I like the idea of not having completely free allocation, but instead having some limited ability to focus, like the merit points people have been bringing up.
The reason I posted this thread, though, was really about archers. I've been reading a lot of threads saying that archers got nerfed to the ground - but someone pointed out recently that the stat auto-allocation for archers currently puts a lot more into mental stats than archers need or want. For bard, they might need that, but I was wondering if archers who didn't want to be bard would still have the option to DD.
(Not an archer, but going to have to level it for -Enmity traits)