I liked what Riot did

Angelofchaos16x·Apr 20, 2015·31 votes·1,414 views

When they released Bard. They released a champ that was really really up and when on to buffing him slowly as the patches carried on. I liked a lot more then releasing a OP champ and then nerfing it

21 Comments

PhifeApr 20, 20155 votes

I dont think that was their intention tbh, they thought he was going to be OP as fuck, and didn't realize how bad their beta testers were.

Meep ManApr 20, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I dont think that was their intention tbh, they thought he was going to be OP as fuck, and didn't realize how bad their beta testers were.

I actually remembered getting on the beta forums and seeing a lot of people saying he needs buffs. They just chose not to buff him immediately.

AnArousedCactusApr 20, 20152 votes

[{quoted}](name=Inept Maverick,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=2K7xtGtn,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2015-04-20T19:53:21.812+0000)

I actually remembered getting on the beta forums and seeing a lot of people saying he needs buffs. They just chose not to buff him immediately.

Just 2. The other one isn't even level 20 yet. But I do have lots of friends. We just wanted to see how sheepish the gameplay and balance section was. Seems you guys will upvote anything apparently if you see other people upvote it first.

MigrañaboyApr 20, 20156 votes

They don't care about balance opinions when beta testing, just for bug, glitches and typos reports.

PhifeApr 20, 20153 votes

I guess when you see a champions damage get lowered / raised in pbe before the champs release its just bug fixes.

MigrañaboyApr 21, 20155 votes

When balancing they don't care about player feedback, but real game statistics. They only care of PBE player opinion/comments when it's about glitches. There's a reason that PBE players complain when it comes to balance opinions.

TitilnApr 20, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I dont think that was their intention tbh, they thought he was going to be OP as fuck, and didn't realize how bad their beta testers were.

everyone in the beta said he sucked lol

ZmuecatApr 20, 20153 votes

I didn't like it this time. Mainly because I enjoy Bard I suppose, but moreso because all of his abilities require an additional step (Q needs to hit a wall or another enemy, W needs to charge for a full heal) or can screw over your team (E and bring enemies to your teammates face, R and save the enemy if you mess up). Then they let his passive spawn in the enemy jungle for the first 5 minutes of the game, which, while obtainable, is pretty much slapping him in the face and saying "I hope you didn't want your passive power spike anytime soon."

You can get over these by using your brain or skill, but releasing a champion that requires other people to know what you do and how to work with you and making him weak on release, while also being a support that is supposed to roam to be more effective which is a completely new play style for a large handful of people, is not the best way for people to learn him or learn to play with him,

My opinion, don't take as fact.

qetzelApr 20, 20151 votes

They did that with Kalista though... and Lucian...

This means nothing.

JasiwelApr 21, 20151 votes

It's not that great either way though. If you remember Lucian on release then you'd remember how painful it was to have the Lucian pick because he was weaker than the meta ADCs AND required finesse to play well. People complained hard, then Lucian got buffed hard, redesigned to irritation and now he's in his current "balanced" state.

The point is that new champions need to be tested better in highly competitive environments that ARE NOT the PBE. They used to allow High-Level-Only Players do testing for a while, then release the champion in a decent state. They should do something similar again, or at least be more thorough with testing than they have been.

PacifiedValApr 21, 20151 votes

that is pretty clever....

Claps for Riot

DrNovaApr 21, 20151 votes

Is he still useless with buffs? I bought him, played him a good hard while, then gave up. I assume its his kit more then numbers.

TenSlashTenApr 21, 20151 votes

bard isn;t balanced. its just that his kit is such complete shit to use that you can't possibely make him op you could literally give him an ability that 1 shots dragon and he'd still be "meh" compared to every other support simply because he'd so painfully balanced that if you're not broken thresh/nami(aka sona 2.0)/Annie you might as well just go fuck yourself as a support.

For me I still play alistar. But I play thresh/nami on my main in LAN. 95% winrate thresh in LAN. 82% winrate nami Those champs are so fucking broken if you gave them a human with a broken spine they'd fix it with their utility and buy him a car.

bard is just another painful example of riot going for Complexity over Depth in design decisions. This time the champion was so complex that you literally can't make him work even in good situations you're still painfully average compared to half the other support kits.

