Bard's kit is a mess.

I've played several games as Bard now, and I've noticed a few things. His lane phase is pretty good - I'll give him that much. He can create some decent pressure with his Q, and he can set up ganks nicely with his E. Bard past lane phase, however, is a different story.

If you build him as a Mage-Support with AP, you have no defensive capabilities outside of small skirmishes. You can only peel off 2 enemies, and your ult is pretty ineffective as a whole if your team is tangled up in enemy players if you're trying to disengage. Your heal is a little nicer, and your Q and Meeps damage isn't totally worthless, but it's still very lacklustre compared to the likes of Sona, Lulu or Annie. The movement speed on W doesn't scale with AP either.

If you build him as a Utility-Tank with a lot of CDR, you become a lot more effective in teamfights and skirmishes, but then you no longer get any value from your W.

As a whole, his ultimate is extremely situational and bad considering its awfully long cooldown. It's bad as disengage, as I've stated, and it is bad for engaging as it isn't CC - you can land a 5-man ult on the enemy team and you're no better off than you were before you used the ultimate. In fact, your ult really only does 3 things. It buys time for cooldowns to come back up or allies to come to assist, it buys time for ultimates to channel, and it can be used to bait ultimates out of the enemy team.

What would I change?

I would change his W so that either (or both) the Heal from W scales off Bard's Maximum/Current/Bonus HP and the movement speed on W scales with Bard's AP.

I would also make his ultimate more instantaneous (its current missile speed is pretty pathetic) so that it can be used for clutch saves/engages and also allow for it to be self-cast so it can be cast at Bard's feet. This way he can E ---> Alt + R or E ---> Flash ---> Alt + R.

EDIT: As for his Meeps, they're an incentive to roam. But they don't spawn fluently. Upon picking up Meeps, you gain a movement speed charge that can stack up to 5 times. The issue is, they don't spawn in range of each other (especially in the early game) when you have no additional movement speed. And considering that Meeps upgrades in increments of 5, something needs to be done about this. I will rarely get any more than 2 movement speed charges before tier 1 boots, and I usually won't get above 3 or 4 before I get mobility boots.