Looking for an up-to-date guide in How To Bard

[Hasrat]

As so many of BRD's skills/procs are dependent on crits, Critical Hit is probably your secondary stat of choice.

At your level, if you're keeping up with your job quests, you'll be getting some pretty ok left-side gear at 45/50. MSQ will also provide plenty of appropriate gear as you wrap up level 50 quests leading to Heavensward content. If you'd like, you can save up tomestones of Poetics to spend in Mor Dhona for ilvl 120 Ironworks gear (which you can also upgrade to ilvl 130 Augmented Ironworks in North Shroud), which will be the best available gear at 50, and serviceable until level 55 at minimum (some players will push all the way to 60 with this gear, when they can buy the next set of Poetics gear, the best available for level 60).

Far as tips go, you lose nothing by having songs playing, and you'll need to keep those DoT skills up to get the most out of them.

[Frizze]

Ill expand a little bit here. So for the "main" stats, only 2 of them affect your job. Vitality gives you hit points, dexterity gives you damage. Strength mind and intelligence are completely wasted, so avoid them(as you level you will increasingly find yourself unable to equip the wrong jobs gear, so this will be less of an issue). Hasrat is correct that your secondary of choice is crit, and correct about why(when you have abilities triggered by critting youd like to do so early and often). As someone currently going through the storyline(rather then someone leveling up a second or third class who already has the story finished) you will find yourself getting a ton of gear as you move forward. Because of this you shouldnt have to worry a ton about gear until you get to 70(the current cap). If you do find yourself having issues, there will be slight upgrades available. The story quests will get you to roughly i110 at level 50(with 130 available via poetics as Hasrat pointed out), the HW leveling dungeons will have gear up to i148 if youre feeling behind and want to do a couple runs for upgrades, then the level 60 story will give you another few sets of upgrades(with another set being available for poetics too). The pattern continues til you get to the cap, at which point you start getting most of your gear from tomes(creation and mendacity are the current ones) and raids. Many of these ranges also have decent crafted gear available too(rarely the best, but certainly servicable).

As for combat tips, ill leave those to the experts. I only leveled far enough to get quelling strikes back in the day. But in general: keep dots going, use AoEs on mob packs, and learn what your buffs do and when to use them. Bard has one of the best support and buffing skill sets in the game, so learn to let it shine.