This is a breakdown of some of the core bard aa's. It isn't intended to tell you what to get first, that's up to you and maybe the advice of some of your friends. Rather it's an explanation of how or why some of them are useful, and in what context, so you can make more informed decisions.
Abilities Useful to all Bard Playstyles
[ ] Run 5
[ ] Selo's Enduring Cadence 3
[ ] Fading Memories
[ ] Mnemonic Retention 2
[ ] Selo's Sonata
[ ] Hymn of the Last Stand 3
[ ] Dirge of the Sleepwalker
[ ] Shield of Notes 1
[ ] Combat Agility 8
[ ] Combat Stability 8
Solo Abilities
[ ] Instrument Mastery
[ ] Critical Affliction
[ ] Boastful Bellow 1
Pulling Abilities
[ ] Boastful Bellow 1
[ ] Combat Agility 9-23 (9-13)
[ ] Combat Stability 9-23 (9-13)
[ ] Natural Durability
[ ] Physical Enhancement
[ ] Mental Clarity
[ ] Expansive Mind
[ ] Maestro's Concentration
[ ] General Sturdiness
[ ] Shield Block
Group Abilites
[ ] Extended Notes
[ ] Quick Time
[ ] Fierce Eye
[ ] Instrument Mastery
[ ] Singing Mastery
Melee Abilities
[ ] Harmonious Attack
[ ] Ambidexterity
[ ] Sinister Strikes
[ ] Combat Fury
[ ] Weapon Affinity
[ ] Veteran's Wrath
[ ] Spell Casting Fury
[ ] Fury of Magic
[ ] Dance of Blades
[ ] Hastened Blades
[ ] Enhanced Aggression
[ ] Burst of Power
Raiding Abilities
[ ] Extended Notes 3-6
[ ] Quick Time
[ ] Instrument Mastery 4
[ ] Ayonae's Tutelage 1-6
[ ] Fading Memories
[ ] Mnemonic Retention 2
[ ] Fierce Eye
[ ] Dance of Blades 1
[ ] Bladed Song 1-2
[ ] Funeral Dirge 1-6
[ ] Singing Mastery 4
Grab Bag
[ ] Body and Mind Rejuvenation
[ ] Master of Disguise
[ ] Planar Power
[ ] Discordant Defiance
[ ] Trials of Mata Muram
[ ] Mystical Attuning
[ ] Tune of Pursuance
[ ] Scribble Notes
[ ] Cacophony
[ ] Hastened Cacophony
[ ] Song of Stone
[ ] Origin
[ ] Shield of Notes
ABILITIES USEFUL TO ALL BARD PLAYSTYLES
These are abilities that are highly useful, no matter how you play.
Run 5 and Selo's Enduring Cadence 3: Run speed, combined with casting while moving, can give the bard a big edge in any zone. Where selo's is not available, innate run speeds are crucial. Run 8 is fast enough that it makes run 5 seem slow. In modern content, a lot of mobs run faster than run 5 and this gives the bard a tremendous advantage, no matter what they're doing.
Fading Memories: No one has it like we do. Fading Memories changes the game for us completely. This definitely can get use in all areas of the game.
Mnemonic Retention 2: Sometimes our songs change often, sometimes we want to have a lot of song tools on hand, like divine aura. More spell gems let us have more tools at our fingertips.
Selo's Sonata: AA selo's. Insta cast, can be clicked during singing without an interruption. Modified by percussion, group, same as sung selo's accelerando in every respect. Selo's without a spell gem! The only advantage the song gives you is the ability to leave selo's running while faded for permanent selo's and invis. Must have aa for sure. Level 76 requirement.
Hymn of the Last Stand: This raises the bard's maximum hit points by 2000. It serves as a 2000 point self heal once every ten minutes, similar in ways to monk mend, though certainly not as powerful. I usually save this most often for making sure I am above 20% in health when I drop under it and get low health aggro. If I have low health aggro, I fade. Getting above 20% lets me continue to sing songs. This overwrites form of endurance and adds a number of hit points equal to 2000-you foe bonus. The bonus hit points decay over the course of a minute until you are back at your normal max. The 2k is at rank 3, lower levels "heal" for less. 1k at rank 1, 1.5k at rank 2, 2k at rank 3.
