Bard - Important stats, suitable race?

[Nargroth]

I always played a bard, in all MMO's...

I've not tried the VG beta, and I have no clue what stats are vital to which class. Someone said vitality was important for healers? Ok, so whats vitality? I always thought wisdom was the healer thing? See my point?

I'd really like to know the important stats to focus on as a bard first... and then, which race would better suit a bard?

I've always gone with elven races for a bard. I prefer Wood Elves mostly. Is that a bad choice for a bard ?

I'm so clueless as to how some of these important things like stats all work out.

Maybe i'm just clueless because I'm ill atm ¬_¬

Thanks in advance.

[Doresain]

The various attributes have lots of different effects, but I'll try to run down those that are most important to the bard. Hopefully some fellow composers will assist me :)

Strength- Melee damage and carry capacity. If you want to do lots of damage, STR is a good stat. We ARE offensive fighters, after all.

Dexterity- DEX primarily helps you A) Not get hit, and B) perform critical strikes. Crits are important because some of your abilities can only be used after a successful crit.

Constitution- Hit points and resistances. If you like to solo, and thus plan to get hit a lot, this might be a good stat.

Vitality- The healing benefits don't have anything to do with us, but VIT does increase health and energy regen rates; a high VIT means you can play more powerful songs for longer without running out of mana.

Wisdom- Energy pool. If you want a larger pool of energy (which fuels our songs), WIS could be a good stat.

Intelligence- Spell damage on a very few of our abilities. Currently (and there may be those who disagree!) this seems to be the least useful Bard stat.

When you get to character select you'll see that all the races get bonuses to various stats, except humans, who are more generalized by default. Which stats you want to emphasize is up to you. I will be primarily STR and DEX, with VIT a close third myself. YMMV. :)

[Kaelan]

http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=472


I'd say mainly STR + DEX, then VIT + WIS. Higher energy regeneration lets you make songs that cost more than 0 but still don't use up any mana (because you recover it faster than the song drains it). For BRDs, even if they fix CON, it still looks like CON and INT will be pretty useless. Up to level 30 as far as I know we only have 1 nuke, which isn't really worth giving up tons of STR/DEX/VIT/WIS points for, and CON shouldn't matter unless they change it to give a much higher amount of HP. Otherwise, what you get from leveling is enough for a DD class.

[Korupt]

Vitality also increases your run speed. Very important if your a speed burner. :) Wood Elf's get the highest base Vitality.

[rabb1t]

Just an important note, I've like never come here but the thread caught my attention so I'll drop this then poof...

For some reason, at the end of beta Bard skills were kind of broken. Now, when I say this I don't mean they weren't working, but there were some key abilities missing.

For those who don't know how bard songs work, you get 'slots' that open up as you level. You also get new bard song bits to put in these slots. Each bard song bit has an effect and takes a certain amount of energy. The thing which was missing at the end of beta (which was in earlier versions) were "rests". These are things which reduce the song cost. So what you had at the end of beta was a Bard that had to not use all of the song slots because if you did it would drain your endurance in a matter of seconds. What should happen is that you have some "rests" to place here and there which negate some of the song cost.

So, kind of long and rambly, but at the end of beta bards were somewhat gimped in you only had abilities that cost endurance, but all of the ones to reduce cost were missing for some reason.

So, if this is not fixed by launch, don't go dumping a bunch of points into Wis to compensate, because it should be assumed that at some point the "rests" will go back in and you can then build songs properly again.


PS - Bard is not a healing class. Yeah, there are regeneration songs (actually about 3 days before beta closed it got a pretty cool animation and sound to go with one of them), but they aren't a healer class. (Healers are; Cleric, Disciple, Shaman and Blood Mage.) Think of bard like the buffing class that does dual wield damage. The higher you go the more buff abilities you have to choose from and the more songs you can make with differing effects for different situations.