"oh boy ranged auto attacks" thresh janna ANNIE(mostly annie.. because fuck you and everything you ever loved with 625 auto +Q+W range) "oh boy hard CC thats no on that bad of a cooldown" Alistar Janna leona ... every other support literally even soraka has better CC than him "A heal" Soraka is better and she's been absolutely gutted. Sona's better and we all saw those sona chain nerfs. Janna's heal is better and thats not even what her ult is for as a support LOL "passive" Don't even bother, half the other supports have passives 1,000 times better "telporting through walls" In what way is that useful other than trolling the shit out of the enemy jungler early game... (maybe?) I've yet to see a bard try to early invade with his team through blue buff wall/gromp wall/baron wall so I guess its not a thing. Though thats exactly what I'd do with that champ. "znhoyas ult" Welp its pretty unique but when does it actually become usable honestly? I've yet to see one game where a bards ult actually did something that really set it up well for his team to win a game or anything. I'm not even gonna bother to list other supports ults because we just know how outclassed he is in this department in terms of reliability

Penta PenguinApr 21, 20151 votes

Bard is a useless god-fucking noob trap, people don't troll you with the ult, they just flat-out fail every time because it's 90% impossible to use it correctly unless you're making some kind of fringe "janna shield the turret" or "ohmwrecker" style of play.

I had a Bard "save" me from a Zed who was chasing me down to my turret. I had gotten away and was running the touch down back to base, then Bard drops the fucking Ultra in front of me. Either I get hit by it and set up Zed's kill, or a move around it and give up my distance, setting up his kill.

Most bards just throw their ultra randomly onto any skirmish and hope for the best.

AkeydelApr 22, 20151 votes

Its a solid 2.5 second aoe suppress. if your bard is competent, then lobbing it into the entire enemy team as an escape or mid-fight cc is not even hard.

NinjaFiferApr 21, 20151 votes

Here's the thing: releasing an OP champ makes sure that they see a lot of playtime. More exposure means that the playerbase in general develops strategies against said champion. With Bard, I stopped seeing him after only a couple of games, so I really don't feel familiar enough with him to know how to play when he's on mine or the enemy's team. It's something small, but putting out an UP champ means both reduced profit from said champ (important in a F2P game) and reduced player uptake. When he's finally viable, there will be less people familiar with his kit (very important with a champ with such weird abilities) and even fewer Bard mains to really give Riot the feedback they need to see if they buffed him over the line. It takes a ton of data to figure out if a champ is truly OP or UP, so it's pretty much a given that Riot is going to have to buff Bard to OP status just to get people to play him enough to get that data. They will then nerf him, but that cycle can be done right from the start by just releasing an OP champ, and carries the side benefit of increased profits, meaning a better overall game.

Valhalla RisingApr 21, 20151 votes

I would agree, but riot made him available to ranked immediately, and because I(and many others) didn't know he was severely underpowered it resulted in several lossed games.

B1naryB0tApr 21, 20151 votes

The only problem is that he's still just not used simply because he doesn't bring enough to the table in fights, where other supports can do his job better.

Facade45Apr 22, 20151 votes

Well, developers usually want their champion strong with lot of ideas only to figure out it's OP.

For example, when I saw lucian for the first time. I saw his E dash ability removes slows AND resets on kills. I knew that was OP the second I saw it. It took them ages to patch it. I don't know who's balancing these champions but for anyone, it's OP and shouldn't even existed in the first place.

And it's for profit purposes.

NoMonkuApr 22, 20151 votes

It isn't their intention to release the champion as either OP or UP imo. In most cases, at least for new champions I feel, they release it at a level where they felt it did okay. It just isn't strong enough I feel for people to want to gravitate towards it, so they need to buff it.

Gnar is a good example of your point, though. They buffed him continually and then people latched onto him, also because they were able to catch onto his playstyle after having time to play him. After that, though, is when they come back with the nerf hammer to break his legs and bring him back to his "place." :P

lB2kGRlc8yApr 22, 20151 votes

Probably unintentional, he would have been OP if they decided to give him passive effects to each of his abilities like they seem to have been doing for a lot of new releases,