Hello! My name is Beefy and I am a Bard one trick on the NA server. I reached Challenger playing Bard only and I want to spread my knowledge and help other Bard mains reach their ranked goals!



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

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.

Important Chime Powerspikes
5 chimes: Meeps will slow on impact
15 chimes: Meeps will gain a damaging and slowing cone behind your initial target
35 chimes: Meep cone significantly increases in size

Q - Cosmic Binding

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

Caretaker's Shrine
Bard places a health pack on the ground that grows in strength over time, reaching its maximum potency after 5 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, and stores up to a max of 2 charges.

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

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, Cosmic Binding as you will be able to stun enemies against the wall when they reach the end of the portal. It is always important to use this ability wisely, as this is your only form of escape and if you get caught without it you will have no way out.

If you ever are caught, you should always look for the longest portal possible to escape. Because you will travel faster than enemies do, the longer the portal is the more space is will create between you and the enemy if you both take it.

Ultimate - Tempered Fate

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 Zhonya's Hourglass, or stall the enemy team on an objective. Another common use that is extremely good is to ult your own tower when the enemy is using Rift Herald to deny the turret damage and plate gold if it is before 14 minutes.

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

This rune page is the most consistent and the one I recommend you use if you are trying really hard to climb.

Guardian is, and has been for some time now, the most consistent and stable keystone rune for Bard. It provides quite good utility both in lane as well as teamfights, and allows you to take the minor runes in the resolve tree. Remember that Caretaker's Shrine can be used to proc it from a good distance away.


As Bard is able to apply near infinite slows with his Q and meep autos, Font of Life is the best choice for the second row. While it doesn't heal nearly as much as it used to, it has a fairly short cooldown so make sure you're using it often.


Conditioning is one of the best minor runes in the game. It is an absolutely insane power spike at 12 minutes and makes every armor and magic resistance buy that much better.


Similar to Unflinching, Overgrowth provides a ton of value once you pass the 120 minion threshold. While you don't absorb CS as quickly as you would as another laner, it's still the best 3rd row rune after Unflinching was reworked.


With the recent change to boots, rushing tier 3 boots is no longer viable. Magical footwear now lets you save 300 gold in addition to providing 10 bonus movespeed over normal boots. Additionally, as you will be roaming around the map you should be picking up a good amount of KP, reducing the time to receive your boots.


Bard's laning phase is quite weak in most matchups, so taking biscuits can help you make it through the early game, especially into enchanter/mage matchups. They also provide an additional 90 max hp once all 3 are consumed/sold. Remember to wait until you are as low as possible before using them, as the flat heal is very low but restores a large amount of your missing HP. If I am ever in base and have unused biscuits, I will usually sell them for the 5 gold and instant max HP.

For the minor runes, take attack speed and double scaling HP.

Full matchup spreadsheet coming soon!

A quick preamble about item builds on Bard: pretty much any tank/AP bruiser item in the game is going to be good on Bard in some capacity. There are even times when items come out of left field and become popular ( Rapid Firecannon, Statikk Shiv, Wit's End, Divine Sunderer, etc). Due to the champion's strength and flexibility, there is never going to be 1 cookie cutter build that will be the best in 100% of games you play. Try out different items and if you find more success with something different than what I'm recommending below, go for it! What works best for me and my playstyle might not work best for you and your playstyle. I always love seeing the latest and greatest wacky Bard builds that people cook up.

Boots

As we'll be taking Magical Footwear, we no longer have the ability to rush tier 2 boots. Most games, I will usually base my tier 2 upgrade off of what I can afford in that moment. If I base with 600 gold after completing 1-2 items and can't afford anything else, I will just go ahead and upgrade to Ionian Boots of Lucidity for the immediate power spike. If I am fed early and the enemy team is CC heavy, I will purchase Mercury's Treads (or vice versa vs full AD with Plated Steelcaps) with the extra gold after already completing 1 or 2 items.

This also extends to tier 3 boots if you have completed Feats of Strength. I don't make it a priority to upgrade to tier 3 boots as the stats/passive they give are not great for the gold you have to spend, but if I base with just enough money to purchase them but not something else, I once again opt for the immediate combat power. If you follow this guide, you'll be building multiple items that give movespeed to partially make up for sitting on tier 1 boots for longer than we have been in the past.

Support Item

Once the support quest is completed, I will always opt for Bloodsong. While it has been nerfed multiple times for ranged champions, the sheen passive to provide extra damage still fits in with the aggresive roaming playstyle much better than any of the other options. However, if you find yourself consistently struggling to survive the early game versus aggressive enemy bot lanes/junglers, Celestial Opposition can provide some additional defense and is a viable second option.

