If your healers and party is smart Ballad is rarely needed. For example, on my WHM, I can heal through all the EM/HM primals and turn 1-4 without needing it.

I remember there was this one healer who yelled at our bard for not playing Ballad every boss in CT. The party was not taking excessive amounts of damage, he'd just stand there and spam medica until he ran out of mana.