PS PS - Don't forget bards can also use the same skill repeatedly in a song. Like right before the close of beta I got to bounce a char up to lv 30. I had one particular run buff three times in the run song. Sure, it was only 4%, but still, +4% +4% +4% is a lot more than just one +4% ;)

[Phasael]

At the end of open beta I rolled a new bard to test higher levels, the rests were indeed in the compose menu, just in a non-intuitive place, in the lower right hand corner, vs up the left hand side like the rest of the components. I think this was changed after they revamped the Compose menu, since the last time I looked at it you had to pull all your components out of your adventuring abilities menu, and they were no longer in the adventuring menu for my new toon. So rests are in and they are great! At level 30 I was able to use the 2 highest rests to offset almost every other slot filled. stuff like Speed song, 4X +spd components, 1invis, 1levi with a drum that got me to ~220% speed boost.. or damage melody with like 6X +7% haste mods. some of the bard songs can be pretty depending on how you tune them..

[rabb1t]

Hum... so they had like their own button? I was using the button next to the song bit type and they weren't in there. Nor did they appear in the regular adventure skill tab.

[Azathul]

Hum... so they had like their own button? I was using the button next to the song bit type and they weren't in there. Nor did they appear in the regular adventure skill tab.

Yes, they were there like the previous poster noted. I was confused for a bit when I first had to deal with the compose menu changes. It seemed odd to me to have them on the far right. Though I could kind of understand why, since all of the other song bit had a certain field to associate to.

[EsoMonty]

I had already decided that my three main stats would be Str, Dex and Vitality. Str and dex for greater damage and vitality to increase my regen and run speed.

The Compose screen is a bit weird, but once you find the rest button underneath all the song slots. It becomes a lot less confusing.

I am really looking forward being a bard in VG. I can't wait to be a melee Fighter that buffs his allies.

[Hackworth]

I posed this over on vgbards... might be useful here.

When choosing a race for your bard, here are some things to consider:

This is based on possible stats at 50. Everyone starts out the same I think.

Half Elves don't get the highest of any stat, so we will assume they are the most generally balanced (which may or may not be true). They get the ability to apply a rune to every member of the group for 60 seconds, which will mitigate damage as well as apply an un-resistible damage shield. Using them as a baseline, lets see how the other races compare.

Dark Elves Trade 41 Vitality and 41 Dexterity for 82 Intelligence, Maxing Intelligence
Ability to summon forth a small drake for a short duration. 20 Minute recast. What does it do? I dunno.

High Elves Trade 41 Vitality and 82 Dexterity for 82 Wisdom and 41 Intelligence, Maxing Wisdom
Ability to take the cumulative amount of mana in a group, add 25% to that number, and evenly redistribute it to all members.

Wood Elves Trade 41 Wisdom for 41 Vitality, Maxing Vitality
Ability to increase run speed and be immune to snares.

Halflings Trade 41 Vitality for 41 Dexterity, Maxing Dexterity
Ability to immediately remove yourself from combat. For the next 10 seconds afterwards they will also be invisible. (Essentially Fading Memories with a drop-off timer?)

All the Human Races have the same trade off.
Humans Trade 41 Dexterity for 41 Intelligence, 41 Constitution, and 41 Strength

Mordebi - This ability will immediately remove a targeted NPC from combat, wiping their agro and reducing their agro range to 0. During this time the creature can not be healed, attack, or be attacked.

Thestran - You will have 3 inspirational commands at your disposal: Inspirational Presence, Inspirational Wisdom, and Inspirational Tactics. Each command is a group buff that will add either 2% to mitigation, a 3% reduction to mana cost of all spells, or a 2% increase in damage. You may only maintain one command at a time, however you may have all 3 effects active at the same time.

Kojani - This ability will immediately restore 45% of energy and hit points to the target.

Qaliathari - For this next 10 seconds, when this ability is activated your ability to evade all melee attacks and spells will be greatly increased.

I mostly just wanted to see all that in one place... hope it helps some in choosing races as well.