Dirge of the Sleepwalker: New sof aa mez, insta cast, with a built in -45 magic resist check to help it land more reliably than our normal mez. Works up to level 83. Lasts for 72 seconds, or 12 ticks! Has a built in 30% chance of a memblur. Requires level 79 to get.
Shield of Notes 1: This is a fantastic oh nos! defensive mitigation aa. Rank 1 is a very cheap buy at 3 aa and mitigates 25% damage for one minute, up to a maximum of 4000 total. This means you would have to take 16,000 total damage before it stops absorbing 25%. Higher ranks increase both the % mitigated and the total absorbed, and are well worth getting down the road, all the way up to 41% mitigation up to 11,875 total. For early in your career, you will get far more out of buying defensives than additional ranks of shield of notes.
Combat Agility and Combat Stability: I would encourage everyone to consider investing in the first 8 ranks of each of these for general survivability, the difference is staggering. Without them you have the survivability of a wet paper doll. The first 8 ranks give the biggest bang for the buck in my opinion.
SOLO ABILITIES:
Instrument Mastery: This gives you an innate 0.2 boost to your instrument mods per rank, up to 0.8 total. For soloing, this means higher percussion, making your chants do more damage, and a higher level of resist debuff (making it even easier to land the chant after it's already on). The default maximum an instrument mod can be total is 3.6, and this aa does NOT raise that cap. See Ayonae's Tutelage for how to raise the cap up to 4.2 maximum.
Critical Affliction: 6 ranks available. This line gives you the ability for your dots to crit, doing double damage on that tick. Higher ranks make it happen more often.
Boastful Bellow 1: The first rank is handy to buy as an insta cast dd. This lets you tag mobs with precision, and can be used to quickly break mez. For repositioning a mezzed mob, try hitting it with a harmony of sound to guarantee mez landing, then start singing mez. Wake it using bellow mid cast and it will move, followed by the mez landing shortly after. It takes practice and a feeling for how fast the mob runs, but this is an impressive way to quickly move a mob to exactly where you want it to be. Higher ranks increase the level at which mobs can be stunned, currently up to level 80 with all ranks. The stun is a 0.1 second stun useful only for interrupting annoying spells like dispel or gate. It costs an arm and a leg to keep this one current though, so the real value is in the first rank. When you want to interrupt spells, use mez. You can either watch for the spell you want to interrupt and mez it then, or leave mez running as a surefire way to stop gaters. Combat Fury 1 is a pre-requisite for this AA. Further ranks beyond 1 is a huge aa cost sink just to not even get additional use out of it till you complete it. Don't buy anything after the first rank till you start to wonder what else is left to buy.
PULLING ABILITIES
Boastful Bellow 1: Instacast makes this a fantastic ability for precise tagging of mobs while splitting. Also you can start singing invis, or using your cloak, and bellow during the cast time, tagging a mob while making you safely invis for your run back to camp. For a similar, higher mana cost, but also very useful technique, start singing something like hos on a mob and fade mid-cast. You're invis but have hos running on the mob. Using bellow to break mez is important to the pulling bard as well - sometimes it's handy to pull 2 and keep one mezzed just outside of camp. Bellow let's you break mez instantly when you're ready to bring it to the tank.
Combat Agility: The only thing better than mitigating some damage, is mitigating ALL damage. This aa helps make the mob miss you completely, so you take no damage from a hit. The combat agility line brings avoidance well worth the aa costs up to about 8 or so. From 9-18 it continues to have a noticable impact, and is worth getting, but the returns beging to diminish compared to earlier levels. Ranks 19-23 are more expensive and bring even less returns to avoidance. You'll be really glad you invested in the first 8 ranks for sure (must have), and enjoy the benefits of working further down the line. Costs are 3/6/9 for the first three ranks, followed by 3 aa each for ranks 4-8. Ranks 9-18 are 5 aa each, and 19-23 are 7 a piece.
