Bard

The Bard is the third Tideborn class, after the Assassin and the Psychic. It is a magic damage and support class that mainly deals Water damage. Players can create a Bard of either gender.

In battle the Bard can swap between its Zither and a sword. With the Zither it casts long-range spells or puts a chain of buffs on teammates to protect them; with the sword it fights the enemy up close.

Some Bard skills build Melody Points. With enough of them the Bard enters a Frenzied Melody state that makes its attacks much stronger and adds extra critical damage. Bards are built around critical hits: by chaining attacks one after another they can make their hits critical, which allows deadly burst damage.

• Strong: heals aimed at chosen squad members.
• Strong: hard to kill in PvP and able to chain critical hits.
• Strong: can save a squad from being wiped out.
• Weak: few buffs or debuffs that help a squad in dungeons.
• Weak: damage falls sharply in one-on-one fights or when its channeling is interrupted, and it is vulnerable to control skills.

Most Bard skills need the Zither, whose damage ranges from minimum to high. Arcane armor suits the class because of its high magic.

In PvP, Roaming Dragon Blessing makes the Bard tough to bring down: when it would otherwise die while stunned, it gets a short immunity to stuns. Its main weaknesses are stuns and movement control, because its best damage comes from chaining attacks, and an enemy can break that chain by stunning it or running away. Upstream Glow helps against runners but has a 30-second cooldown, and Clouds Encompassing the Sea buys the Bard about 5 seconds of breathing room.

In PvE a young Bard struggles against physical bosses: it has no heal-over-time, no summons, no shield spells, and cannot move while casting at low level. Normal monsters are easy, since chained attacks give guaranteed critical hits. A second heal arrives at level 59. At level 100 Great Sound of Hope adds a powerful transformation, usable once every 5 minutes if Subsiding Dirt is in the inventory, which lasts 20 to 40 seconds.

In Dungeons a high-level Bard becomes a strong support: its heals on the tank also spread to other party members. Yu: Kunshan Jade Shatter can stop big area attacks from killing weaker members, saving the squad from a wipe. How the Bard performs in Territory Wars is still largely unknown.

The Bard came with Song of the Surging Waves in December 2024. The same update added a Hero Saga chapter for the class, Qin Sword, which opens at level 80 with the Aware of Vacuity stage of Spiritual Cultivation. Its story follows a Tideborn tribe with dragon horns who arrived from the eastern coast of the Sea of Reality.