Bard needs some love too.

[Felessan]

This thread has to be a troll thread. BRD's damage is balanced around it giving Foe's Requiem to casters to make up for its lower training dummy DPS, and its extremely high uptime on both boss and adds alike.

And what around NIN damage balanced? Or even MNK as they can buff second monk for free?
Bard can maintain Foe only 30% of time and if he needs to sing other song (eventually he'll need to play at least paeon) - it will be even lower.

Ok. Thanks for letting us know.
Ah, FYI - good bards don't need buffs to be top DPS.
You're welcome.

This is how bards really parse in final coil - http://puu.sh/cNmNU/9e2270792f.png
You'll never get a top spot if you have good MNK, DRG, NIN, BLM in your party (probably a SMN too, but I haven't seen one perfomance in fcob).

Go tell all the top teams around the worlds and your server that their healers doesn't need Ballad during progression, and if they need, they suck. They would probably give you the big middle finger.

Healers run out of mana when they a) raise a lot or b) overheal a lot and both are quite bad.
It's healers job to quickly learn a fight and optimize heal structure, same as dps should optimize their dps.
Yes, bards can make up for some healers and tank errors, but on other hand they make dps checks tighter and less room for error on dps side.

And to be clear - at start of 2.4 there was no other choice but to bring a bard as you need TP regen anyway.