Bard, The Cosmic Traveller thoughts and discussion thread

[shammypie]

Thought I would add a thread for the new champ for people to discuss. I am pretty excited since I main supports. I hope they don't release him the same day as DJ Sona as I will be hard pressed to decide which I want to play.

That said I like his kit but I think he might have the same problems Braum does. In that it doesn't look he'll do too much damage and he won't be able to cover a lane that someone forgot about for too long. His utility looks good and his team fight capabilities will probably keep him somewhere in the meta long after nerfs.

so that said here are his potential problems

1. You use meeps when you AA so you basically have to pool them if you want burst damage in a fight.

2. Few Champs can be left alone in bot for any length of time.

3. No support gold generation item synergizes well with him. Frostqueen looks the best since you could exhaust the charges and then start roaming but you won't be able to maximize it. Since he is ranged Relic shield loses value as well which kind of sucks since it would be the easiest to use in a new lane.

4. In order for his roaming to be useful you need a jungler with strong gank potential and good communication skills. At high elo's this will be easier since a lot of teams run voice or understand what you mean by your pings etc. But essentially when you roam your mission is to pick up chimes to charge your passive/mana pool and get the jungler into a good gank position on mid/top and lock down the enemy champ/turret.

5. Your ult is situational and has huge backfiring potential. In a team fight it is possible to hit the wrong people and cc your own tank/protectors/damage dealers.

6. Morgana just straight shuts you down. Not uncommon among many supports (blitz/thresh/leona). But her shield nullifies your q and if she follows you into your team she gets and easy ult and if you try to ult your team you are doing her job for her.


That said there are a lot of unsaid potential brokenness.

1. The portals can be used in some extremely unfair spots for ganks/escapes. In bot alone you leave like your going to roam and then give your jungler a nocturne like jump from back in the jungle to behind the enemy bot. Potentially you can use it to travel down the wall in mid for the above. Alternatively it gives you an escape wherever you go with easy q stuns if they follow. Furthermore if you combine it with the potential of flash you can get the enemy to follow you through, flash back over, they flash back over, and then jump in your portal again hopefully right before it closes. Or if you know they don't have flash you can use it to seperate them.

2. The health packs could be mean rediculous sustain for your lane partner (intended). Or they could be set up as an easy bait option since they also give movement speed. You could leave a candy trail for someone to follow whether it's the adc using it to bait the enemy team; or someone going oh another shrine, oh another shrine, oh another shrine, uh oh.

3. The ult has crazy tower/nexus saving potential. Granted if your in this state you are pretty much boned anyway but it can give you precious seconds to keep a tower/nexus alive. This could be the difference between in a successful backdoor scheme.

4. Blitzcrank is your arch nemesis. Think about it he pulls people through walls to his team while you open holes in that wall and can aoe ult people. He pulls your adc you immediately throw your ult over the wall and portal through for your team to come in and pounce. You portal through a wall to get away from thier team he pulls you back to your doom. You randomly pick up chimes/health packs to run fast, he pops his w to chase. He knocks you up, you stun him to the wall. It's like lex luther and superman.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

I wish he did more damage but with all of his utility that would be broken. Still I might buy him just to see if he works top lane.

[Zethras]

I wish he did more damage but with all of his utility that would be broken. Still I might buy him just to see if he works top lane.

I thought about that, nothing in his kit says "top laner" to me.

[Charge me Doctor]

so that said here are his potential problems

1. You use meeps when you AA so you basically have to pool them if you want burst damage in a fight.

2. Few Champs can be left alone in bot for any length of time.

3. No support gold generation item synergizes well with him. Frostqueen looks the best since you could exhaust the charges and then start roaming but you won't be able to maximize it. Since he is ranged Relic shield loses value as well which kind of sucks since it would be the easiest to use in a new lane.

4. In order for his roaming to be useful you need a jungler with strong gank potential and good communication skills. At high elo's this will be easier since a lot of teams run voice or understand what you mean by your pings etc. But essentially when you roam your mission is to pick up chimes to charge your passive/mana pool and get the jungler into a good gank position on mid/top and lock down the enemy champ/turret.

5. Your ult is situational and has huge backfiring potential. In a team fight it is possible to hit the wrong people and cc your own tank/protectors/damage dealers.

