Zacc's right about bards being weak, he's just terrible at backing up his claim.

Bards have no way to keep people in a room and keeping people in a room is the only chance that they have at winning - they need octave + barbs and colourmaelstrom to be effective. No other class is affected so dramatically when people can get away. Mages and druids rely heavily upon room effects, but they can extend the effects to multiple rooms, and they don't lose 10p worth of used skills if they move 1 room away to fight. Other then that, the other classes for the most part can follow and continue their offense without having to re-setup in the room. Yes, bards have perfect fifth, but if that stops you, you're either stupid or you can't figure out or can't be bothered to figure out how to get your system to eat earwort at the right time. Gusting the bard away is extremely easy, and that doesn't even require changing your system. If the bard icewalls the room shut to prevent this (which is time-consuming, and incredibly easy to notice), eating earwort doesn't stop a tumble once it starts, which is slightly trickier to do system-wise, but not much.

(Sorry if I repeated anything from earlier in the thread, couldn't bother to read it, I'm sure its the same old uninformed claims that people have always made though)