Minstrel Bard
So the newest class that came with mod 21 the bard has a healer paragon called “minstrel”. Unlike the other three healers on paper, it is also a buffer. That being said from someone who plays all healing classes, the bard is the most challenging one that requires the most from the player in class mechanics and game mechanics as well. Not gonna lie me and Kali bard had a complicated love-hate relationship at the start and I wanted to make sure I understand her before creating this guide. Huge thanks to Cold Water for help at the start <3.
Now that some time has passed and me and Kali bard are getting along very well I thought it is time for the guide, especially after there were requests for it.
Even though as HoT healer bard cannot keep up with dc or sw and in a trial, they will outheal you by a lot, I can confirm that bard can heal anything the other 3 healing classes can. Endgame content (ToMM, ZCM and VoS hc and RCs) as well without any issues and it can offer its own perks if utilized correctly. Admittedly you cannot afford mistakes on bard as u could on the rest and recover easily, AP regeneration is very bad compared to the other 3 but it has other cool thingies we would explore in this guide.
Not to mention that it is a very fun playstyle, however, requires lots of tabbing xD. Anyways let’s start.
Race:
For the healers, I love the Aasimar race. All my healers are Aasimar I just like that little extra 2% on power, OH, IH, Defense and HP. With race, bonus reworks there are other races that are good choices as well: such as Human (+1 to all ratings); Wood elf (+5% crit strike – good choice for DC, which do not have crit strike in forte like OP and SW); Sun elf (more action point gain – which for healers is always so sweet), drow, dragonborn.
Ability Scores
WIS and CHA for all healers in the current mod (Mod 21) – WIS because you do want that OH and CHA because you do want that forte – forte for all healers has their resource pool (performance for bard, divinity for OP and DC and soulweave for SW). On top of that another stat in forte that is really nice is crit severity for bard and DC, and crit strike for OP and SW. The third stat in forte is a defensive one – deflect severity for bard and OP, deflect for DC and awareness for SW and as we already mentioned healers want higher survivability so investment in defensive stats is important.
Priority stats to focus on: Offense: Power and OH > crit strike and crit severity
Defence: Defense and Awareness – preferably above 50%, as much HP as you can get from wherever u can get. Healer roles get an extra 10% HP after combat rework and that is super sweet
Gear and Stats:
Gear Options:
Buffs – Superior flask of potency, Wild storm elixir, Squash soup or grand summer feast, Invocation blessing crit severity, Sambocade, Forger’s box.
For tomm especially if you will be taking hypos alone with tank caprese instead of the squash soup and you can also use foehammer’s favor elixir instead of wild storm so you are more tankier.
Stats shown are out of combat and with no buffs, gloves bonus isn’t proced atm either.
Head: Rain catcher (VoS hc), goristo horns ( T1 avernus hunt) or if none of those you can always use something that gives equip on power like the Divine head gear piece or the Lionsguard obtainable from TIC
Chest: Ribcage (T3 avernus hunt); Forest Guardians restoration (VOS chest gives u more awareness, and tankiness); Raindrop Rainment (VoS hc miniboss drop – gives u more OH) or the Infernal Forged (more defense)
Arms: Arms of the last resistance (T3 avernus hunt - +Power and Defense), Lionsguard (TIC - +power) or the divine ones that come from the blessed citadel forge.
Weapons: Lionhearts (come from TOMM), Celestials (ZCM), MW.
Feat: Fairy steps (VoS hc), Greaves of the Lightguard (T3 avernus hunt – if u miss power in rating), Boots of the Harald (T2 avernus hunt – makes u and party tankier giving u defense), Midnight Wispers (VoS hc – more defense and crit severity)
Artefact set – few good options – tiamat’s orb set, sparkling fey emblem set, vistani set (if you are used to dealing damage with your at will to proc it great debuff for party), apocalypse dagger set.
However I am currently using the Jewel of the north set because of the IL and it actually really helps for hc VoS especially in the maze phase where healers usually generate lots of threat and often draw all the mobs to them. So not a bad option especially because the bonus OH from Tiamat isn’t that great for the IL reduction it gives and fey is very depended on your own health and your target’s health for you to get the bonus. Vistani and apocalypse still great to debuff and help the party even with the lower IL, however I don’t have them so Jewel of the North for the moment it is.
Secondary artefacts – Journals if available, or just go for debuffs like Halaster’s blast scepter, charm of the serpent, wyvern coated venom knives etc, the new artifacts Neverwinter Standard, Jewel of the north and Demogorgon’s Reach are great as slotted since they have very high IL, however a healer should always have different debuff artefacts to help the party.
