Bard guides are popping up like mushrooms. His abilities are so interesting, that i must take the opportunity to add my own guide and share some thougths.

+ Very unique Gameplay (I like that)
+ Gives Teammates the choice, when to use the utilities
+ Scaling up in lategame when used properly
+ Can turn a fight in favour of own team
+ Nice spherical ambient music when roaming

o Needs teammates who understand the "out of meta" concept

- Can actively turn a fight against own team
- No use for getting kills
- Chimes are sometimes hard zu recognize

The pure meta says: "Smite is only for junglers", but for Bard I break the meta. Why should bard take smite?

• Bard has no good own waveclear until late game. Smite+ Ranger's Trailblazer fill this gap, so Bard is able to rescue towers from minion waves, when the teammates are licking their wounds after a teamfight.
• Bard gets another attack so he can help in early game by smiting cannon minions (elsewere he only has his autoattak and his Q)
• If your jungler doesn't mind, you can capture the buffs of the outer jungle creeps (not killing them so he can have the gold an xp)
• While roaming in the enemy jungle you also can capture the buffs of the jungle creeps
• Getting Dragon or Baron is much more easier whith 2 champions smiting the beasts

The shrines are for your teammates and not very useful if you need instant heal for yourself. With the healspell you have 3 Options in tight situations.

• Heal yourself and increase your speed while running for cover
• Heal your surrounding busy teammates
• Increase your speed to get somewhere in time

Why not Flash
If you need to Flash, your team is probably already dead. So this might give you a little chance to escape, but often you will be captured and you burn this spell without any outcome.

Why not Exhaust
Exhaust might be a choice when your team objectives are the kills. But my objectives are to win. Therefore it is much better to help in pushing lanes. If you have a fed ADC and APC and Fighter, the exhaust makes no difference in the teamfight. But when the enemy team is dead and your team also lacks of 2-3 champions, beeing able to push lanes with the most power can turn the game.

Up to the core

Supports need an alternate Gold source and mana regeneration

Ward the jungle when roaming, keeping your adc safe from ganks. Ward Ward Ward.

After getting the sightstone, switch your trinket to the Sweeping lens, so you can check for hidden wards of the enemy

Roaming with speed, keeps you safe and opens up more opportunities to help anywhere on the map. Combined with the chimes speedbuff you get incredibly fast.

Ranger's Trailblazer - Magus

Gives you good minion waveclear to protect your turrets an push lanes

Scale up your ap, health and Mana. In the next 10 Minutes you gain 650 health and mana

Ap, cooldown and more better mana regeneration are essential for the support

Extending
Depending on the situtation you grab some defense or add more offense.

Best magic resistance available. If you still get melted, get another one.

Ap, Ap, some armor and your personal Tempered Fate

Your enemy does lot of attack damage. This will help you and scale you up.

Your enemy does lot lot lot of attack damage. This will help you but wont scale you up.

Nearly all ablilties are only useful when working for the team. So lets see what you can do.

Taveler's Call
The most complicated passive ability in the game (until now). To scale up the power and number of meeps, which are used in your autoattack you must collect the chimes which occur on the map. The chimes seem to spawn first in the actual surrounding of Bard( radius about one quater of the map, never in bases) and will show up in more distance after the surrounding of Bard is saturated with chimes. They spawn in pairs every 50 seconds (except 2nd to 4th spawn with only one chime) and seem to prefer distinct spots.
You need to collect a lot of chimes and scale up your AP to get good damage when using the autoattack.





If possible you should always plan a route over a chain of chimes, so you can stack the speedbuff. This can also help you to get fast in or out of a fight. The speedbuf is stopped, when you attack or get attacked. Don't mess with the creeps and dont try to fly by enemy turrets if you want to keep the buff.

Cosmic Binding
This is your only attack ability (thats why I reccomend smite as a 2nd). You should practice how to nail enemies to a wall, a minion or a 2nd champion. Be aware of the width of the spell. If you have two minions side by side and the enemy champion behind, you only get the two minions. In big teamfights first spam this into the whole mess. In a chase remember the slow.

Caretaker's Shrine
In the laning phase, put the shrines out of sight or reach of the enemy. Best places are behind walls and towers. Putting them into brushes needs good eyes of your teammates, since they are hard to recognize and maybe forgotten.
When in an escape situation remember the speedbuff of the shrine, which does not need the 10 second setup time. Throw a shrine on your escape route and run away.

Magical Journey
Check out where you can use this most effectively. The wider the wall, the better the profit of this spell. Also you can use it just along a wall and set up an express way for you and all other players (especially your teammates). This can be used to catch up an escaping enemy, by building a path parallel to his movement.

The spell is good for

• Getting shortcuts when travelling around the map (e.g. getting into the blue buff pit)
• boosting speed by using long walls instead of parallel paths
• Establish a path for a gank of your teammates. (make sure everybody in the team knows how to use the tunnel) "Rightclick on the entrance"
• Escaping (but only on long distance tunnels and with level 4 and 5)

Tempered Fate
This spell can lead to victory and defeat, depending how good you are in choosing the right moment and location. It can be used on a long distance, but this will lead so a long casting time until the spell hits the marked area.

Victory

• Freeze half(!) of the enemy team, so your teammates can kill the other half first
• Prevent the enemy from enganging, since he see's the marked area and stops or walks around it
• Freeze enemy to get an escape
• Freeze the enemy at the Dragon/Baron and take Dragon/Baron yourself (aaah smite is nice here)
• Freeze enemy turret, so your team can dive
• Freeze own turret, so your team has time to defend
• Freeze enemy on respawn to buy time in final nexus combat(check timers on scoreboard)

Defeat

• Freeze half of your team during a fight (especially your carries)
• Freeze enemy towers while pushing
• Freeze lonely enemy, when enemy team is coming for rescue
• Freeze enemy nexus (LOL)

Not using the ult in a complicated situation can sometimes be better.

That's all to tell. I look foreward to new ideas how to utilize Bard's abilities. Also maybe there will develop new custom game modes.

Bard vs. Bard: Who collects the most chimes for example.

We will see and good luck with the the Caretaker.

16.3.2015: Changed woogles into hourglas. Added spawntables and some tactics for Magical Journey