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My Impression on Bard

Civil Dawn·3/16/2015, 5:35:07 PM·3 votes·1,122 views

This is a Support Bard analysis only. No other roles.

He's a great, interesting, and unique champion with a lot of potential. However, it just feels pointless to ever pick him. Here's my reasoning: Every other support in the game can do a better job at supporting 90%+ of the time. Whether it's poking, engaging, peeling, sustaining, anything.

Now you might be thinking: "But he's a great roamer! that's why you should pick him!" But see, this is where the problem lies. There's almost no reward to roaming with him. The chimes don't give enough rewards to be considered worth VS staying in lane protecting your ADC, and dropping health packs in mid is barely worth the potential death botlane and the lost xp/gold. Once you realize that there is no point in roaming, you have to stay in lane. And at that point, you realize there's no point in playing Bard whatsoever because you're going to be forced to stay with your ADC anyways.

In the end, it just feels like I'm putting my team at a huge, pointless disadvantage when I pick Bard. I'd even go on a limb and say he is countered by all of the viable supports because they can just pressure the ADC super hard when bard goes to roam. Including supports that are not normally a pressure-oriented or kill-oriented champion (An example of that could be Janna)

It just feels pointless to play Bard when I can be significantly better and still have fun with literally any other support.

It's not that I hate Bard, or want him to not be played, its just that his kit is so infuriatingly inferior to everyone, in every situation except maybe a few niche times that are still most likely not worth it.Bard isn't a bad champion. He just needs a little boost. :)

14 Comments

Alljoy3/16/2015, 5:47:01 PM1 votes

League isn't just about SoloQ, champions like Bard can literally pull off amazing plays in co-ordinated teams like 5 v 5's.

IJN Taiyou3/16/2015, 6:08:53 PM1 votes

Skills should scale with chimes.

GnomeDigest3/16/2015, 7:09:44 PM1 votes

Obviously in solo que a champion like Bard is going to suffer hard. His lane presence is weak and his strengths need strong coordination to exploit. People seem to understand this as I have never seen a champion picked/banned less their first week of release as Bard has been.

Now in organized play I think his magical journey and his ult could be real terrors. If he roams with the jungler the gank paths are endless. Level 6 ganks where you can dive turrets and deactivate them with Bards ult could be devastating.

Teamcomps designed around Bard where you account for his roaming could deal with a lot of his lane weaknesses. Like you send your adc top to solo top vs their top laner while you have a good 1v2 champ bot. Meanwhile Bard and the jungler wreck havoc. That sort of thing.

But what I am afraid of us Riot will see just how big of a flop this was across the general playerbase and avoid things like this is the future. Hopefully the pro's will find some use for him. Thats our only hope for Riot being encouraged enough by the results to give us more meta-breaking designed champions.