Legendary Items

Most games, I'll start with Dead Man's Plate as a first item. Unless the enemy has 5 AP champions, Dead Man's provides the most consistent early power - it gives you all of the stats you want (armor, HP, movespeed), and the passive movespeed helps compensate for the fact that we can no longer rush tier 2 boots. The passive damage is also quite good and means you can do some serious chunking early game when combined with Bloodsong.

After Dead Man's, your build becomes extremely flexible and should be molded to your current game - take into account both your team's comp as well as the enemy's comp and build around that. In a standard game where both team's comps are balanced between AD and AP as well as damage and tankiness, I will usually follow up with a magic resist item. Kaenic Rookern is stronger versus burst mages due to the magic damage shield, while Force of Nature is better versus most AP bruises and damage over time mages such as Brand, Azir, and Malzahar. Abyssal Mask is also a good choice if the enemy team does not have too much magic damaged and you have a lot of magic damage on your team to buff. As both Blackfire Torch and Liandry's Torment are extremely popular choice for many AP champions, I find myself opting for Force of Nature most often (it also gives movespeed as well which feels very nice).

To round out the build, I finish with Liandry's Torment and Bloodletter's Curse. I will usually buy Liandry's first, but if one of my teammates already bought it and will be able to apply the burn in fights that I am a part of (not a split pusher), I usually purchase Bloodletter's Curse before Liandry's because the burn does not stack from multiple sources.

This build is extremely consistent as you will have 1 armor item, 1 MR item, and a ton of HP, as every item you buy has HP with all of the additional HP taken in your runes. This build also provides a significant amount of damage once you reach full build, with both Liandry's and Bloodletter's being applied by your large cone meep auto attacks in the mid to late game.

Additionally, if you are able to reach this 4 item spike on Bard, you should be able to 1v1 enemy carries with relative ease due to Bard's extremely high base damage and tankines. Both mages and ADCs currently struggle to kill most tanks, and Bard is no exception so if you do end up reaching this point make sure you are playing teamfights aggresively as enemies typically do not expect the damage that this build can do.

If your team is not lacking damage and instead needs a frontliner, building more traditional tank items is very good as well. Versus heavy AD comps, some options after Dead Man's include Frozen Heart, Thornmail, and Randuin's Omen.
Thornmail is a good option if you need grevious wounds, Randuin's is strong versus multiple crit based carries, and Frozen Heart is the most flexible and is effective versus most champions in the game.

Versus heavy AP comps, I will usually still start with Dead Man's. Afterwards, you can build multiple of the above options for MR ( Force of Nature, Kaenic Rookern, Abyssal Mask). Abyssal Mask is also strong when combined with Bloodletter's Curse as it allows your AP carries to shred any tanks on the enemy team stacking MR.

Some other miscellaneous tank items that can be slotted in are Warmog's Armor and Unending Despair. Some support items to buff your team are good as well such as Locket of the Iron Solari, Redemption, and Knight's Vow.

Control Wards

If you watch my games, you'll notice that I purchase far fewer Control Wards than other supports at my elo. As stated in the previous section, your income on support is very low. Spending 75 gold on a Control Ward may not seem like much in the moment, but over the course of the game buying a lot will really add up. Obviously if a major objective is spawning, Control Wards are necessary sometimes, but for the most part I believe that it is possible to get effective vision control without breaking the bank on Control Wards.

Bard does best in short, bursty trades. If trades last too long, you will most likely come out more hurt than the enemy. This obviously differs based on the matchup and there are some lanes where you will be able to press for those extra couple auto attacks without getting punished. However, you are by no means invincible so a stray Nautilus hook or Nami bubble could mean you end up back in fountain.

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 a meep and at least 2 World Atlas stacks. You should be walking up with your meep auto attack, using the meep slow to help land your Q Cosmic Binding. Versus most enchanters you will actually slightly lose this trade, but it is worth it because you got gold from your World Atlas, getting you closer to your question completion, and you can sustain back up with Caretaker's Shrine.

Versus most engage supports, you will have to avoid their counter engage. Most of the time this entails dodging an important skillshot like Leona E or Blitzcrank hook. For others this just means spacing properly so you don't get combo'd by champions like Alistar or Rell.

