Bard's Place in Competitive Play

The newest support in League of Legends has seen an interesting bit of attention since allowed in competitive play. He has seen a few games across the regions but he has also seen a few bans. These bans have been targeted at very specific players and are based on knowledge from Solo Queue. Are these bans worth it?

Roaming

Bard is the first support for which Riot has actually introduced direct rewards for roaming. The chimes that spawn around the map restore Bard’s mana, some experience points and a short speed boost. The chimes also increase the effects of Bard’s Meeps as more chimes are collected. Getting these chimes makes Bard extremely useful as the game goes on, making Bard’s meeps more powerful. It also becomes an area of effect slow instead of a single target slow once Bard has collected 25 chimes, giving him a larger impact during team fights.

The other factor to consider in Bard’s roaming is Magical Journey. The ability to pass through a wall, no matter how thick the wall is, is invaluable in ganking lanes. Bard can enter with as many teammates as he wants from out of vision range of any wards. When Bard is limited to a lane though, the uses of this ability are also significantly limited. This is the chief reason that Bard is better in competitive play than in Solo Queue.

Bard’s Ultimate

Bard’s Ultimate might be one of the best engage spells in the game. The absurd 3400 range that the spell has gives Bard the ability to engage from well beyond enemy vision. The ability does have a small delay during which enemies can avoid it, but they usually need to burn a significant cooldown to do so. It is also doesn’t risk anything on the part of the player when they use it to try to engage. His ultimate doesn’t require him to, nor puts him into, a dangerous situation. This ability is best used to create picks but can also be used to great effect in a team fight scenario.

What truly makes this ability unique though is its ability to disable turrets and neutral objectives. Disabling an enemy turret for 5 seconds can turn a risky dive into a safe engage. The strongest part of Bard’s kit is his ability to turn a siege into a team fight engage, as he can control the turret aggro in extended dives or render the turret useless for quick ones. It also has the ability to stall an opponent’s siege or attempt at a neutral objective, buying pressure time for Bard’s team to get in position for a contest, or rotate and trade objectives. This is where the team really gets to be creative with their map choices and movements because they can affect a lane significantly without having to be in an unsafe situation.

When to play Bard

The most important things to consider when choosing whether to pick Bard or not are his relatively weak laning and what situations he would be able to use his ultimate in. These are the two limiting factors that need to be considered when you want to pick Bard. He is also extremely strong in a lane swap scenario. Lane swaps utilize his strength in roaming and creating picks as well as avoiding his weakness in a 2v2 laning phase.

Bard works extremely well in a composition with high global pressure. In week 2 of the summer season of LCK Samsung Galaxy picked Sivir, Rek’Sai, Gnar, Bard, and Twisted Fate. The KOO Tigers picked Gragas, Thresh, Lulu, Jinx, and Rumble. This is an amazing situation to have Bard in. Samsung has a huge amount of global mobility with the Rek’Sai, Twisted Fate, and Teleport on Gnar, as well as a large amount of local mobility with Sivir’s On The Hunt and Bard’s Magical Journey. All of this mobility adds up to an extremely effective pick composition.  The global nature of their spells allows the team to react to their opponent’s position extremely quickly from well beyond vision ranges. This composition handily won them the first game of the set and drew bans throughout the rest of the set.

The uses of Bard’s ultimate in this game shows just how versatile the skill is. At 22:40 into the game the Bard ultimate was used on Samsung’s bottom outer turret to slow down the KOO Tigers push while Samsung pushed KOO’s mid lane turrets down. The KOO Tigers had committed to taking the turret and the ultimate forced them to stay there even longer than they would have liked to, giving Samsung an extremely favorable trade in terms of map position and vision control. The 2.5 seconds allowed the fast push composition to do their job while remaining safe.

Bard is a specialized pick who is extremely strong in certain scenarios. He excels in high mobility pick compositions and has decent team fighting. He is excellent in lane swaps because of his rewards for roaming and the abnormal gank paths that are open to him. He requires a significant amount of coordination to play successfully in a team, but if achieved, the coordination has a huge payoff.