I have seen defiant gear as high as 70. Not sure if there is something above that. I really like the bard for the third slot because of the versatility. You can do all your pulls with the bard and not need to use coth. Should you get a bad pull the bard has the aggro drop AA to reset the pull. With the improvements to /melody you can melee the crap out stuff, sing your songs and only worry about mob push/positioning (from the tanks view).