We're pretty happy with Bard's current balance state but would like to open up some more options for him, namely in building AP items like Shurelya's, making him better at supporting his team when playing AP-heavy.

Bard is just on the cusp of being viable in higher levels of play, so we’re giving him more movement speed to help him stand out a bit more as the omnipresent, roaming support that he is.

Bard is currently quite powerful and is especially durable due to having more than enough base values on his kit to not require anything but tank items. In this patch, we're closing the gap between tank and mage/enchanter-style builds by lowering his base values while preserving his AP scaling to nudge him toward those purchases more often. On top of that, he gets a guaranteed 200 HP from the new support items, so he's generally a bit too durable. As one final set of changes, we're making discharging Meeps feel a bit better by increasing his overall attack speed. Nashor's Tooth, anyone?

In this patch we have some nice quality of life changes for everyone’s favorite Meep collector. Our goal with these changes is to make Bard’s W feel better to use (for both himself and allies) while the passive changes should strengthen his fantasy as a roaming champion, especially when traversing large distances.

The Wandering Caretaker has to do too much caretaking before he gets to do any wandering these days. This should make it easier for him to help his partner out while also incentivizing him to abandon lane roam around the map.

Bard's been overperforming at higher tiers of play due to his roaming capabilities. Obviously, it's Bard. Bard roams. So to preserve his unique strength as a roaming support, we're toning down his early lane damage instead.