Bard’s entire identity in League of Legends revolves around roaming, catching enemies off guard, and ultimately being a second jungler. In an upcoming update, Riot Games is looking to extend that fantasy even more with a ton of juicy changes.
On Aug. 29, Rioter Maxwell “Yelough” Perlman shared a detailed list of changes Bard will be getting soon. The tweaks, mainly focused on Bard’s passive and W ability, will increase the champion’s movement speed out of combat and give more healing options via shrines to their poor lonely AD carry.
With the next update, Bard’s passive is getting increased from five to 10 stacks and it will now last for full 20 seconds. On top of this, Caretaker’s Shrine will have two charges from the get-go, but the cooldown will be longer. This ability will also charge up more quickly, and it will be more of a scaling ability as it’s getting AP scaling ratios.
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These tweaks should actually push Bard players even more toward the roaming playstyle and encourage mains to go Meep-hunting when the bot lane turns sour. It’s worth noting that after these adjustments go live, it might be more rewarding to lean into AP builds, especially with the AP scaling on W.
Since Bard will now be a full-time roaming machine, I recommend you grab an AD carry that can stay safe on their own during the laning phase. The best matches are Ezreal, Lucian, and even AP carries like Ziggs, Karthus, and Seraphine work well on their own.
