New bard!

Zerok

Heya! Brand new bard here, wondering what stats I should specc for and which traits to take. Thanks! Any other hints or tips or advice would be appreciated

Zerok

Oh, I think I also want to be a horkval cuz they're cool. Any race suggestions?

Tesha

Hi! Welcome to Achaea. 

Constitution, nimble, robust, whatever you want for the third major trait. Your second most important stat is intelligence if you want to damage people out, and your third most important stat is dexterity. Strength adds like 10-20 damage to jab, and 25 or so to DFA, don't bother with it. Grook is good, with 14 con/13 int. Also you get to look like this.

Bard is complex, but essentially, here's a checklist:

- Get a rapier x/150+/220+

- Get as high in swashbuckling as you can

- Splash some lessons in voicecraft and harmonics - tune is great, so is anthem.

- Bash with tunesmith rapier accentato, jab target. 

- Eventually, get leather armour, full curatives, venoms.

- Bug Tesha or Terra to teach you the rest in-game.

Florentino

If you don't want to be a Good character (Tesha and Terra are both in that faction and Good players seem to like to forum recruit), Kafziel and Xer can also teach you very well, and maybe Zeon if he's still around.

Zerok

So the horkval armour isn't better than regular leather?

Tesha

His character's already Targossian, was assuming that's the character he was asking about. No recruitment necessary. 

Leather armour sucks, horkval armour isn't amazing, but it might be better. You'd have to ask @Sena.

Tune is pretty good, and bard healing with continuo is pretty great. Spike damage will always be a concern, but you have tricks to survive, sometimes.

Jacen

There's not a simple answer to that. From the Quick Questions thread: 

Sena said:

Rexia said:

Sena said:

Horkval is 10% blunt/cutting resistance. Does stack with any other resistances.

How does that compare to say, leather armour?

Not very easily.

Armour and resistances work differently (armour generally applying to a portion of the damage, dependent on the attack, while resistances apply to the full damage) and then there's stacking to consider. So leather armour could be better than horkval resistance for one attack and worse for another attack. Or even with the same attack, leather armour could be better with a certain amount of health and worse at another health value. With weapon damage, for example, the health-scaling portion of the damage isn't reduced by armour, only the flat, non-scaling portion is affected. That means that the higher your health, the less effective armour will be against DSL, while resistance stays at the same percentage same regardless of health. And certain attacks (like backstab) ignore armour entirely, and are only reduced by resistances. And I mentioned stacking; I'm not exactly sure how resistances stack now (it keeps being changed), but how many other sources of damage resistance you have might also influence how effective horkval resistances are.

In general (a very huge generalisation), I'd guess that horkval resistance is approximately as useful as good scalemail. But as I said, this will vary based on your health, other resistances, and what you're taking damage from.

Sena

Horkval resistance will be better than pretty much any leather armour, most of the time. There may still be situations where good leather is better, though.

Zerok

Ok awesome thank you all! I appreciate it.

Antonius

Leap is also amazing as a fast bypass for things like icewalls and blocking, and is essentially a free 700 credit artefact.

Kafziel

Bards get backflip already

Antonius

How fast is the balance recovery on backflip?

Cooper

Fast.

Kafziel

Under a second from memory

Atalkez

Very fast. If it isn't under 1s it isn't much more than that. I was always able to back flip away and not get lunged, unlike Evade.

Averi

Backflip is REALLY fast. 

11:21:45 You gather your legs under you and backflip out to the south.

11:21:46 You have recovered balance on all limbs.

11:21:05 You gather your legs under you and backflip out to the west.

11:21:05 You have recovered balance on all limbs.

Mostly what @Tesha said except the rapier stat part.  

If you are a new bard, without trans swashbuckling, you might want to look into a high accuracy rapier instead of a high speed one.  Young bards miss A LOT and a +180 to-hit will help you hit most of the time. That's why all the rapiers that you get from the trial of rebirth have a to-hit of 180 but their damage is only 50 and the speed is only 167 so you can usually switch it out for something slightly better.  

After you trans swashbuckling, you can switch to the typical 150 to-hit, 230+ speed rapier.  Pretty much you want to get tune in voicecraft (gives you approximately 10% I think damage reduction) and then work on transing swashbuckling.  When you can get harmonics, anthem is nice but it's not really a necessity.

As for specializations, I went with the high constitution one.  These are my traits.  Nimble and robust are great.  Master contemplator is sort of nice after a long thing of hunting but the minor traits are all sort of whatever...

Level 20: Nimble

Level 30: Knife thrower

Level 40: Blissful ignorance

Level 50: Robust

Level 60: Decorated

Level 70: Master contemplator

Level 80: Lucky

Zerok

How important is the intelligence stat? Dealing good damage would be great but it seems more health is better. What mix should I should for? As Horkval I could get a constitution as high as 16, but then my intelligence would only be 11..

Averi

I'd say you should make your intelligence at least 12.  The more intelligence you have, the more mana you will have + the higher your accentato damage.  One of the worst things about being bard is how quickly your mana drains. As a horkval, you'll have better damage resistance so you might be able to afford a slightly lower constitution (not certain about this).  

I only have a constitution of 15 and I'm human and stuff. 

When it comes to horkval options, I like the commander one best.  You can add robust to bring your constitution up another notch. Check with @Tesha to see if she agrees. 
Commander 11 12 13 13

Zerok

Ok thanks! I wasn't sure how well accentato scaled with intelligence because the scaling of the rapier's damage with strength seemed pretty lackluster. Also eyeing up Satyr! I want to be something that I don't see very often

Averi

The int scaling is better than the strength scaling for sure.

Satyr is cool too but it seems a bit more strength oriented. Horkval seems to have more bard suited stats.  But in the end, it really doesn't matter. Depends on your rp and how much fun you have etc. etc. I'd probably go with this one if I was Satyr though 
Gallant 13 11 13 12

Antonius

@Averi Timestamps aren't much use without milliseconds shown, but I'd guess backflip is the same as leap and mountjump; about 0.9 seconds with nimble.

Kafziel

You don't need damage to kill for lock strats and smart damage strats usually succeed even with base 12 int/str

Riley

Bards in my opinion should look at Con, Int, Dex in that order.. Horkvali in my opinion is a very good choice especially as the Commander spec with the CON trait

Zerok

Thanks guys, I went horkval commander with con trait.