as a person who has played bard to 50, the dps loss isn't noticeable. and unless its in a raid or extreme or w/e u won't need to use it in fights unless something goes wrong. best time to use those is after a trash group or when dps/mages are 50% mp/tp trhen turn it off. Bards in rpg have always been support style, and there is nothing wrong with it. All groups need to be balanced in roles or it gets messy. I recall dcuo, all ppl did was play dps (powers had 2 styles dps or job style which was tank heal support) and all ppl did was use dps stance. No one worked together.

(this was partly due to the built in parser leaderboard but enough on that no wanna derail thread)

Bard is a fun job to play, ff14 bard beats ff11 bard, in ff11 all we got was a paper knife and all we did was sing/play the harp or play the flute. ff11 bard dps was... well it didn't exist.