Bard, balanced?

uJhisper·3/13/2015, 3:15:18 PM·2 votes·901 views

Can someone elaborate & help me understand what's broken/OP about him? As someone who mains the support role, I don't see the issues.

His ULT is a make or break situation, which I feel like is one of his Cons. There's many other champions who can completely screw up a team, Blitzcrank pulling the tank into the team, Alistar headbutting the enemy away (or too close), Lissandra ulting an important player in a teamfight, trundle/anivia putting walls in bad spots etc...

Oh, and having literally 0 damage.

5 Comments

S H A Y C 03/13/2015, 3:24:48 PM1 votes

i onlly played with one on my team once, and one on the enemy team once and i do not find him anywhere near op. he is a floating ball of utility for sure, but hey thats prime for a useful support.

there are many ways i see his ult being used, most of which i could tell were completely unintentional by the two guys i had last night, but i see a lot of potentional, but nothing so strong he should be pick banned. i mean its another zilean, with 0 damage.

a few notes on cool things you can do with bard.

starting health packs: follow your jungler to his starting camp: drop all you can there, recall and head to lane. Damn this is hot for the jungler!

ult: stop dragon, baron: obviously

save team from devastating ult/incoming damage

probably less obvious: zhonya enemy team

uses: put tanks and front line on pause in team fight while your team freely deletes enemy damage dealers

pause enemy team/2-3 seperated members to give your team enough time to get in position to squish them

pause enemy team to give your team enough time to respawn and defend inhib-turret-nexus

and again pause them for disengauge

with all that, hes not op, he is utility out the pooper.

LordDarkshayde3/13/2015, 3:38:24 PM1 votes

He is a great champion if used correctly. First off if you build ap on him (RoA, Rylai's, etc.) not only does it give him survivability due to increased HP, but his Q damage will increase as well as his passive Meep damage which in turn becomes very powerful late game if you have diligently collected chimes while you roam. Also as for his ultimate I have 2 examples of a great use for it that I did myself.

Enemy was taking Baron and only our Orianna followed me to Baron pit. Enemy had clustered in front of Baron so as they nearly killed it I ulted them but not Baron which cause Baron to heal alot of it's health while they were stasis'd. Ori placed her ball on the ulted enemies and as soon as they were free she ulted and we killed them all together and secured Baron.
Yasuo was running from 2 enemies in their jungle. He had his whirlwind up but was very near death so I ulted the 2 chasing him giving him a much needed breather. As the stasis wore off he knocks them both up and ults them while I walk in and Q the enemies together locking them down for an easy double kill.

Granted these situations do not always occur, but the fact that I could capitalize on them when they did shows how powerful Bard (and any other champion) can be in the right situations.

Ltank1293/13/2015, 3:44:03 PM1 votes

Bard is a real niche pick. Since coming out I have only played a few games where I haven't been against a bard support, so he definitely is popular. However, with all the mechanics he implements, he is undoubtedly the most difficult support to use at the moment. He gives you a lot of choices. His passive makes you question when to wander (and it forces the ADC to actually think and not just shoot anything that moves at all times), his q makes your positioning very significant, his W has the use of a long term health boost or a momentary speed buff, his E can gapclose to his doom or sneak around and flank. His ult of course is the most complicated part of his kit. It has the most choices of any ult in the game. For example, Nami's ult can be an initiation or a disengage. Bards ult can be that, or a free ohm, or zhonya's, or a way to preserve baron or dragon for a steal.

His difficulty is insanely high. His utility and versatility is insane. His damage potential is near zero (Unless he somehow gets 200 meeps. That was a fun custom game). I would say he is balanced pretty well. He will be a very skill dependent champ, and mastering him will be greatly rewarding. When we see some people use him to his full potential, then we might consider balance, but at the moment with the influx of new bard players, I don't see a problem.

People are probably just upset because he can completely counter Zed with his ult.

Celeste Benal3/13/2015, 3:45:52 PM1 votes

Biggest problem I've had is my Bard roaming off and not coming back. 1v2 early game? Pretty much gg. In no way is he OP.

SIayton3/13/2015, 4:16:48 PM1 votes

There's nothing broken about bard. He's pretty garbage as a support and doesn't contribute much to team fights. He's just a mid to late game initiator, pretty much. Laning wise he's terrrrrrrrrrrrrible.