Talk:Bard/@comment-30517000-20170426232000/@comment-24322295-20170727034139

There's two good ways to build Bard with Damage in my experience: AS/AP or One Shot Bard.

Start with Sapphire Crystal and 3 pots, shoot for Sheen and Aether Wisp/Sorc Shoes first back. One shot bard is all about perfecting the art of the Q+auto combo, with Thunderlords, Sorcery, Double Edged Sword, Fresh Blood and AP/MPen runes to maximise the damage. From there you rush Lich bane, sorc shoes, and Luden's Echo. I recommend taking bard Mid with this build because it's not the best against tankier/high sustain champions. After Luden's you can build into Void Staff and Death Cap, then Rod of Ages or a tank item of your choice depending on the situation for health.

AP/AS bard starts with Dagger, 4 pots. It sounds weird, but it's hard to CS with bard so it's best to be gold efficient with your first buy unless you're taking this build to supp. If you want to top lane bard, this'll be your build. You'll want AS/AP runes for this, with either AP quints or precision quints. Go for Deathfire Touch and Fury instead of Sorcery, but otherwise the same as One Shot bard for your masteries. Since the majority of non-support Bard is just outsustaining your opponent instead of actually winning fights, you'll want to try to hold out until you can get Berserker's Greaves and a Recurve bow for your first back. From there you'll want to go Rageblade, then Nashor's, then Rod of Ages/tank item of your choice, then into Gunblade/Lichbane depending on how tanky their team is, and finish it off with a Rabadons.

Both builds are relatively squishy, so you may want to substitute one of the later damage items for another tank item, but that's how I normally do it, as an M7 Bard main.