Silkroad Online Forums

I need some advice: When I was reading the skill info, I was thinking that I could keep mana tambour, guard tambour, and hit march going while channeling mp with mana switch, then I looked closer and noticed I couldn't use them all at once. A real shame, too, because that would make bards godly. D:

Anyway, Could someone verify this problem? Maybe there's a chance it's a typo (please be a typo), and if not could I get some advice on what skills to avoid? I figure I'd be in the back of the party not attacking much, so would mana switch be useful if I just have the other mp recovery skills on my self? I intend to get all buffs mentioned above, in the off chance two other bards join the party. Keep in mind I'm a pure int bard, and don't really have any reason to go with another skill build.

I can't think of a single useless bard skill to be honest. They all have their uses in specific situations. You'll be amazed how quickly you blast through your own MP though, so any skill that heals your own MP is useful as well.

You can only use one tambour and one dance at a time, and you can only dance if someone else is playing. Basically if you have N bards in the party, you can have N musics, and N-1 dances going at the same time. I've been in a 3 bard party; it was fun. With so many bards, they can actually afford to attack as well as heal MP, and although the attacks are not powerful in themselves, they do execute quickly, so your damage/second is quite reasonable.

A party type I really like for grinding, is 6 sword nukers with 2 bards. Rarely have I been able to get something like that together though.

Yeah, I think I'm the only pure bard in the guild. There is another bard, but I think he just uses it for increasing speed and recovering MP.

And no, bard skills are not useless. I just think they have the potential to be better if it wasn't for that stupid limit.

Errr... Temptation?
Its faster to just kill two mobs then to wait for them to kill each other.

Mana wind - i dont like this skill too much, its alright but i use mana cycle on other users more often than this skill. but you need this maxed inorder to get mana breeze i think (which i think is really useful but you dont get it till lvl 70)

You dont have to max every dance, thats based on my opinion.
The physical and magic attk damage increase in % should be maxed tho. the others are your choice. those two are mana reduce (why would your party need this when they already have you recovering their mp?) and hp heal increase (how often do you find a good cleric that spams heals?)

tips:
- discord wave can be your bestfriend. DONT be forget to use it often on your int-based people in your party. you can use it on yourself too
- Have a high lvl wolf. Discord wave does not remove the aggro from your wolf. If you use the chord on yourself while soloing and champs and giants are around you, they wont hesitate to kill your wolf.
- Tambour always (when in parties or soloing)
- Keep track of your mp, dont forget mana cycling yourself if you want to save Gold, yes it gets annoying but it gets bnetter with that lvl 36 which converts hp to mp instantly.

dont get hp/mp convert unless you are pure str... bards have low enough hp already lol

but i like mana switch a lot, with mana switch on every person in party i can cast mana cycle and wind and never run out of mp

the cure skill is good too since cleric might not have time to do it and holy word is on cooldown

and i forget the attack skill, but the one that converts 100% damage to mp is great too

Why would you stand around and wait? Just go kill something else while they're busy killing each other. Works especially well when the mob deals splash damage, like the yeti and muiji. It's also nice to confuse that single mob that got away from the warrior, and is now running towards your cleric.

i use temptation to run from giants well that or my wolf...

just get giant to fight another mob while you run to get distance

Temptation works better one it becomes aoe...if it does, not entirely sure. When it's not, it's still a good skill to use to protect wizards and clerics from getting hit or if you start getting mobbed...which I don't see happening with noise, then temptation would help.

Dances are all useful, they are fast cast for a reason, but there are very rare chances to use them.

For a pure bard, every skill is useful. Sure you can skip one of the mp regen skills, but if you party with a wizard and he uses aoe nonstop, you will notice that mana cycle doesn't work fast enough if the wizard doesn't do mp management with weaker skills/non-aoe skills.

Well, I just got done with a quick lion party. they aren't strong, but with me being level 21, they're a good thing to test on. Noise kept the aggro off, which was good with my 500HP, and any giants or champs that got close to me was slaughtered by the time I actually took damage. I pretty much used mana cycle (level 2 for now) and mana wind once in a while, though I don't think wind bounced from one player to the next like it was suppose to (plus even on a pure int around my level, level 2 cycle heals pretty much all mp, and with that 1 second cool down I could cast on the whole party faster than if I used wind.) With noise and guard tambour on, I was assured I wouldn't lose the skill from damage as long as I stayed near the center (there was a cleric build in the party who stayed near me all the time, while the wizard and rouge did the damage. Mana Swicth would have been very useful, if I could've used it with the tambours. Weak. -.-). All-in-all, I didn't have to use any attack skills. I can't wait to really get to a high level and try my luck again. I've decided to avoid the dance skills completely, only because my guild doesn't have many bard characters and with the amount of people on my server and the majority of which Chinese characters, I'm not going to run into a bard with high enough skill levels. Of course, this means I could ultimately max out every non-dance skill available, seeing how there's no limit to the sp I could gain.

