The Bard

Definitely - the 10s cooldown on a misclick is rough. This feels like a bug, and should definitely be 5s.

All barding skills having a 5s cooldown is probably a different discussion. I'd definitely be for it, but I could see how people could be against this change.

While we're on the topic of Provocation bugs, if you try to provoke a pet onto a monster (pet is first target, monster is second) you will get a message along the lines of 'They are too loyal to their master to do that". However, if you swap the order so that the monster is the first target and the pet is the second, it works. (this is actually really useful for managing aggro or preventing monsters from running when low on health)

Guess that should probably go in the bug forum rather than here. I'll get pictures tonight.

Theres another very similar bug with provo as well. When you try to target a boss mob such as a beholder, you will get a sysmessage along the lines of "You have no chance of provoking that creature", however, if you target another mob first (such as another spawned elder gazer), you can provo onto the beholder with a low success chance. Seems like you should be getting the same chance regardless of the order of operation.

I'll add this in for the thread you create as well.

This is "working as intended" - or at the very least the same mechanic was in use on production shards at some point or the other (unless my memory is playing major tricks on me).
'may seem a bit non-sensical to make a distinction, but if your pets still follow commands (somewhat) as the second target, then that's possibly the difference. As first target, the owner probably wouldn't have any sort of control over them for the duration of the skill's effect.
That aside, even without a mechanical difference, I like the concept. Tamed pets should be loyal to their master. Someone else shouldn't be able to assume control over them directly. If a bard provokes a monster to attack the pets and they fight back - well, that's the natural course of events, more or less. There's a causal difference between the two cases, as far as I am concerned.

I think this is because, in effect, you're not actually provoking the second monster. You're provoking the first monster to attack the second monster.

On other shards, I think you would provoke the two monsters onto each other. So when your provocation was successful, *both* of them would dart towards each other and start swinging.

Here, my observation has been that when you provoke two monsters, it's only the first one that beelines for the second. So if the second is already engaged, it typically doesn't respond.

I have no idea what is appropriate to the era, but if this is the intended functionality, I actually like the way it works.

Thanks for the clarification on the earlier 1s patch timer. In regards to this, he's not talking about someone else, he's talking about provoking your own tames. If they are loyal to their master, their master (you) should be able to provoke them in either direction if you can at all.