Quote Originally Posted by gigarit View Post
They are a support class and they do it very well, if a bard didnt have to play any songs they would do amazing dps, but since their songs are required by many groups they will almost always have the 20% damage nerf. That is why they have such great skills and dps cooldowns to try and make up for that 20% nerf.
They aren't a support class, a support class unsurprisingly consists mainly of support skills, not mainly DPS skills with a handful of support, they also tend to do significantly less damage than the temporary 20% reduction that bards get, which is then compensated by having a higher uptime due to lack of casts, this game does not have support classes.

Bard is just a DPS class with a little bit of support, some of which is critical, so makes them an automatic pick above any other DPS, bad design, is bad.