Combat Stability: Combat stability is the sister aa to combat agility. It gives you innate mitigation to incoming damage. Without it you will take full damage, more often, and go down pretty fast. Content is designed with this aa in mind. Like combat agility, the biggest value is in the first 8 ranks, with less return on ranks 9-18, and even less on 19-23. If you love these aa's as much as I do, you may buy more ranks earlier on your list. Getting those first 8 though is really important and you will see a huge difference because of it.
Natural Durability: This aa flat out increases your hit points by 2%, 5%, and 10% at ranks 1, 2, and 3 respectively.
Physical Enhancement: "This ability will give you additional improvements in your Natural Durability, Avoidance Boost, and Mitigation Boost." I don't know how big of a boost it is, but it's only one rank with a 5 aa cost, and covers multiple aspects. I'd get this one earlier than later for sure.
Mental Clarity and Expansive Mind: Bards are not affected by any mana regen effects, except for mana regen on gear and the mental clarity aa line. No group wants to sit around waiting for their puller to med. With the changes to medding and the out of combat state, this is much less painful than it used to be. Getting these aa's will boost your mana regen to the highest levels, allowing you to keep going without stopping in even the heaviest of fading environments. Mental Clarity 1 and 2 are great buys at 2 and 4 aa's. After that it's more expensive, but eventually quite worth it to make mana more and more of a non-issue in your pulling. Mental Clarity provides innate mana regen, and Expansive Mind adds to it by raising the amount of worn mana regen you can be affected by. The default with no Expansive Mind is 15 worn mana regen, and each rank raises that by one point.
Maestro's Concentration: This gives you an innate chance to resist stunning blows. On pulls, stunning blows are brutal in stopping you in your tracks, allowing the mobs to catch up to you and have you for lunch. The returns on this are pretty nice, 5% increase per rank, 4 ranks.
General Sturdiness: 100 point boost to hit points per rank. I'm not sure if it's applied before or after natural durability yet. For bards, avoidance and mitigation does a lot more than a few extra hit points, but a few extra hit points ain't bad either.
Shield Block: When using a shield and being attacked from the front, this aa line gives you a chance to block an attack, independent of parry checks and avoidance. The % chance that this can occur is 1%/3%5%/6%/7%/8%. But when do I ever use a shield?!?! you ask. Good point. This probably isn't something even worth including in the guide - it's not something you want to buy till much later, but I included it because it's something that the pulling bard might want to think about for down the road. Shields can be used for tremendous boosts to armor class while pulling the most brutal of content. Shield block only works from frontal attacks, while the ac bonus works from all angles. Shield block comes into play while facing a mob while mezzing or ramp tanking which can happen to the puller in difficult raid pulls. A bard can fade off ramp, but that's expensive to do if it's on every pull. This is a way to eek out a little more survivability in end game pulling.
GROUP ABILITIES
Extended Notes: Your group songs are only good if people can hear them. The default range on our songs without aa's is painfully small. You will always see them in the song window, because you are always in range, but if you want the cleric to hear mana song without hugging the mob, or the wizard way in the back to nuke for more damage, you're going to need a boost to your song range. These aa's only work on beneficial songs. It increases the base range by 10% / 15% / 25% / 30% / 35% / 40%.
Quick Time: Usable once every 15 minutes, and lasts 2 minutes, this gives your group a hundred hands haste effect. The easiest way to think of this is an overhaste that stacks with overhaste. Great for when there are adds to churn through quick, a named to kill, or to burn a mob when the tank or healer is down.
