endnotes

• The content reflects practical raid scenarios and discusses real-game uptimes and DPS meter interpretations.

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Visual references (captions)

• The Bard Core Build screenshot demonstrates skill slots and engravings setup.
• Engravings comparison image shows Courageous Tune vs Tough Tune, and other DR options with uptime metrics.
• Gauge generation comparisons illustrate Prelude vs WoM and WoMWoM through meters per second.
• Effective HP analysis image summarizes the DPDR values across supports.
• Serenade Bubble and AP uptime visualizations explain 3-bubble effectiveness.

Effective HP and gauge visuals explained

• The charts emphasize that DR options deliver higher effective HP than pure shields in many hard progs.
• Guardian Tune offers strong defensive uptime, while Rhapsody of Light remains the strongest among the trio in practice due to cooldown and uptime advantages.

Special notes on playstyle and pacing

• AP uptime and buffer management between Heavenly Tune and Sonic Vibration is crucial to avoid desyncs.
• The decision to use Guardian Tune with Endless or Powerful Protection depends on team needs and fight patterns.
• The debate on Serenade uptime versus 4-bubble DPS should be grounded in actual boss mechanics and mechs rather than raw meter values.

Conclusion

Bard’s role as a support can be misunderstood; with the right engraving choices, skill timing, and team coordination, Bard can be the strongest by maximizing uptime, DR, and swarm utility. The author emphasizes practical, data-backed approaches to AP cycling, mana management, and progs, and encourages flexible builds tuned to raid context.