At the end of the day, I'm not sure whether Bard is stronger or weaker than before. What I am sure of, is that by homogenizing Bard to fit in with BLM and such, it makes it far easier for the devs to balance the job and make it put out comparable DPS to other jobs.

I wasn't exactly asking for this, DPS wasn't the reason I rolled Bard, but I see why they did it and I can live with it. Also I'm cool with change. If we get another rework just as big in 4.0 then that'd be great.