Fierce Eye: Fierce Eye lasts one minute and is usable once every 10 minutes. Its biggest contribution is increasing the rate at which your group members will crit on nukes, dots, and heals. If you don't have mammoth's strength, it provides a similar damage increase, useful for groups without it. It adds a small increase to melee crit damage that pales compared to zerker aura. It also adds a +300% proc rate mod to your groups procs. Overall, this generates a larger and more useful effect in groups than in raids, where stacking issues limit many of this buff's effects.
Instrument Mastery: This will give your group a larger attack boost from Warmarch, a larger damage shield from Warmarch, and better resist debuffs. Harmony of Sound is used a lot in groups on anything that tends to resist spells, for making sure slow lands, making sure mez lands on the first try, and making sure your caster dps is hitting for full damage on the mob. Also, with tss+ mezzes, there is again an unresistable magic resist debuff built into the mez song, modifiable by a wind mod. This makes it more likely for mez to be refreshed without any other debuffs needed, once it's already on. Also increases the hp regen component of mana songs.
Singing Mastery: Used for Psalm of Veeshan and sometimes for ac songs. This is used less and less these days. Sometimes your group will want max resists, and this does happen situationally. With today's gear, less singing mastery is probably needed to max out people's resists than before. It also increases damage shield on pov, which stacks with the ds on warmarch. Many armor class songs are singing based, and sometimes the tank will want those against really hard hitting mobs. Your total singing mod will make a big difference in how high the ac is raised. Again, situational, but it certainly does come up in groups, less so in a typical exp group, and more so in an objective oriented group needing pov or ac songs for specific encounters.
MELEE ABILITIES
Harmonious Attack: Gives you a chance to perform a double attack. We can otherwise begin training in this skill at level 71. Higher ranks make it happen more often. The first 5 ranks are an excellent way to begin, with an aa cost of only 2 per rank. 10 ranks total.
Ambidexterity: Only one rank with a cost of 9 aa's, but this increases your duel wield, making you attack with both weapons in a combat round far more often, and is well worth getting.
Sinister Strikes: This provides a noticable increase to your melee damage in your offhand. Expensive at 12 aa's, but you only have to get it once.
Combat Fury: This allows you to crit on melee damage. Each rank increases the rate at which you score critical hits. 6 ranks total. Because bards have a low base damage to begin with, but swing very fast, aa's like harmonious attack and ambidexterity often provide more overall dps for starters.
Weapon Affinity: This increases your chance of firing your weapon procs in a combat round. At 5 ranks a piece, this can be a big dps boost if you have some major weapon procs. For bards with low melee dps aa's, they often can get bigger dps increases by investing in weapons with high damage procs and weapon affinity, than they can by going for better damage/delay ratios. While this was true in my day and for a long time, I won't swear by it with the newer weapons available. I really don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if this were true. Also, if you like to use lifetaps to enhance your self healing abilities, this aa is definitely for you.
Veteran's Wrath: This increases the damage of your melee crits. Obviously, it's more important to work on combat fury first, as veteran's wrath only does anything if you crit in the first place. I'd finish combat fury before starting this aa line.
Spell Casting Fury and Fury of Magic: This gives you the ability to crit on your melee procs. This does not affect your chants at all, that's critical affliction. It doesn't affect the rate at which you proc either, that's weapon affinity. Like with veteran's wrath, I'd finish weapon affinity before starting this aa line.
Dance of Blades and Hastened Blades: Self only disc-like aa that increases your chance to double attack by 500%, and your ability to duel wield by 100%, at all ranks. Ranks 4-6 add +5%, +8%, and +10% modifiers to hit with all skills. Rank 3 is a pre-requisite for Hastened Blades, which reduces the reuse timer on this AA. Also, while Dance of Blades is active, you have a chance to proc Bladewhirl as a spell proc. Bladewhirl is a dd proc, starting at 100, and increasing in damage by 100 per rank, up to 600. Bladewhirl is a -20 chromatic resist check so it lands well even on resistant mobs. It includes an ac, magic, fire, and cold debuff on the mob that is modded by percussion and lasts 36 seconds. The real return on investment on Dance of Blades is in the first AA. For when you want to burn, especially used in conjunction with other abilities, Dance of Blades lets you make the maximum number of attacks per round for 30 seconds. When used in conjunction with other effects, this ensures you get the biggest bang for your buck on a dps burn, and is still great even when used by itself. Hastened Blades reduces the cooldown time by 4 minutes per rank.
