Bard issues

[Idracab]

Continuing the trend of bard topics, I'm interested in what issues are facing the bard class right now. I vaguely recall reading something about skill caps and about lack of useful songs past level 70 ( ? ), but I'd be interested in seeing what issues bards have to face with the grouping / soloing / raid game right now.

[Unmei]

The big bard issues are:

#1: Songs 76+ "not good" - self explanatory
#2: Instrument Mods Capped/Not used - it's very easy for a bard to cap instrument mods with items/AAs, and so there's not really any difference between a mega-uber-raid-bard singing a song and an extra-gimpy-group-bard singing the same song. Also, many songs aren't affected by instruments at all.
#2a: Songs are not spells, therefore cannot be 'focused' by Type3 augs.

To me, #1 is a bummer, but is partially a symptom of the way bards want their class to be designed (Old songs never go out of service, so there's only so many cool new things you can do.) and #2: is sucky, but on a scale from 1 to crippling class balance issue, I give it a 3.

[Kilgaroz]

Yeah, Unmei pretty much nailed it. Those are pretty minor issues though, bards are in pretty good shape as the original "Jack of all trades, master of none." Though in 90% of the game, they outpull any other class.

[JyveAFK]

Bards are still fun, but they're in a sorry, sorry state at this time. Terrible Stagnation.
Was able to hit the instrument cap using PoP gear. Problem only continues to worsen.
Problem with the songs themselves, it's actually a major thing, scale of 1 to 10, ,it's THE most important thing to a Bard. Songs /should/ scale up so we'd only need one or so a level, but the artificial limits to them mean we keep getting songs copy/pasted time and time again.
Contribution to a group using songs (our primary ability?) doesn't show tier of toon, ie, a bazaar geared toon will contribute as much dps to a group as the top bards in game (aura + warsong + clicky haste + holding a drum and singing HoS (that goes so far over the cap it's not funny))

Songs themselves... These caster focus songs that use mana? Terrible idea. You do more damage singing a dot and with the debuff component, it's more beneficial to sing that than waste your mana trying to get that extra tick from a caster.
I could go on, and there's more to be said by bards on http://forums.theconcerthall.net/
I'd recommend bards interested in what's going on check these threads out.