DPS is never negligible when raiding. In a group, maybe, especially if it detracts from doing other things, but for a bard on a raid, the 20-25 dps you can get from melee still counts towards the total damage to the mob. 25 dps is 1500 damage a minute. That is comparable to pally dps. In fact, I used to routinely rate my dps on raids based on whether or not i out dps'd corova (a low bar, i know, but i needed a metric of some sort).
Additionally, the 30 atk from epic, plus the 25 from modded mcvaxius is 55 to the entire group, which is super significant. Plus higher DS, resists, and doing melee dps.... it is an aggregate effect. You can just single out one thing that improves with the bard epic, because bards arent a class that is about doing one thing well. Bards do everything okay, and their epic gives them more options to do almost everything better. You cant just do a point to point comparison because you have to factor in everything. Sure, drums might give you more resist overall, but to get that yourr sacrificing MR from psalm (most important resist by far), atk from mcvaxius, and 25ish dps. For you econ majors out there, it is all about opportunity cost, and epic completely changes the landscape of your next best option.
Also, try fear kiting without epic, that alone highlights the type of playstyles that epic opens up. I can chain fear, snare and stack dots, all while meleeing, which would be basically impossible without epic. Given that is a minor utility with limited uses, but just one example of how bard epic opens up new options.
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