Bard

Bard
Job Base:			Archer
Job Type:			2-2
Changes At:			Comodo
Number of Skills:			18
Total Skill Points:			91
Total Quest Skills:			1
Job Bonuses
STR	AGI	VIT	INT	DEX	LUK
+2	+7	+3	+5	+9	+4

Overview

After a life of plucking their bows, many Archers feel the itch to strum strings of a different kind. The Bards of Ragnarok Online are the right choice for the idealists among Archers who wish to change the world with their poetry.

The voice of a Bard is laden with magical harmonies, singing hymns that invoke the ancient Gods of Asgard to instill fear in the hearts of his enemies and inspire his comrades to victory with songs of eternal youth and glorious charges. Where their female counterparts, the Dancers, are more bent on disruption, Bards specialize in support, which make them central in all defensive strategies during the War of Emperium.

Supporting with a Bard or Dancer requires a different approach than other classes. Music-based buffs are mostly percentual values, as opposed to the absolute values of Priest buffs, and require careful strategy and positioning, but playing as an Archer should already provide some experience in this respect. Despite their supportive role, one should not forget that Bards are also capable of dealing good quantities of damage, one of their main advantages over Hunters is their immense SP pool which allows them to continually use Double Strafe instead of normal attacks, ensuring a very nice damage output.

In general, there are 2 types of skills for both Dancers and a Bards; skills which can be sung or danced without a partner of the opposite gender and those where the player needs another Bard or Dancer respectively.

As a Bard, only Instruments, Daggers, and Bows are available for weapons, whereas Dancers can use Whips instead of Instruments.

• When armed with an Instrument:
  • Bow skills (Double Strafe, Arrow Shower, Arrow Repel) cannot be used
  • Performance Skills, as well as Amp and Encore are available
  • Instrument skills (Melody Strike) can be used

Unbarring Octave and Pang Voice are usable regardless of weapons.

Jobchange Guide

See Bard Job Change Guide for detailed information.

In order to become a Bard, one must go to Comodo and look for the Roaming Bard. The applicant has to perform various tasks:

• Item Collection
• Making friends with Mr. Snowman in Lutie
• Singing Test

Once these have been completed, the applicant will be made a bard by the Roaming Bard.

Builds

Battle

• 99 DEX
• 80 VIT
• 50 AGI
• 9 INT
• 1 STR
• 1 LUK

A well-rounded build due to the 80/50 distribution of VIT and AGI. Apparently quite a popular choice in iRO, it works great for both battle and support circumstances, though it's lacking the int of a full support build.

WoE

• 90 DEX
• 90 VIT
• 30 AGI
• 25 INT
• 20 STR
• 1 LUK

The standard build for the WoE-happy Bard. Dex is for MS/SA with status cards, VIT is good for staying alive during support situations, and the agi helps improve "Impressive Riff".

AGI Battle/ Riff Support

• 91 DEX
• 1-20 VIT
• 85-90 AGI
• 40 INT
• 1 or 8 STR
• 1 LUK

This build provides great flee and SP regen for leveling w/double strafe, an unsrupassed riff performance and moderate strings performance for support. It sacrifices WoE survivability for leveling speed, good support, and near immunity to acid bomb.

Skills

• 1 Amp
• 1 Encore
• 10 Music Lessons
• 5 Melody Strike
• 5 Unbarring Octave
• 3 Unchained Serenade
• 10 Impressive Riff
• 1 Classical Pluck
• 10 Magic Strings
• 3 <Insert any song/duet here>

Tactics

Dagger switching, or Dagger Amping is a popular technique used among Bards and Minstrels to stop a song. By switching to a dagger while performing a song, the song is immediately interrupted. While is has the same effect as Amp, switching weapons can be done at any time, where as Amp requires both SP and can only be used 5 seconds after the song has started. Although it is also possible of to cancel a song by equipping a Bow, changing to a Dagger has the advantage that the bard's shield does not become unequipped in the process.

Flashing is a tactic used to make full use of the bard. The bard casts a song for an instant, then dagger or bow switches to a damage or status dealing configuration to participate in combat. This works because a song's effect stays on players for about 20 sec after a person leaves the song's AoE. One can also flash by moving around a large formation of players with a single song up.

Equipment

Presented here are just suggestions to what a player may find useful to kill, survive and win in a tough environment.

Headgear

Top Headgear

• Cap [1] - +4 DEF. It is usually easy to find an overupgraded cap to put a card in for defensive or offensive purposes.
  • Cards: Depending on what you're doing, PVP/WoE/PVM the cards in headgear will differ. For leveling purposes more INT or SP helps the player to kill more monsters. Carat Card, +2 INT and +150 SP if the headgear is upgraded to +9 or higher. Willow Card, +80 SP. Elder Willow Card, +2 INT. If you are in a situation where you could be affected by status effects a card that reduces that chance, or makes you immune to it could be more useful. Nightmare, immune to sleep and +1 AGI, and Marduk, immune to silence are helpful.
• Apple of Archer - 0 DEF and +3 DEX. Not recommended in PVP/WoE environment, but for MVP and leveling to reach a new dex bonus AoA is very useful. With it's +3 DEX on headgear, this is a must-have for all Bards, even if it is not part of their build to reach a new DEX bonus. You never know when you may have ot use a different Armor/Accesory combo and have to use the AoA to reach the next dex bonus.
• Poo Hat - 10% less from demi-humans. If you don't need an AoA for your dex, Poo Hat is great for PVP and WoE.
• Ghost Bandana - +2 AGI.. If you are an AGI Bard this is useful, it obviously depends on your build.

