Hello all, this is my very first guide! with one of my absolute favorite and underplayed supports. BARD!
I have been a league of legends troll since the start of season two, however i didnt start taking to the ranked season until season 4. I am Meeps Of Cthulhu and a very active player who has carried myself from the depths of ELO HELL Silver 1, into Gold 3 with only using bard support. I hope that this guide inspires and helps people to see some of his real potential into a great support. A lot of fun, with a ton of play styles available. I also stream live now with bard support so make sure you come and give me a shout at twitch.tv/txjayohxt

Pros
can ult back line, or stop basically any engage from happening
great healing
awesome roots for multiple enemies
all around fun


Cons
can destroy your team with a bad ult
requires a lot of skill and timing
people will hate you and flame you when you pick him (sounds like a pro to me)

I ALWAYS prefer these runes for my standard matching.
9x magic pen marks, because of my meep and Q damage, you can also go for hybrids which isn't a bad idea for trading with your autos while meeps are respawning.

9x armor seals, pretty standard as well for the sustain and trades. I have been experimenting with scaling armor seals as well, but i usually have to play pretty passive early on.

6x Scaling CDR, we want to maximize our cooldown for spamming our Q, also with the max CDR it allows us to bait our journey more often for either escaping, or just having the enemy distracted on us.

3x MR, i personally think early game this is plenty for me. majority of our items give us a nice chunk of magic resist so by the time we are full build, we dont have to worry too much.

3x AP Quints, a little extra boost for the passive damage, Q damage, and a baby bump for our health packs. you may also try out hybrid pen quints, or magic pen quints for even more damage for your AA-Q-AA combos.

So for masteries i dont like to play the utility as much. my standard 12-18 is my route as this allows me some damage for early trades, gives my adc a little boost with expose weakness. i run thunderlords because im already using magic pen. one auto with a meep attached, throw in a Q or another auto, and boom yo! you got the nice boost of damage with your thunder lords.

When im building bard, the main thing to look at is "do i need the extra slot from sightstone, or do i want that big time slow from frost queen." That is basically your main decision with bard. everything else is pretty common sense, and you should be able to identify if you need that active to save someone with crucible, or maybe you need some extra armor and health with randuins.
Follow the core build though, swiftness boots i think work much better because this gives you the permaboost speed. where as the mobility boots will lose that speed once you get engaged. We want to make sure we have the speed to roam for chimes, but still get back to protect our adc.

For obvious reasons, we max R anytime its up, Q should be the main focus to max. its our main source for play making, it also is the main source of damage. Cosmic binding has an amazing root on it, if your able to pressure your enemy into minions, or to a wall. you can basically have free range to throw everything on them and almost guarantee you burn their summoner spells.

I personally feel that maxing E over my heal, is more beneficial to me. heals are great, but our Caretaker shrines, need to have some time to build up in order to give that full heal. with maxing E we offer a better escape if being ganked, or need to escape from a bad fight. having a 50% speed increase over the enemy going through our tunnel is awesome, because we can set up for a Q against the wall as they come out.

our W is going to be caretakers shrine. a simple health pack that you should be throwing around closely behind your ally, this way they can fully "grow" into big boy healths, they will remain on the map until picked up, also providing a nice little speed buff. having these in place before a fight is a great plan. This will allow your ADC to take trades, run to health and return back to fights with a finishing blow.

Now lets talk about our ult. its basically a zhonyas that can be thrown on enemies, turrets, dragons, barons, even minions, as well as allies. One of bards BIGGEST complaints from teams is the ult. this will make or break your bardling experience. you want to make sure you communicate, ping, whatever to your team that your ulting. How many times I have been raged at for ulting the enemy while a miss fortune ults at the same time. so practice and be sure you use this correctly. i LOVE seeing the enemy adc out alone because i can long range michael Jordan that puppy onto the adc, and have plenty of time to E through walls and set up a stun for my team. also remember, this is a STASIS! NOTHING CAN HAPPEN TO YOU while in it. save your adc from ignite, or fizz ult by throwing that puppy on him. he will thank you later.

Lastly i didnt forget, our passive. Which is what i find so amazing with the new season, and what makes bard unique
Travelers Call. This passive spawns randomly, and periodically, chimes. which you collect to grant special attributes to your meeps.
but wait theres more! Since you can no longer purchase mana potions, spamming abilities becomes something you have to moderate, not with this big chime flute playing bastard! collecting chimes replenishes 12% of your MAXIMUM MANA! gives you a cute little speed burst, also throws in some experience for each one collected!
so in a nutshell, your going to get your ADC in a safe zone, roam through the map and grab these chimes, just to come back and throw more skills out, ALL WHILE your stacking to make your meeps even more meepier(if thats not a word, then it should be!) every 5 chimes adds a bonus to your meeps, extra meeps, adding a slow, doing more damage, and a strike cone which allows the meep to strike through enemies and hitting back lines.
With this build you can pretty much clear a wave of minions when you have 55 chimes. thats aboutthe mark to where you will gain 3 meeps, with a 65% slow with EACH meep and some insane damage along with stacking on AP

So in conclusion, this should have been quite helpful in understanding bard. i hope that it was worth reading. I will continue to update this guide as well, and include some of my personal videos on some set ups, and play making. As always feel free to check out my stream where i will always be playing bard, and continuing my ranked climb. Proving that bard is a very viable support this meta.
Feel free to drop a comment in, and see if i can answer any questions.
twitch.tv/txjayohxt