Are Archery Valor Bards any Good?

[Man_Over_Game]

But if you want to create a party with maximal options and problem solving ability and good damage, it's one of your better bets for filling the "ranged damage dealer"-spot you really do want in every rounded party (up there alongside a few different Warlocks and Bladesinger; though it's of course less difficult to fill the role otherwise with Summon Celestial on the table for Cleric now). It's a decent damage dealer throughout its career by all accounts (though again Swords is better mostly due to having Flourishes especially to cover the Tier 2 where Valor Bard lacks a good buff and the base boosters for the Extra Attack, and Valor Inspiration buffs being not-so-amazing [though the AC buff can be great at times]) and scales up like casters in general, rather than down like martials.

But indeed, when evaluating it, one has to of course evaluate it as a caster with solid at-will, rather than pure at-will character: it always has the option of just casting a big spell that can turn the encounter on its head for especially Tier 1 and 2, which is generally going to do more to make a hard encounter easy than damage novas (with some exceptions: something like Demilich you just want to damage nova ASAP if you happen to have magical weapons). It's going to be a great damage dealer on very high levels due to the stupidly powerful spells that occur in Tier 3 and 4, but on the way there it's not going to be dealing as much damage as a Battlemaster at all points (though it's not far behind anything else - damage spells like Hex can of course be Fey-Touched for if that's the way he wants to go though given how feat heavy archery is, that may not be optimal) but he's going to be dealing very relevant damage at superb range (being a good chassis to stack buffs on if needed too) while still casting all sorts of great stuff.

My thought-process was "Well, how often does your Bard cast a cantrip?". Then replace that cantrip with 20 damage.

Taking a lesson from the old Bladesinger, putting Extra Attack on a Full Caster doesn't make the Full Casting any less important, even if our human minds are convinced otherwise (fallacies and all that).

It could even be easily fixed by just taking a few levels into Rogue or Fighter or something, but any full-casting Bard is going to be a waste if they aren't planning on leveraging their primary class features as a main tool.

Magical Secrets and Elemental Weapon for a Bard to enhance himself is probably one of the most wasteful strategies I've heard of. That's not because they deal much less damage than a Fighter or something, but because a Bard's talents could be used for so much more than a +2-or-whatever attack bonus on themselves (as they proceed to actually attack maybe 2 rounds in what remains of that fight). Might as well go EK+Wizard by that point, at least you'll have some synergies for that playstyle.

From my experience, the go-to strategy most folks go for with Valor Bards and bows is with Greater Steed. Get a flying mount and just shoot at people from afar, and resist retaliation against your Concentration spells that harass the enemy. You'd get a lot more value as a flying mage than you would a sniping bard.