Right now bard is a divided community. Those who loved the feeling of helping other rather than big damage. And those that thought it should still be an archer and are getting their fill of power in ShB. Simply stated by SE description of the job bards are a support job. https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/jobguide/bard/ So it is the identity crisis that is making bard mains upset. The headphone analogy was spot on. LOL. The combat does feel good in ShB but the "bard" part feels selfish and empty. IMO, if they would just change our name to ranger and give us pets or give us meaningful songs to serenade our teams with, this topic would be sated.
Like Connor stated, SE just has trouble separating a job from it's original iteration. It's one reason SUM/SCH always felt awkward to me. It's just that ARC/BRD stayed on the same job. And to dumb bard down, they took away meaningful song to make it feel like an upgraded archer instead. Heck the lvl 80 job quest even feels like a joke towards bard with it's deep irony.
I wish I would have play EQ or even FF11 bard so I could compare to FF14.