I think they'll be STR too, but that line from Yoshida does NOT preclude them being DEX.

Is his statement still true if they end up DEX-based? Yes. "Disciples of War" gear, which is for monks as well as bards, has DEX, and the comment was aimed at keeping gear for levelling up. End of story.

Edit: Also there could be a translation problem here, "melee" could include bard, if you were just going by 2 categories of either melee or magic.