Improving Bard's usability with some minimap tweaks
From the looks of the PBE, prevailing opinion seems to be that Bard could use a little love right now, as they're trying various numeric buffs, which I'm happy to see, though I'm not qualified to comment on their appropriateness. I'd like to propose something orthogonal to those changes, namely, making a few changes to how Bard's information is presented to himself and to his allies, in order to make it more satisfying to play as and with Bard.
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Bard's chime minimap icons should appear on top of, not underneath, champion minimap icons. There have been several times where I've thought I was missing a chime spawn when what had actually happened was it spawned in the bush our jungler was standing in. The chime icons are small enough that putting them on top instead won't interfere with us keeping track of where the champions are.
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Allied Bard health shrines should show up as blue crosses on the minimap, kind of like the heath shrines on Twisted Treeline or Crystal Scar, rather than generic blue dots. If nothing else, this should help with health shrines being placed just north of turrets, which are frequently handy places to put them except for the part where they're obscured by the camera. The strategy should come from placing them in useful locations, not in figuring out which places your allies can see easily. While there's a bit of worry about creeping up the number of distinct symbols on the map, there is precedent for this with wards being given their own icon, as well as Rek'Sai's tunnel entrances.
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There should be some indicator that tells you the amount of time left until the next set of chimes spawn. It happens every 50 seconds, so it's knowledge that we have, but it would be handy to be able to tell at a glance. This is important because the chime spawn location is dependent on your location at the spawn time, which means you'd rather be on your side of the map when a spawn time comes so that they spawn in safer locations. This could be one of those cooldown indicators directly on the passive indicator (e.g., Blitz's Mana Barrier cooldown), or it could be attached to that indicator in the buff bar that tells you how many more chimes you need to pick up to get your next powerup.
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The chime minimap indicators are a lot of extra information, so I can understand not wanting to make it visible to players other than Bard to avoid information overload, but at the same time, if you don't know where an allied Bard's chimes are, Bard's occasional forays into the enemy jungle seem erratic. A friend of mine who didn't know about the chimes asked after playing a few games with me playing Bard whether I was just periodically going insane. What would be really nice is if allies could have access to a toggle (default off) that would make Bard's chimes visible on the minimap to them, kind of like how you can toggle whether you're listening to an allied DJ Sona.
None of these things are mechanical buffs, but they should all help a lot with being able to coordinate with a Bard on the team.