Rings: The new VoS rings are great – Red eyes glare (+Power equip and critical severity in stat) and Grove’s crystal tears (+OH in rating stat and +5% crit strike on equip bonus u can keep it proced all the time with barkshield since it counts as a shield), and the Queen’s golden skyring (+power/crit sev vs single enemy – awesome for tomm/zcm). Other good options are the Golden rings of the herald, striking ring of the master or veteran (tomm/AH).
Shirt – Many good options the new shirts from the seals of the wild, T3 avernus shirts, BHE sharandar shirts, VoS hc shirts and if none of those possible Haralds and Infernal forged still good options and decent IL
Pants – Same as the shirt.
Enchants:
utility: darks
offence - radiants + brutals mix
defense - radiants+draconic+tactical
armour - bark to keep OH ring proced, if not shadowclad
weapon - frost, dread, bronzewood to debuff and help party or vorpal (stronger heals), holy avenger (defence buff on dps)
Boons:
Personally, I swap between power and crit strike depending if there is a runic aura in the party and the same with awareness and HP depending on what I feel I need more for the current run. Revive sickness always in trials and Movement speed in dungeons (healers shouldn’t die in dungeons so u don’t need revive sickness there, not saying they should die in trials, but sometimes a crit hypo or WN can fuck u over so better safe than sorry u can’t afford to have even slower perform regen)
Companions and Companion Equips:
Companion gear:
on Bard I use 1x crit strike + defense; crit strike+ awareness & crit severity +awareness companion gear (1350 IL from Sharandar). Runestones are a mix of 2 profanes, 1 arcane and 1 empowered in offense and 2 recondite in defense slots. However this is something that you can work around with depending on what stats you need.
Active Companion Bonuses (ACB)
Golden Bulette pup’s presence (that juicy expensive OH paid with blood and tears), polar bear cub (OH, def), black dragon Ioun stone (crit chance), Alpha compy and deep crow hatchling – for da poweeeer. Other combinations are possible also such as quickling instead of polar bear, if you dont have golden bulette then polar bear.
As summoned I run the golden bulette pup right now but other good options are the polar bear cub ( u gain more power/crit and awareness) or the stalwart golden lion for helping out your party and give them more survivability, or spined devil - 10% debuff with less than 100% uptime, drizzt is 3% constant buff
Companion Enhancement - Reinvigorate (more OH) or Armor break, dulled senses to help party.
Mounts, Insignia bonuses, Collars:
Active Mount Power:
Swarm, King of Spines, Armored Griffon, Eclipse Lion, Armored Bulette, Remifire Salamander – anything that gives damage mitigation or debuffs the bosses.
Passive:
You can go with whatever stat you are missing in rating, I am currently using Ferocious Predetor for more power and crit severity. Runic Aura (for more power and def for whole party); Quick Action for faster AP gain is also a good option, stalwart for more HP, Indestructible for more defence, etc. Whatever stat u feel you can benefit from.
Collars and insignia bonuses:
On Bard I use OH collar (the obvious choice for all healers), crit severity (because I don’t have ribcage on my bard) can be substituted with AP gain, movement speed, encounter powers and gold gain (this one mainly for the IL doesn’t matter much either way)
Insignias I use all fortitude on my bard because I like my healers tanky in case she needs to go with the tank on hypos and because my Bard, OP and SW share insignias, while my cleric is a spoilt little princess and has her own set xD , but if you are missing stats in rating insignias are a great place to tweak those in by using a mix of different ones.
You can substitute Artificier’s persuasion and Cavalry’s warning for magistrate's patience insignia bonus and protector's camaraderie, but since those are the insignias I have right now I use those two bonuses.
Powers, Feats, Rotations:
Soo... the interesting part. Rotation on a bard heal is very situational and often missing, it is more a feeling of timing and what you need to do when. If you are not careful to watch out, performance can drain very fast and if you panic it is difficult to recover.
The important thing to understand is that unlike the other 3 bard doesn’t have a tab solo heal. The tab enables you to enter performance more and play different songs, which are your main source of healing. Encounters on bard also do not heal. So you need to get used to not having encounter heals or big tab solo heal/shield. Your main sources of healing are the songs u can do in performance mode + the at-will Arpeggio which together with the class feature Arpeggio Fortissimo becomes a very decent aoe heal, however can drain your performance very fast so watch out.
Powers:
At wills – Reprise (to apply frost/dread debuff) and fill AP and Arpeggio obviously to heal.
