Bard Change Suggestions.

So let's face it right now, Bard kind of sucks and it isn't necessarily the fault of people playing him. He has the lowest win rate in the game and generally contributes minimally to team fights. His numbers are too low to be useful in many situations and can just end up punishing him when he attempts to do anything other than collecting chimes.

But hear me out a little bit, I love this champion to death! He has one of the most creative kits in the game and he gives a name to the wandering support sub-niche. The thing is he's just too dang weak right now.

Here are a few things that I think would fix this champion and make him actually viable for play in, well, the game.

• Range: Bard just needs more of it. On everything. His passive is a really cool harassment tool which could really push someone out of lane and even give him a kiting option. The only issue is that it only activates on his auto attacks, and a harassment option is near useless if you have to get within range of the even the shortest ranged AD carries in the game; you will be punished more than you can dish out from trying to harass. On his Q, it's just absolutely necessary: there is no way that a champion like Karma, which fills a very similar role to him in lane, should have higher damage, more reliable CC, and a drastically longer range on her damaging skillshot than Bard. It just makes the poor horn wielding fool obsolete despite his freshness to the league.

• Magical Journey: This skill is honestly cool to begin with, but it has a very fatal error to use when not just collecting chimes. That error is that you are offering utility to your enemies. Last time I read, that's called griefing. There are a couple of potential solutions to this, but I think I saw where you wanted to go with the skill and I want to keep its original intention in mind. Make it so that enemies still CAN go through the portal, but give them a more prominent reason than "they move slower" to not want to use the portal. This can be done by making it so that enemies are slowed by a decent amount upon exiting the portal, or even a mini-stun as if to say they were tossed out on their heads and need to stand up.

• Make him slightly tankier: Right now Bard doesn't necessarily have a designated role in the meta. This can be an issue for him due to the fact that everybody else does. Besides, what are you supposed to build on this guy? Right now his kit edges toward mage but even then it only slightly edges towards it. He needs a little bit more of a definition, and I believe this can be done by making him tankier. This way he'll be closer to Taric than Sona, and honestly that just sounds more appealing.

• His ult: Oh my god where do I begin with his ult. It's absolutely beautiful! It's such a cool idea to be able to stasis absolutely anything in the game that you please just gives me the giggles. It's essentially a massive pause button on whatever you feel like, but that's honestly just where the problem lies: it's practically useless. It needs more to it, but also less. It needs less start up time, less travel time, and less radius on the AOE (wait, what?) In the current form of Bard's ult, casting it from max range (which you'll be doing because you were off getting chimes) means you have to predict a total of about 2.5 seconds into the future to hit a stasis that will probably do more damage than good or nothing at all because you hit allies. That's some Pantheon level of insight, there. Less AOE, faster particle speed, and faster start up animation will make it possible to be more precise in what you want to pause and still make it possible to be accurate in doing so without having Jedi reactions. And remember that analogy I made about Pantheon? Give it a Pantheon element. A cool addition would be if he recasts the spell after it lands, but before the stasis wears off, he teleports to the location. Shen can help up close and person, why shouldn't Bard? Besides, he's known as the wandering caretaker, not an artillery hourglass.

Bard honestly is a really cool champ and I have so much fun playing him, it's just impossible to make any meaningful contribution to team fights (reflected through a lack of assists.) He just needs more to really suture his kit into something cohesive and fluid.