[brecon]

I've thought about writing a comprehensive bard guide. I've leveled two bards to 60 now without any swarm kiting, and Bards are excellent soloers. They can be truly amazing in groups once you learn to play the roles required, but they can also solo very well. As your answer is about soloing, I will address that specifically.

There are a few main ways for a Bard to solo without resorting to swarm kiting. Lull and sneak are your friends, keep engages to singles except where I say otherwise. Sneak pulling is far safer than lull pulling, and use that whenever possible. Being said, get your CHA as high as possible, and stick outdoors where you can run away, or near zonelines whenever possible when lulling to solo.

(1) Pure Melee - this will be your only real option up until the mid 20s. Bards melee almost as well as any other class up to 20, which is when the other hybrids get double attack. You can use Selos to gain some distance and use Regen song, and keep attacking til the mob is dead. Avoid anything that can root and this is pretty safe.

(2) Mez/ Melee - This tactic relies on using your single target mez. Bascially, you melee until you are low hp, then keep the mob mezzed while you regen hp. You want to avoid using dots in order to mez lock the mob as needed. This is a slow way for a Bard to kill, but it is useful up until 60 if you are fighting a mob in a dungeon where there is no room to move around. I use it for some named camps. Once you know how much DPS the mob does to you per 4 ticks, you can add some dots in for the first few rounds.

(3) Charming: This is where Bards solo very well, starting when you get your first charm spell (~level 26?). You charm just like an enchanter, but with the caveat that charms only last 18 seconds. It is best to use an outdoor zone, on mobs that cannot root you. Charm one mob and send it at the others: while the mob is attacking the other mob, keep up on yourself Selos, and twist in either HP regen, chants on the other mob, or perhaps a mez on an additional target.

The way charming works on P99 is that your target, when charm breaks, still is aggroed on you but has effectively zero hate. If you charm the target you were dotting before, and send that target on your former charmed pet, it will instantly start attacking your charmed pet. Dotting while charming is really important once you hit your 40s and your charm spell starts costing mana: it makes encounters shorter, which means less charms and less mana spent. It is also useful to get an SS bracer or better Ragefire arms, and ds both pets, the additional damage is substantial over a fight.

To get full xp, you need to break your pet before you kill one of them. There are a few ways to make that easier to accomplish without taking hits: the main one is snare one of the mobs. If the mobs run at low hp, once the unsnared pets gets far enough from the snared pet, both will stop trying to attack you and you can kill them leisurely. Charming as a Bard takes some practice to do well.

(4) Fear kiting
This is easy once you get fear and selo's constant chain. Find your target. If it is solo, mez it. Then cast snare and fear. After this is done, start killing it. You have two additional songs you can cast dependably. What I usually do is melee attack until I can proc tash, while only playing snare and fear (get an orb of tishan, it makes fear kiting much more reliable), and then switch to snare, fear, and two chants with a drum - I find I do more damage with two chants and a drum than by meleeing, and it doesn't require you to be in pbaoe range except when you refresh your fear spell.

You can solo any mob you can fear as a Bard, and casters are your prime target: lower hp and you can usually get a fear off before any spell casts anyway. Also, the pbaoe radius on fear is larger than the melee range of most mobs, so if it is snared, you can usually get a fear off without taking a hit or mezzing it.

(5) chant kiting
This requires you to have snare, seloes, and some of your chants. It's simple: just snare the mob and use DPS chants. You do less damage than fear kiting. When fear kiting, your dots do full damage: when you snare only, the dots do 2/3 damage. Sometimes when I'm feeling lazy or just finishing off a mob (or if I'm low hp and don't want to get close for a fear), I'll chant instead of fear kiting.

Chant-kiting is also very effective for xp groups. As the puller, you just pull the mob with snare, and move around chanting until it dies. It works well in COM arena, for instance.

Conclusion:
Bards can solo a lot of ways. I just listed 5, and there are some more that I forgot. Also, there are many tricks and caveats, and things change somewhat when you get your epic or some high damage proc weapons. But Bards are great in groups, solo well outside groups, and are great at farming any gear solo if the mob either (1) does not summon, or (2) is fearable.