Awhile ago (over a year now I guess?) they changed the ticks on bard songs to be 3 ticks. This doesn't affect some songs (like selo's and mez), but does affect all damage songs.
You'll miss notes a lot, it just happens. Raising your DEX helps, as does raising the songs relevant skill. I haven't done any experiments to see if playing with an instrument helps or not, but anecdotal evidence screams it doesn't help.
As for Charming, I have a guide in these forums about how I'm able to charm like-factioned mobs. Basically the idea is to keep re-charming the same mob, so as to not build up any aggro on mob2. That way it'll only take a single hit for your re-charmed pet to get aggro.
I haven't tried charming in dungeons except with greens, so can't help you there on strategies.
I've been able to tank LCY and other stuff in KC on my bard at 55. I wouldn't say clerics love it, but it's doable. You just have to be really good at locking down adds, and chain-mezzing/slowing greatly hurts the mobs DPS.
As for a goto song lineup, mine has always been:
1. Haste
2. Mana Song
3. Health Regen Song
4. Snare
Throw in Mez and Charm for crowd control, and that'll leave you one more slot for Selo's and a "flavor of the battle" song.
For solo, I go with:
1. Snare
2. AE Fear
3-5: Single target dots
6. mez
7 charm/selo's song of travel
8 selo's
For raids:
1. Mana Song
2. Regen song
3. Haste
4. Guardian Rhythms
5. Whatever other resist song you'll need
6. Charm
7. Mez
8. Selo's
As you can see, Charm and Mez are mainstays. I like to mez in a group, but every once in awhile you'll run into a groupmember who loves to assist the bard. In those situations, Charm becomes the best CC possible. The rest are my typical lineups, but I'll switch them up as need arises.
As for the Mez ticks. I've never noticed a difference in when mez breaks as opposed to "server ticks". Typically I can always keep 5 locked down, no matter where in the server tick I started. Buffs seem the same way. So I don't think you can game the system that way.
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Muteki - 57 Bard
Alva - 53 Monk
Kallon - 58 Shaman
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