Ballads

We will start with ballads.

Yes, those are your damaging skills. But they have buffs attached to them, which is handy in some tough fights. They don’t have a large range, but far enough for you to still be out of the way. Tier one ballads open up tier two ballads, two opens up tier three.

Tier Three do not do damage, but rather buff your fellowship, tier three opens up your anthems which I will cover next.

With book seven out, each ballad now adds a +3% healing buffs along with shorter animations making it quicker to use ballads without affecting your healing.

So with 3 stacked the bonus will be 9%. Depending on how deeply the minstrel is slotted into The Watcher of Resolve trait line, this can improve up to 5% per buff to a total of a 15% bonus with 3 stacked. Each buff lasts 10 seconds by default. If you have Song of Vigour and Song of Balance skills unlocked from the Smooth Voice create healing/tier buffs that last a whole 20 seconds each.

· Ballad of Vigour: Tier one -Vitality buff

Effect: This basic ballad provides a vitality bonus. In most fights, all the extra vitality will serve to do is slightly increase your maximum morale, and then only for a limited time. With the trait Smooth voice this turns into a group buff.

· Ballad of Steel: Tier one -Armour buff

Effect: This basic ballad provides an armor bonus. It's good for building up to an

Anthem.

· Ballad of Resonance: Tier one - Damage buff

Effect: This basic ballad provides a tactical damage bonus. All of the minstrels

ballads and cry attacks do tactical damage, so this ballad is good for building up an an

anthem with an offensive chain of ballads, or whenever the minstrel needs to do more

damage with any of his other tactical attacks.

· Ballad of Swiftness: Tier two - Attack speed buff

Effect: This basic ballad provides an attack speed bonus. It's good for building up to

an anthem with an offensive chain of ballads.

· Ballad of Balance: Tier two - Evade buff

Effect: This basic ballad provides an evade bonus. Good for when you are getting

wacked on and need to take less damage. This turns into a group buff with the trait

Smooth voice.

· Ballad of the Stout: Tier two - Resist buff

Effect: This basic ballad provides a resistance bonus to disease, poison and wound

effects. Good for building up to an anthem with a defensive chain.

· Ballad of War: Tier three - Group melee damage buff

Effect: This move gives your whole group a melee damage bonus of 10%. This is

probably the Minstrel's best all-purpose tier 3 ballad, though it is also the shortest,

lasting the standard ballad duration of 10 seconds by default.

· Ballad of Unshakeable Will: Tier three - Group Fear resist buff

Effect: This adds a group fear resistance buff, which is handy if you are fighting mobs that put out fear, such as the Balrog fight in Rift.

· Ballad of Flame: Tier three - Group Fire mitigation buff

Effect: This gives you and your party a small fire mitigation buff. It's very situational

but can be very powerful when used while fighting fire-using enemies, like

salamanders.