I disagree with some of your points Majere.
<You forest the days and days of no stop training it takes to train taming...>
Have you tried GMing provokation? It's actually a very difficult skill to raise. Although bardic skills arent effected by anti macro code, you still have to find monsters of the appropriate difficulty and provoke them. They inevitably kill each other and you have to move on and find more monsters. It would be very hard to set up a way to macro provoke unattended. You would need a tamer to get various levels of creatures, and you would need boats or a special setup in a house where you can provoke them and they won't be able to hit one another... as to which one actually takes more effort to GM I'm not sure, but just keep in mind that Provoke is by no means an easy skill to raise.
<And take the risk of being killed by player killers.>
Yes, tamers are vulnerable to player killers. They can lose their pets. But a typical bard template will also not include wrestling or magic resist which means they are also very vulnerable to PKs, and dont have dragons to protect them. I have watched Drithe play and deal with PKs on his tamer. Sometimes he kills them, most of the time he gates out. Rarely does he lose his pets. Perhaps I just haven't been around the dungeons long enough to notice PKers constantly running through looking for tamers. Maybe I should make a tamer-PKer and make money that way, hahaha.
<This is complete bull, I have tested and I know for a fact dexters can kill LLs very easy if they know what they are doing.>
Yes dexers can kill LLs and liches quickly. But they need to have high resist, which is as hard as taming or harder to raise I hear, as well as a very strong magic weapon which is worth more money than the dragon the tamer uses, and is not as easily replaced. (You can't gate to the silver/vanq spawn location and tame one so easily.) The tamer can kill the LLs just as fast or faster, with less risk to himself since the dragon is doing the fighting. But I suppose you are right, a really decked out warrior could make good cash off undead with a silver vanq, or other kinds of monsters with a slayer weapon. Maybe they dont need adjustment in this area.
<Even if you COULD use Energy Vortex, they are pretty weak. They seem to do about 15 damage per hit and don't poison.>
<You have to take in mind the impack that would cause on PVP.>
As far as the changes I suggested for energy vortex, the increase in power could also be combined with slowing down the movement speed. Specificly I think that the damage of EVs need not be increased, but they should use level 3 or 4 poison. They would do a lot of damage against monsters that way, but to players who carry around cure potions it would not be overly powerful.
<This I might be changed so it won't break when the bard leaves LOS, so it is more like the way it was before powerscrolls.>
This alone will make bards greatly more useful as they'll be able to run multiple fights. This should really help.
What do you think about letting a weakened form of Discordance or Peacemake effect bosses to make them more sought after for big fights?