Hi there, so you might wonder what took me here to do a Bard guide. Nice question random guy btw.

So, im not even a main supp BUT, im main adc and my experience can say that i learnt how to play support better than a main mid/top/jungle, pretty much cause i see every move he does in the phase lane.

I think that's not too much to say "OH I PREFER TO WATCH A REAL BARD MAIN GUIDE SO, OMG REPROT", okok calm down, im not supp main, im not Bard main but my stats can say that i have kinda nice winrate with him, maybe cause i play against bots or maybe cause Bardo is way to easy to play. So here u go:

Well, in the "Presentation" u might have seen the winrate that i have with Bard, and u might ask "When u started playing him" Ok, first of all thanks for the question. As i remember i started playing him like in patch 5.11, didnt actually trained him in normal games, so i just went straight for rankeds. I should say that Bard might be the worst supp from 1-10min games.
Not because he is useless at this point, is pretty much cause u will have to leave your lane pretty much every 2 min to recollect chimes. And yeah, u have to recollect them as much as u can, but u wont leave your ADC alone to recollect 1 chime, remember that.

Im actually in Gold and i think that if i "mastered" him in around 50 games, everyone can.

Well, u might have seen that in the abilities i say that in lvl 1 u upgrade W. Well, dont get scared, what u have to do with that is just HELP your jungler, except if its Warwick or another jungler that have insane sustain in jungle as him. U just place 3 W's in the place where he starts. If he starts from the frog: Place 1 or 2 between the space of the frog and the blue buff, and another 1 in the direction of wolves. And if he start krugs, place 1 on the actual Krugs, another one in the red bush, and the last one in the bush that is just at the front of red buff.

By doing that u just help your jungler a lot, imagine, every heal its like 70hp, u place 3, 70*3= 210HP, thats an insane amount of health that u give your jungler in the first beggining of the game, so he ganks more, and safer.

In lane what i reccomend is placing from 1-3 heals in some place of the lane that enemies cant reach so they cant step in and delete the healing but not too far of the adc, tell your adc to freeze the lane as much as he can, its important, u will stay half of the lane phase out of your lane recollecting chimes and sometimes doing a midlane gank if its possible.
Once your jungler comes or u reach lvl 6, the actual plays start. Ganking with your E is waaaaaay too easy, but ofc they will se u coming, so wait they push the lane a bit so its safe. Once you reach lane, if youre not facing Morg, Sivir, Ezreal, or an adc with an EZ escape u can actually do this combo:

With or without your jungler do your E from a safe place, once u do the E animation do R, predicting their movement to keep them stunned 2 Seconds, if u can, do a Q to stun 1 or 2 of them 1 more second, and your team will do the rest of the job, easy as it sounds

Ok, so here we enter the business place.

What is actually so broken of Bard is that actually if the player who plays Bard has enough prediction and so aim, can actually ENGAGE/START/WIN the teamfight at the same time, just keep this idea, ure Bard, your team is close to their team, you get someone of their team like the ap or ad carry that has low mobility, AUTOMATICALLY that guy has to die, but sometimes your team wont follow u just cause u got 1 guy with ult, big deal, just try to get as much as you can, meanwhile u stay in the backline poking with your powered AA, throwing Q's that stun 1,5s and healing the AD and the AP carry, as i said earlier, your team will do the rest of the job.

Pros

-The best supp as the game gets longer.
-Can initiate or catch people super easy.
-Has many escapes.
-Strong CC.
-Sustain to you and your ADc in lane phase.

Cons

-Youre the most irrelevant supp in early cause u will have to keep your adc alone every 2 minutes
-Very skill dependent.
-High skill cap.
-Needs play-vision and so prediction.