Meta Bard Build Guide

Welcome to our Meta Bard build guide! In this build, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to utilize the top tier Meta bard build in Dark and Darker. This includes Skills, Perks, Stat Priority and more!

This Bard build focuses on being a full support class in a competitive trio while bringing optimal weapons and songs to provide the best for the team.

Skills

Song Memory 1 and Song Memory 2 are the recommended skills required to run the Meta Bard Build. Song Memory 1 and 2 is a must-have for any Bard player as a result of maximizing our buffs and debuffs. However, it takes a good amount of Knowledge to reach 10 songs.

Recommended Meta Bard Build Songs

Drum Songs

For the drums, we recommend Allegro, Beats of Alacrity, Accelerando and Rousing Rhythm. These particular songs allow for long-duration buffs, increasing movement speed, action speed and stats.

Lyre Songs

For the Lyre, we recommend Chorale of Clarity, Harmonic Shield and Tranquility. These songs allow for great utility buffs such as armor or magic resist shields, health regeneration and Spell regeneration for the Wizard and Cleric classes.

Flute Songs

For the Flute, we recommend Shriek of Weakness and Piercing Shrill. Both of these songs are useful in different ways. Shriek of Weakness shreds the resistances of your enemies, providing you with a huge damage boost while Piercing Shrill deals AoE damage even through doors and walls!

Lute Songs

For the Lute, we recommend taking just Aria of Alacrity. Aria of Alacrity provides additional action speed, helping to smooth out our actions.

Perks

For this Bard build, we recommend the following perks:

Charismatic Performance
Story Teller
Rapier Mastery (when using Rapier) or Dancing Feet
Wanderer’s Luck or Reinforced Instruments or Dancing Feet

The main aim of this build is to be able to be the ultimate support class. Charismatic Performance allows you to fail a note and still achieve a perfect song. As a result, the Bard can pump out perfect songs at a faster rate. Story Teller provides a +3 Will and Knowledge buff to all teammates which is a huge boon to a meta composition of Bard, Cleric and a DPS – like the Wizard. Dancing Feet provides movement speed while Reinforced Instruments allows you to carry multiple sets of Drums for ranged damage.

Stat Priority

+All Attributes
Strength or Agility
Any other Physical/Magical Damage modifier
Knowledge

Within the stat priority, it should be a no-brainer that +All Attributes is a great all-rounder stat to obtain. Strength is a must, increasing your survivability and damage output. As can be expected, any other Physical/Magical Damage modifier after the rest is useful too! Agility provides movement speed and attack speed which is also a nice plus.

Weapons

Weapons for the Meta Bard build are heavily solved at this point. We recommend primarily using a Falchion or Rapier in your main hand. For our ranged option, the Crossbow is king, dealing huge damage from a range to open the fight. Carrying several Drums as an alternative option is recommended. The Fachion provides fantastic melee damage at a decent swinging range while the Crossbow provides ranged burst, finally allowing you to finish off players with Drums – or your teammates do it for you.

Armor

For the Meta Bard Build Guide, we recommend using a decent combination of cloth and leather where appropriate to get the best protection-to-movement speed ratio. This can be the following:

Leather Cap or Bard hat
Regal Gambeson or Tunic for faster movement
Lightfoot Boots
Leather Gloves or Strength Gloves
Loose Trouser

The above loadout provides the best possible resistances without compromising your movement speed. Try to build your loadout with the above in mind to yield the most optimal results. Finally, do not forget to find the associated stat priorities required for the build!

How to Play the Meta Bard Build

Playing the Bard can take some time to learn properly, due to the amount of songs you’re trying to maintain. Learning how and when your team needs buffs is important to succeeding as a trio, especially in High Roller.

The first thing to remember when playing the Bard is failing a single note in most Songs is fine because of the Charismatic Performance perk. Learning exactly the best note to fail, however, comes with time and patience after some testing. Generally speaking, it’s safe to fail the first note or second from the last note in a song as a rule of thumb.

Before engaging a team, it is important to buff yourself and your teammates. The general priority of songs is the following:

Aria of Alacrity
Beats of Alacrity
Harmonic Shield
Rousing Rhythms
Accelerando
Allegro

After this priority or as much of it as possible is complete, you and your team can engage the opponent with a huge amount of buffs and speed. Once you are in the range of your opponents, proceed to use the Shriek of Weakness to crush their resistance. After this, your team are free to engage and you can defend yourself with the Falchion!

Post-Buff

With all your buffs present, this Bard build should be at the movement speed cap, allowing you to position close enough to your teammates for peel. Knowing your positioning in a team is important, otherwise, you’ll be too far away and being assassinated while not providing buffs to your team. As a result, stick close enough to your team to buff while providing ranged assistance with the Crossbow. The Falchion is primarily to respond to enemy divers looking to take out the support of your team – the support being you.

Between rooms and fights, make sure to have your players move into rest state so you can play Chorale of Clarity and Tranquility to assist with your team’s Spell regeneration and recoverable HP regeneration.

Finally, if you and your team spot opponents in another room and you can hold the chokepoint versus them, you can spam Piercing Shrill by the door to poke them for free and apply pressure.

Multiclassing Options

Multiclassing is a very experimental feature in Dark and Darker. As a result, there is going to be a ton of possibilities and build tweaks. As we and the many players of the game push further into the wipe to test Multiclassing, we’ll update this build with our recommendations! To see more on Multiclassing and what it means for the future of Dark and Darker – check out the 2024 Roadmap.