The Bard rarely has a place in today’s MMOs. Either you have a cut and dry tank healer and DPS or none of the above. It is exciting to see a Bard come into a modern MMO with the trinity system because we have not seen one for years.
The Bard
“Truly a force multiplier, The Bard weaves songs of glory and conquest, inspiring his allies to ever greater heights. The Bard knows secret and powerful words, is able to speak into being terrible nightmares, or convince foes to become friends.”
The last time we saw a Bard class in an MMO was in Rift. It was indeed the best Bard class you’ve ever played. It uses the traditional rogue mechanic of energy and combo points. However instead of swinging swords and shooting arrows it uses instruments instead to buff and heal the party and raid. It has combo point generators in the form of cadence, spenders in the form of coders, temporary buffs in the form of motifs, permanent buffs in the form of fanfares and shared raid buffs in the form of anthems. Back in the day, playing this Bard was really nice.
The Bard explained by Steve:
Bards are intended to amplify the party or raid’s ability to perform within their own class. The amplification is not just intended for DPS but also for support, healing, for taking damage or movement. Bards have often been portrayed as a musical class, Bard applications may exist in just telling a story. Telling a story is going to be the thematic component of how Bards interact with the party and that story is going to enhance the player’s ability to perform. Very similar, in a way to buffing up a party but you are not going to see him as a buff bot that you might have experienced in previous games. Where they are only good for their buffs and then you kick them at the party and they sit in the corner and come back in 30 minutes.
Bard’s loadout
They clearly state that they don’t want the Bard to just be the class that sits in the back lines and plays a flute. Instead the kind of Bard they are looking to create is a class who is more focused on positioning and debuffing alongside healing their allies. The way they describe it, it feels like they want buffs, debuffs and heals to resonate out of the Bard instead of targeting specific members of your team. Very similar to how it actually works in Rift. Offering more AOE healing and buffs for a short duration at a short to mid range giving the players, playing the Bard, decisions to make based on their positioning in the fight.
Acting and Performance in Combat
Wielding some form of melee weapon allows the Bard to do a performance attack inspiring their allies to do more damage for a short duration. This may mean that healing comes from music skills and buffing comes from performance attacks. Which leaves us with one more type of spell that the Bard can use- wordsmithing. As badass as the phrase wordsmithing sounds, we can only speculate on what we think it means. And if Rift is anything to go by, wordsmithing may be the Bard’s long term or permanent buffs in the form of singing an anthem. Kind of similar to what you’d find in World of Warcarft’s Priest or Paladin’s buffs that are just basically free stats for having a Priest in the raid. Because there is no spell on the wiki for the Bard, the following are predicted abilities we may see from the Bard based on the class from Black Desert online.
Tune – just a simple swipe of the loop, healing allies around the Bard
Drum – being an aggressive sound, drums can be used to deal big AOE damage or crowd control to enemies around the Bard
Flute – buffs allies with movement and attack speed for a short duration whilst channeling your flute
It is hard to guess what could be the main combo for the Bard for generating focus. Whether it will be a simple melee weapon or whether they will have their own special combo to use. Here’s our guesses:
Riff – play your loot at frightening pace towards a foe dealing damage and generating focus to use on your ultimate skills
Fae Disturbance – channel an ominous verse using all your instruments summoning the Fae realm to disrupt the area around the Bard. Dealing damage to enemies and healing allies
SECONDARY ARCHETYPES FOR THE BARD
Mixing with the Cleric, you become a Soul Weaver. Becoming a pure Bard turns you into a Minstrel. Adopting Fighter turns you into a Tellsword. Specializing in Rogue you become a Trickster. Learning the ways of the Mage will grant you the title Magician. Attuning with nature and obtaining the teachings of the Ranger will allow you to become a Song Warden. The teachings of the Summoner will turn you into a Songcaller.
00:00 Intro
00:54 The Wiki Description
01:20 The Bard in Rift
02:14 Steven’s Segment
03:34 Performance, Wordsmithing and Music
05:18 Tune
05:25 Drum
05:34 Flute
05:53 Riff
06:03 Ultimate Skill: Fae Disturbance
06:20 Secondary Archetypes