Remember to place down Caretaker's Shrines periodically, incase you take a bad trade and need to heal. You should also be looking for chimes that spawn close enough to lane that you can grab without having to commit a significant amount of time.

It is important to get bush control as a ranged support. Your first goal as soon as the minions reach bot lane should be to walk into the farthest uncontested lane bush possible to enemy tower that you can (this usually ends up being the middle brush, but if you are able to get into the furthest one, even better). Now, the enemy support/ADC will either ward the bush you are in or give you bush control uncontested. If they ward, you will most likely need to retreat as there are very few 2v2 matchups in the game that Bard doesn't lose. However, this is still a positive outcome as the enemy having to use a ward in a lane brush means one less ward they can place in the river to protect against jungle ganks. Early game wards from trinkets are the most important and scarce in the game due to supports not having their first support quest completed, so if you are able to get wards out from 1 or both of the enemy laners early, this could lead to successful ganks in the future.

If they do not ward the bush you are in, you now have a massive pressure advantage in the lane. If the enemy cannot see you, you will always get the first hit in while trading and they will have less time to react to your Q, making it much easier to line them up for the stun. You are also able to quickly drop the enemy minion's aggro by walking back into the bush, as enemy minions will always turn their focus to you if you auto attack enemy champions near them. Never underestimate the minion's influence in trades/all ins - the number of minions near a fight can easily sway the fight one way or the other, especially prior to backing for the first time purchasing some items.

As laning continues, the amount of bush control you will be able to keep is largely dependant on the matchup. You should try and stand your ground and maintain bush control as much as possible, but you should never risk dying or take an extremely bad trade to keep it. Some champions like Nautilus and Blitzcrank will be able to zone you out of the bushes by just walking up with their hooks ready, even if they do not have direct vision of you. While having bush control should be your priority, it will never guarantee a won trade or 2v2 so make sure you are still being concious of your relatively weak state early.

Finally, you can use your Magical Journey in the alcove to escape to your turret if you are at risk of dying 2v2 or getting ganked. This takes some practice so I recommend you load up the practice tool to make sure you have this crucial portal on lock.

Roaming is the bread and butter of Bard's kit. If you want to climb with this champion you need to love roaming and you need to be really good at it. You need to learn when you can roam, when you can't, where to go, and most importantly of all, WHY!

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 Oracle Lens, it should be your goal to have vision control of as much of the river as you can (without dying for it of course). This is extra important on Bard because it will allow you to collect more chimes as well, increasing your combat power in the process. Once you have successfully cleared and planted wards, you can head back bot lane if you need to.

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 Vayne versus Caitlyn and Karma. They will be able to poke Vayne under the tower without taking damage, and Vayne will eventually have to reset, making her lose out on the wave. Another example could be your ADC is Twitch laning versus Lucian Leona. If the wave crashes under your tower and you are not there to protect Twitch, the enemy bot lane will simply walk up and kill your ADC.

This is not always the case, though. Say your ADC is Ezreal and the enemy locked in Jinx Yuumi. In this scenario, you can stay out on the map even as the wave crashes, because Jinx Yuumi poses no threat to dive an Ezreal.

Another important skill to know is when to roam top. Roaming top is a significantly bigger investment of time than roaming mid and it is much harder to kill top laners as they usually have more tools to escape ganks than the immoble mages you'll find mid. But, if your jungler is there the walls are really good for tunnels on both sides of the map for a 3 man gank. It’s also a pretty common play to help your jungler on herald and immediately go top for a 3 man dive. While you won’t be providing much damage, the angle is good for a stun against the wall. You can also hit them first and stand at the edge of tower range, tanking as many shots as is needed.

Keep in mind that sometimes roaming top and letting your ADC get 3 man dove is worth it, as long as you are getting more on the other side of the map with herald (just hope your ADC doesn’t tilt).

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.

DISCLAIMER: I am not nor do I claim to be an expert on warding. The below information is a very surface level guide that works well enough for all levels of play below the apex tiers. For a more in depth and comprehensive guide to warding, I would recommend seeking information from other challenger/professional players and coaches who understand the support role as a whole much more than I do due to my narrow view as a Bard one trick.

Now that you know when and where to roam and you've completed your first support quest and swapped to Oracle Lens, let's talk about one of your most important jobs as a support - warding.

Warding is pretty unique for Bard, as his Magical Journey is the best escape tool that any support has in the game. This means that you'll be able to be slightly more aggresive with your ward placements throughout the course of any game and be able to get away with your tunnel. Warding is a game of inches, so placing your wards even slighly deeper in the enemy jungle can translate to quite a significant advantage. Of course, you should still remain wary as even with your portal you can very easily die to most jungle/support duos.

