Tarisland Bard DPS build – rotation, talents, and stats

The Bard is an interesting DPS class, with a few various playstyles you can use and manage. There’s the sustained blue cooldown build, and there’s the red burst playstyle.  We think the red playstyle is more fun, so, we shall show you the red bard dps build and what you can expect from it. 

In case you’re wondering Bards are very good damage dealers for PvP and end-game raiding. They rank quite highly on our Tarisland Tier List for those two reasons. Not to mention they are great healers.

Bard DPS rotation

The rotation largely depends on talent build at the time. Here are a few rotation examples, depending if you choose to go pure red with some purple, or decide you want to use the Variation talent, and for various stages of levelling. For the most part, the rotations will reflect certain talents we will tell you to get later in the build.

Typically, your early game rotation looks like this

• 1-1-3
• 4
• 1-1-3

1-1-3 is your primarily higher damage combination of basic spells and chord damage.  It scales the most with your attack power, and grants bonus higher base damage. This is your primary filler combo. The 1-1-3 Combo also grants a personal damage buff lasting 25 seconds. So you always want to open with this buff before pressing your 4 or 6 cooldown abilities. You want to press 4 as that does a lot of damage and further increases your damage bonuses for a short time. So, you always buff yourself with 1-1-3, so that spell does more damage Then you stack your buffs for an even stronger second and third rotation.

When you get the Elegant Melody talent, you’ll need to press:

• 1-1-3 – get your 25-second damage buff.
• 2-2-3 – stack your DoT of Elegant Melody twice. Some synergy with Elegant Chord DMG buff procs too from the talent tree.
• 2-3 – DoT stack complete.
• 1-4-3 – Passionate Play talent allows you to to press three times here.
• 1-2-3 – highest damage Chord spam for your rotation. Also reapplies your DoT to the target.
• 1-1-3 to maintain buff when its due to fall off.

Repeat the process while maintaining the DoT on the boss. Impermanence procs should wait for your rotation to complete and still get the damage buff from it. Again, more on this in the talent section.

Elegant Melody is a spell that turns your 2 skill from a blue icon into a purple icon. Essentially Elegant Melody is an upgraded blue, which does more damage and applies a DoT that can stack. The stacked DoT can combo as well for faster spread of the damage over time effect. Once the DoT is fully stacked it does more attack power scaling and base damage than the red chord, meaning you have a rotation to manage for maximum sustained damage, while also bursting with red. You’ll also find that your mixed Chord will start outperforming your Red Chord at that point.

Note you want to press 4 before you start Mixed Chording because you can get multiple chord attacks via the Elegant buff from the talent tree.

If you take the Variation talent, your build rotation can look like

• 1-1-3
• 4
• 2-2-3
• 1-3
• Repeat

(We don’t recommend this playstyle for now so don’t worry about this one. It is mainly for blue builds in the talent tree. Blue builds use more sustained damage and rotate chord styles like a Windwalker Monk from WoW. Essentially, you do less damage with your basic rotation, but you reduce the cooldown of your 4th skill very quickly, which essentially becomes your main DPS spell, which then ramps the rest of your lower damage chords very frequently.) Frequently rotation chord skill also ramps the damage of your next Chord. Hence the playstyle.

AOE Rotation

As for your AOE Rotation, Bard DPS builds in Tarisland have a AOE that reduces its CD based on targets hit, just like the Barbarian DPS build. If you can hit your AOE 5th spell on at least 5 targets, you can spam your AOE. A 5-target AOE scenario rotation looks like this.

• 1-1-3
• 4 – for DMG buff
• 5 spam until loss of 4 targets
• Attempt to 1-1-3 rotation in between AOE attacks when less than 4 targets.

Again you want your buffs activated for bonus AOE damage.

If you have less than 5 targets, then you get a second cooldown for every target lower than 5. So, if you have 3 targets, your AOE has a two-second cooldown. 4 = 1 second, etc. With that downtime, you can GCD one other spell. Work on pressing either 1 or 3, depending on your chord stacks as filler spells before your AOE activates. Only AOE on 3 targets minimum as your basic rotation does more damage.

Bard DPS – red talent build

As alluded to, here’s a look at the talents. This accounts for 32 skill points in the rough order you want to get them in. You’ll need to fully level up, along with completing the talent unlock challenge to fully set up your build. Don’t worry about Elite dungeons, they are not actually challenging. The enemies hit slightly harder and require more item levels, but those tactics are fairly simple to follow with the built-in tactics announcement built into the game. Everything else is side content or other main story challenges to progress through.

