If you feel like it, free to post an actual ranking. From best to worst (obviously) for me, it's:

Cantors
Spiritsingers (iffy between Harbingers)
Harbingers
Cacophony

As far as I know, Cacophony sucks. A lot. Just INVOKE ORANGE if you have it and cut them to pieces.

Spiritsingers are pretty good, but they're pretty bad against Metawake. Hence the 'iffy between Harbingers' comment. The only Harbinger I've ever fought was Daedalion, and he wasn't terribly formal in our fights, since he wasn't even using a song.

When there's NOT Metawake, Spiritsingers are probably a high-second sorta deal.

Lastly, from personal experience, Cantors rock. Fairly good support, best targeted song in the game, combining aeon and 50% PERMA ANOREXIA -eyetwitch-.

(Okay, it's more like 25%. But that's still really damn annoying.)

If you don't know much about Bards in fighting, then try to still give a guess if you can. (I made sure not to put 'they all suck' and 'they're too overpowered', 'cause that'd fairly skew the poll.

In my personal opinion I'd rank the bards:

Cantors
Cacophony
Spiritsingers
Harbingers

Cantors for obvious reasons, aeon and recessional are just wrong.

Cacophony have aeon again as well as tarot, hunger makes threnody viable against people without orange and they have that new skill which slows movement out of the room. Vileblood burns away afflictions every 10 seconds, nice in some situations. They also get passive mana/willpower drain.

Spiritsingers have sleep which makes their instakill more viable against people, though metawake is pretty nasty against that. They also get ecology which is sub-par compared to tarot.

Harbingers get 250 bleeding every 10 seconds, no afflictions except from fetishes.

I think that commune bards are generally weaker because we have ecology which is worse than tarot generally for both combat and utility. As nice as it is being able to afflict with fetishes it's not as if we have sap or any decent way to slow curing at all.

*cough*
Someone take 1 vote off of each except Cantors. <.<