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Some changes for Bard (from a Bard lover)

ComplexityNP·4/12/2019, 9:47:09 AM·2 votes·3,715 views

First of all: Im a huge Bard fan. I love to play this champion and I very much enjoy to play it in solo lanes (partly because I can roam more freely and not have to worry about my adc all the time). However, there are a few things that could be done to make it more fun and buff the solo lane Bard a little bit.

1)** Armor: ** Bard has 34 base armor + 4 per lvl. Those are tank level stats, and I think it is a strange place to put power into his kit, because you don't want to tank in most fights anyway .. after all, your kit is much more about outplay. Also: As a solo lane Bard, this high base armor feels often ackwardly ineffective in ap lanes.

  1. **Alternatives: **Instead that power could be placed into a more general stat like hp, ad or ms. I would love to see it placed into movement speed actually. Bard is so clunky in lane. He has a huge champion model, super slow ms (330), short aa range (500) for a ranged champion and his abilities self stun him for a brief moment. In combination, those weaknesses just make it extra hard to dodge skillshots.

  2. Itemization (always feels strange):

  • Ad Bard: Nothing scales with Ad in his kit. You can play it, but there is no particular synergy.
  • Ap Bard: His Ap ratios are actually very low. If you manage to hit like a q and 3 meeps (which is allready quite a task), that totals to 155% ap magic damage. That is actually really low in comparison to other champions that scale with ap. You could still ad the value of 30% ap by casting a quick heal in a fight, but it's still on the low end. I know people like to tell stories how their ap bard nuked xyz. However, those stories exist for many champions and in Bards case it was probably mostly done by his high meep damage.
  • Tank Stats: Of course it is always nice to be more tanky, but you normally don't want to be the one tanking, so I think it's rather inefficient too.
  • Utility Items (mikaels, ardent censer, etc): You don't really scale well with the heals/shields bonus and you also aren't one of those enchanters, that is always close to their adc, but instead a roamer. So this doesn't feel like a perfect fit either.
  • On-Hit Bard: I think this one isn't bad for solo lanes, but there is no particular synergy either. Expecially the king of On-Hit builds (Guinsoos) has no synergy with Bards kit. Your damage as Bard is so frontloaded, that when your rageblade finally stacked, all your meeps are gone anyway and you normally want to retreat and reload.

My suggestion would be to increase his ap ratios, so AP Bard can feel good about buying ap items. This also shouldn't change the power of support Bard too much.

  1. Meeps/Waveclear/Trading (as a solo laner): Not sure how to fix the following as a solo laner, but maybe someone has a bright idea: You can't save your meeps for trading in a solo lane, because you have to last hit. This one really hurts your power during laning phase a lot. I would be fine with the tradeoff that most people have: Use your spells for either waveclear or trading, but in Bards case you sadly have no control over it (and the waveclear is actually very bad until later in the game). I don't have a solution for this, but it would be cool if there were.

It would be really great to have solo lane Bard as a valid option, particularly because in my experience many adc's really don't like to have a bard support .. and I can understand why. I still wanna play that champion though.

ps: any chance someone from Riot will see this here?

Bard

7 Comments

Tobykachu4/12/2019, 1:03:39 PM2 votes

Bard has low scaling because his base damage is so high. You can get away with building 0 offensive items and still deal a good amount of damage, especially later on into the game, just with your meeps.

l MrD l4/12/2019, 10:27:49 AM1 votes

the only changes id like to see is making his W feel more impactful .... its only useful very early for leaving heals which wont heal much unles syou get all 3 since its better to max W mid game its just a point and click minor heal with a speed buff ... but these dont feel good at all ... trying to place them around the map dont feel good either

Kai Guy4/12/2019, 10:52:49 AM1 votes

I try to abuse bards tank stats into some silly builds. Not very strong in the current meta but I love it in a late game champions meta or Tank are meta, as what I have consistently played to make it to plat in the years I do it works reasonably well in most lower MMRS. His item stat independence enables him to run a off meta Item CDR build.

Runes are a huge part of being a functional bard. To many players try to play him as a different champion when that other champion outperforms Bard.

So core items for me are item 3153 item 3512 item 3006 . Then situationally I run item 3109 item 2065 item 3143 item 3161 item 3905 item 3190 item 3075 item 3071 item 3800 as well as a wide range of other items. I used to use item 3091 but its reworked and I have not spent enough time testing it.

item 3153 provides an on demand slow. A lot of tilt when you build it but it adds a lot of value to his passive, and that's easy to understand for bard mains. Your almost able to keep the Meep slow at 100% uptime from the AS. The Ad is just raw damage, the %passive as well. Its nice because often times your going to want to meep a tank to peel for teammates. Once you can perma slow for as many seconds as you have chimes, in an aoe you have better kiting, peel, chase. The ondemand slow is stronger and also provides a nice dash of MS. Lifesteals not great.. but not wasted as to trigger your passive you are required to auto. Despite the lack of AP the fact that an Auto is required the Base 40 AD from botrk > 100 AP for damage scaling. add the passive, active, and AS and you do see a pretty decent spike in Bards power and with AS it scales with his passive scaling better then flat AP items.

item 3512 is underused imo. It was better when its scaling wasn't off Hp but it remains a fantastic tool to drag lanes out. Depending on Hunter stacks it becomes increasingly easy to keep one up and with a Item CDR build you will be able to have 2 of them on the map at a time even if your. As your not saveing it exclusively for takeing towers but aim to use it frequently the item itself starts having some goofy impacts. You can set it as bait for R and E. You can use it as a ward on steroids if you put it into a jungle. You can slow push a lane or protect a tower from being pushed to far. And for some hilarious outplays you can place it behind a champion and then stun them point blank with Q because its coded as terrain, or use it as a really small trundle pillar. Its just large enough to completely block the tight passages between towers.

The advantage of this is that your runes are not completely dictating your build direction and are able to consistently adapt to matches AFTER they start, Protect objs, and clear if necessary.

I don't like full ad builds. 0 scaling and others are better at adc. Full tank doesn't work because your not really going to be rewarded for front lineing, to much focus will end you. Flat ap HAS to be stacked and you have trash scaling on your passive and W, your E and R have 0. W under pressures weak so "Healbot" is always better with a healbot champion.

So I made my playstyle around gold efficiency,utility, and embracing the jack of all trades nature of low item dependence. as that's the best way I found to play bard, focus on what he can accomplish no one else can mimic. An example, unless we going to invade then I start W and will either give my jungler 3 Shrines staggered in their clear path for faster MS and safer clears, or if theres a matchup I want to see a teammate win badly I put 2 Shrines near their tower providing some 160 extra hp for laneing.

Edit. Eh looks like its still able to impact the match pretty strongly. https://imgur.com/a/edUPzHh

MorgManBasher4/15/2019, 11:48:02 AM1 votes

My support bard build: item 3117 item 3115 item 3151 item 3100 item 3092

He actually does so much damage when allowed to get in, problem is his range is pretty short so you really have to have really good positioning.

I dunno, if they buffed anything I'd like to see an AP ratio buff on his W heal.

Diamond Senpai4/20/2019, 3:40:24 PM1 votes

Bard ad: Full crit has the mosf damage late game