Difference between revisions of "Bard"

Revision as of 16:32, 11 March 2008

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

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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.

General Information

To understand building your Bard or Dancer, you need to know what all your skills do. Dancer and Bard skills in comparison to other classes, are very stat dependent. 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.

How to become a Bard

Items needed

a flower not sold by NPCs (with the exception of a Witherless Rose)
1 Sticky Mucus
1 Squid Ink

Optional Items

60 Trunks of any kind.

Seeking the Wandering Minstrel

The Roaming Bard, Lalo, can be found at 226,123 on the Comodo town map. This is a short distance to the bottom right of the Kafra. After a short conversation with the bard he will request that the player brings him a flower. The flower must be one of the following,

Hinalle
Ment
Singing Flower
Illusion Flower
Witherless Rose (Sold in Morroc by an NPC on the east side)

Once the player has given the bard a flower, he will send the player to Lutie to becom friends with the Snowman in Lutie.

Mr Snowman

See: Snowysnow Quest

Singing

Once the player becomes friends with Mr Snowman, return to the bard to finish the quest. He will require the player to type exactly what he sings.

Job Change

Upon job change, the bard offers to give you a weapon if you have 60 trunks. Each type of trunk gives the player a different weapon.

Trunk : 3s Violin
Solid or Barren : 2s Mandolin
Fine Trunk : 2s Lute
Fine Trunk + Job 50 : 2s Harp

Equipments Used

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.

Common Skill/Stat Builds

Battle Builds

WoE Builds

Other Builds

PvM PvP WoE Application

Tips and Tricks

Dagger switching, or Dagger Amping is a popular technique used among Bards and Minstrels to stop a song, most commonly Magic Strings, faster than Amp does, even within the first five seconds. This also protects the Musical Instrument from being broken if it does not have a Golem Card in it. 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.

Bard 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.