So how would you buff bard? (Just like to hear peoples thoughts)

[mallleable]

I do not understand that take. Songs are extremely flexible and BRD doesn't have to worry too much about drifting long recast CDs either.

They really aren't. Let's take the current alliance raid, the Ark Angels fight can end towards the end of Mage's Ballad with not enough time to use Army's Paean early which means a BRD will be down gauge, Army's Muse buff and coda going into the Shadow Lord fight. BRD can't use Army's Paean out of combat either. And unlike every other job, BRD did not receive buffs to get a free damage during burst at the start of the expansion. Doing something like Barrage grants a free Apex/Blast Arrow, and deleting coda while making Radiant Finale, and Encore flat buff/potency, and making Muse a passive trait would actually make BRD a lot more flexible.

[Valence]

What do you consider a long CD? It's currently 45s. I'm asking for 15s / 20s. If you don't like long CDs, how is making it shorter bad?

Meanwhile, the job launched with DoT juggling and still ultimately had said job-juggling, just with it reduced from converting at least 29% of uptime to taking just 5.5%. It's not as if asking for shorter timers to intervene between filler spam would be some uncalled for intrusion into Bard's core design.

What would be a drastic change would be to replace the DoTs with another manager of time-gating those alternative actions, but even that I would be okay with if it thereby increased the frequency of actual apparent decisions to be made and reduced the monotony of Bard's RABS spam.

(Lastly, though, since when did DoTs, especially short ones, require any more screen-staring against a single target than did one's combo or the likes of Disciplined Fist or Astral Fire? Outside of boss jumps or getting stunned, it's a fixed number of GCDs.) Before level 56, you use Full Thrust every 6 GCDs. After level 58, you use it every 8. A DoT lasting 6 GCDs and a DoT lasting 8 GCDs give exactly the same impact on ST platform and are no harder to pace in themselves even without looking at the UI.)

I don't think anybody said that DoTs are more demanding than upkeeping buffs like Disciplined Fists. It's tomato and tomato.
I am not speaking about long duration dots, I absolutely hate long recast drift sensitive GCDs introduced in ShB and I find them unengaging and tactically uninteresting.
I am just saying that I don't like dot juggling or buff upkeep, timers are tedious babysitting to my eyes, but if that's what BRD needs for its filler to be interesting again then that's what BRD needs even though I feel like its more of an old healer paradigm with all their asynchronous dots. I'll be the last one to oppose going back to the roots of the job. People that mained BRD and enjoyed the job for this have more legitimacy of a claim over it than I do. I just personally like the priority part of the job more, and both aren't mutually exclusive since as you say you can have priority based around shorter and unsynced dot upkeep.

They really aren't. Let's take the current alliance raid, the Ark Angels fight can end towards the end of Mage's Ballad with not enough time to use Army's Paean early which means a BRD will be down gauge, Army's Muse buff and coda going into the Shadow Lord fight. BRD can't use Army's Paean out of combat either.

You know you can use Army earlier in the fight so that it is ready to swap before the end if that's the case? Army isn't actually a big loss compared to Ballad. You complain about an actual privilege which is filling the gauge out of combat, which is one of the strengths of the job unlike most others that cannot. And I maintain that you can still do it if you adjust your song timing a little. Maybe the problem is more that with randos you're never sure when a fight is going to end and you're bound to either have it end at the start of a song (which is good) or near the end of a song (which is bad if the next song isn't up yet). And you know what? I almost like that. Introduces some variations to play with when then next fight starts.

And unlike every other job, BRD did not receive buffs to get a free damage during burst at the start of the expansion. Doing something like Barrage grants a free Apex/Blast Arrow, and deleting coda while making Radiant Finale, and Encore flat buff/potency, and making Muse a passive trait would actually make BRD a lot more flexible.

What do you mean by "buffs to get a free damage during burst at the start of the expansion"?
What would those changes do to help make BRD more flexible? Getting a free Apex wouldn't change anything because then the opener would require 2 Apex for optimal use, you'd just get a free one in bonus which changes literally nothing but fills up one more GCD (which bard has room for).
What do you mean by making Radian and Encore "flat buff potency"? What do you mean with making Muse a passive trait? That BRD would be played like a fast melee on 2s GCD recast? Adios double weaving I guess?

[Shurrikhan]

They really aren't. Let's take the current alliance raid, the Ark Angels fight can end towards the end of Mage's Ballad with not enough time to use Army's Paean early which means a BRD will be down gauge, Army's Muse buff and coda going into the Shadow Lord fight. BRD can't use Army's Paean out of combat either.

Fair enough, I guess, but...

And unlike every other job, BRD did not receive buffs to get a free damage during burst at the start of the expansion. Doing something like Barrage grants a free Apex/Blast Arrow, and deleting coda while making Radiant Finale, and Encore flat buff/potency, and making Muse a passive trait would actually make BRD a lot more flexible.

...I would dislike a lot of this. Granted, I wasn't a huge fan of the DRG changes, so that probably tells you something.

Barrage already grants 1000 potency over fillers use across its affected GCDs (979 if counting natural HE proc chance). That's... 240 potency (32% more bonus damage over filler GCDs) than a free 100-gauge Apex Arrow + Burst Shot (760 potency over filler). (Granted, as Apex Arrow is the more visually impressive, I could see why one might prefer to axe Resonant and just use another Apex+Burst instead.)

If by making Muse passive you mean just giving Ethos infinite duration, sure, I guess. If you really mean bundling a 12% Haste into the first 10s of every Mage's or Wanderer's, then I'd rather not make the songs even less related to our actual actions / even less distinct.

Making Finale just a flat buff would, in ideal circumstances, only affect the opening raid burst (with an extra 4% damage for 20 seconds vs. present use), so I'd be fine with that.. if not for the fact that you'll have then just made a second Battle Voice button and gotten rid of any reason to call it a "Finale". Personally, I like some things not being immediately present from the start, so... I'd slightly have to pass on that one, too.

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For my part, to deal with the issues you note I'd rather simply...

1. replace the fixed song CDs with a softer enforcement system and rework the Coda requirement (and its reward[s]) instead of axing it outright,
   --and--
2. maybe buff Apex Arrow's base damage and have Burst Arrow be made available based on total Soul Voice expenditure akin to Reaper's dual system (Soul Voice -> Resonance) -- say, tracked as a spark line on the Soul Voice gauge or a semi-transparent bar behind current Soul Voice, holding up to 160 charge and spending 80 at a time -- as to allow for more flexibility in exploiting its linear AoE.