Enhanced Aggression: This AA line increases the maximum amount of worn attack you can benefit from. Like Expansive Mind and Ayonae's Tutelage, this aa means nothing if you aren't already at your current cap anyway. Ultimately, this will let your gear take your attack to higher levels, but in the meantime, getting aa's like harmonious attack, ambidexterity, sinister strikes, combat fury, spell casting fury, and veteran's wrath will do more for your overall dps than higher attack will, especially since you'll often be boosting it with warmarch anyway. Attack is checked against the mob's ac (which is usually fairly low) to determine how much damage your hit does, within the damage range of the weapon. Because most mobs tend to have low ac, only a certain amount of attack is really needed to hit for higher damage most of the time. That's why the other aa's, which allow you to hit more often, or for a larger damage range, have a greater effect than increasing your worn attack cap, especially due to the benefits of warmarch which makes this aa weep with jealousy anyway.
Burst of Power: Gives the bard the chance to score a triple attack upon the execution of a successful double attack. Bards get triple attack at level 76, with a maximum skill of 20. Burst of Power increases the cap by 5 points per rank, up to a skill of 30 in triple attack. 30 is pretty low. Because you only ever even get a possibility of a chance of performing a triple attack IF you score a double attack first, be sure to get harmonious attack maxed before even considering this aa. On the other hand, you can expect to double attack a lot with dance of blades active, or a tss bp clicky active. Bottom line: the returns on burst of power are very small, and definitely not a good buy till much much later.
RAIDING ABILITIES
For raiding abilities, see the guide for raiding as a bard, stickied in this section.
GRAB BAG
Body and Mind Rejuvenation: Bard only bonus buy aa. For 5 aa you get one more mana regen and one more health regen.
Master of Disguise: Most of us love illusions and this will make the illusion practically permanent, with a duration of 1000 minutes or so, and sustains the illusion while you zone. Some illusions, like air elemental, provide utility, like lev, which makes this valuable for more than just looks. Getting this for fun is reason enough though if you like illusions at all.
Planar Power: Useful in so many ways, planar power increases the maximum that your stats can be raised to. With gear these days it is very easy to be capped in your stats, and this aa lets you get full benefit from the stat increases on your gear. Strength increases your damage and maxing weight carrying capacity, stamina increases your hit points, dexterity increases your chances to hit (raises attack maybe? I forget) as well as the chance of scoring melee procs (melee procs too? sorry, I forget), and increases the rate of increases in combat based skills, agility increases your armor class, intelligence raises your mana pool and your rate of skillups in non-combat skills, and charisma generally makes your charms last longer in duration and your chances of successfully landing mez. For all these reasons, these stats are worth raising through the planar power aa's as your gear allows. The first 5 ranks especially, are very very cheap, 2 aa's each.
Discordant Defiance and Trials of Mata Muram: These two lines increase the maximum that your resists can be raised to (doesn't include corruption). Because bards can max all their resists so easily with pov, this gives you a special advantage against ae's on raids, allowing higher resists to counter the hard to resist spells. Trials of Mata Muram are not purchased but earned by completing the six group mpg trials.
Mystical Attuning: Each rank of Mystical Attuning increases the number of buff slots you can fill by one. Generally for bards only really useful for raiding. There are a lot of good buffs out there, get as many as you can.
Tune of Pursuance: 5 ranks, each increases your cap in tracking skill by ten points, up to 150 tracking. Certainly not a must have, but useful if you use tracking a lot in larger zones, especially as a puller, and for finding nameds. The 50 point increase increases the range within which you can detect mobs.
