At 95th percentile in 5.1, BRD's total contribution is the lowest of all DPS

[Akiudo]

They fully admitted they were playing it REALLY conservatively when they added the buffs back to the songs. If bard is weaker than it was before (I'm going off what I'm being told since I have no first hand knowledge) then it seems they may have gone too far with the nerfs when adding the song effects. BUT I would still argue this is the better outcome than if they hadn't been so conservative. If they had broken the job and made it over powered, then it's a lot harder for them, from a player backlash perspective, to apply nerfs after a buff than to do what they've done now and then buff the job afterwards, this can even be done in a small patch, like the 5.11 patch.

Though they likely won't change the job so soon since they want to give the changes across all jobs time to settle in, most likely, before applying new balance changes. This could easily be adjusted come 5.15.

bard is on average 500~ dps below mch, if this waits till 5.15 brd is dead for ultimate, and thats completly ignoring that the state of the phys ranged as a whole , even mch is pretty much as bad as it was before the patch

also, on bard being weaker or not you could read my post on page 1, it should be the second or third post, basically what it boils down to is that while we are not weaker in a "deal less dps than before" sense we are indeed weaker in relation to everyone else than we were before the patch, you know, the patch that should buff us (well, all ranged) as we were struggling