Feedback (and wishes) on Bard

Keeping Bard out of norm games due to his inconsistent performance and testing him back to back in intermediate bot matches to see what he's like... in my honest opinion, here's my (hopefully fair) criticism of the new champ. Please keep in mind that at low summoner levels in BOT matches, especially with a mid level summoner account... you usually get a brand-new or sub par ADC player. Even so, I believe that actually provides a good environment to test out a brand new support champ:

Some things that are really good with bard imo:

1. mobility is in surplus (only out of combat)...(charms, mobi-boots are a must, W boost and ancient coin->build path items are good together)
2. cooldowns feel tight and non-abusable (except for perhaps 30s on magic journey for inhib tower double wreckage)
3. looks+style+sound (8.5/10 imo. Good)
4. potential for gank setups in voice-comm teams.
5. playstyle (he's generally fun.)

BREAKDOWN-- Overall, bard has a lot of gimmicks in his kit which are very useful to sustain a strong ADC or team carry that can already do their job on their own. Bard does not shine in the in-lane support role with an ADC that cannot handle his ground or with an ADC player that plays too re-actively instead of pro-actively. If you play bard in a team that has good communication or has voice comms, Bard can perform as well as many alternative support champs such as Thresh and Leona and give the needed sustain and confidence in your team by providing that defensive presence to bot and mid lane early game, and to all lanes early into mid-game during the transition from lane to roaming phase.

Bard's Q was designed well and is effective to a point. While playing close to either hump in the bot lane provides many opportunities to stun single champs against the wall (usually the marksmen peeking out for that clear-LOS skill pokes), using it has an extremely short range and by doing so almost always puts Bard much closer to the enemy than he ever should be given that he is extremely squishy. The only real effective way to utilize the Q is from the bush, and if you don't have a proactive ADC, you are most likely going to be ahead of your ADC trying to get shots in under the creep wave, stuck in a bad position which will result in insta-lock death, which means Bard will not providing meep assisted pokes due to playing behind your ADC out of range to reduce being hit.

Bard's W is strong, but in the current state of the game, it requires more knowledge and proficiency on the ADC's part for it to work well. If the ADC improperly uses his health packs (i.e "what do these green shrine things do? I wonder... potatoface) by using them for speed only at full HP, not letting the health packs evolve for maximum use, or simply not using them at all, half of his lane support function is lost. This is due partly from lack of knowledge on the ADC's part (because using it becomes the responsibility of the ADC instead of the player in the support role), the extravagant mana cost early on (100 mana/cast), and its tendency to make reckless ADC players develop bad laning habits that get them hit excessively by the opposing team knowing they can just "bubble up" any time. If even one of these packs are wasted, you're both going to have a bad time.

Bard's E is really useful for countless imaginable plays, but will go unused for the whole game UNLESS your teams knows when to use it, and wants to use it. Hence, those plays will remain imagined in all solo-q matches, no communication comps, or in any match where any single player has never used or never seen the portal in use before. Every match where I've set up portals for good plays (such as double inhib-turret takedowns a-la advantageous pushes to lanes while enemy team is respawning) my teammates have just walked past or away from the portals. +Dear RIOT: Please make the quick-castable form of this skill hold-and-releasable so we can see the "portal trail" before dropping it to avoid awkwardly aimed portals and screw-ups. Even when trying to be careful, placing portals skillfully tends to be a valiant but useless effort without a visual on where it goes.

Bard's R (ult) can be an amazing godlike game changer in the hands of a cool-headed and skilled player waiting for the right (and needed) moment, but it can also be a crutch and even a hindrance to your team if used improperly, or even if you make a simple mistake. Making mistakes with his R is easier to do than i'd like to admit-- while ideally you want to cast it aimed slightly behind the position of the enemy team in anticipation of a retreating group movement or to alienate their ADC, failure to anticipate the movement can lead to a false sense of teamfight engagement and will most likely result in premature teamfights and/or wasted combo casting from your teammates. Just from writing down tally marks between when Bard's R was useful vs. when it was "meh" or "ohmygodwhathaveidone.jpg" It's really a somewhat even split between success and failure with the "meh" or less fortunate executions being more common. +Dear RIOT: Please make it so if you direct target a teammate it will friendly-stasis your teammate+adjacent teammates, and if you target in an area, it will only stasis enemy units/champs/towers. same target-friendly suggestion applies to friendly towers and adjacent champs.