Scribble Notes: With changes made a long time ago, this aa is less useful than it used to be, but it's still cheap. By using right click on spell gems to mem songs, and selecting the song to mem at the beginning of the cast time of a song being played, you can mem any song before the song you are casting is completed, thereby not interrupting your melody while memming songs. This still makes it faster however, and thus easier to do. Great for swapping songs on the fly while trying not to get hit by mobs coming after you. Also in certain raid environments where you are under the effect of an intelligence debuff or lowered casting effectiveness debuff, which drastically increases the time it takes to mem songs, this will make it quick and painless.
Cacophony and Hastened Cacophony: Despite the description, I've never seen this interrupt a spell before, but I've never watched it very closely. However, it is a pretty nice "free" dot that lasts a minute, recast time is 1 minute. Hastened Cacophony reduces the recast time on it by 1 minute per rank, down to 12 minutes at best. Cacophony does 100 damage per tick at rank 1, and adds 100 damage per rank, up to 900. This dot is affected by critical affliction and can crit on any tick. This can also be used to help hold aggro in a tanking or kiting situation.
Song of Stone: Swarm pets! Summons really cool gargoyle swarm pets to melee the mob you have targeted. Rank 1 gives you 3 pets, each additional rank gives you an extra one. They hit for up to about 100 or so each, but have low atk, so there are a lot of hits in the 40's and 60's. If you use it while kiting, your pets will have a hard time keeping up with the mob to hit it unless it's snared. If used in a melee situation, these add a fairly hefty amount of push, so if you want to avoid too much push, move around as you summon them. They spawn about one every half a second, so by circling the mob you can position the pets on all sides to balance the push. Or, if push is exactly what you want, use it like a fire hose, to keep a mob from going over an edge or to help pin it in a corner. On mobs that ae ramp (and will probably kill your pets on the first shot of ae ramp), use this in conjunction with bladed song for maximum effect. That way when he hits them and they die, you'll still get in lots of damage from the ds alone.
Origin: Making your transportation needs easier, one hour at a time. Gates you to your home city. What's really nice is that as a bard, you can cast it while running/training/trying to stay alive. Origin is much more convenient than an OT hammer. Personally, I got this one some time after 1000 aa's, I wanted other stuff instead, and never had a problem with the OT hammer. Since I got it though, I don't even carry the hammer any more, so you may or may not find it worth buying early. I wouldn't, but as Bigox said last night, I tend to do things the hard way.
Shield of Notes 2-6: Higher ranks of Shield of Notes will improve you to exceptional levels of off tanking ability, for a minute at a time, on unmezzable mobs in an OH NO! type of situation. You may even make the warrior cry. Sadly, there is no aa for reducing the reuse time on this AA. Definitely not something you want to buy till you are pretty well through most of your defensives at least. Mostly for off tanking / tanking really.
Jam Fest: This aa increases your effective casting level. And it's bugged in a bad way. It will consider you 1-3 levels higher than your current level (1 level per rank), for the purposes of scalable songs. Scalable songs are ones that are affected not just by instrument mod, but also by level. For instance, more strength on chant of battle based on being a higher level, or more damage on dots, because the damage scales with your level. Jam Fest still works in that sense, but 1) the songs reach a cap because none of the recent devs ever bothered to factor into their code levels higher than 70 (or was it 65 even I think lol). 2)Because by the time you think about buying this, you're probably not going to be affected by it anymore. Fixing Jam Fest is on the top ten bard list for many years, but won't ever happen. It used to be that if two bards both sang a song, only the higher level bard's song would take hold, which meant that if a 63 bard and a 65 bard were both singing elemental chorus, and the 63 bard had jam fest 3 and the 65 bard had no jam fest, the 63 bard's song would be the one everyone would hear, not the 65's. Assuming the 65 bard had a higher percussion mod, that would be bad. So all the bards got this just so they wouldn't be screwed out of their mods by a lower modded bard with jam fest lol. I believe that no longer applies any more, but I haven't checked in ages either. Last I remember, it was a non-issue. Jam Fest is included in this guide for historical significance!