4. My biggest dissapointment at becoming a bard in the beginning, went to buy a bow only to find we cannot use them. I could care less that they are somewhat inefficient, I just wanted to be able to use one. It fits into almost every concept of a bard in fantasy literature and games, but not in EQ? Can't figure out why since it clearly is not unbalancing.

Actually it can be very unbalancing. You could stand outside of combat, play songs with an instrument and still be able to fire arrows into combat. Last I heard people were capable of doing 20+ dmg per arrow. The trade off we make for having more effective songs when played is that we're out of combat and generally not doing direct damage (except of course bellow/discord/etc). If we could use bows then there'd be no decision to make as to sing or play songs.

Funny thing is 7 is all I canthink of right offhand. I still think bards are a great class, most of my gripes are little things. I still hold to my feeling that I will never play another non-binding class however.

I'd have to concur, which is why I tend to laugh a bit when I see a bard petition being proposed. There are much larger issues in the game, but still it's nice to have a concise list of what we see as problem areas.