About bards... my first and main toon was a bard. But I stopped playing him since the enhancemet pass hit us. I was hoping to be able to make a viable pure bard warchanter build, but since enhancement pass made multiclassing even stronger than it was I somehow dumped him because I was disappointed. And with my other toons it's so much easier to be a viable party member.
It's a lot easier to play a monk split und carry your own weight in a party than playing a bard. So if you need to be very good to make a class shine and other builds/classes can do well, even if they are played by a noob or newbie, then it is not balanced.
And even if you say bards can do everything if they need to and a good player and builds is combined... noone needs that anymore. Helping out the divines? Even raids are often byoh now anyways, no need to have a bard as backup heals.
Tank is dead... most time this only results in the next dps toon tanking or monkcher kiting the boss/mobs.
Bard songs? At the current powercreep they doesn't matter anymore.
Most of the 'not casual' players seem to aim for self sufficient builds now and even mocking divines who are build for raid healing(healbots).
I know no one in the endgame of ddo who is interested in playing an RPG where different classes cover different roles and one has to trust other players that they do their job. Most players build for toons who can solo everything if needed.
In such an environment there is no room for bards, healbots and even rogues. Most people don't care about traps anymore and just bypass them or know how to survive them.
And in every other MMO I would understand that the most players support that. But a game which is based upon a pen&paper RPG... I would have thought the players want the online game to be an RPG too.
But the current builds and opinions of the endgame players has nothing in coming with RPG anymore. There are no roles, just DDs who can heal themself.
Only difference is if you are ranged/spellcaster or melee...
And first I was happy to see the thread and survey about character balance.... Then I saw their questions in the survey and I closed it again... Not wasting my time for something like that.
I am better of wasting my time in the vault.