Bards viability now?

[Garan]

I don't really mind that bard and machinist do less damage than the other "pure" dps classes. It's a trade off since they can enable other classes to go longer and hit harder. But they still need to be able to pull their weight as a dps class, which currently they do not. So a 4-man party with only bard/machinist as dps can really struggle. And at levels below 40 machinists have it particularly bad because they're lacking their turret which makes up a significant percentage of their total dps.

I keep seeing this reasoning come up for why Bards do less damage. Does everyone not know that any time a Bard sings paeon or ballad we ALREADY receive a 15% DPS loss? Our penalty for supporting the party is already built in. There is absolutely no reason for Bards to have significantly lower DPS when not supporting the party with songs.