Don't forget that enemies can also use your Magical Journey doorways, and that your ultimate can also hit your allies!
Let your Caretaker's Shrines charge up - they heal for a lot more when at full power.
It's important to collect chimes to improve your meep's attacks, but don't neglect your lane partner! Try to make a big entrance by bringing an ally into the lane with you with Magical Journey.
Vel'Koz has fairly low mobility and is vulnerable to ganks.
Vel'Koz is very dangerous if left alone in a fight. Try to focus him down early.
Life Form Disintegration Ray can be interrupted by stuns, silences and knockups.
The stat comparisons shown here underscore several significant Bard against Vel'Koz matchup statistics that can help us realize the distinctions between this set of champs. Bard’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is more than Vel'Koz’s ratio of NaN, indicating that Bard may be more central to his team's team fighting effectiveness than Vel'Koz. This observation is largely a result of the differences in assists.
Bard typically has a slightly smaller longest killing spree than his matchup does. On average, he receives more damage than Vel'Koz. This commonly reflects differing health capacities, but it can also show that the champion with more health has less mobility and thus is not able to flee from additional damage when poked or engaged.
Both LoL champions are great champions. Both have their strengths, weaknesses, and counters. In the game's current meta, Bard usually wins when taking on Vel'Koz, with a 53.4% win rate. As a result, Bard makes a great counter to Vel'Koz.
While Bard does have a higher winrate compared to Vel'Koz, when on opposite teams, Bard also has a greater learning curve that makes him a more challenging champion to learn and master. You don't need to be too worried when picking Bard into Vel'Kozas his relative depth means you may not be able to unleash his full potential without a lot of practice beforehand.
Moreover, Bard has a good amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Vel'Koz. This makes her just as valuable during teamfights, especially when fighting champions with a lot of burst damage.
While there isn't a single best champion overall in League of Legends, in Bard vs Vel'Koz matchups, Bard is the better champion with a noticably higher win rate, more champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your allies during teamfights.
Bard is a great counter to Vel'Koz. Make sure you focus your actions on maximizing your CS and clearing objectives. If you do that, you should be able to stand on your own as Bard against Vel'Koz.
If you would like to truly master Bard to counter Vel'Koz during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should keep reading to learn a few extra lessons on this matchup. If you listen to the build and suggestions presented here, you should grow your win rate by a lot and be closer to League of Legends pro players.
Bard usually picks up less CS compared to Vel'Koz. Champs who on average don't earn much CS often don't require much CS to be valuable teammates, such as support champions. These kinds of champions are able to scale properly off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champs with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, usually have to have several high cost items to be effective. In either situation, try to surpass the numbers displayed here to do well.
The best items to focus on in your Bard versus Vel'Koz build consist of Frozen Heart, Bloodsong, and Imperial Mandate. When Bard bought at least these three items in his build, he did significantly better vs Vel'Koz than with many other common counter builds. In fact, Bard had an average winrate of 53.4% when playing against Vel'Koz with this counter build.
To have the highest chance of crushing Vel'Koz as Bard, you should equip the Fleet Footwork, Triumph, Legend: Tenacity, Last Stand, Conditioning, and Overgrowth runes from the Precision and Resolve rune sets. Of all the runes that we analyzed for Bard vs Vel'Koz counters, this mixture of runes yielded the highest win rate. In fact, these runes provided a 53.4% win rate overall.
If you need to get Bard versus Vel'Koz tips and matchup stats and build suggestions for a a particular player tier, feel free to select one from the selection menu above. By default, the statistics and strategies given are computed using all matches with data with these champions.