Bard

Bard is a catcher in the support, and on patch 16.11 they grade out as a top-tier pick — a 52.4% win rate, 6.9% pick rate, 81,202 ranked games sampled. On the power curve, Bard is a scaling champion: comparatively weak early, but one of the strongest picks on the map once core items come online — so the plan is to survive the laning phase and take the game over late.

How Bard wins: roaming out of lane to snowball the rest of the map, and using Bard's mobility to catch isolated targets. The kit grades 9/10 roaming, 8/10 mobility, 7/10 disengage. Play around where Bard is thin, waveclear and split-push (3/10, 1/10), and the enemy loses their angle.

The most-played core build is Bloodsong, Dead Man's Plate, Liandry's Torment, which holds a 54.5% win rate across 4,781 games this patch. Set the enemy team at the top of the page to see how the path shifts against that comp.

The matchup to respect is Swain, where Bard sits at just 43.5%, the lane swings the other way into Mel (61.0%), and on the team side, Bard gains the most from a Zed (+10.8% pair win rate).