I know Bards here are different than Bards on Live, but I believe as far as twisting songs and/or kiting goes, this probably still applies.
For Kiting, you usually want runspeed/regen as Julon said... because you have to be able to out-run the mobs... and if/when you get hit a couple times, you'll want to regen it. So, it's nice here on SoD because you put them in your melody and you don't have to twist them. So, kiting becomes: set those two in your melody, and twist your two DoTs.
The changes to Bards here are both good and bad for the Bard (power-wise). You can only use two detrimentals so, you only ever have to twist two songs... as a Bard who consistently twisted 4, and sometimes (with longer pulse songs) could have 5 song effects going at once on Live, this should be much easier. Playing a Bard 'instinctively' becomes an art and requires an actual rhythm. That is to say, you learn how long it takes from the time you push a button to start singing a song and when the song hits and you can start the next song. I don't mean you sit and count, but you get a 'feel' for it. With just two songs, it should be easy to time in such a way where neither of the songs fades. This really comes with practice.
The things that are easier/better about Bards here than when I played Live (I think Live has a /melody now too, actually) are that you don't have to twist beneficials, some things that WERE songs (mez's, etc) are now spells so you can use them without having to twist them in as well, and while being limited to 2 detrimentals isn't that great, it keeps your twisting to a minimum which is good.
The things that seem to be harder/worse about Bards here are, as noted above you can only twist 2 detrimentals... so instead of twisting 3 Tuyens, you only get 2... You cannot kite 40+ mobs around like you could on Live... That is both bad and good... Bad because the exp from dropping 40+ dark blue/white/yellow/red mobs all at the same time without taking any damage was SICK SICK SICK... but, if you cut a turn too close and got knicked/stunned, you were dead in less than one 'round'.
As far as solo melee goes, yeah, that's going to get progressively harder and unless twinked, you won't do it much longer. In a group, I looked at what we had and where we were fighting. I was in a group the other night where the Bard made a HUGE difference while doing very little damage himself... we had like 2 pallys, 2 sks, a monk and a bard or something like that... Bard played haste song, and that rocked because we were mostly melee. If you're playing in a zone with lotsa casters, perhaps a resist song is the way to go, at least until you get mana song. If you're in a mixed group of melees and casters and fighting physical mobs, maybe your regen song and haste (or mana song if you have it by then), etc. That was always my favorite part of playing on Live... I had different spell sets for different kinds of groups, solo swarm kiting (charming 1, getting aggro of all others on it, then when your pet is about to die, breaking charm, killing it, charming another one, sending it in, etc... at least that's what was swarm kiting on our server/eqdiva forums), ae kiting (dragging however many mobs i could find that didn't summon, snare or root around and killing all at once), etc... it was a blast having all those different play abilities... I was a good puller 'cause I could lull, range-hit, mez adds, and bring to group a snared, slowed single-pull... I was good for general CC 'cause I could keep 3 mobs pretty reliably mezzed... I was an augmenter where I didn't do much damage myself, casters and melees alike got much stronger when I was around, and I had hide, sneak and track so I could scout when need be too.
Anyway, I love(d) Bards... haven't truly given one a try on this server yet though I may well do so.
