Playing Bard on PBE - my thoughts
this is my takeaway. not saying you should listen to me 100% but i'm close to 300k mastery on bard and mained him to plat 2 last season, so I know bard pretty well
bard does a ridiculous amount of damage now; with all the meeps he has, he can repeatedly smack you down. seems like he'll transition to a med-high damage threat even more than now if he keeps up in chimes. expect to have around 5-6 meeps per game; 9 is only for late, late game scenarios and 7-8 are somewhere in between. between your low attack speed and Q, you will respawn at least 2 meeps in your longer combos to throw at them some more; I'm pretty sure Bard has an even easier time perma-CCing people mid-late game. would not be surprised to see damage/slow nerfs hit PBE soon
with how he gets his biggest power-spikes much earlier now (AoE cone, second meep, stronger slow) I expect solo-lane carry Bard to come into play, too. it was already "okay" as in somewhat playable but w/ this buff, farming with him will become much more tolerable, and more meeps == more harass. once he gets the cone AP bard also has probably some of the best waveclear in the game for absolutely free, and it's only been made better. also with the raw amount of damage he can put out just with some magic pen, AP bard will turn into a multikill machine. may possibly be a viable ADC replacement if you pair him with another roaming support; we'll see.
right now i'm fond of this build on pbe 
and then your choice of boots( i get tabi usually). Decent chunk of AP and full CDR, 2.8k health and ~140 for both resists, magic pen etc. the biggest appeal to Athene's now when it is very suboptimal on live is how often Bard can refill it with his new meep count. Transforms him into a VERY potent chain-healer, between his W applying it single target (it was about a 500 heal with this build no charge, would be even higher with full) and then Locket and Redemption spreading the heal to everyone it hits, I think this has a lot of potential to be a strong support build for Bard. Liandry isn't core but it works very nicely with him (meeps are considered a spell effect so he gets the burn damage too), you can sub it for something else depending on what you need. Thunderlord's is obvious best choice still, but with this build it may be possible to take Windspeaker's instead.
overall, i'm pretty worried about these changes; the sheer amount of meeps he can have now make him very forgiving for bad players who can't aim Q. the last thing I want is for bard to become a spammed pick; I know Riot will gut something else when/if these changes turn him into god tier, and bard is one of few champions who I've gotten to enjoy not being in the patch notes
edit: i forgot the most important buff of all - 9 meeps make a perfect circle when you emote or recall. gg riot
