I myself will just sit it out first until he's available for free play. But he looks like a heavy support (hee hee, heavy), so maybe I won't be a fan of him as I prefer blowing stuffs up.
I main support (my three most played champs season 4 were Thresh, Leona, and Morgana), but I'm low gold / high silver ELO - take my musings with a grain of salt.
I've played him a few times and I found him to be really lacking. I really prefer supports to have a good kit, preferrably with some cc, engage, disengage, sustain, or shields and Bard just doesn't bring that to the table nearly as much as other champs. Thresh, Leona, Sona, Morgana, Janna, and Nami all have way better kits for supporting when a fight breaks out.
Bard feels like a cousin of Zilean and Nunu - they can help harass and provide some extra movement speed and slow, but they feel weak in the current meta.
He does some fun things and has a really unique set of abilities, but when I queue up for ranked, I'm not picking him as a support; he's just not as good as most of the other supports.
I find it odd that most of the interactivity with bard relies on his Q and Passive, its like those are the only parameters that actually have counterplay, the altars are nifty but it feels more like the old Soraka situation of sustain attrition, his passive requires you to move around a lot and thats fine, but i find it also limits the impact i can have in lane early on when the meeps and Q are at their most efficient.
I'm most likely wrong tho...
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I myself will just sit it out first until he's available for free play. But he looks like a heavy support (hee hee, heavy), so maybe I won't be a fan of him as I prefer blowing stuffs up.
For solo queue, he's pretty bad. His lane presence isn't that good, and you can't always trust your adc to handle a 1v2 while you roam, or your team to be able to coordinate with your gate and ult.
He'll be pretty decent in competitive I think though. The 1v2 lane swaps really play into his strengths, and his kit is amazing for rotating your team around the map.
Actually thinking about it, I think it was either Korea or the EU LCS where they have the support roam with the jungle, so possibly we could have bard roam around the place collecting chimes dropping altars as he rotates with the jungle to help sustain all lanes and using his passage for faster clears/roam times.
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That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange eons even death may die.
His playmaking potential alone is probably going to make him broken in competitive at some point if not immediately. Similar situation to gnar, though probably with a less impactful early game.
The possible setups and denials with ult alone are insane. Can easily see a single bard ult win a competitive game.
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His playmaking potential alone is probably going to make him broken in competitive at some point if not immediately. Similar situation to gnar, though probably with a less impactful early game.
The possible setups and denials with ult alone are insane. Can easily see a single bard ult win a competitive game.
On the flip side, a slightly misplaced Bard ult could lose a competitive game. There is some serious power behind that ability.
I think he's probably underpowered, which compounds with being a high skill cap champ who teammates need to know how to play with and who demands very good strategic-level knowledge to succeed on.
That is, his win rate is artificially deflated because people still don't know what to do with him... but even when played at a very high level (I have seen some very high level Bard play) doesn't really pay off more than average-level Sona or something.
Well, I guess it's refreshing to have an underpowered release after Rek'sai, Kallista, and Azir.
On another note, checking out Bard on the winrate table at lolking, I happened to notice they list Quinn as a top laner. Really? I know she's a weird ADC, but she's still pretty definitely an ADC, right?
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Re: Bard - To be fair, Azir and Kallista also released into the low-mid 30s for win rate and didn't become truly playable until after at least one round of buffs each. And Azir at his peak was still a mid 40s % win rate champion who wasn't particularly great in competitive; he just made diamond solo queue a living hell when not banned.
Quinn is afaik most often picked top lane, which would be where lolking gets that. I don't really know what she is, but I'd never pick her bot lane, personally (to be fair, I'd rarely *at most* pick her top lane).
Azir on release was awful, mostly due to bugs. His ult is still horrifically bugged but most of the rest has been fixed.
If his ult was actually reliable I might play him still, but as is you can very easily just lose any given all-in when the ult you need to win just about all of them just does nothing.
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Ended my last night of URF by getting a triple kill on a full-tank Leona. All credit actually goes to the Sivir, of course - my AoEs were just killstealing like crazy that fight. Anyway, I love URF Leona. She's not so broken that she's constantly banned or a chore to play against. And she's just constantly exploding - what more can you ask for?
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For the part two years, I've quit league of legends and gotten back into it due to URF.
They have the worse timing, I'm in pre exam season with papers due and I've play like 40 urf games in 3 days. My last game before urf was actually on Jan 01 2015.
Urf makes me plat lol more but it also makes me loathe Ranked more, because somehow i see more skill and coordination in a "joke spam" mode than i see in a mode where coordination and skill should be the one thing everyone can agree on.
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Thus it's a good thing that URF is just a temporary mode that is total blast while it lasts.
My favorite URF champs are Vel'Koz (spamming his Deconstruction can be surprisingly deadly) and Evelynn (another week of URF and I might have to buy a new keyboard due to my Q key).
For me it was vlad and sona, i never lost with them even against eve and velkoz, had one game where the team had a singed and a voli... we got flip locked for eternity at times...
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Oh, god, I can't wait for the Caitlyn buffs. I don't even care about the passive - the ult change is just going to be such an amazing quality-of-life improvement. I've lost people at the edge of vision so many times.
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I myself will just sit it out first until he's available for free play. But he looks like a heavy support (hee hee, heavy), so maybe I won't be a fan of him as I prefer blowing stuffs up.
I've played him a few times and I found him to be really lacking. I really prefer supports to have a good kit, preferrably with some cc, engage, disengage, sustain, or shields and Bard just doesn't bring that to the table nearly as much as other champs. Thresh, Leona, Sona, Morgana, Janna, and Nami all have way better kits for supporting when a fight breaks out.
Bard feels like a cousin of Zilean and Nunu - they can help harass and provide some extra movement speed and slow, but they feel weak in the current meta.
He does some fun things and has a really unique set of abilities, but when I queue up for ranked, I'm not picking him as a support; he's just not as good as most of the other supports.
I'm most likely wrong tho...
For solo queue, he's pretty bad. His lane presence isn't that good, and you can't always trust your adc to handle a 1v2 while you roam, or your team to be able to coordinate with your gate and ult.
He'll be pretty decent in competitive I think though. The 1v2 lane swaps really play into his strengths, and his kit is amazing for rotating your team around the map.
The possible setups and denials with ult alone are insane. Can easily see a single bard ult win a competitive game.
On the flip side, a slightly misplaced Bard ult could lose a competitive game. There is some serious power behind that ability.
That is, his win rate is artificially deflated because people still don't know what to do with him... but even when played at a very high level (I have seen some very high level Bard play) doesn't really pay off more than average-level Sona or something.
On another note, checking out Bard on the winrate table at lolking, I happened to notice they list Quinn as a top laner. Really? I know she's a weird ADC, but she's still pretty definitely an ADC, right?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Quinn is afaik most often picked top lane, which would be where lolking gets that. I don't really know what she is, but I'd never pick her bot lane, personally (to be fair, I'd rarely *at most* pick her top lane).
If his ult was actually reliable I might play him still, but as is you can very easily just lose any given all-in when the ult you need to win just about all of them just does nothing.
EDIT:
Aaaaaand URF mode is back. Having a blast, guys?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
They have the worse timing, I'm in pre exam season with papers due and I've play like 40 urf games in 3 days. My last game before urf was actually on Jan 01 2015.
My favorite URF champs are Vel'Koz (spamming his Deconstruction can be surprisingly deadly) and Evelynn (another week of URF and I might have to buy a new keyboard due to my Q key).
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.