A proposal buff to Caretaker's Shrine
As someone who's been playing Bard like a maniac since I bought them a few days ago (and he's one of the only reasons I can have fun playing this game again), I can't help but feel like his shrines are the most... off thing about his kit. When I look at what his other abilities do (a slow/conditional stun, a wormhole to travel through terrain, and an AoE stasis), I can't help but feel that Caretaker's Shrine has no place in what he's usually doing.
As a roaming support, or Riot's attempt to make one with incentive to actively roam beyond getting assists, Caretaker's Shrine offers very little by way of ganking power, and with his Q needing a wall or a second unit in order to stun, landing that key CC is really all you have pre-6. It's not really like Alistar, where he can just run up behind you and knock you into his tower; Bard actually needs to play it smartly in order to get results. Yes, the healing pod that you leave behind is useful for allies with little sustain; but honestly, leaving them behind for my ADC if I plan on roaming for ganks/chimes, I rarely come back to see that they've taken them, because they've done something that lets them not need it; play safe while I'm gone. I ward the bushes for them before I leave, and they try not to push too hard, giving up only a few CS in exchange for an ally pulling ahead and an XP advantage.
Even worse is that the shrine has to scale up from laughably bad to mediocre. This takes ten seconds, which makes it extremely unrewarding in the case of a quick heal when it's needed. Outside of a really small movement buff, which I'm pretty sure also scales with time, there's not too much reason for you to do anything except drop them down as an investment, so as an ability it's a little lacking in interaction.
But what if we gave it a purpose for quick-casting it in order to grant him some on-the-fly utility? What if his shrine acted as terrain only in the case of his Q connecting with it? It offers both play for the Bard (where to set it up, using it for a gank/emergency stun vs investing it for the heal) and counterplay for the enemy (telegraphs your intentions very obviously depending on where it's dropped, stepping on it vs walking around it if he can punish you for stepping on it with a stun vs a wall or ally). Cast times might need to be tweaked so that he can't drop the CC too quickly, but I mused over this long enough to think it was at least worth a conversation.
Would this change be too powerful? I think it would put him more on par with other powerful roaming champions like Nami and Alistar. If any Rioter who worked on him wants to talk about it, has this already been tested out and you decided it was too useful or not useful enough?
tl;dr make Bard's W count as terrain if his Q connects with an enemy and then hits a shrine
