Welcome to our Lost Ark Bard guide! If you’re coming from traditional MMOs, the Bard may not be exactly what you expect. The class is a sub-set of Mage and is Lost Ark’s premium support class, focusing on buffing and healing allies.
Bard is a great pick for anyone looking to play a core support role, allowing you to focus on healing and buffing allies, with two builds highlighting each playstyle. It’s also very desired in-game, so a great pick if you always want a spot in a group.
Bard Leveling Guide
Leveling in Lost Ark is more of a tutorial for the class than anything else and you will have a fairly smooth experience doing just about anything. However, with that being said, there are a few things you can do to optimize your leveling experience.
To maximize damage while leveling, you should focus all your skill points on the following skills:
- Dissonance
- Soundholic
- Stigma
While these are the recommended skills, you can level up with just about anything. As a Bard, make sure to pick the damage skills if you’re leveling solo, but feel free to experiment and try things out with any extra points.
Best Bard PvE Engravings and Stat Priority
Like most classes, the Bard can be split into two builds, based on its class-specific engravings: True Courage and Desperate Salvation. There is a slight difference, however, as both builds can play practically the same engravings and tripods.
True Courage focuses on buffing up allies, increasing their damage and critical strike chance. Meanwhile, Desperate Salvation focuses on a healer playstyle, providing extra healing after recovery effects expire.
True Courage stat priority: Swiftness and Spec (at a 70/30 ratio)
Desperate Salvation stat priority: Swiftness and Spec (at a 70/30 ratio)
Best True Courage Engravings
- Awakening
- True Courage
- Increased Max Mana
- Spirit Absorption
- Heavy Armor
- Drops of Ether
Best Desperate Salvation Engravings
- Awakening
- Desperate Salvation
- Increased Max Mana
- Spirit Absorption
- Heavy Armor
- Drops of Ether
Bard Chaos Dungeon & Cube Tripods and Skill Builds
Generally, Bards are pretty flexible when it comes to chaos dungeons and the cube. There are multiple effective builds as the Bard has a wide range of useful tools. The most important thing is to focus on a few key buffs and heals, as well as AoE abilities.
With that being said, we’ll just take a look at one build that’s proven to be a great all rounder so far. Also, remember to use Oratorio in dungeons and Symphonia in raids as Awakening skills.
For new players, to read these builds simply look at which skills are colored and pick the upgrades based on the small images below the names. Then, add runes to upgrade skills even more.
Here’s how you should spend your points:
Bard Dungeon & Cube Build
Bard Raid Tripods and Skill Builds
Things get a touch more specialized for the Bard when it comes to raids. Both class engravings still share builds, but you’ll notice quite a few different skills from the dungeon build. This is simply to special abilities to the raid environment, focusing on things like counters and single-target damage over AoE abilities.
| Attack Gems | Cooldown Gems |
| Sound Shock | Sound Shock |
| Soundholic | Soundholic |
| Prelude of Storm | Prelude of Storm |
| Heavenly Tune | |
| Guardian Tune | |
| Wind of Music | |
| Harp of Rhythm | |
| Sonic Vibration |
Best Bard Card Sets
For both builds, you should go with:
- Field Boss
- OR
- Farewell, Weapon
Best Bard PvE Combos
In Lost Ark, skills combo together to create a powerful chain of moves that is much more effective than using each move individually. As such, there will be a huge damage difference between players who know how to get the most out of their class, and those who don’t.
That being said, most fights are very dynamic, so you won’t always be able to complete your full combo, as surviving should be the key focus. Still, here’s how a core combo looks for both Bard builds:
Lost Ark General Bard Combo
- Wind of Music (Right before starting a fight)
- Heavenly Tune
- Sonic Vibration
- Guardian Tune (If expecting incoming damage)
- Soundholic
- Sound Shock
After casting Sound Shock you should notice your initial buffs starting to expire and should aim to reapply them as quickly as possible.
Thank you for checking out our Lost Ark Bard PvE Guide! Now you should be ready to get the most out of your class and progress through the endgame in Lost Ark. We’ll keep this page constantly updated, should any changes happen.