@Riot, you're gonna have to do a hell of a lot more than that to buff Bard
Bard is weird, Bard is different, Bard is new, yes, so a decent number of people just say that he needs more time for people to figure out, but I know for an absolute fact that this champion is exceedingly underpowered on top of those aspects above. HIS PASSIVE is a huge problem. The numbers on that needs to be seriously tweaked. He has to collect WAY too many chimes to ramp up his passive, to that of which when he actually does, not many people even notice it anyway. It can still be 5 chimes per increase, but the increase should definitely get bigger, and there should be roughly a max amount of 30 chimes per game, and have the chimes appear in slightly less random, abstract places. Decrease the time of which how many spawn around if 30 per game isn't much, but Bard shouldnt be playing a flat-out minigame either during a RANKED game.
His base and scaling also needs more buffs than what's currently on the PBE. It needs to be that of something like malzahar's or Morgana's to be useful. If bard had a 300 damage Q at max rank following a .8 Ap scaling, that would at least begin to show some more pressure for him. As of now, his lane pressure is flat out horrible, and he has little to-no choice to set health packs and roam. There should be diverse strategies involved when playing this champion other than roaming way too much around the map in order to be "useful" in Riot's perspective. All that roaming for chimes don't even pay off. He always STILL ends up being very underleveled and weak. He needs a bigger offer in his lane.
With a total of .8 AP DAMAGE available to scale in the game, it wouldn't even turn him into an AP threat to have .8 AP on his Q as opposed to .5. "Oh man, 1.1 ap damage scaling in his kit VeX are you insane? INSTA OP LOL" mind you that all regular mages have over 2.1 scaling in their kits so if you're trying to say that's way too op then you're just flat-out having no idea what you're talking about. And finally, the reward should be actually NOTICEABLE for when Bard leaves off to collect chimes, and there shouldn't be AS much to collect. That is the only way this champion can promote healthy gameplay. Preferrably here are tweaks that I would closer ant to see for Bard to be even CONSIDERABLY decent.
Bard
Base attack damage changed to 50 from 46
(Personally I would like to see his attack range go to 525 from 500 as well)
Traveler's Call
Maximum Chimes decreased to 30 from 65
Damage adjusted to 40/110/180/250/320/390/460 within 30 chimes (from 30-465 from 65 chimes)
Slow changed to 20/30/40/50/60/70/80 within 30 chimes (from 80% from 65)
Chimes spawn a bit less frequently, as well as their location's being less threatening and random, still somewhat far, just less random.
30 chimes will spawn by 30 minutes, (1 minute per chime)
Bard gets an additional meep per 10 chimes (4 maximum at 30, total value unchanged)
Cosmic Binding
Damage increased to 80/120/160/200/240 (up from 75/110/145/180/215) NOTE: already on the PBE
Scaling increased to .8 from .5 NOTE: my suggestion
Caretaker's Shrine
Health Shrine ramp duration changed to 8 seconds (from 10)
Magical Journey
Cooldown lowered to 20/19/18/17/16 (down from 26/24/22/20/18) NOTE: already on the PBE
These changes will set Bard into a very healthy state in the game. The only way he can be healthy is if his downtime on collecting chimes is decreased and his actual presence was a bit stronger. Going chime collecting every 5 minutes is not too bad. As of now the trade-offs for what he does is simply not rewarding, on top of his general scaling being very poor.
Please leave constructive feedback from what you think about these changes and for what your suggestions would be. Thank you