[guineapig]

Absolutely, if you are just using an instrument and just punching then that's a whole other ballgame with bard dots. My bard is low level still but I have been keeping my hand to hand maxed for when my dots will actually be that useful.

That's the great thing about bards. There are so many right answers.
With blue con mobs we can tank with a Staff of Writhing and (chanter nuke with huge agro generation and procs often) and an obsidian shard in the offhand. Spam in the snare+slow song to keep the mobs attention on you on the offchance that the procs aren't going off (which is rarely).

The staff is a very overlooked bard weapon for when we need to interupt casting and/or hold aggro.

But I digress.