





Your votes and comments encourage our guide authors to continue
creating helpful guides for the League of Legends community.
Runes: Guardian - Best Page
+10% Attack Speed
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+6 Armor
Spells:
Flash
Ignite
Recommended Items
Items
Ability Order Abilities
Traveler's Call (PASSIVE)
Bard Passive Ability
Threats & Synergies
Karma
Karma is an extremely tough matchup for Bard. She bullies you in lane with her mantra Q and scales just as hard in teamfights with her mantra E. Her E also makes it very difficult for you to land abilities on anyone on the enemy team (especially with Shurelya's). BAN WORTHY
Aphelios
As long as your ADC can play him properly, Aphelios is extremely good with Bard. He has range with green gun, can sustain when you're not there with red gun, self peel with purple, and waveclear with blue. This champion has everything.
Aphelios
As long as your ADC can play him properly, Aphelios is extremely good with Bard. He has range with green gun, can sustain when you're not there with red gun, self peel with purple, and waveclear with blue. This champion has everything.
Champion Build Guide

If this guide helped you at all please consider giving it an upvote, it really helps me out. You can also catch my streams at https://www.twitch.tv/beefyy and ask me any questions or tell me if I missed something in this guide. You can also flame me whenever I miss my skillshots. Thanks!
PASSIVE - Traveler's Call

Chimes will spawn periodically around the map for you to collect. They give a small amount of experience and mana, so make sure to use some mana in lane before you pick one up. This is the main reason that Bard's roaming is so strong. The experience you miss from lane minions is made up by the experience gained from chimes.
One mistake I see many Bard players make is roaming JUST to get chimes. You should be picking up chimes on the way to go do something else (roam mid, go to herald, etc.). Most of the time giving up pressure and making your ADC 1v2 just to get chimes is not worth it.
The second aspect of Bard's passive are his meeps. Meeps will follow you around and empower your auto attacks. As you collect more chimes your meeps will become stronger, gaining damage, a slow, and an AOE cone behind your inital target.
Meeps are what give Bard his ability to trade in lane. You want to make sure you have at least 1 meep before you go in for any trade because without meeps your auto attacks are pretty much useless.
Q - Cosmic Binding

Bard's Q is a line skillshot that does damage and slows enemies. It will also travel through the first target, hitting a maximum of 2 targets. If you hit multiple enemies or one enemy and then a wall, your Q will stun its targets instead.
This skillshot takes a lot of practice, but once you master it can become an extremely impactful ability in any fight if you can stun multiple targets. I would recommend going into the practice tool just to get used to this ability's range and projectile speed.
Something to keep in mind when using this ability is that it will always travel a fixed distance after the first target. This means that if you hit a champion at the very edge of the ability's indicator, it will travel beyond that threshold after and can hit another target. This is extremely useful when ganking a lane and you can easily surprise your enemies with how far this ability can travel.
W - Caretaker's Shrine

Bard places a health pack on the ground that grows in strength over time, reaching it's maximum potency after 10 seconds. Allies can step on this shrine to gain health and a burst of movement speed. Enemies can also step on the shrine, destroying it. You can have a maximum of 3 shrines at a time.
Place these shrines bot lane for your ADC before you go to roam. While they don't heal for much, that small amount of health and movement speed can be the difference in them living or dying. They do cost quite a bit of mana, however, so be smart early to make sure you aren't wasting mana on shrines that you don't need.
Keep in mind that this ability can also be used directly on an ally for a quick heal and movespeed buff. This is still possible if you have 3 shrines on the ground already; using another one directly on an ally will not get rid of any of the 3 on the ground.
E - Magical Journey

Bard creates a tunnel on any wall that both allies and enemies can take to travel through the wall. Allies travel faster through the portal than enemies do.
Use this ability to peel for your allies, escape when you're caught, and chase after low health enemies. If you time it right this ability can also be used to pull champions such as Master Yi and Maokai into unfavorable positions. You can also use this ability in your own fountain to get out on the map a little bit quicker.
This ability synergizes extremely well with your Q,

Ultimate - Tempered Fate

A long range skill shot that will place everything in its zone into a statis, making them unable to move, attack, or take damage for 2.5 seconds. This is one of the most versatile abilities in the game and has a plethora of different uses.
You can use it to catch enemies out, forcing them to burn their flash, give an ally a free


My best advice for this ability is to practice (a LOT), and to not be afraid to use it. You will throw amazing ults that win a teamfight, you will throw terrible ults that lose a teamfight. I have played Bard for years now and I still throw bad ults all the time. Don't be timid; learn what you can and cannot do with this ability and don't be hesitant to pull the trigger.
Guardian - Best Page
This rune page is the most consistent and the one I recommend you use if you are trying really hard to climb.

