Bard and how to fix it.

[Dante_V]

BRD and MCH are the lowest DPS jobs, at the same lvl of skill ofc...
Do You need support?
Yes: Fine, take a BRD or a MCH.
No: Fine, take real DPS jobs or take a BRD or MCH and carry him.

There is no fight in this game that is so dps dependent that bringing a bard will impair the group and similar logic can be used to not bring a pally. But regardless of hyperbole and rhetoric if your teams dps is so low that bringing a bard is what is going to make it or break it then that's not the bards fault. Beyond that certain mechanics such as red/blue fire in t12 posit a situation where bard becomes the most efficient dps to handle them as they can move and attack. The party wide support bard brings was almost mandatory in final coil and once the echo was added any dps disparity became irrelevant so the nonsense of "once progression is done bard is useless" is simply nonsense.

[Neyka]

Honestly, Bismark Ex is a terrible fight to compare dps classes with. It's probably most friendly to summoners and ninjas, much less friendly to any class that needs to sustain a buff (nothing like killing everything fast, and then watching your buff tick off while the dragon killers reel in Bismark).

That said, the Bismark Ex run I was in the other day, the top dps was a bard.

Alex 1 or Alex 4 is probably a better fight to judge dps.

But back to topic, it sounds like Bards feel like their current skills are clunky, and don't flow well together, and the fixes are more about adding fun to the class without adding power.

[Snowaeth]

But back to topic, it sounds like Bards feel like their current skills are clunky, and don't flow well together, and the fixes are more about adding fun to the class without adding power.

These are pretty much the main issues when playing in WM yes.

The other issues that players have are more vague and concern playstyle change, mobility, lack of old rotation security, etc.
Those are not things we can come up with solutions for, unless SE suddenly lets us know that they will be redesigning/removing WM or something like that, which is not likely to happen.

Thus yea despite not really liking it, sucking it up and trying to improve on what we have might be the best course.
The other complaints shouldn't be just ignored though and absolutely looked at, I just don't think we can do much about them without SE going as far as dropping the current WM idea.

As for people that don't play bard and are commenting without putting the effort in of understanding where bards are coming from.
If you watch South Park, this is basically what it comes down to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvD9TawMqCY