Bard Overview

In Lost Ark, supports deal a very small fraction of damage compared to DPS classes. Seeing as Supports aren't required to clear group content they must justify the damage difference, or else a party would be missing out on billions of damage if they picked a Support. A good support will ensure that the party's damage is greater than if a DPS was put in their place.

That being said, as a Bard, your role is to ensure that your DPS are the best version of themselves, you can accomplish this by ensuring maximum uptime on your Atk. Power buffs, and note brand proc, shields and damage reductions.

One misconception about the Support role in Lost Ark is that they exist to babysit DPS and make sure their health bar is topped, the real function of Supports in Lost Ark is to ensure that the DPS have maximum damage uptime. Healing should only be a priority if your party is inexperienced and is failing mechanics, or to get prepared for a phase in the fight/ certain mechanic. Generally, the Support should focus on making the DPS more comfortable while they are dealing damage - this may include using damage reduction skills when they are near the boss so that they can deal damage through some minor skills that might get thrown their way.

Overall, a Bard should not only make the DPS experience a more fluid one for your party, but should also make sure that the damage boost is significantly larger than if a DPS were in their place.

To learn about the other Mage classes, head to our guides for Sorceress and Arcanist.

Bards class mechanic revolves around the Serenade Meter. Serenade Meter consists of three bars.

Once you’ve filled up your Serenade Meter, you can spend it to play one of your two songs: Serenade of Courage and Serenade of Salvation. Both of these songs have specific purposes:

• Serenade of Courage
  • Is a damage buff that gives your allies a huge boost in damage for a short time. This helps your party get maximum DPS during key parts of the raid.
• Serenade of Salvation
  • Is a massive heal that restores health over time. This helps undo your party’s mistakes and increases the survivability of the raid.

Both buffs increase in power depending on how many bars you used to play the song with the maximum power buff requiring all three bars.

Bards Identity is flexible and fun. It rewards players that have good awareness and understanding of the situation at hand.

As a Bard your job will generally be playing around your cooldowns and buff durations. Bards focus around burst buffs - short durations but very powerful - extra communication allows for more efficiency for burst windows.

This means that in encounters, Bards have to focus a lot on a macro level and facilitate the over-arching strategy. This includes tracking your note brands, as well as your Atk. Power buffs, shields and damage reductions.

Although they don’t do much damage themselves, the damage increase they give to their team as well as the utility they provide more than makes up for the difference.

Bard is a support class in PvP that takes on a reactive role. They use their buffs, immunity, and great ability to peel to counter anything aggressive from their opponents.

Bard's shortcomings lie in the fact that they have limited mobility and are reliant on their team to deal damage. However, with good positioning and understanding of the game, Bard’s can be the biggest impact in the game.