After the recent nerfs to



















Electrocute - Fun Page
If you are like me, you find the




Everything I said before about





The newest rune added to the game,









Starting Items
I start





Boots
On Bard, you want to complete your tier 2 boots as soon as possible, so you can roam around the map faster with the increased movement speed.






I never buy



Mythic Item
After the nerfs to


But the real benefit of



There are certain games where I build








Legendary Items
In most games, I will choose between the same 4 legendary items, but the order that I build them in changes. These 4 legendaries are






If they enemy is magic damage heavy, I will instead build









Finally, the item that I typically build the least is


The order in which I build these legendary items varies greatly from game to game. You can build



Control Wards
If you watch my games, you'll notice that I purchase far fewer




Fun Items
If you want to break away from the mold, there are a few more items that you can buy.








The main thing that was preventing me from recommending this item in the past was its cost. On a support's income, spending 2800 gold on your first item feels really bad, and if you aren't ahead in the early game it will take you ages to finally complete your Mythic. However, with the new




The only other AP item I recommend you buy is






As a reminder, if you collect your first 3 chimes before laning starts, you will hit level 2 1 minion early and can use this level advantage to press up and harass the enemy.
A good rule of thumb for trading is to only walk up when you have





Versus most engage supports, you will have to avoid their counter engage. Most of the time this entails dodging an important skillshot like




Remember to place down

It is important to get bush control as a ranged support. If you have a positioning advantage on your opponent, it is much easier to zone them off the wave or take a favorable trade than if your opponent has a position advantage on you. Finally, you can use your

So let's start with the most basic mistake I see most Bards (and support players in general) making: walking from fountain to bot lane. I know that minion wave experience looks tempting and your ADC might spam ping you, but you need to get into the habit of walking to bot river nearly every time you leave base. Getting vision in river is the most important job for the support in the early game. Having vision control in river means that your laners will see every gank attempt, your junglers can take crabs, and you can have the fastest route to and from the different lanes.
As soon as you complete your first support quest and get

Roam timings are dependant on two things: wave management and matchups. A wave in a good spot means you can roam without consequence, a wave in a bad spot means if you roam your ADC will die and you will get flamed. If the wave is slow pushing or is frozen on the enemy's side of the lane, then you cannot leave. You have to push the wave into tower so it will reset or if you need to call your jungler down to help break the freeze. If you roam on a frozen wave your ADC will get permanently zoned from gold and experience, or, in some cases, they will greed for the wave and die 1v2. But, if the wave is frozen on your side or is pushing towards you, you have a window to roam while your ADC can sit back and wait for the wave to come to them.
In these scenarios, the other thing that effects roam timings comes into play, matchups. There are certain matchups where you cannot leave your ADC to 1v2 even under their own tower as they will get zoned off the wave or just straight up dove. An example of this would be if your ADC is playing









This is not always the case, though. Say your ADC is






With all that being said, it is important that you identify the win cons in your team comp and play towards that. Just because you can roam as Bard, doesn't mean you always should. There are some games where the best play is to stay bot and play more of an enchanter role because your ADC is the one most likely to carry. You should be thinking about these things even before the game starts, in champ select and the loading screen. Play towards your team's strengths and negate any weaknesses, and you will carry with Bard in the support role.

Alternatively, if you have a fed backliner on your team that you want to protect, you can use your ultimate to give them a free


When it comes to your other abilities, you want to use your




Finally, the last thing I want to emphasize is to use your health bar as a resource. With the recommended build, you will be extremely tanky and you should be putting that to good use. It doesnt matter if you have 200 armor if you are sitting behind your carries, waiting for them to get hit first. You should be an annoying pest in the enemies face, distracting them so that your carries can free hit while you tank the enemies' abilities. In these scenarious the combination of


Also, remember to use

I love Bard; he is by far my favorite champion and I hope this guide helps anyone who reads it to have fun playing Bard as well. If you did enjoy it, an upvote here is greatly appreciated as it helps me spread the Bard love even more.
Finally, if you have any questions you want to ask I am more than happy to answer. I stream most days on Twitch, but if I'm not live you can shoot me a whisper on Twitch or a message on Discord and I will try to get back to you ASAP.
Thanks for reading and good luck in your chime collecting adventures!

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzxncHWQR3xVR31s6TF5vXQ/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/beefyylol
Discord - https://discord.gg/nN96bjbzuX
You must be logged in to comment. Please login or register.