Super TP intensive to go runestaff pre-cap. I'd go shield/brawl, maybe drop your dodge down a little to get 2x shield and 2x brawl. If you're not getting forced to higher stances, 2x brawl was more DS than 2x shield. In higher stances 2x shield was higher than 2x brawl. At cap my best DS config before hitting 10mil XP was 2x brawl, 2x shield, 50 dodge, 100 bard & 30 MnE.
Sonic Runestaff is nice once you are post-cap like 15-18mil XP, but it's a lot of TPs. My bard also still has 0 CM because CM training was not greater than dodge training and more expensive than perception. Since bards do have DS issues it was better to get the dodge ranks and focus on DS while gaining SMR defense at the same time. CM will happen post-cap IMO. My 1st priority will probably be 2x spells though I might ditch that and pick up 1x CMAN before finishing spells... we'll have to see what the potential bard review looks like.
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