Bard - Leveling Build

Overview

Class: Bard

Designed for: Leveling

Focused on: Bard

Difficulty:

Easy

Strengths

• Great AoE DPS
• Easy to Play
• Great Utility
• Good Self and Group Heal

Weaknesses

• Squishy

Overview

This Leveling Bard Build focuses on leveling alone through the use of multiple AOE abilities that make it much easier to push through the leveling part of Ashes of Creation while still remaining a very useful Support build that can heal itself and others when and if you'd rather play in a group, offering great buffs for everyone while also being easy to play.

Skills

18

19

14

16

17

15

13

20

8

21

22

12

6

7

10

3

4

5

9

11

2

23

1

Equipment

Weapons

Sword

Longbow

Stamina

21

17

7

20

16

6

19

15

5

18

14

4

10

13

3

9

12

2

8

11

1

As a Tank, you rely a whole lot on your blocking and that for investing points into Sustained Guard is an obvious choices to reduce stamina drain while blocking (default key E). Adding Mental Fortification is also helpful, as it lowers the chance of being crowd-controlled (CC’d) while blocking, which can be situationally useful. However, the most important node you want to unlock as soon as possible remains the Empowered Guard as it greatly improves your blocking efficiency.

Once you've unlocked the right side of the Stamina tree, start unlocking the rest with Escape Velocity to boost your movement speed while sprinting in combat (default key C). This becomes especially important later in the game, allowing you to kite mobs while waiting for cooldowns or to escape dangerous situations entirely if needed.

Next, invest in Recuperation Training and Evasive Maneuver to improve your evasion rate while dodging. This also unlocks Springstep, which significantly enhances mobility by increasing the distance you can roll.

Rotations

Bunker PVE Rotation ↴

• This is the main rotation you should use when AOE grinding mobs and playing in groups.

• Start by pulling mobs using your Longbow, bringing them to your group. First you want to use Absorption Field to boost group defenses before using Intimidating Aura to both do damage and also maintain the Stagger debuff. Use Tremoring Bellow to guarantee Stagger before following up with Ground Pound to trip them and allow your team to deal damage while the mobs are tripped. Continue the rotation with Tomahawk as it deals extra damage to tripped targets before using Desolate and Slam to maintain high threat levels and keep the mobs aggroed.

Single Target DPS Rotation ↴

• This short rotation is meant to kill off mobs on your own with minimum effort.

• Start with Shield Assault to instantly gain Courage so you can use Vengeance instantly before using Tremoring Bellow to apply Snare on the group of mobs and also do some extra damage.

• Trip the group of mobs using Ground Pound then move behind them to use Tomahawk and deal extra damage thanks to Tomahawk: Trip. Finish the rotation and kill off the mob using Desolate and Slam.

Indomitable Spirit: Use this alongside Shake It Off and Intercept to regain health in a pinch. You can also use Reflect to also negate some of the incoming damage and give your healer some time to heal you back up quickly.

Reflect: Use this whenever the mob channels a hard hitting skill, allowing you to survive where otherwise you could easily die. Once you've gotten Refreshing Reflect, this will also restore your mana, acting as a great way to regain mana.

Protect: Use this to save party members if they are in danger and at the risk of dying until the healer in your party can top them up back to full HP.

Aegis: Use this when in group after you make a pull and group mobs together if you lose aggro and party members take the aggro from you and take damage, this will redirect the damage to you and often save your party members from death.

Fortify: Use this only when you have a good amount of Courage stacks. Usually before pulling a big group of mobs.

Wall: Be careful when using this skill as it puts up a shield and can make it awkward for allies.