bard top is surprisingly strong. PLEASE READ BEFORE DOWNVOTES

he's seriously so incredibly safe and strong in terms of harass its ridiculous.

i run 13 attack damage, 10% flat cdr, and scaling health seals for easier last hitting/harder hitting harass early.

your strategy for playing bard top is simple. its very easy to farm as him with 72 ad at level one as his auto attack animations are slow(much like how it's easy to last hit as sion as well). every time your enemy laner top(melee strategy) comes up to last hit a minion, hit him with your Q, and stun him with another minion and then proceed to auto attack him as many times as you feel like, as you can honestly eat all the minion attacks you want thanks to your sustain in w along with grabbing chimes quickly when you're low on mana. it might not look like you're doing a ton of damage straight away, and you're not. but it really adds up when theyre stunned for 1.5 seconds eating free auto attacks. usually by the first three minutes ive harassed them so hard they're wary of coming up to farm because of how much health ive taken from them. laning phase is that, just rinse and repeat. ward your bush often as people will want to gank a bard top a lot. onto what to build for bard.

when the game starts get either x5. this will guarantee now matter how strong of an early your enemy top laner has, if he's melee he wont be able to force you out of lane as you can easily trade back all of the damage he does to you.

if against a mage i start just to have harder harass for them and be able to push the wave faster.

first item is and always should be . it gives a surprisingly good power spike early, and since you can easily deny farm from your enemy while last hitting easily too, it makes denying farm and eventually killing your enemy laner so much easier. if for some reason you're behind really far i would just rush, but if you're ahead definitely finish gauntlet first. it is invaluable.

your next four items are entirely situational though. take a good hard look at the enemy team before deciding what you want to do.

if they're AP heavy build (it may be armor, but 500 health is still very very good. and the slow helps you get away easier. could potentially be a last item for an AP heavy team because aside from MR, health is the only thing that stops an AP champion in their tracks.

if you're against a mostly melee team, i find it best to build , and . it gives you about 400 armor, and from my experience with this build, even a full build vayne that was very very good could not 1v1 me with her true damage and all. as long as i had meeps and at least hit her with my q's she was going to sustain too much damage while not being able to lifesteal any back to do anything to me. and if vayne can't take you down 1v1 with this build, no one can.

think of bard as being a tank with a support secondary in the top lane. people will realize very quickly that if you land your stuns and ults, and utilize your magical journeys properly, that you're a very big threat and they will have no choice but to try and focus your or you'll just cc them until your team crushes them. but, because you're an incredibly tanky cc churning naturally escapy bard, they either have to throw everything they have at you, or theyre gonna watch you walk away for a second, come back, and stun them into oblivion while theyre fighting the rest of your team.

also a little tip for top lane bard that you might not know. say your enemy is teleporting in through his turret. ult his turret. it will force cancel his teleport, thus wasting it and forcing him to run back.

i really hope people see this guide and don't think "wow he's just a shitter silver" and actually think about the possible benefits a bard top could bring to your game. who knows, bard top may become a common pick on teams with 2-3 hypercarries on it.