Bard's future

[XRuecian]

I only recently picked up bard, i mainly play melee and tanks. However i have tried of most of the jobs a little. I quickly noticed however when i played bard that this job has a huge problem of feeling OLD.
There are so many redundant skills in this class that just feel like 'leftovers' from a past age.
This class more than any i feel needs a full rework.
I like the base idea of the class, but many things jumped out at me as feeling like bad design.
First off, the fact that Straight Shot is a Weaponskill (GCD) instead of an OGCD feels like a really odd choice to me. It doesn't feel very rewarding to proc a skill if you have to use a GCD on it anyways.
Sidewinder feels like a very uninspirational skill. It literally is just 'another' OCD to push every 60 seconds with no real kit synergy or reasoning behind it existing. (FF14 seems to have a lot of these extra copy-paste skills and i consider it bad design.)

If it were up to me, i would suggest that they merge Straight Shot + Sidewinder + Bloodletter into a single OGCD skill (and an AoE version) that you proc via Heavy Shot/Quick Nock, and increase the Proc Chance to 40-50%. You could let it hold 2 charges, and Mage's Ballad could still give you a free proc for each Repertoire. By doing this, getting the proc would feel more impactful (and more fun) to hit. And by increasing the proc chance, you won't lose that feeling of it being a Weaving class.
And when i say merge, i don't mean they need to merge all their potencies together into one skill.
They could spread the potency out into other skills or new skills so that overall DPS is still the same. It just feels like all of these skills serve the same purpose (OGCD) and therefore should just be the same skill period. This would free up a lot of space in the kit for them to add more interesting abilities rather than just copy-pasted abilities like this.

I don't really have a preference for if the class is DoT focused or not. But right now the two dots on bard feel like a joke. My healers single DoT has more potency than both of Bards DoTs put together. As it is right now, they need to decide if they want to make these DoTs have impact, or just remove them altogether. Perhaps you should be rewarded for keeping BOTH DoTs on with a potency increase, or something.

Overall i feel like this class is suffering from an identity crisis. Its as if SE just cant decide on if they want it to be a Proc/Weaving class, a DoT class, or a support DPS. They REALLY need to choose one, iron out its core, and then add on from there.
A lot of times, i feel like SE often misses the mark when it comes to a jobs FANTASY. A bard at its core is supposed to be a class that supports via music. This means that ideally, the music should be the CORE FOCUS of the class. However, the songs on bard right now are like 90% self-buffs with tiny party buffs on top. Your main party buff is Battle Voice, a skill completely unrelated to your song system. If they really want to deliver on the class's fantasy identity, they should remove Battle Voice and buff all three songs to have slightly better party buffs. And perhaps each of those songs should have some sort of rhythm you need to keep up with (by pressing certain OGCDs in sequence every so often to "hit notes") to keep the buff going. This way the class has some skill involved and actually would feel like your ability to PLAY THE MUSIC is what is supporting your party.