@Meddler Can we talk Bard for just a second? Just wanting developer insight.

(If anyone knows someone better to have a discussion about this with from Riot's staff, could you please direct them to this. I don't know many Rioter's handles, or people on the boards who I could make a good discussion about this with.)

I have just a couple of questions if anyone could shed light on them, that would be super great. While other champs could use a looking at instead of him, I'm just curious about how you guys on the design/live side see him. He doesn't really scale well with anything besides CDR (and what support doesn't) and I notice a lot of people would love to jungle him. There is something about running into lanes and dropping a health shrine at an allies tower as you keep clearing/roaming that is a wonderful thing. (See: "Wandering Caretaker.")

That being said, we all know his clear speed is possibly the slowest in the game while still having any reason to be in the jungle. (Chimes/Journey ganks.) I'm just curious if this is an active design intention to keep him out of the jungle or what? (Kind of like how you guys do with Leona and Alistar.) I know you guys could just slap bonus neutral monster damage on him and cheese it out if you wanted him to be a jungle pick of any kind.

I think a good number of us would love to see him scale with attack speed somehow. Maybe something like increasing meep regeneration by 1 second and adding "on-hit having him reduce the cooldown of the next meep by 0.5 seconds," allowing him scale with attack speed as a second option to do more in a teamfight. Maybe reduce meep AP scaling ratio by .1? Anything to help him be more proactive rather than just waiting for Q cooldown and meeps since his W is very lack luster late game.

Do you think there is any hope of this kind of thing? Was bard jungling discussed when he was being designed? Any changes in design you guys have in mind, or do you think he is in a great spot as far as ability design/intention to keep him firmly as a support?

Thanks for reading.