Bard weapon and armor affixes?

[Dr5d0s]

Curious if anyone has run the numbers on bard heals with different affixes, if they even do effect heals, and if so which ones are best?

[Lavawhale]

I believe charged strikes unbending is the best, I’ve heard the ticks from your heal pulsing effect the charged strikes cooldown but don’t consume it, so your next crescendo heal or attack will crit. That could be misinformation, in which case the attacks are the only ones building up the crit chance, and heals have a chance to consume it if timed right. The random pulses from your aoe damage instruments will consume the crits though. Can’t imagine any of the other affixes helping.

Lightning forged - lol, maybe a slight increase in aoe pressure if the ticks from your instruments proc it
treasure master - -_-
bleed - We don’t hit hard enough to make this matter
giantkiller - nope
Iceheart - nope
Lifesteal - Why? maybe more solo survivability but not much
First Strike - Maybe worth some testing to see if all of your 5 attack orbs hit a target at the same time if they all crit, but not very helpful for healing.
Unbending - extra life!
charged strikes - free random crits for heals or damage, significantly better than the other affixes.

[Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeshka]

+1 on Lavawhale’s comment. Charged Strikes/Unbending is the best combo I’m aware of. For armour, projectile damage increases your crescendos, including healing. Whether you go for that or crit damage/crit chance to give yourself better crit heals is up to you.

[aRkker]

Charged Strikes / whatever with it. Most people go with unbending, which probably is wise, but if you truly want to minmax and optimize, it would probably be bleed.

Charged Strikes guarantees a crit every 15th strike, and each of your passive heal pulses counts as one, so it becomes especially strong in raids when you pulse basically 10 “strikes” every 3 seconds.

For armor, I go for crit and crit chance. Crescendos already heal ridiculously big numbers without projectile damage boost, so its more often than not a waste to pump it up even further since overhealing helps nobody

Rings empowered/elite hunter, as basically with nearly every other class as well

[Dr5d0s]

So I’m understanding that the pulse heals count as hits to go towards charged strikes, but don’t ever crit themselves, only the crescendos can crit?

[Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeshka]

The pulse can crit. Because each pulse can hit up to 10 times, Empowered Strikes becomes super strong because you’re going to be critting like crazy.

[Infiniterune]

Not that its particularly good but iceheart increases musket healing on players that are slowed so I would assume its probably the same for bard healing as well. I personally tested it at one point for science on a hunch for musket.

There are very few enemies in the game that slow you so its still not super useful but I figured I’d spread around the information.