Bard actually harkens back to the era of roaming supports like Janna, Alistar, Taric; Difference?

Salt Miner 49 Er·Mar 24, 2015·3 votes·1,282 views

None of them have a directionless kit or unreliable CC that forces you to shoot and pray you hit them at a good angle.

18 Comments

Kitten of EvilMar 25, 20152 votes

Sadly, I agree. They just threw a bunch of supporty and utility mechanics on a champion, and then gated him with a passive that is laughably undertuned (as in, it is literally impossible to get all his passive scaling 145 chimes until 61 minutes into a game).

His Q is amazing and I love it. No problems there, even though some people seem to hate it. Even if you just hit one champion, it does damage and slows decently. His W is amazing in lane and total ass after, because in teamfights it will never be charged up. Also it's a huge mana sink. 100 mana at level one. His E is total ass in lane but good after, because it can be used flexibly to bring allies, set up Q stuns, bait enemies, and so on... but leveling it beyond one point does absolutely nothing worthwhile. His ult is amazing, though it has a ton of backfiring potential. It may even be one of the strongest moves in the game, due to its flexibility and pick potential. His passive is the worst. If you're helping your team out at all on dragon, or pushing minions off an inhib, you will not have any meeps up to use on enemies. This would be fine, if his meep-enhanced auto-attacks weren't almost literally his ONLY damage source. Would it kill him to have a toggle on his meeps? Also, as mentioned before, chimes are nice but they spawn and scale way too slowly. It feels really unrewarding to hop out of lane to pick up 2 or 3 chimes, when each upgrade costs 5.

I'm just not sure what he's supposed to be good at. He heals a bit, CCs a bit, and makes picks a bit. I feel like Karma does "utility support" better than Bard ever could, because she can spike her damage output with R+Q if needed, and has reliable AOE.

KidSpectreMar 24, 20151 votes

What exactly do you mean by "directionless?"

JustMyBassCannonMar 24, 20151 votes

Allow me to answer your question with a question.

What is Bard's kit centered around?

katobarbadoMar 24, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Allow me to answer your question with a question.

What is Bard's kit centered around?

peeling/saving lives

JustMyBassCannonMar 24, 20151 votes

Janna does it better So do Alistar and Taric

AbyssphereMar 24, 20153 votes

{quoted}

peeling/saving lives

That doesn't really count as an answer. His kit focuses on peeling in the same way that every support's kit focuses on peeling. Blitzcrank's kit focuses on peeling - he can knockup a chaser, silence several chasers, hook someone that's going after his ADC in the opposite direction and has a shield and speed boost for himself.

But Blitzcrank is an all-in kill lane support. See how vague a focus "peeling" is?

WarlockLawMar 24, 20152 votes

Except I would never sat blitz is about peeling, I would say it's about catching people out of position. Bard is about movement control, he shapes the battlefield on how people can move around it. Imo the main problem with bard is that no build path works well with him. Build him ap but he doesn't do much damage or heal for much relative to sona/nami/raka but if you build him tank he still isnt as tanky as leona/thresh/braum

redniwediSMar 24, 20151 votes

Movement, both increasing and decreasing it with an aoe stasis, wall portal, speed boost shrine, and stun.

JustMyBassCannonMar 24, 20151 votes

Janna does most of that better without the iffy Zhonya's and wall portals.

redniwediSMar 24, 20151 votes

She sure does, however that fact doesn't invalidate my point.

JustMyBassCannonMar 24, 20151 votes

While it doesn't invalidate the point, it does bring up a question; if another champion does the same job better with less gimmicky tools, what purpose does the other serve?

There are a couple unique things Bard can do that other supports can't, namely Magical Journey and Tempered Fate, but it's a lot more difficult for Bard to pull off the same level of supporting strength as other wandering supports, let alone the supports that hover over their bot lane partners.

redniwediSMar 24, 20151 votes

To me it seems like Bard was made in an attempt to mix up the rather stale bot lane meta. I may be wrong in saying this (and I really hope I am) but it doesn't seem like Riot knows how to shake things up, so they made a champion to test the waters for them.

Perhaps Bard will never be a "meta" pick, and maybe his kit never should be, however I personally hope his playstyle will begin to stick in the meta and will revive roaming as a legitimate role.

Sightless66Mar 25, 20153 votes

In order for roaming to be a legitimate role, there has to be increased rewards and fewer risks for it. Bard has the advantages of being able to lay down heals that can be used later, and getting exp for roaming. Even with those perks, he can barely preform the role of a roamer well. There just isn't any gold or exp in roaming unless you are successful, and there is a huge amount of risk in consigning someone to a 2v1 lane without any guarantee of profit, particularly since there are support items that give gold as a reward for staying in lane. Without major changes to that reward structure, roaming will always be a situational action a support can (and often should) take, instead of something they actually enter the game planning to do.

Bard's problem is that while he can kind of roam early game, he can't guarantee anything, and it is very easy to make him useless in later game fights. Large parts of his kit only work if he sets a fight up on his terms. If the enemy team or his team engages before he can stack up medpacks for his team to use or before he can find a good opportunity to use his E, he contributes less to the fight than absolutely any other support. Making him less dependent on starting a fight on his terms (potentially by increasing the reward for using uncharged medpacks, increasing the speed boost of the E to 50% at all levels so it can serve as a useful disengage, lowering ult delay, etc) would go a long way towards making him an effective champion.

IForgot2buyBootsMar 25, 20151 votes

The risk as a roamer is compounded for Bard given that, if he stumbles onto the enemy jungler while he's roaming to another lane, he either escapes after taking a lot of damage, or feeds the enemy jungler a kill. The risk with him roaming is worse than any other roaming champ, and the reward is less because he has virtually no damage to contribute when he gets to his destination, just unreliable cc.

Edit: To clarify, he has less chance of securing a kill for where he roams to. Thus, less reward.

ADDRESS FINDERMar 24, 20151 votes

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Salt Miner 49 ErMar 24, 20152 votes

{quoted}

Lol bard's q is really good i can get the stun 80% of the time, you jsut can't try bard for 1 game and suck at him, then proclaim he is a bad champ

Given the amount of Bards i've seen be absolutely useless, yes. I can say he's pretty damned bad at this stage of the game. Especially given that he has 500 attack range on top of an iffy hitbox on his Q.

IForgot2buyBootsMar 25, 20151 votes

I've spent five days practicing him, where it was practically all I did while playing LoL. I can say that he's a bad champ. He's a liability to his team against BOTS.

I've watched several games featured on the home screen with Bard playing. Every one of those games I watched, he gets a few good plays, but ultimately loses the game for his team because he has no IMPACT when it's important. He's an easy kill that either skirts the edges of the fight uselessly, or gets murked in passing. High mobility is no excuse for hitting like a lane minion. Even less excuse for being labeled a mage when he has one damage dealing spell that moves like a Soraka banana and requires a combination of luck and stupidity on the enemy team to land.

He has no viable build path. He has no concrete role besides "arrive from an unexpected angle and disable someone for long enough that the element of surprise might give the lane native a chance at a kill." He has no real damage. He has no place in the League, and that's a damn shame, because aside from his flaws, he's kinda fun.

Salt Miner 49 ErMar 24, 20151 votes

It's to fill the niche of "Cool and Mystical". If you hadn't noticed, alot of Bard's abilities are flashy (if not flashier) than alot of other supports. As if Riot is even trying to juxtapose LC$BigPlays into the Support meta. But the difference is that at the end of the day the more reliable picks will always out-weigh the iffy picks.