Middle Headgear

• Binoculars - +1 DEF and +1 DEX, not bad but slotted sunnies are almost always better, unless you need the binocs to hit your dex bonus.
• Sunglasses [1] - The only slotted middle headgear in the game.
  • Cards: The same cards mentioned above with the exception of the Carat card as it would be cheaper to get an Elder Willow card, and you cannot get the bonus from the card as Sunglasses cannot be upgraded.
• Masquerade - 0 DEF Increases damage to Demihuman monsters by 3%.
• Zealotus Mask - +3 DEF Increases damage to Demihuman monsters by 5% and reduces damage from Demihuman monsters by 5%. This headgear also takes up the upper headgear slot.

Lower Headgear

• Gangster Mask - 0 DEF, adds 15% resistance to Silence status.

Weapons

There are 3 types of weapons that bards can use. Daggers, Bows and Instruments. Daggers serve a limited usefulness, a common Knife is usually carried for its use in the dagger-stopping method to cancel songs. Instruments are needed to perform the songs and duets that the bard class can do. Bows are used mainly for leveling purposes.

Class Data

Note: The iRO Bard Skill Section is very outdated. Do not be surprised if some of the skill descriptions differ from the website contents (i.e. Acoustic Rhythm), they have been contrasted with the ingame descriptions and the more up-to-date Korean website.

Skills

See Archer Skills for first class skills.

Solo Skills

Skill	Description	Levels	Type
Amp	Cancels active Performance Skill the caster is performing.	1	Active
Encore	Recast the last Performance Skill that was cast at half of the SP cost.	1	Active
Impressive Riff	Increases ASPD of all players in the 7x7 area of effect.	10	Active
Magic Strings	Reduces Cast Time and Cast Delay of skills used inside the 7x7 area of effect.	10	Active
Melody Strike	Use an instrument-class weapon to do ranged damage to a single target.	5	Offensive
Music Lessons	Increases damage with Instruments, Movement Speed while singing and the effect of certain Performance Skills.	10	Passive
Perfect Tablature	Raises Flee Rate and Perfect Dodge of all players in the 7x7 area of effect.	10	Active
Song of Lutie	Increases the the Max HP of all players in the area of effect.	10	Active
Unbarring Octave	Freeze monsters and party members within caster's view by chance.	5	Active
Unchained Serenade	Hits enemies in a 9x9 area with a slow sonic attack, piercing their defense.	5	Offensive

Ensemble Skills

Ensemble skills can only be performed when a Bard and Dancer are in the same party and standing beside each other. When an Ensemble skill is performed by a Bard and Dancer, the lower level of Acoustic Rhythm is performed. (i.e. when a Bard that has learned Acoustic Rhythm Lv.5 performs the skill with a Dancer that has only learned Acoustic Rhythm Lv.3, the Bard and Dancer will perform Acoutic Rhythm Lv.3)

Skill	Description	Levels	Type
Acoustic Rhythm	Increases resistance against all Elements and Status Effects of party members within the 9x9 area of influence.	5	Active
Battle Theme	Party members within this skill's 9x9 area will have increased ATK and DEF for the skill's duration.	5	Active
Classical Pluck	Casts a 9x9 area around the caster where all skills are disabled.	1	Active
Down Tempo	Reduces all DEF derived from the VIT stat to 0 for all enemies within the 9x9 area of effect.	1	Active
Harmonic Lick	Provides a bonus of armor piercing damage (ignores DEF) to all players within the 9x9 area of effect, as long as they're wielding level 4 weapons.	5	Supportive
Lullaby	Sing a dreamy song to put enemies in a 9x9 area to sleep.	1	Active
Mental Sensing	Increases the EXP earned from monsters killed in the affected 9x9 area.	5	Active
Power Cord	Cast a 9x9 cell area around the casters that nullifies item costs for most skills.	1	Active

Quest Skills

Skill	Description	Levels	Type	Job Level Requirement	Quest
Pang Voice	The Bard screams out at a single target, attempting to inflict Chaos status effect.	1	Active	40	Pang Voice Quest

Soul Link

See Bard and Dancer Spirits.

Skill	Description	Levels	Type
Slow Grace	(If level 10 Impressive Riff is learned) Decrease attack and movement speed of all enemies within the 7x7 area of effect.	10	Active
Lady Luck	(If level 10 Magic Strings is learned) Improves CRIT rate of all players within the 7x7 area of effect.	10	Active
Focus Ballet	(If level 10 Perfect Tablature is learned) Improves HIT of all players within the 7x7 area of effect.	10	Active
Gypsy's Kiss	(If level 10 Song of Lutie is learned) Increase max SP and SP regeneration while reducing the SP consumption of all players within the 7x7 area of effect.	10	Active

Unimplemented Skills

Skill	Description	Levels	Type
Ragnarok	Randomly casts spells in the area of effect for 60 seconds.	Unknown	Offensive

Job Bonuses

Stat\Amount	+1	+2	+3	+4	+5	+6	+7	+8
STR	3	28
AGI	2	10	11	24	30	35	48
VIT	17	33	43
INT	5	13	21	40	47
DEX	7	15	16	19	32	38	46	50
LUK	6	9	20	41

ASPD

Weapon	Base ASPD	Base Delay
Unarmed
Dagger
Bow
Instrument

External Links

• Skill Simulator
• General Stat Calculator