Well shamans and bards are both amazing in groups and both can solo effectively, so it's more a preference of how you want to play. *Although ultimately bards are pullers/buffbots while shamans are gods. But again, depends on if you plan on soloing things with puppet strings.
Bard is a class I've always wanted to play but never bothered with because the meta seems annoying. I'm the kind of person who can't stand half-assing it, but bards are so tedious that I'd be fine if any bards I'm with were slacking a bit. Twisting is demanding but it's fun, swapping weapons/instruments constantly however is just annoying. I can't deal with that without hotbuttons. FFXI's bard seems heavily inspired by EQ's but isn't expected to melee. Imagine EQ's bard but with buffs lasting a couple minutes. They pull, CC and buff their group accordingly with a short-range pbaoe songs, but most importantly in FFXI you can bind equipment swaps and spells into the same hotbutton rather than needing to manually swap constantly. EQ bards being fun are more of an ideal than a reality to me. Like people who want to theoretically be a ranger but don't want to be useless.
As far as later levels it's basically just pulling. Does anyone expect a bard to melee in groups when people are in kunark/velious gear? In raids you're just a resist buffbot afaik.
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