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Thoughts on Bard

Aldirion·8/25/2015, 8:42:48 AM·2 votes·368 views

I'm a support player and recently I fell in love with Bard:

He has an extremely versatile kit and requires a very high amount of skill, much more than I've ever seen on any support. The kit looks simple but it's his gameplay and map awareness that needs to be on a very high level to be effective.

And here is the problem:

I love that you HAVE to leave your lane to collect chimes to become more powerfull.

Collecting chimes is very funny but also very risky for your lane.

The decision when and for how long you leave the lane can make the difference in winning or loosing botlane.

The shrines help your adc, and are perfect for this matter.

Here is now my problem:

Although the chimes give a temporary movement boost while collecting, Bard only becomes slowly effective with Boots of Mobility, he needs the out of combat movement speed and with more movement items his roaming and collecting chimes really starts to shine.

The new item Dead Mans Plate is in my opinion a great item on Bard!

It gives him a lot movement speed and when he comes back his chime empowered auto attacks even deal more damage and he has better sustain.

My thought is that bards movement speed could be better so he can be better in his supposed role: a roaming support!

He should be able to cross lanes more quickly or come back to his lane to assist, this way his overall kit doesn't need to be buffed in other aspects.

But this movement boost should not come at a too early level, because this could screw balance too much. It should slightly rise! Right now this is implemented with items, but having this in his kit makes itemization more flexible and buffs Bard overall.

My suggestions how to implement that:

a) Each collected chime gives Bard +1 out of combat movement speed. -> This way the speed rise is steady and collecting chimes is even more rewarding.

or

b) Each Meep that is actively following Bard gives him +25 out of combat movement speed. -> This also helps Bard thorough collecting Chimes, but the speed buff is even there in early levels because he already starts with one Meep, if he attacks it takes some time for the Meeps to reappear so he can't start to roam at a really high speed immediately after a fight.

I like my second suggestion more although the first one gives in theory an unlimited out of combat movement speed, while the second only gives a maximum out of combat movement speed of +100 with the maximum of 4 Meeps following you.

After 100 chimes are collected the movement speed is about the same for both suggestions that is a Match with an about 40 minutes duration.

What do you think?

1 Comments

Ben Sharpio8/25/2015, 6:19:34 PM1 votes

This is why i main Bard top lane, you don't have to worry about another person. These movement speed items are just terribly unnecessary. I've built Dead Man's Plate with Boots of Mobility. I could travel across the map in less than 10 seconds while collecting all chimes. Bard does not need any Buffs of any sort. He already has movement speed bursts when collecting his chimes, no more movement speed is required.