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Bard is one of my favorite champions... anyone want to talk about Bard with me?

WeaselRune·5/9/2019, 7:48:44 PM·4 votes·5,343 views

Morgana main for the most part, but shes a popular ban at the moment. Shes always seen some bans, but the recent rework made her a tiny bit more popular, and tweeked some peoples buttholes into making her a more popular ban.

So Bard is like my other main, along with Karma. The only reason I dont use Karma as much is because her hard CC takes a bit too long, but Bard has 2 ways to bring in the ganks to his lane... Have 18 games with a 72% win rate atm in soloQ on this account.

I dont like to play Bard in too low of ELO. Around mid silver people are less prone to misplay around his kit. Namely using his shrines instantly, picking them up as a casual speed boost, or thinking his Q has a 2 second cooldown.

Anyway, just thought it would be fun to talk about him with some people, maybe share builds, or tricks. Maybe answer some questions for people who want to know more about Bard, or play Bard.

25 Comments

cars3n5/9/2019, 7:54:08 PM3 votes

Ult the enemy towers as you’re trying to end. It boosts your win rate by 7859%.

Kai Guy5/9/2019, 8:34:47 PM2 votes

Any day of the week. I am an off meta bard main and have loved this champ from release.
I use item 3512 and item 3153 as core items, with an Item CDR rune setup. Keystone Electro because Meep is seen as a separate trigger so 1 Q auto W meep = Trigger and that gives you some early trade power in lane.

Its funny how people value ratio colors more then some solid math. Meeps have 0.3 AP. Autos trigger meeps. Autos have 1.0 AD scaling. The slow on a Meep is 1 second duration. Bard base auto is 0.625 per second. His scaling is ok for AS. At level 11 you have 17.6% As scaling. On paper, for Bard at level 1 to have 1 auto per second you need 60% As. As your autos have travel time realistically you want a bit more then just 1 to 1 if your goal is to overlap Meep slows. 60% is conveniently calculated with 2 items. item 3006 item 3153 The boots despite it being a common pick are 100% optinal as there are other items that can help bard and provide 30% or so AS.

So now each Meep Trigger is doing 40 extra damage but Any random attack is also 40 damage even with no meep. For pure damage your looking at the BASE ad of Botrk Being > 100 AP. When I make support builds I try to look for gold efficiency and Botrk is one of the best items in the game for that. With it being 100% off its passive onhit damage when you damage a target with a current hp value of 362.5 Anything above that just adds more value to the item. AND you get the ondemand slow MS boost active.

Your base damage on Q is the same regardless of build so all your losing out is the 0.65 AP scaling and some W growth. E and R are only impacted off CDR so nonfactors. Take a look 0.3+0.65 = 0.95. So a Q and Auto at 100 AP literally does less damage then tapping the BOTRK active 1 time... plus you still see 40 for the auto + Onhit, and get a step closer to your mid and late game ability to chain slow in an AOE.

But people see green ratios and that's it lol.

item 3512 ? Bards special for how he interacts with terrain, his Q stun. Zzrot is coded as terrain. He can stun some one on it. So your Q now can be used as ondemand, and the item itself. Alone its mixed defensive stats are 91.3%. The MS from being near a tower or ZZ from point runner passive spikes it up to 120.56%. And oviously theres the active, which I don't just use for tower pushing. Set it back farther to defend a lane, Put it into a jungle for massive vision, the thing is a super ward because the Spawn also have vision for their pathing. Often times drop it behind a enemy tower at lots of spots for free BD damage on a tower, it just eats their hp. Then like I said you use it for stuns, use it with your R to surprise gank folks. R into Zzrot into Q can be done at anyplace on the map regardless of if some one Is solo, near terrain, or has minions. People also like to try to kill the thing so if they are tracking it down in a jungle you can use it as bait. Wait for some one to try to kill it. R them over a wall, E you and teammates thru the wall. Q them and you just went fishing. With the item CDR you can hit the soft cap on ZZrot to litearly have 2 of them out at once. Great for sieges. Leave it in a side lane and if they go to stop it throw the R for a teamfight and enjoy forcing 4v5 as a support.

Bard W is a subpar heal. Its good lane sustain. Its bad combat sustain. I don't feel its AP ratio is worth it because the 10 seconds required charge time. but people undervalue the skill. I start a lot of games with W. Give my jungler a shine and leave 2 of them near mid tower. The thing has no duration, lasts all game till used or you make a 4th. With W start my mid sees an extra 174 hp. And my jungler gets a W fast cast + shrine for 120 ish.

Rest of items are great because it doesn't matter what you get. They are all game to game. DPS on team is weak? item 3091 makes you tankyer vs mages and put up some solid damage #s. item 3143 if you need to tank more The list of what you can use viably by match goes on and on. item 3109 item 3905 item 3222 item 3800 item 3071 item 2065 item 3107 item 3190 + others. Bard is one of the most independent of item champions because his R and E.