1. Music Theory x3 – 15% dmg increases to all musical note skills.
2. Symphonic Poem x3 – Passionate Play grants 100% chance to obtain a Symphonic Poem buff. While active, your Chord skills cost no notes. In other words, you get to spam your chord for big damage while your Passionate Play buff lasts. Works nicely with your Inscribed Stone skill too if you can sync it up properly (7th skill).
3. Stimulate x3 – Zealous Melody and Chord deal 15% more base damage. Aka this is your 1-1-3 rotation spell names.
4. Solo Master x3 – Increase Combo stat by 3%. This should be enough to grant your first Inspire Core Passive stat check when you hit this point in the game since you should have some combo gear by that point.
5. Elegant Melody (EM): Turns Blue Melody into Purple Melody skills. Applies a DoT onto the target that can stack up to three times. It can also Combo, so it is perfect for your main secondary stat.
6. Homology x3 – Zealous Chord DMG gains 3% bonus damage and 50% chance to deal additional damage to the target once. Again, more buffs to your 1-1-3 rotation’s burst potential on the 3 cast.
7. Outburst x3 – Elegant Melody and Chord deal 15% more base damage.
8. Passionate Play+ x2 – Passionate Play deals 15% more DMG. You also gain a 5% DMG increase while the buff lasts.
9. Impermanence x2 – Increase damage to enemies affected with Elegant Melody by 2%. After Melody lands a Combo you have a 100% chance to make your next Elegant Melody cast deal extra damage equal to 20% of your ATK. When several enemies are affected by EM, the trigger chance of the effect is lowered.
10. Finale x3 – Deal increased damage to targets below 25% HP. Basically, an execute window talent for bosses. It is also decent for AOE packs for when there are 5 or more enemies.
11. Wild Music x2 – Wild Music lasts 3 seconds longer and you deal more damage during the buff phase.
12. Majestic x2 – Raid buff for increased attack damage and combo rate improvement for 18 seconds. Depending on raid coordination you may not need this talent. Matchmaking group leaders will love you too!
13. Free Inspiration x2 – Chance to gain a musical score that sits above the class mechanic. If your Chord Score plays the same Chord skills as the ones given on the bar you get bonuses to that next Chord Score.- Pretty much passive damage improvement from time to time for spamming your rotation. Also handy for your inscribed stone skill when you get to use that.

Recommended Bard ultimates

Ultimates depend on what you are doing and will likely change all the time. Try to mix and match and use your own playstyle, role in party or game sense to better plan your utility options. Here are a few examples of what we like and why.

•  We quite like Sound Barrier for self-shielding for boss mechanics that deal AOE damage. Helps your raid healers out a lot. 
• Potential Unleash is a nice skill for dodging mechanics or doing tactics. Also fantastic for escaping threats in PvP who use their charge skill or gap closer as you can teleport a short distance in the direction you’re facing. 
• Noise is good for silencing casters in pvp or in dungeons.
• Break Free is great for PvP and cleansing stuns.

Bard attributes and gearing

For the most part, the recommended stats for the class are correct. You can get attributes and stats from gear and your inscribed stone, which is your main end-game character progression grind.  In terms of your gearing priority for the stats you want:

1. Combo – Increases the chance you’ll free-cast the same spell you pressed.
2. Intelligence – Flat damage increase
3. Omni – Increases final damage dealt and other status effects.
4. Crit – A chance to crit with your spells
5. Hit – Reduce the chance of your attack missing
6. Cooldown – Recues the CD of your 4 and 6 skills.
7. Everything else

Combo is a needed skill for a few reasons. The first is that it is a core talent skill, which allows for your red chord to combo. It also gives you a nice damage buff if you reach the combo requirements.  It is also required for comboing your EM, which helps stack your DoT much faster on your main target. You can also combo your Chords and musical notes too. Comboing chords means more burst; Comboing your notes means more chord casts per fight, which is where your damage is. All in all, very much needed.

We recommend getting to 50% for the full-skill passive talent, and to make sure you get to cast your 3 skill for Chords more often. Try to reach 46% Combo rating if you want as your 6th skill grants a minimum of 4% combo while the buff lasts for 18 seconds using our full talent build.

Omni is required for your second active talent skill, which buffs the damage of your chord skills greatly. The better that gets, the better your red chord and DoT will do. So it’s worth trying to reach that 15.6% for the full buff in your talent tree.  Any higher stat is less valuable than Crit or Intellect at that point, as it only scales properly with that active skill talent.

Intelligence is a flat damage increase. Get this whenever you can with no cap on it.

Crit help you deal more damage. Focus on that alongside Intellect once you’re at your other stat caps.

Hit increases your chances of hitting enemies the same level as you or higher. Aim to improve this when possible on your end-game gearing. You can find the hit requirement for each dungeon and raid under the attributes required tab by going into the dungeon and raid menu. Make sure you hit the number needed for the content you’re aiming for to make sure you hit all your attacks.

Cooldown is nice for lowering the CD on your 4th and 6th skill. There’s an active passive talent that lowers the CD of your 4th skill further. If you can get at least 10%  you’ll start shaving a second or two off it. Any more is nice for better uptime on your 4. Lowering your 6th skill cooldown is very handy. CD has little to no affect on your 5th skill cooldown.

Focus allows you to ignore a target’s defence. Mainly a PvP stat

Stamina is a stat that manages your HP and recovery. It’s largely a tanking stat and defensive stat that you can passively increase without much focus on it. It’s also nice for PvP too.

When it comes to the Inscribed Stone, you want to to leave the build on recommended as it gives you what you need for the main stat priority. You’ll also easily find your way to the rune slots. In terms of ruins, the following are decent runes to level up.

1. Drive – 6.5% chance to deal 222% attack power to the target.
2. Burst – Each time you deal direct damage, you apply a stack that when it hits 23, it explodes, dealing 280% ATK.
3. Sprawl – Applies a DoT that stacks up to 5 times, dealing 15.4% of your ATK power per second.

These three are your main runes to focus on if and when you can. They offer DoT and easy-to-trigger damage procs that passively boost your DPS. Considering you’re doing lots of Direct Damage to bosses anyway, you should trigger these from time to time. As for the other two, look for runes like Intertwined Fate for passive DMG and Defense buffs. The 5th one can be whatever you can get your hands on at that time that offers more passive DMG procs or offensive / defensive combo stats.