The simplest way to think about warding is to imagine a line connecting all of the outermost enemy turrets that are still standing and obtain vision control around this line. Turrets are the primary spots of safety for every player in the game, so this imaginary line between turrets will often be the areas of the map that see the most player movement and where your wards will be most effective.

In the early game, this basically means the river. Like I said above in the roaming section, having vision control in the river in the early game means that you have the most opportunitues for picks and objectives and minimize the risk of dying to ganks/roams. The below map shows the best spots to place your wards in the early to mid game before any towers have fallen (blue circles for blue side, red circles for red side, purple for both):





Keep in mind that these placements can change based on the state of your game. If you need to place some more defensive wards on your own side of the river to scout for invades or dives, that is perfectly fine to do as well.

As turrets begin to fall during the midgame, you'll want to adjust your ward placements to compensate. Losing your own turrets means you'll have to back your vision line up, while taking enemy turrets means you can push deeper into the enemy jungle. During the mid game, if you are winning, the most effective wards will usually be on the enemy's jungle camps. If your team is stronger, you can push into the enemy jungle and threaten them off their own camps, thus cutting off a significant portion of the enemy jungle's source of gold and experience. The reverse is also true, if you are losing you'll want to ward your own camps to preserve as much safe income as possible to mount a possible comeback.

You need to keep objectives in mind as the game progresses - using all 3 of your wards in the enemy's topside jungle as dragon is spawning means you'll be at a severe disadvantage for that fight. Additionally, when an objective is spawning and you know there will be a teamfight, it's a good habit to place 3 wards in the area 45 seconds - 1 minute before the objective spawns, reset, and come back with another fully refilled set of wards. This means that even if the enemy support/jungle sweeps your first set of wards, you have the ability to replace them immediately. If you do this and the enemy support does not, you've essentially doubled the amount of vision you are able to place down over the enemy support which can be a key factor in how the fight plays out (especially on Bard, who is very good at getting picks).

As the game transitions to the late game, your ward placements become extremely variable based on the state of the game. If you have taken all inner and outer turrets, a common ward spot I like is directly over the enemy base's wall gates (you'll have to place it pretty much directly in the middle of the 2 inhib towers, otherwise the towers will see it). If unswept, these wards can track almost all movement in the enemy base. What was said above about warding objectives is extra important due to the significance a late game objective like Baron or Elder Dragon can have on the game.

Finally, all the information above applies to the enemy support as well, so the most effective spots for their wards will be the most effective spots for your sweeper. In addition to thinking about where you want to place your own wards, you should be thinking about where the enemy support wants to place their wards and use your sweeper accordingly.

P.S. If you're playing against a Pyke, Senna, etc. who builds Umbral Glaive, throw everything I just said out the window. You'll never be able to get vision control of anything, and that's something you'll just have to accept. Play safe and look for picks around your towers (the one place they cannot deny vision). If you can't tell, I hate this item with every ounce of my being.

Teamfighting, if done well, can be one of Bard's greatest strengths; double stuns and 3 man ults can win a teamfight singlehandedly. I often like to engage the teamfights with Tempered Fate if my team has damage or CC that I know they can follow up with, or if an enemy is out of position.

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 Zhonya's Hourglass. Deciding what to use your ult on in a teamfight requires lots of practice and split second decision making. For example, if Zac is jumping onto your backline, you can use your ult on the enemy backline to prevent them from following up, making it much easier to deal with the enemies on top of your carries. Using your ultimate correctly in this way means that a fight can be 3v5 or 4v5 for 2.5 seconds. While that might not sound like long, 2.5 seconds is an eternity in teamfights.

When it comes to your other abilities, you want to use your Cosmic Binding to look for as many stuns as possible and weave meep empowered auto attacks in to get that massive cone slow. Your Caretaker's Shrine is not the most useful ability in teamfights, but it never hurts to top off an ally with a little bit of missing HP. Finally, you can use your Magical Journey to reposition you or your allies in a fight, or use it to escape after you made a pick. Never stop looking for angles where you can hit multiple enemies with your Cosmic Binding or stun them against a wall. When it comes to your Q, 1 good stun in a fight is better than 3 slows.

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.

I really hope you learned something from reading this guide. I had a lot of fun making it and I will try to keep it updated as new patches come out.

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!

Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/beefyy
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzxncHWQR3xVR31s6TF5vXQ/