Upon hearing the word bard, most folk are like to be put in mind of those itinerant minstrels, fair of voice and nimble of finger, who earn their coin performing in taverns and the halls of great lords.
Few know, however, that bards in fact trace their origins back to bowmen who took to singing in the heat of battle, that they might fortify their spirits with anthems beseeching the gods for victory.
In time, their impassioned song came to hold sway over the hearts of men, inspiring their comrades to great feats and granting peace unto those who lay upon the precipice of death. While the bardic tradition had gone into decline in recent decades, the time is nigh when song once more shapes the outcome of conflict.
Patch 1.21 saw the introduction of jobs to FFXIV, which allows you to become one of the traditional jobs from the FF series after completing a quest. An Archer can become a Bard by equipping the Soul of the Bard item after completing the first quest. The details for this quest are below.
| Quest | NPC | Location | Conditions |
| A Song of Bards and Bowmen | Luciane | Gridania, Archers’ Guild | ARC 30 |
For each quest you complete, you will be rewarded with a new ability, while the latter quests will also reward you with artifact (AF) armour that is shown in the screenshot above.
Introduction to Bard
Bard is a support job that branches off the damage dealing class Archer. The idea behind the job is that it sacrifices some damage in order to buff party members via songs.
Bard Attributes
As a Bard your main stat is Dexterity (DEX) for your ranged damage. You should be focusing on equipment with this stat. For secondary stats you should be focusing on the likes of Direct Hit Rate, Determination, Critical Hit Rate and Skill Speed in addition to simply boosting DEX. However you’ll find Skill Speed is generally not worth it.
Skill Speed and Critical Hit Rate are self-explanatory in what they do. For the other two, Determination is used to boost the damage dealt by all attacks and the amount of HP recovered when healed while Direct Hit Rate is Stormblood’s replacement for Accuracy. Instead of a simple hit or miss effect that Accuracy could give, having a low Direct Hit Rate for a fight will reduce damage dealt so it is important to improve this stat.