Bards are awesome. You'll soon be outleveling everyone, even the necros, druids, and enchanters will be eating your exp dust. See my bard AoE leveling locations guide
here. It also contains links to a few guides on HOW to AoE kite as a bard.
You can start AoEing at L2 (with chords), but most wait til at least L5 (selos) and L18 for the larger range on the DoT. However, grouping can also be REALLY fun, and bards are pretty awesome at grouping at all levels. Bard advantages to groups start at 6 (lowest level for hp regen in the game), 15 when we get AE mez, 20/23 when we get AE/single target slows, 28 when we get single target mez, and 32 when we get mana song V1.0 (major milestones through L50).
If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a tell or PM. As for gearing: if you are going AE kiting, get a vendor horn, drum, and lute and just start doing it. Upgrade to mistmoore drums and gypsy lute (~100p each), and that'll take you to planar level. If grouping mostly, work on some banded, then lambent, and get weapons. Since bard weapons are real niche weapons, they can usually be bought pretty cheap. BIS for DPS (pre-epic) are breath of harmony and guardians mace, 5-6k and 2-4k respectively. Sionachie's Partisan is a 9/19 for ~400p, which is awesome considering lamentations still sell for >2k.
Enjoy playing one of the best designed classes in any game ever! (personal opinion)