How I play the Super Cosmic Hobo: Bard

I am a Bard main, Usually bard, people see him as either a balloon with no damage, or a tank with no substantial damage... Wrong! Bard can be an ap carry, jg, adc, tank bruiser and mid lane mage (though certain match ups will flank with bard's growth). This guild is for a tankish-bruiser bard that can kill a squishy from 100-0 with just q+ignite+auto 2x.

Thunderlords, keep that in mind when you build Bard. Build 20% cdr, because this build won't use much cdr items.

The main item that is essential on my Bard builds: <=== That is the powerhouse of all items that bard needs. Folks will say, why not Luden's or Rabadon? Ludens takes too long for a good damage out put while building. Rabadon, easily costs too much and has no partial help benefits to instant burst damage early. Lich bane comes with and is really strong in the first half of the game. The second you build Lich bane, your power significantly goes up. I go with rushing Lich bane first.

Items to build on bard: This is actually a good second build after Lich, but situation matters and only build if you are crushing their lane in and you have a understanding of what bard does. This will leave bard really squishy, but bard can literally out damage a lot of adcs, if you get the element of surprise from bushes/stun up by level 11.

This scales with bard, since his meeps power grows, you gain additional 10% damage, works well on all things ap. Gets you ready to semi tank.

Fast, more hp, armor, and more damage? Drop it in the shopping cart.

Is a good choice since all your damage will do more, but it is a situational ideal for a bruiser bard, though you might want some defensive stats. or is a stronger pick.

Last picks: Build what ever you want. At this point of the game, last item is usually utility that I pick. , , or .You want to play as aggressively as you can in this build and these items allow you, Bard to do so without getting instantly burst down.

My sometimes build for Bard: , , , , , and for high damage, but tanky output. Sometimes, even in rank. I will toss out a for reasons I want to.

Bard's damage output (late game): Late game is when you go beast mode, around 60-100+ chimes (210-300+ damage). Say you collect 100 chimes and it is really late into the game, and now you do 300 damage per meep. Scaling meeps with 54+ ap from both and , about 30% scaling on ap. Your meeps now do, 354 damage. Add in dealing 100 bonus damage which bard's base damage is 103. Now on auto, you do 354+100+103 = 557. Add in of 110-120 on hit damage to it plus thunderlords 180+18 (10% ap). 557+110+198 = 865 damage. Now if I built 160 is added to that, but if I crit on it... It's about 320+Bard's crit on basic attack 206. No crits: 865+160 = 1025. With crit: 865+320+103 = 1288 However, thunderlords does not proc on hit... So that is when your Q is your butter to the bread... Q is 260+117 = 377 (65% ap scaling) on hit. Adding that to the damage math, it should be about 1665 damage on q+auto. Adding Ignite gives off another 410 damage over time. I didn't add in the item to it, but imagine adding 10% to all your ap damage... That's a lot and the radius of this item's effect is enough for his q and auto to hit.

It hits so hard an adc will usually die and rethink of life and Bard.

However, armor wanes down the damage so it's probably gonna usually be about a 20-35% damage reduction on a adc. That is why will do good in bursting them down+ some quints of magic pen... An adc usually will only have 30-45 armor... So I'd laugh when my Magic penetration hits over the 45 thresh hold because I am actually doing true damage now. is also a nice pick to do that. All that on one auto and then everything else you load in before the next 1.5 seconds will do 457 damage. Enough to kill an Adc.

So Bard, a bruiser that can do 1665+ damage and also be tanky. One heck of a fun champ. What you usually want to build on a bruiser for armor and mr is usaully around 100-150. Anymore armor and mr building will start to lose it's value for a bruiser since the scaling significantly goes down on it. He's not broken, it's his passive you want to keep in mind. Bard has many counters but he's more to just damage, it's tactical plays as well.

You can just build ap and watch a lot of people complain about how bard hit's too hard... Dude... Bard only has his passive and q, every other champ that's not a support has a full kit of damage or at least two. This build works really well on Bard and is really a situational build. Though I got to admit it that it is fun when folks are like "Bard God" or etc. it's funny. I've actually got more folks to play bard, just one time in rank, my group and I were fighting a bunch of gold and one silver. They were complaining about how Bard shouldn't be carrying, it's just that funny.

"I like to call walking because, that literally is what he is." The more Bard wanders, the stronger he gets.