Oddly enough, I don't think Bard needed to be dumbed down. It was one of the easiest classes to get into, you just had to put in effort to play it well (and you know read the tooltips and job actions so you know what stuff is doing). RNG was a pain at times, especially if you weren't geared up on CRIT materias, but I chalked it up to Bard being like AST in that regards so I didn't mind it.

Since EQ was brought up, I thought I'd bring up my Bard experience from another MMO I played years back.
Back in my days on Eden Eternal, Bard wasn't a DPS class but actually a healing class (the AOE master). You had your classic Cure, Revive, Escape (saved a few raids with that one), etc. But you had about 5-6 songs you had to constantly weave as they lasted less than 15s each, as well as put up a 3x DMG debuff and set time for a few Stones, it was a great feeling when you could keep that chain going. Then class specialties came along (you could go back and forth) and we got boosted versions of those songs. At least now they lasted 30 seconds.

Now for comparison, I enjoyed SB Bard more than Eden's movement wise. I'm no fan of casting classes in FF personally. However in terms of identity I enjoyed Eden's more. More songs, more to do (and more panicking when shit hit the fan) and a better feeling of helping your team. However it's likely I'm comparing apples to oranges here since the design roots were different between both games.

*Edit: EQ Bard sounds dope and much fun!