User blog comment:Alartan/My appraisal of champions design in last year/@comment-27175337-20151115025730/@comment-10768370-20151116101952

Alartan, in that way you could argue every support is the same.

Stay in lane for exp, roam for ganks with cc, ult when it's appropriate. This goes for nearly all supports and this is because this is literally the core elements of the support-role along with "Keep your ADC alive".

Although I do agree that Bard's abilities feel a bit forcefully designed sometimes (It kinda feels like someone crowbarred a plethora of interesting abilities into one design). I still think that his theme and identity are quite unique in the sense that he is the first support completely designed to roam.

Also, I want to state that Kindred is in a similar situation to Bard in the sense that the pattern may feel familiar, but like Bard they are the first ADC completely designed for their specific role which was more seen as a casual pick in the Meta back then. And the reason it's not special anymore is because Kindred's entrance on the PBE kickstarted the jungle-ADC tactics for draft games.