You are all talking about how bards support via buffs, but lets not forget that you can support via debuffs as well. Bards attacks add debuffs to the mobs we attack. While they did remove a major part of one of our attacks (no longer making them take 10% more dmg) there is still some other major difference our class will add to the group. (Making mobs do 10% less dmg for instance.)

I think we will add plenty to a group, and any 24 man raid without 3 bards would notice the difference end game. ^^