DAMAGE & MEEPS--

1. auto damage is non-existent. Struggles to even clear waves alone with and without offensive items (which are a waste to his design, so don't do it.)

2. meeps are lackluster. The damage they provide is way too weak, and while you sort of feel it during levels 4-9ish if you properly roam for charms early laning phase to get the leg up, they quickly and shamefully do not scale up into later game and become useless except for the proc-slow. They also cannot be turned off, so trying to assist with clearing waves is a no-go unless you want to be unprepared for fight trades and duo initiates.

• Thresh's flay passive is lightyears better than Bard's meeps, and considering the meeps seem to be a core design that provides his only viable damage output, this needs to be remedied soon.
• Ashe's crit passive does better poke than his meeps.

CHARMS-- 3) charm spawn rates are inconsistent. Edit Charm spawn areas are inconsistent. Apparently they spawn at a fixed rate, but by 50 minutes, you really can only get about 100ish max. Problem is with where they spawn, which is nowhere near you early mid game.

4. charms do not provide the needed xp later in game to keep up with team when choosing to roam support. They provide adequate early game xp, but that number quickly washes out and provides marginal if nonexistent levels of xp to stay with your team mid and early late game. Combined with bard's inability to farm and clear creeps/minions, xp is actually hard to come by without hugging a farmer or team carry early on.

PORTALS (aka, the MAGICAL JOURNEY™)-- 5) Extremely low in mana cost, extremely low cooldown time makes this one of the more prominent "OP" pieces of the Bard champ. I strongly believe the mana cost should be something more like 45-60ish instead of 30 at R1, and that 30s should be a more dynamic cooldown based on how many people used the portal. (if bard is using it alone, leave the cooldown as-is, but if you bring 1~4 of your teammates, increase the cooldown by 6-seconds per person passing through)

6. Portals are "walk-into" activated, not click activated like Thresh's lantern. Once you get used to it, it becomes easy enough, but many times the somewhat narrow walkway into the door leaves you retardedly humping the adjacent wall wondering why the magic doesn't commence. Either add the click-point to use, or widen the doorway a bit, or even both.

THE ZONIA MORTAR (aka "thanks Obama Bard!" >:| ) 7) As explained earlier in my breakdown, Bard's ult can be awesome, but half the time you end up trolling your team or screwing something up. The tipping point dynamic between it being successful and it backlashing against your entire team is too risky to be used outside of snatching a runner solo in-lane to secure a teammate's kill. This point is easily the most arguable and can be devil's advocated to death with (lern 2 play noob, it's a new champ. Let people get good with it, Don't use it in teamfights then, etc.) The biggest point with this is that Bard's R's risk-to-reward ratio is realistically too high to be used for teamfights unless you're quite literally the Top Gun of LoL and can shoot a dime flying through the air with Jinx's "Zap!".

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I know this is a long wordy post, but if you have the time please read some of it. It may seem like a whine post, but I assure you, there are many moments where Bard does well-- just given the current weaknesses and imbalances, he's not a consistent enough performer to bring into a serious normal or ranked game. I know some parts are arguable, and some of you guys are definitely going to pull the "you're a level 15 summoner with nothing but bard bot games logged for the last couple days." flame war attempts. Please don't. There is no need. I'm just a player coming back to league from 2.5 years ago when Varus was just released. have to do that grind again to play ranked and get frustrated enough with the lack of teamwork at this perpetual bronze pool to deal with flamers and trolls. Thank you!

Some requests from the can i have my cake and eat it too gnome:

• Please also make Bard viable as a mage when built AP offensively.
• Please make meeps useful besides slows. They hit like a pack of wet noodles. Make it more like an uncooked ramen block to the face.
• Please recall the elderwood skin. It looks like a pedophile faun-like chernobyl mutated Jax who took a dunk in the blueberry bubblegum tank at the wonka factory. ++ In fact, recall the elderwood skin and go straight to releasing the Maurader skin so we can have Lord Mordekaiser + Marauder Bard pow-wow combo wombo duos /laughing in mid in true yolo spirit.
• Seriously, why do you make the health packs so mana expensive?? all it does is hurt early game for the noob ADCs.
• Also please add a cleanse to slows when instacasting the heal on a teammate.