Séane's Bard guide, posted to JeuxOnLine in February 2007 and added to through that year. An English edition of the French original. The screenshots it hung its explanations on are gone, so the captions that pointed at them are written out as prose.
What a Bard is
An offensive fighter who pairs a gift for music and song with a natural skill at arms.
Who can be one
Nine races: Thestran, Halfling, High Elf, Kojani, Wood Elf, Half Elf, Qaliathari — "without question the finest-looking race in the game", the author's aside — Mordebi and Dark Elf.
Where to put your points
A human race — Thestran, Kojani, Qaliathari, Mordebi — gets five points a level. Spread them across strength, constitution, dexterity and vitality as you prefer.
- Strength: you are a damage dealer, so this is damage. It raises the melee damage bonus and how much you can carry before you are overloaded.
- Constitution: far more health, and worth knowing that a Bard below 30% health stops regenerating mana altogether. It also raises resistances.
- Dexterity: better with weapons. It raises critical chance, ranged damage, parry chance, spell resistance, and how often you recognise what an enemy is doing and can answer it.
- Vitality: mana regeneration. The higher it is, the more powerful the songs you can hold, because rests — the parts of a composition that give energy back — can come out and leave the slots free. It also raises healing, health regeneration, energy per second and movement speed.
A long argument followed in the thread about strength against dexterity. One regular, bardy hyrsys, worked it through on damage per second and concluded that strength gives more, while saying plainly that the point was not to choose one over the other but to divide the points well; he settled on 5 strength, 4 dexterity, 5 vitality as a human, was happy with his mana pool, and thought constitution genuinely unimportant. Another poster, Scarface, objected that damage per second is the wrong measure in Vanguard, because what matters is critical hits opening the finishing attacks at 400% weapon damage and more. Both are in the thread and neither convinced the other.
Equipment
A Bard wears light or medium armour, whose bonuses generally give constitution, health, resistances and vitality.
For weapons, short swords most often, because they add up to 10% critical chance. Criticals unlock the finishing attacks, which cost little endurance and can deal nearly 400% of the weapon's damage, or add damage to everything within eight metres.
A crossbow, or a bow if you prefer, is very effective: it pulls, and it lets you chase someone on horseback while still shooting — even with a tambourine in your hands.
Instruments come in four kinds, wind, strings, percussion and brass, with the voice alongside them. The right instrument improves a composition considerably: it can take a variant of Tynen's song from 200% to 381%.
Compositions
A composition is built in four parts, each improving the one before:
- Melody — the primary song, and the base of everything; you cannot write a composition without one.
- Embellishments — the first improvement.
- Lyrics — the second.
- Choruses — the third.
You can put several improvements in the slots, and gain both new improvements and new slots as you level. You can also put the same improvement in twice or more, to multiply it.
The composition window shows the melody's name and description, which other players see when they hover over the buff; its energy cost, which tells you how many rests you need; and the rests themselves. A rest is an addition that keeps the song from consuming mana. To free those slots for something else, raise your vitality.
The songs
- Cirel's Rhythm of Renewal — health regeneration. 2 energy a second, melody, 5 metres, strings. Improves your health regeneration and your allies'.
- Mellarian's Anthem of War — 2 energy a second, melody, 5 metres, voice. Improves the group's strength, intelligence, armour factor and damage.
- Tynen's Melody of Acceleration — the speed song. 2 energy a second, melody, 5 metres, percussion. Raises your movement speed and your allies' by 28%.
Tynen's song is faster than a horse, which is extremely useful. It will carry you out of a fight, but it will not free you from a stun or a snare.
The hotbar
The author's own bar held: the dances, which grow with the soul link; direct damage; the spell that parries an attack, used with the parry combo; the cone attack that strikes four enemies; the mesmerise; the composing ability; a melody, shown with the same icon as its buff; and an improvement costing 20% of total endurance that adds damage. Finishing attacks, parry and bodyguard are not on the bar at all, because they are taken with G the moment they light up. There is also a mount on the bar, purely for show, because a Bard has no use for one — and it is a diplomacy horse.
Fighting
A Bard has a lot of ways to weaken an enemy: a damage-over-time, a cone attack reaching four of them, a direct damage spell, the finishing attacks, the parry spell that combines into a chain, and several mesmerises. The dances add damage, criticals or parry. He can also play bodyguard, through his blocking ability.
He solos well, though with frequent downtime, and comes into his own in a group.
Favour elemental creatures, raising your resistances first: they deal very little damage and take it badly. The Elementary Pool in Evendusk Fortress, levels 15 to 18, is the example he gave.
In player versus player
A pleasant class to play and fairly solid, except against casters. Quick damage, good damage, a mesmerise that lets you take on two people at once — mind the damage-over-time, which breaks it — the speed song when you are losing, and the crossbow to chase someone who runs from it. The buffs are good: Mellarian's song is nearly 400 extra health at level 18.
In diplomacy
The Bard is the specialist in flattery, silver-tongued as he is. A Qaliathari is the better choice, because the race carries a flattery bonus too, which raises your chances further and lets you run a deck that is nothing but flattery.
Patch notes for the Bard, as the thread recorded them
- Tynen's Chant of Chains is now a verse.
- Illestine's Epic Substitution should now increase cold resistance as well as fire.
- Mellarian's Melody of War now correctly stacks with the Paladin's Aura of Divine Power.
- Greatly reducing the energy cost of Calming Lullaby.
- Suann's Entrancing Trill now has a 2 second cast time.
- Suann's Call of Slumber now has a 2 second refresh time.
- Fence now has a 10 second refresh timer, down from 20.
- Hinder now has the proper amount of upgrades.
- The lyric Hazoc's Magical Aria is now available at level 25; it was inadvertently left off trainers.
- Striking the Mountain now exploits armor chink.
- Cleave the Mountain I, II, III and IV have been added to the trainer lists, at levels 22, 30, 38 and 46.
- Humming Blade would turn off after 72 minutes; this is fixed.