Please sell me on why I'd want to ever play a bard, when they seem so weak...

[Potato_Priest]

I’ve got to disagree with the assertion that bards are buffing specialists. While a lore bard who puts all their resources into acquiring buff spells will be about the best buffer it is possible to be, any other configuration of the class falls behind the wizard, the cleric, or both.

While bardic inspiration has been favorably compared to bless and guidance here, it doesn’t take a genius to see that those abilities are far stronger due to the number of dice they can give for the resource expenditure. (Though bardic inspiration does have the nice boost of not requiring concentration)

Further, bards don’t have access to the best buff spells like stoneskin and haste, except through magical secrets. This means that to even catch up to a wizard in the buffing department, they have to spend their extraordinarily valuable class specific resource.

Thus, by simple virtue of their spell list, I’d argue that bards are not the best buffers in the game.

Their situation is a bit better, but still not great in the debuffs department. A wizard again has a superior spell list (especially post xanathar’s with frostbite as a vicious mockery knockoff), though bards can catch up if they want to blow their special resources on being as good, but not much better, than another class. The reason I say bards are better here than at buffs is the spell list differences are less obvious and problematic, and the cleric isn’t also in the running here, getting basically zilch after the god-mode spell known as command.

Do they still make adequate buff/debuffers with a mix of skill monkey thrown in? Certainly. Just not perhaps as good at either as their previous edition history might suggest.