6. Morgana just straight shuts you down. Not uncommon among many supports (blitz/thresh/leona). But her shield nullifies your q and if she follows you into your team she gets and easy ult and if you try to ult your team you are doing her job for her.


That said there are a lot of unsaid potential brokenness.

1. The portals can be used in some extremely unfair spots for ganks/escapes. In bot alone you leave like your going to roam and then give your jungler a nocturne like jump from back in the jungle to behind the enemy bot. Potentially you can use it to travel down the wall in mid for the above. Alternatively it gives you an escape wherever you go with easy q stuns if they follow. Furthermore if you combine it with the potential of flash you can get the enemy to follow you through, flash back over, they flash back over, and then jump in your portal again hopefully right before it closes. Or if you know they don't have flash you can use it to seperate them.

2. The health packs could be mean rediculous sustain for your lane partner (intended). Or they could be set up as an easy bait option since they also give movement speed. You could leave a candy trail for someone to follow whether it's the adc using it to bait the enemy team; or someone going oh another shrine, oh another shrine, oh another shrine, uh oh.

3. The ult has crazy tower/nexus saving potential. Granted if your in this state you are pretty much boned anyway but it can give you precious seconds to keep a tower/nexus alive. This could be the difference between in a successful backdoor scheme.

4. Blitzcrank is your arch nemesis. Think about it he pulls people through walls to his team while you open holes in that wall and can aoe ult people. He pulls your adc you immediately throw your ult over the wall and portal through for your team to come in and pounce. You portal through a wall to get away from thier team he pulls you back to your doom. You randomly pick up chimes/health packs to run fast, he pops his w to chase. He knocks you up, you stun him to the wall. It's like lex luther and superman.

These are not problems, but features, you are roaming support, and you are compensated by EXP for leaving your lane. Off course you want your ADC to be semi-self-sustainable to make this work.

1. Yes, that's basically the time you spend roaming is going towards meep generation.

2. Yes, you need to use one magic thing called strategy (ever heard of games being lost in lobby?)

3. Frostqueen is obvious choice, it scales great with his kit, and it's support gold generating item, you spend you charges the same way you spend meeps, by ganking

4. Not really, not all ganks must result in a kill or two, but you have a point, i'll expand it down below.

5. Yes, and i personally like it, i want more spells for supports that can backfire at you if you use it in the wrong way.

6. No she doesn't, her shield has significantly higher CD and you can easily bait it out. Morgana is not a great choice from what i've seen, Braum is more obvious one since he can both negate your Q effect (it will never stun through shield wall), dive your ADC who was left alone (denying your ability to roam) and harass you with his Q (since it has almost same range but it has more devastating effect). She can "follow you into your team" (really confused here) with any kind of support if you don't blow off or bait out her shield. Why would you want to ult your team in first place? And if it was unintentional, then you fucked up and enemy have all right to exploit it.

about his "brokenness"

1. Hardly can call situational ability that works both ways "unfair". That's his feature, it's like saying that Morganas' shield is unfair because it makes target immune to CC, or that Rek'Sai has free TP summoner. It's his gameplay and hardly "unfair"

2. They cost mana and can be stepped on to destroy, yeah, they heal, but no more than Soraka or Sona or Taric, and they are needed if you plan on leaving your lane every now and then, it fits well with his kit, but in teamfights it doesn't feel very powerful (glorified MS boost), bit it has great baiting potential (almost same as Teemo shrooms)

3. Doubt that it's "crazy", but can be useful sometimes.

4. Hardly, since he often grabs people into a bush (and bushes often are located near walls), making it piss poor easy to land your shackle stun. I'm pretty sure that you are immune to grabs while using a portal, so it have to be very small "wall" or Blitz must be a god of prediction. It's hardly a counter, since he does not shut down main "things" of Bard (being roaming support).


Back to a point about roaming. I find the idea of dedicated roaming support to be great, it's somewhat fresh one, the one that doesn't provide as much damage as others, but have most of his kit as utility.
He has great synergy with "pushing" ADCs (Tristana for example) since it will be easier to start roaming without leaving your ADC to be eaten by enemy duo lane. On the other side, he suffers very much from ADCs not being able to push fast enough or sustain itself (no AoE clear, small range, basically that's why i quit ADC role for some time on Bard release, it won't be able to play Draven or Twitch).
He works pretty well with junglers, communicating with your jungler to make 3 man ganks out of weird or unexpected positions thanks to your E can be devastating. On the other hand, enemy jungler is your enemy #1, especially "duelists" like Trundle (i still wonder how Bards E works with his pillar, will it be blocked by a pillar? Can pillar be used to block entrance to the portal?), Shaco, J4, Xin, you get my point, anyone who can get you and murder you.

