how to play bard support the right way

i know a lot of bards take TLD for that poke damage boost, but i take the healing keystone talent. it really gives your fully charged shrines a noticeable jump in lane.

i skip leveling up e at level 3, seriously you don't even need journey until level 4 or 5. i put my point into w instead.

when i get to lane at start i set down 3 shrines in a line behind where my adc and I will be pushing wave at, then go collect chimes and get back at 1:50

ADC and i generally have the choice to be aggressive or passive depending on matchups. if we take damage, we grab a shrine for a pretty high base heal of 150 at full charge level 3. whenever i get low mana(40%), i let my adc know and set a shrine down near her so she can run to it and escape easily if they decide to all-in or if a gank comes. I'll leave lane for chimes first time usually at level 4 when i get magical journey. lots of chimes built up, and now a fast way to return to my lane if things get hairy for me or my adc.

i usually build as my core items. eventually sightstone gets turned into later on. then i just go full on utility tank, and build depending on what kinds of situation i'm in.

a lot of people ask my why

well, there are a few reasons why i personally like it.

65 armor is a pretty big jump in armor to pull on an adc. coupled with max rank heal and one or 2 hp pots leaves me at full hp for a while.

the 500 bonus mana makes it so that if my team needs me i wont be low on mana and collecting chimes at a bad time. since there's no real limit to how many can be on the map, they'll just keep spawning. then i can speed clear jungle/lanes of chimes for a mana refresh after fight's over, get a good enough damage boost to be relevant without even backing.

20% CDR just lets me spam more abilities. faster.

the spellblade is my hands down favorite part. it gives you a solid damage boost for tower push at all points of the game, turns your meep attacks into an aoe and cone. it also slows 60% if i remember correctly. the bonus damage from spellblade really starts making you hurt squishies with just meeps and aa's. permaslow is always nice for teamfights too.

take if you need to split push badly. the armor and mr is always nice, but not ideal since no health.

against an all AD comp. sure, they can kill me if i stand there and try to fight them head on. but with it ill get away 80% of the time by being so tanky, while also so fast and cc heavy.

mostly for tbh. the armor's nice, and AS slow is nice, but its just dead CDR to me most of the time which kills its biggest selling point. also don't really have the need for any more mana than i've already built. mostly for. once 1v1'd a full build vayne as tank bard. i had 102 chimes that game, and it went on for 72 minutes. this and thornmail are the only reason i won. my meeps did 500 damage with 100 chimes. was funny.

once we win or lose lane advantage, we just start setting up ganks with that magical journey and start snowballing other lanes as best we can.

the game post laning phase basically turns into a minigame of how many chimes can i collect before i have to be back with my team. that doesn't mean ignore all teamfights, but rather, collect as many chimes as you can, but be ready at a moment's notice when your team needs you there.

throw dem q's throw dem r's, heal yo homies, win teamfights, and gg!