Should You Main Bard? Tier S
Yes. Bard is tier S for maining. 16 Challenger and 29 Grandmaster mains across Korea, Europe West and North America, on 309,989 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Bard holds more high elo mains per game played than almost anything else in the game.
The numbers
Score 14.34 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 16 Challenger · 29 Grandmaster · 196 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 309,989 games played worldwide · 3.37% pick rate · 1.25% ban rate
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
So, it's going to be Bard. Bard actually has, I was pretty surprised by this. But he is a 3.3% pick rate and he has 16 challenger one tricks mains basically and 29 grandmaster players on bard.
So this is a very large very large I guess amount of players who have reached the apex MMRs of GM plus and he has a very low ban rate as well. So very strong champion. You'll learn the game very well on Bard.
So I actually do not like Bard as a champion. But the data shows otherwise. I mean I see him a lot in my games.
And I think he is fairly strong. I actually do not like the roaming play style but because I like to full clear and I guess just kind of farm more as a jungler, but he definitely shows up a lot and his roaming play style does work.
How this was measured
Two numbers, one division. First, how many players are currently in Challenger or Grandmaster maining this champion in Korea, Europe West and North America, from onetricks.gg. Second, how many ranked games the entire playerbase plays of this champion worldwide across every rank, from op.gg. The result is high elo mains per 100,000 games played, then reduced by the champion's ban rate, because a champion you cannot pick is a champion you cannot main.
This is not a win rate list and it is not a patch strength list. It measures availability-adjusted high-elo main density: how much Challenger and Grandmaster main representation a champion has relative to how often it is played. It is not the probability that maining this champion will get you to high elo. The score counts Challenger and Grandmaster mains only, drawn from a tracked pool that starts at Master; it does not include the Chinese server, and it counts accounts rather than people, so one dedicated player with several high elo accounts shows up more than once. Patch 16.15. The full plain English explanation, including everything this list cannot tell you, is on the main list page.
Popularity is not the signal. What matters here is how densely high elo mains appear relative to how often the champion is played.