You wanted ap burst support? Play a mage. You wanted a heal bot? Play a heal bot. Tank? Hello Leona Alistar Braum . But lets say You want a Jack of all trades master of fun who can reactively respond on a match to match situation that's entirely going to be successful or fail because your mechanics? Thats bard!

Jessey5/9/2019, 8:22:13 PM1 votes

Bard is only support that is fun to play as support. Most support you just babysitting in bot lane.

Moonscourge5/9/2019, 8:38:12 PM1 votes

I love Bard & he has carried me to Diamond on multiple accounts. More people should play him as a mage support. It's fun. Get a Liandry's and start melting and even 1vi1ng people.

Morgana Deus5/9/2019, 9:08:12 PM1 votes

Morgana is definitely the cooler champion. She has cookies, and a wife skin, and some kinky bondage skin, and she's also a witch.

Bard has hot chocolate though. So I guess it might be kind of even.

Mr Dalloway5/10/2019, 12:19:13 AM1 votes

I don't play him in Summoner's Rift but I love him in ARAM and other game modes. One of my favorite things about him is he is strong with so many different keystones and with so many different items.

Rikirie5/10/2019, 12:22:09 AM1 votes

If you still need to itch that scratch no meeps can reach heres a whole sub reddit for bard players too! https://www.reddit.com/r/bardmains/

Oblívíõn5/10/2019, 12:33:20 AM1 votes

i just want to talk about the great noises bard makes

Dorans Pants5/10/2019, 2:26:02 AM1 votes

I really love how flexible he is especially in terms of builds. He is one of those champs that can build practically anything and make it work, even though I prefer to play him more dmg oriented.

This is a build I used to run in the past and still do occasionally when I feel like I will be on my own in this game.

full-Ap-OMG-I AM MELTING AWAY IN LIANDRYS-MEEP-BARRAGE-BUILD:

item 3098 item 3020 item 3151 item 3165 + item 3089 / item 3135 / Defensive item

It´s probably the best solo carry build and really shines in teamfights (kind of like an ap twitch who is not complete bs), but you will note that there is barely any cdr and that you are much slower without mobis and ms items so you have a few restrictions to work around. You can´t tunnel all the time, you are more reliant on good ults to engage, and everyone on the enemy team will start to focus you instead of the carries which is hilarious and sometimes outright wins you some games.

Then I tried to incorporate athens into my builds so that my heals wouldn´t suck anymore and to get value out of athene´s second passive I added more and more heal items to it, which then ended up becoming a completely different build.

the Ap-ambulance-build

item 3098 item 3117 item 3174 item 3504 item 3107 item 3222 + stone born pact or however it´s called now. The thing that heals allies when you slow enemies or in bard´s case when you AA somebody.

Healing may be its main function, but it can still run you over if you are not careful.

And right now I am tinkering more with early cheese and really fast meep acquisition, which requires a lot of movement speed and as we all know only ludicrous speed can suffice here.

the [I am here, I am there, I am everywhere]-build

item 3098 item 3117 item 3905 item 2065 item 3100 + relentless hunter

And ofc there is the good old on hit build which is quite funny.

The one thing I would never do is building him as a tank. I see a lot of players building item 3190 item 3118 item 3512 item 3107 and even though they can be annoying, they never have as much of an impact as they could have had.

In the end you are ranged, you even have additional reach with your meeps, you don´t profit much from being in the center of a fight like an alistar, leone, or taric would and you don´t get bonus resistances. So I would just focus on either more utility and or dmg.

These bulds may not be equally effective, but they are all fun to mess around with.

And whatever riot does with him in the future, I hope they don´t cut in his dmg output. I really like how he scales with meeps and you kind of have to be able to bully the lane to even get the chance to roam.

Meep Man5/10/2019, 2:27:48 AM1 votes

I used to be a Bard main, but then I stopped playing League for a while and didn't play Bard when I came back. I mainly play him now cause I still loosely have some knowledge on him. I like meme-ing with him Top by using item 3100 and item 3285 since his Meep Attacks proc both. No one really cares what Top does early game too so long as your turret doesn't fall, so you can pretty freely go around and collect chimes peacefully so long as you dont abandon your tower. You also get to reserve all your Ws for yourself, although I like to place 3 Ws in the Jungle for my Jungler's initial clear.

Kazekiba5/9/2019, 7:57:12 PM1 votes

Bard is a good bard.

I would like if his W had a scaling max HP ratio and/or chimes provided some form of defense, because I like the idea of Tank bard. Of course, I'm biased as a Leona main. I love tank supports (No, Thresh. Not you) Taking more power out of Q in general, and giving him more strength in early tunnel use in exchange for buffing the ratios of charging/charged shrines (< 3 seconds of charging Shrines would be unaffected/weaker). I like the potential idea of a solo lane bard as well (namely top, can be used to R Heralds or contest it almost instantly) What Im saying is, I like bard but he needs a minor overhaul of his kit to be more enjoyable and less ADC in disguise