Here's the thing though, you're assuming that you can just continuously spam skills and you can't, and this is where crit jumps ahead.
1. Bards can continuously spam skills more than most classes.

2. Crit doesn't jump ahead. It also stops when you can't continuously spam skills.

whereas Crit Rate can greatly increase the value of said limited strikes
Greatly? No.

Small amounts of skill speed is very much like small amounts of crit -- they're both unnoticeable.

the consensus does appear to be that skill speed is trash
Sometimes the consensus is that the Earth is flat.

I don't really care about the consensus. Skill speed is weak, but random idiots pretend it doesn't increase DPS at all, which is not true. They'd gladly trade away 30 SS for 5 DET or CRT or something, which is asinine.