BRD - the most purposefully gimped job in the game.

[JiltedValkyrie]

RR/DD/Apoc as BRD/PLD and you have yourself a tank. Been trying it out recently and it's working really well. Bard may have ho-hum skills, but there is a lot of versatility in variety.

[Mirage]

Idk, OP. When I'm doing dom ops parties I see brd sleep huge pulls all the time.

Oh yeah, and as if marsh isn't still really good.

[Retsujo]

I use Blighted Breath, Merciless Matriarch, and Despot on BRD.

Even before Abyssea, I've had less than capped skills and hardly any resists on monsters that just weren't plain immune, save for Requiem. Requiem is the only complaint I have. If I can land Lullabies without a problem, why can't I land Requiems on a lot of things? If a Scholar is able to modify their helix spells to do around 100/tick, why can't we land our Requiems for the miniscule amount of HP per tick it takes away? Why can WHMs and RDMs land their different tiered Dia spells on the same mobs?

Not that it's that much of a set back, but it'd be nice to have a secondary status ailment we can stick on a monster.

Other than that, OP, you must be doing it wrong.

[Mirage]

Because Dia is unresistable regardless of level, except if immune to all magic . A level 10 whm can land dia on a lv90 mob every time.

[Retsujo]

I think that might've been my point

[Mirage]

That all enfeebles in the game should be unresistable?

[Retsujo]

That would be a dream come true~

But more that Requiem has the same unresistable properties as the Dia spells, since it does the exact same thing.
Hell, Flash can be resisted and there aren't very many mobs that resist it. Put it on that resist list :P

[Lotmorning]

As far as OP is talking about I can also say there are times where you unable to land threnedy for !! even with Macc Drink and 3x Macc atma. I can't recall all the NM's we have seen threnendy having no effect on the mob. Also Reqruiem not sticking on hardly anything anymore is a disappointment when dia can be landed 99% of time no matter what your skill is.

[Gilraen]

I agree with the OP but not on the same things. Bards have piss-poor soloability for their level. I treat it as a rule of thumb that a Bard, solo, is effectively 10 levels weaker than their actual level. Gear only modestly mitigates the disparity but doesn't reduce it in any really significant way. As a back-line buff job Bard is hard to beat, but you better have your NPC Fellow leveled if you want to strike out on your own anytime soon.

[Babekeke]

BRD/DNC can solo as well as most other jobs inside abyssea. I use acc/dex kila, and OA2-4 parazonium as daggers; double march; haste gear; Stronghold/Siren shadow/Razed Ruins. Or use double minuet if you like 800 att with meat. Evisceration is one of the best non empyrean WS inside abyssea!

BLM/BRD can land threnody without ES I'd say ~20% of the time in my experience, using Macc/CHR gear, the correct stave, and only Ultimate atma for Macc and nothing for CHR. If you can't land it as brd main, maybe you think wind staff is correct for wind threnody? Maybe.

The tier 2 VNM avatars resisted threnody even with ES for all elements other than the one that they were weak to.