It needed to be a weaponskill so that new Barrage wouldn't be hot garbage, and because it's a weaponskill it has a cast time. I don't think anyone is under any delusions - whatever the process of designing HW Bard looked like, there must have been a rush of last minute updates and finalizations given all the awkwardness in the kit on release. The "good" news is that Yoshi seems intent on giving Bard special attention this time around, though I fear this is just going to leave some other job in oops-land.