In an shared party, noise does not prevent aggro based on damage you do on other mobs. If you are in a /8 party, and you hit a mob, the mob next to it WILL come to you (unless it already has a higher aggro on someone else). The same goes for healing other people's HP/MP.

healing mp doesnt aggro
or at least putting mana cycle/mana switch on them doesnt
mana wind might, not sure i dont use it much

that skill that converts Hp to MP is very useful in emergency circumstances too. if you have too low mp to cast a mana cycle on yourself could be one of those situations. (im also assuming that you arnt carrying any mp pots, because i dont). Youll find that if you solo grind cycling gettings pretty tedious sometimes (if you dont use mana cycle when you solo you im assuming you use pots, well hp consumed by the hp > mp skill is less than the mp gained so youd be saving pots just by using your hp pots than your mp. na'mean?)

it does have its advantages. leave it at lvl 1. it wont hurt. and of course dont be stupid and cast it while your fighting a monster.

Dances. if your not planning to max them, just leave them at lvl1. You will at one point encounter a bard too.
im maxing my magic dance which increase magic damage. the rest im leaving at lvl1, just to see what colors they are XD

One question: That bind skill for 10 seconds... useless?
i find that if you attack the monster, the bind wears off... and its not insta-cast like a warlock's sleep

use tuning noise if you are out of mp...
and you can hit then after you bind and it wont go away... but it wont last full 10 seconds sometimes if monster is too high, its fast enough to cast

Why would it be stupid to use mana cycle while fighting? The way I see it, if I'm low on MP, I use it regardless of the situation. It has a 1 second cool down, with half the time to actually use it. I don't carry MP pots, so I have to rely on cycle as well as any MP pots I happen to loot from monsters. Plus, I don't need that HP->MP skill because I have the warning sound on- when it sounds, I know to use cycle, and I'd always have enough left to cast it. With 624 HP, it would be stupid to drain that for mana I can easily restore with a press of a button. it's a waste of HP pots, and very dangerous when dealing with tougher monsters. Also, I don't need dance skills, because if I DO run into another bard, chances are THEY have dance skills, so I could play music while they dance. :/

Regardless of whether the mana healers pull aggro or not, if I'm in a party and use them, chances are the monster would die before it reached me. As long as I have noise on, I should be set from the occasional norm that weasels through. remember, I stay in the middle of the group near the cleric.

Oh, and I see bind as useless. i'd only really need it to fight giants- since they're the only monster I can't outrun right now- and they're so big they could hit me from where they're bound, not to mention they might have the occasional magic attack. Since it only lasts 10 seconds, it would be easier to just hit the ground running if a giant spawns.

just sayin temptation doesnt work on champs or giants like you were saying, they only work on normal mobs and normal pt mobs

True, but if you do not attack, you won't get mobbed. You will only ever get mobbed if you attack a mob to draw it to the tank, and they don't taunt it towards them and you have 2 other mobs jumping you because they were too close. And if you are attacking, you won't get mobbed because the aggro of wizards is much higher, unless a warrior puts protect on all of them, then you might draw a mob that a wizard is hitting. The point is, temptation is not useless. The only useless skills of a bard would be multiple MP healing skills. Like the cleric having a 2 rez when you can take off the effect of oblation and it casts faster, and they have 10 heals when you only ever use 3 active heals at most.

Keep in mind, better skills require weaker skills of a certain level. If I want swing march, I need moving march, for example. They do the same thing, but one's better than the other. if someone wants the best skills, they're ultimately going to need the weaker skills.

The only skills in the bard tree that have this set up are your damage % increase dances, your booming wave, tuning noice (its up to you if u like this or not. i find it useless), and you need mana wind maxed to get the mana breeze

Well, if I think the higher skills are worth it, then I'll max them. There's no limit to the amount of sp I gain, right?