Bard. He FEELS useless. (long-ish message)

So many champions have a "mission" they try and achieve through-out a game, and if they do well the can see it reflected in their characters stats. For Nasus it's Q stacks, If hes ahead there hes Q does tons of damage. For Cass it's poison stacks, if shes getting lots of stacks she gets AP. For an ADCs its farm/gold, they get items and see that the get lots of damage. (Everyone scales with gold, just not as hard as ADCs) supports get heals/shields/speed/poke/ect Pretty much EVERY champ in the game is like this, if they do well the become more powerful.

Except Bard.

If he gets gold its not like he has any good scales, and shouldn't be buying damage. His heal isn't big enough to bother buying AP, same with Q damage. Hes never focused so tanky-ness doesn't help a whole lot. Getting 40% CDR with good runes its easy, and can be done quickly ahead behind or not.

Random guy: "But he has his passive! thats like a whole system build around how well he roams that gives him stats!"

False. Chimes appear at a constant speed regardless of what Bard is doing, and as long as he isn't COMPLETELY INCOMPETENT he will get almost all of them at mid game when people are going all over the place team fighting and pushing. Even if he almost ignores them early game.

Bard gets no reward for doing well.

Also, hes just weak. His CC isn't great and his damage is amongst the worst in the game, and his heal is almost the weakest heal, unless he lets it sit for a while. His ult and E are great if used right, but are VERY hard to use in an advantageous way. (His ult is arguably the hardest skill in the game) Not only are they hard to use right but if you mess up, they can really hurt your team. For example, lets take a scenario. You have a sona who's been doing quite well, (shes 3/1/14). You get into a fight and she completely messes up her ult, and another skill. You still have a good chance at winning that fight, since shes ahead. Now you have a 3/1/14 Bard . Hes messes up his ult and E. The fight might as well have been 4v6. It would have been better Bard wasn't even there. Heck if he had been 20/0/20 the same would still hold true.

So I've thought up a few ideas that I think would work well. But these are just random ideas, I assume Riot could do much better, if they realized the state hes in.

Reward for doing well

His passive. This should be what separates the good Bards from the great. A great bad should easily get 2 or 3 times as many chimes as a bad Bard , just like a Nasus or Veigar would get 2 or 3 times as many Q stacks.

Idea #1, Roaming Bard : Change his passive so that chimes appear as he goes places, so that a Bard the is roaming will keep getting chimes to appear, as where a Bard that stays in lane will have far less appear.

Idea #2, Meep Bard : Hitting with meeps make chimes appear faster. This way keeping track of when to your meeps are up gets you more chimes. Make hitting champs make chimes spawn even faster. and hitting multiple champs with 1 meep (via the AoE) would be even better. For example, hitting anything: 1 second off of next chime spawn. Hitting a champion: 5 seconds off of next chime spawn. Hitting more than 1 champion: instant chime spawn for each champ hit beyond the first.

Idea #3, Balanced: Simply make chimes spawn faster. BUT make them disappear with time (make it about 3 or 4 minutes) So Bard has to chose weather to get more chimes or help his lane. Good Bards would time roams right to get chimes AND help lanes.

Scaling and less team-neutral abilities His ult is odd, and would be hard to give balanced scaling to. Only one I can think of is improved travel speed or range. I would just leave his ult alone.

But you could give scaling to his E

**Take away the bonus travel speed to allies, and make going thought the portal give a buff. Ethereal residue: Allies In the portal gain 22%/24%/26%/28%/30%(+0.03) move speed, and heal 10/15/20/25/30 (+0.2 AP) every second, this effect lasts for 2 seconds after they leave the portal (Only works first time through the portal). Enemies get the same effect, but are slowed and take magic damage instead. ** Just a random Idea, again I'm sure there are better ideas I'm just throwing some out there. But the point still stands. Bard needs a way to get rewarded. And some scaling.

TL;DR Bard doesn't get rewarded for playing well, and has almost no scaling. Also his abilities are barely any better to his team than they are to his enemies. Changing chime mechanics and giving "E" a scale would probably help.