Encounters –
Bassline (to restore performance, but cast is long and annoying however u can move super slow while casting it, once u get the hang of it and time it when people don’t need healing is quite ok),
Delayed play – to slot a song and use it as an encounter with lower performance cost ( I usually slot Sheltering Etude here for saves when I am out of performance) – If vamp feat is proced while cast it will keep it slotted which is pretty neat (saves performance cost), so keep out on watching when it’s proced and make good decisions for the timing of using it.
Dancing lights (In ST) – small mitigation and again applies the dread/frost debuff or Lunge in AoE.
Dailies – Curtain Call (very powerful daily that scales out with the number of songs you currently have up on everyone and does few things at the same time – nice shield from sheltering etude, mitigation from warding carol, AP from Blaze flamenko
And
Inspiration (pretty useless however because it only catches on two people)
Tab – Perform – So as already mentioned, the tab is not a mark solo heal, tab is performance mode, which allows you to execute songs, which are your main source of healing. In addition, when you press it you see this.
In order to play the songs, you need to execute a certain sequence, which is different for each one as you can see below. For convenience, you can slot 2 songs in Quick slots. I have Defender’s minuet and Rejuvenating. Defender’s because sometimes you need to use it more than once in a row and rejuvenating because it is an HoT for the whole party. You can set it up, as it is convenient for you. The rest of the songs u can execute manually by doing the sequence for them, u have enough time but careful for mistakes or u need to start all over and loose time.
Songs:
Below you can see each song and what it can offer, I will not go into a detailed explanation but Sheltering Etude, Rejuvenating carol and Blaze flamenco you will use most often. Defender’s minuet for solo heal (fastest way to heal the tank providing some dps doesn’t have less hp atm… so pray it catches the right person xD) and Warding Carol is quite situational (Works great in VoS first boss phase 2 for example, second mini, maze),
Aurora Phantasia is also very nice but you need to take into account the timing left on your other songs before u cast it since it turns perform into aurora finale and you can’t cast other songs before u activate it, watch your performance and activate Aurora finale when u need burst healing. Basically, all songs can be useful in different situations and content and this is quite neat.
Class features:
I slot this if I will be going with the tank on hypos in tomm (yes bards can do it too if you build them for it) and watch out when to proc it. For the rest of the content, I normally go with
This makes our at-will an AoE heal and it is actually pretty neat and helpful, but it can drain your performance quite fast if you are not watching it.
And
Because come on who doesn’t want to be faster…..
Feats:
1. Making our at-will more powerful.
2. Better the small mitigation of this than the other crappy feat.
3. Another one of your best friends as mentioned before helps keep you a song slotted in Delayed play.
4. Literally your best friend in heavy healing demanding places, however, watch out when it procs so you don’t waste casting bassline at the same time.
Or in places that require a lot of Defender’s minuet use, you can swap to Pianissimo, however, so far I keep preferring Desperate finale in most places and the loadout with Pianissimo I barely use.
5. Storyteller - This together with Blaze flamenco are the ways you can buff your party being more damage for dps or give mitigation for tanks. However, it only works if you play the songs not in quickplay so activating songs slotted via Q and E will not give a stack of this buff.
Rotation:
Sooo… fun part bard rotation…. Sorry to disappoint but there isn’t a universal rotation as is with the other 3 heal classes, songs are very situational. Few things, however – I try to have rejuvenating carol, sheltering etude and blaze flamenco up all the time. Defender’s minuet when I need to solo heal someone… would mix in aurora Phantasia and then aurora finale here and there depending on the situation. In places with poison like displacer beast vos – warding carol is great, even if it has such a short duration… Since AP regen is very slow Daily use is always strategic and try to have all songs up before using curtain call to get all benefits from it and don’t forget to reapply them right after… Mixing up the Arpeggio at-will when everyone needs healing at the same time and Reprise when possible to debuff and fill AP. As I mentioned already several times all about bard healer is connected with timing, planning and very strategic usage.
Also keep in mind that there is a very small invisible cd right after u have been in performance mode and u can not instantly use at-wills, encounters or dailies so you need to get the feeling of it
That is as much as I could systemize bard healer for you guys, keep in mind it is a new class and it is also new to me so don’t take everything as 100% but as my observations so far what bards can do and how I play bard minstrel. Don’t expect to heal as much as the other 3 classes, but know u are capable to heal anything they can, just different and a bit more challenging :)
If there are any questions or suggestions as always don’t hesitate to contact me and ask in-game @sunshinedawn#4492 or on discord @Sunshinedawn#8895!
GLHF,
Kali :)
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