Curious on opinion. Smn or Mch. Which would you pick?

[Minorinz]

I'm talking about the amount of downtime.

Yes even with downtime there will be tp/mp depletion in most cases because the dps will not be that high in the beginning.

The design philosophy has been the same since the game is out and bard was like this on 2.0, why bother with it now? Bard was never near top dps during progression as far as I remember and was always bellow casters or on par in some cases. I would understand the frustration over the mobility with WM since bards are/were responsible of most mechanics in previous coil fights but dps wise there shouldn't even be an argument. Most bards even know that their utility has always been a thing and they know they will be needed for it.