Overall he is very versatile "team support" instead of being "ADCs' support",i personally will not enjoy playing him, but i hope someone on my team will find him fun to play.

[Nikkaszal]

Re: the ult

Zeratul in HotS has one EXTREMELY similar (only difference being Zera's is instant instead of having a travel time). In soloQ matches teamed with randoms, yeah you'll have people who basically fuck up their own team with shitty Prisons, but in the hands of someone even halfway competent it's an immensely powerful gamechanger, one of the best ults in the game.

[Charge me Doctor]

It's not similar, it is similar to Voids (dota) chrono, but not to this, this one gives untargetability on hit, not marks the spot and makes everyone untargetable for the duration. I see this ult to be great way to set up "sick plays" and look towards it

[Anium]

Is ulti is going to be strong as feck, that much is obvious.

Anyone else feel rito was inspired by studio ghibli, the similarities are certainly there, even the music, sound effects all ring true. Maybe it's just general japanese mythology, whatever, i like the hero!

[shammypie]

snip

The reason why i saw morg as a counter was due to her natural tendacy to run into the enemy team and ult zhonys to set them up for your team to come in and the shields at the right time (cd isn't as much of an issue since you don't have to catch every one just the ones the matter see blitzcrank grabs). With Blitz it was more that the travel time through the wall looks similar to that of his grab so you would come out and get immediately or he would grab you from the other side and you wouldn't be able to get anyone else on your team into the pit. Think sightstones and wards everywhere for vision coverage (aka smart supports/teammates).


Also as far as his drawbacks i wasn't saying if they were good or bad just that they are things to consider. I am well aware of losing in the team select and I have seen matches like those do a 180 from other lanes being stupid (jungle nidalee gg wake me up @20).

[shammypie]

He is interesting for sure. However I'm not sure how well he will work in lane considering he gives up a lot of lane presence in favor of the roaming aspect. If his ult doesn't have too long of a delay he could become a good champion to gank for simply because he would hold the enemy in place for the jungler to get in position.

I feel that he is going to be considered very weak at any elo below high diamond due to his strength being in utilizing his kit to pull of plays rather than just brute force.

i don't think you need to be a diamond player to do well with him. Like i said earlier he does need the team communication/coordination to be really effective; however when your gathering mid and the enemy team is doing the same it doesn't take a highly skilled player to toss his ult in the middle and either freeze/scatter the enemy team long enough to either outright kill those out of position or for amumu to run in the middle and follow with his ult as well as katarina's ult or any other combination. Same goes with tower diving ping that you will ult the tower and let your adc/jungler dive for the kill. You could also hit your adc after they land the kill to reset turret aggro.

The idea of your ult is that you want a team that has similar big aoes for good setup or a lot of gank potential.

[Deleted]

so when is this being released so I can play it?

[Soulstrike]

so when is this being released so I can play it?

probably within next patch or so i believe so.... 3-4weeks?

this guy brings new mechanics into lol (his ult+ slide) which will open WAY more diversity of skillset for the future champs

im more excited for new korean show that discusses new champ skillset and stuff cant wait <3

[Ergar]

I like his kit a lot, except for the W (it's just boring). Really happy they finally introduced Janus portal from Smite into lol. The ult is a huge playmaker which i like, and the passive is fairly interesting aswell. Will be interesting to see how people balance roaming and laning earlygame with him.

[shammypie]

probably within next patch or so i believe so.... 3-4weeks?

this guy brings new mechanics into lol (his ult+ slide) which will open WAY more diversity of skillset for the future champs

im more excited for new korean show that discusses new champ skillset and stuff cant wait <3

they tend to introduce new mechanics more and more. Look at Braum and Yasuo. They both were introduced in the same year and offer up a projectile wall. The bard is similar to how reksai works but completely different mechanics. I expect we will see sometime in the near future more wall pass through abilites (maybe a passive with a cd for a jungler). Or we might see something similar to his shrine

[Deleted]

