Bard talents¶
The Bard tree is for players who actually play the bard skills. Every node here keys off landing Provocation, Peacemaking, or Discordance, so the tree does nothing for a build that never picks up a lute. Two paths: Virtuoso turns your songs into your own damage, Song of the Company turns them into everyone else's.
Both paths follow the standard shape: a 5-rank opener, a 3-rank second tier, a feature at tier 3, a fork at tier 4, and a capstone that needs either fork.
Virtuoso - your own damage¶
| Talent | Tier | Ranks | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| War Chord | 1 | 5 | +4% damage per rank against creatures you provoked, calmed, or discorded in the last minute |
| Sharp Staccato | 2 | 3 | Your barding checks treat every creature as 4 easier per rank |
| Encore | 3 | 1 | Landing a bard skill primes your next strike or spell: +30% damage within 10 seconds |
| Showstopper | 4A | 1 | Active, 60s cooldown: +25% damage against creatures for 15 seconds |
| Dissonance | 4B | 1 | Creatures under Discordance take 12% more damage from you |
| Maestro | 5 | 1 | Active, 2 min cooldown: for 20 seconds you cannot play poorly, your checks drop 20 difficulty, and your instrument spends no charges |
The rhythm writes itself: bard the target, hit it while the chord holds, bard the next one. Maestro is the boss button - with GM Discordance and scrolled Musicianship it makes the hardest creatures on the shard reliably discordable.
Song of the Company - the party's damage¶
| Talent | Tier | Ranks | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Battle Hymn | 1 | 5 | Allies within 12 tiles deal +2% damage per rank to creatures. Needs a charged instrument in your pack; never applies to you |
| Marching Cadence | 2 | 3 | Allies within 12 tiles swing 2% faster per rank |
| Rally | 3 | 1 | Landing a bard skill grants allies within 12 tiles +10% damage for 10 seconds |
| Dirge | 4A | 1 | Active, 60s cooldown: creatures within 12 tiles of you take 10% more damage from every player for 15 seconds |
| Anthem of Iron | 4B | 1 | Active, 60s cooldown: you and allies within 12 tiles take 10% less melee damage from creatures for 15 seconds |
| Grand Crescendo | 5 | 1 | Active, 2 min cooldown: Battle Hymn and Marching Cadence are doubled for 12 seconds, and a golden ring marks the reach of your song |
The company songs only play for party members, and only while your instrument still has charges - a bard who lets the lute run dry goes quiet.
You can see the songs land: allies inside the 12-tile ring get a buff icon for each aura playing on them (Battle Hymn, Marching Cadence, Anthem of Iron, and Rally when it fires). If the icon fades, you have walked out of the bard's range - step back in and it returns within a few seconds.
The rules underneath¶
- Everything here is PvM. None of it applies against players, same as every other talent tree.
- Your bard skills check at no higher than your Musicianship. A bard who skimps on the music skill is capped by it, talents or not - see the skill page.
- The Aria resonance school and gems of the ballad (Crown Regalia) both shave bard difficulty further and reward the discord bard - see Aria.
- Barding difficulty now caps at 160 for every creature, so a bard at the 150 skill caps with the difficulty shaves from this tree can land on any boss.
- Boss fights want a discord bard: 30% off a boss's stats, skills, and swing speed is the biggest single debuff in the game, and Dissonance pays the bard for bringing it.
Getting an instrument¶
Instruments are crafted, not found. Carpenters build the lute (the one instrument on Lyonspyre) from boards and cloth. Nothing drops instruments and no vendor stocks them - find a carpenter. The one exception: characters who pick the Bard starting path begin with a lute in their pack.
The wood matters. A lute crafted from higher-tier boards is a straight upgrade in every direction:
- Charges: 150 base, +25% per wood tier - a Lyonspire lute holds 375 before quality. Exceptional doubles the total.
- Easier checks: each wood tier shaves 1.5 difficulty from every bard check (up to 9), on top of the exceptional lute's 5.
- Stronger songs: while a bard-tree bonus is live, each tier adds +1% to your own song-fed damage, and your Battle Hymn and Marching Cadence auras grow +5% of their value per tier.
Some places in the deep dungeons will demand a certain wood tier before any song works there at all - a serious bard keeps a serious lute.
Living with your lute: a left-click shows the charges remaining, an overhead Instrument broken! warning fires the moment one plays its last tune, and a full, never-played exceptional lute can be banked in your coffer's new Instruments shelf, one row per wood tier.