Admittedly haven’t tried bard itself yet, but I’ve got access to all those spells on Gale, and I find a well-placed fireball usually ends up being the better choice. The main problem i have is that I almost never saw those conditions last for even one turn, they would just pass a save and it was like the spell might as well have just missed.
It’s a little frustrating, because surely there must be value in using those spells… But I’m definitely not doing it correctly when I try them out.
For what it’s worth I played tactician mode right from the start, which probably colored my learning curve a bit