He looks cool but not sure about his kit in lane he doesn't really offer much in damage but i think if you get past lane without dying he will become really strong. I do think he will be better in lcs and 5's since you can roam more and less chance of losing lane, not looking forward to the roaming support all game and 2v1 bot in solo que haha

[Orkwuzhere]

My experiences with Bard:
-Tell teammates W will give them health when it blooms. Place it near them. Be a nice guy, and give the spring to junglers in the beginning. Don't be afraid to cast it on them if you have some spares when W is maxed sometimes. If they're around your lane, throw a spring now and then. It'll talk a while for people to know about this.
-If the carry can handle himself, you can roam around for chimes. You have to build chimes for Bard to be effective.
-Don't spam Q. It really sucks, and is his worst skill. Use it when your passive builds damage, and you can get more than 1 champion stunned.
-If the enemy is following you, and Q is up with a chime, stun them. It buys you a little time to escape.
-If you're pushing in a team fight, use R to stop the enemy from running away, and let your team catch up to them.

Don't be aggressive with Bard unless someone starts the push/gank. He works well with items like Locket of the Solari, Legion, Frost Queen (he's very squishy). He really needs tanky items that offer AP. He could be an AP-carry or top/mid lane champion, but I can't see him as a jungler.

Worst match-ups:
-Rengar will destroy you if he ganks you. Your tools suck against him.
-You can ruin Sion's last minute push with R when he takes 1-2 hits. It drains him.
-Sona will give you a hard time if her carry is good.

[Deleted]

He could be an AP-carry or top/mid lane champion, but I can't see him as a jungler.

You're aware this guy has the most awful AP scaling you can get, right? Hell 2 out of 4 (5) abilities don't even scale with AP. His heal, the non bloom version, has a +20% AP ratio, that's like nothing. His Q a +30% .. again pretty much nothing. Being mid or top also makes sure you're not collecting Chimes, which you said were so important. Or gives your opponent a free lane to farm/push.

What is your Q and a Passive thing constantly coming up? THey have nothing to do with each other. His Q also slows/stuns whether or not you have your passive up. Your passive works with your AA's ...

[CJack14dt]

I've been having a blast with him and I think it's because I find he's a lot like Braum. You can put out so much utility with him and if your ADC still can't take get a kill out of what you set up then that' a reflection on them and not you.

My favorite things to do with him so far:

1. Make a hidden W path in the bushes when you've pushed up the lane so that if a gank comes in you have a steady flow of bonus movement speed for whoever needs it more.

2. Ulting 2 enemies and taking time to reposition yourself for an instant double stun Q when the effect ends.

3. Being chased by 1 or 2 enemies and doing a magical journey and them following you into a guaranteed Q stun.

[Deleted]

I thought about that, nothing in his kit says "top laner" to me.

is it just me or does his kit scream jungler?

when his kit was first revealed i was excited about it because i main jungle
but his dmg is too low for it, sadly

atleast he can ease up on the junglers start, place a W close to where your starts and one close to the buff camp maybe even 2 there

[Orkwuzhere]

You're aware this guy has the most awful AP scaling you can get, right? Hell 2 out of 4 (5) abilities don't even scale with AP. His heal, the non bloom version, has a +20% AP ratio, that's like nothing. His Q a +30% .. again pretty much nothing. Being mid or top also makes sure you're not collecting Chimes, which you said were so important. Or gives your opponent a free lane to farm/push.

What is your Q and a Passive thing constantly coming up? THey have nothing to do with each other. His Q also slows/stuns whether or not you have your passive up. Your passive works with your AA's ...

I didn't realize the contradiction until I finished the post. He needs his chimes to be good.

With the Q and passive, his damage really sucks until he can has an expendable minion. You might as save up a Chime for a well-timed Q shot, hoping it stuns the enemy.

[Notshauna]

is it just me or does his kit scream jungler?

when his kit was first revealed i was excited about it because i main jungle
but his dmg is too low for it, sadly

atleast he can ease up on the junglers start, place a W close to where your starts and one close to the buff camp maybe even 2 there

I read him and then realized he's someone that the deliberately gimped to prevent being a jungler (much like how they won't give Leona a self proc in the jungle), they made sure he does no damage, has unreliable CC, scales awfully, has a low impact ult (in the jungle/top lane role, it's no Gnar R or Sej R), and is super squishy. His gimmick with his E isn't appreciably better than any viable jungler's ability to avoid wards, it only really works with a buddy.