Bards aren't that good in classic. You barely even need resists in most raid content pre-Kunark. Aside from the two dragons, most bosses have unresistable mechanics or just none. In groups, bards can only mez up to level 45 which excludes most of the top-tier camps in dungeons, and they only get that terrible single-pulse mana song at level 32 which is barely usable since it's not an actual buff that lingers. Their haste songs pre-50 are godawful, too. Bards are really not good until after classic. I wouldn't go so far as to call it the worst class, but I'd definitely place it in the bottom half of the hierarchy.
Let's take a generic group of upper 40s in LGuk. What do they get out of adding a bard? In all likelihood, mobs are being pulled and killed immediately upon respawn, so literally anybody can be the puller. It's unlikely that there's no enchanter or shaman in the group, but even if that's the case and the bard's haste song matters, it's like 20% all the way up until level 50. He won't be able to mez much of the trash in the high-end camps. He can't really tank due to having no serious way of holding aggro, he doesn't do any meaningful DPS, the classic mana song is pretty much useless except during downtime when the bard can just stand there and spam it exclusively. There's just kind of no reason to have a bard in the group at all. The songs are so low-impact and the classic dungeons are so mob-scarce and compact that the role of puller is barely a thing.
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