The gith patral is a difficult encounter irrespective of class, I think. I have learned not to take Lae'zel there, in order to have more control of the situation.
Since this is my first tactician-run and so I cannot compare apples to apples, what I'm about to say might not be entirely relevant, but:
I don't remember exactly if I had her there on both my previous runs (both on balanced), but I'm pretty sure I did at least once. I don't recall this encounter ever being *this* hard and, well, short. First attempt I didn't even know *what* they did to Lae'zel, but she was simply laying around prone and incapacitated until fight's end (I didn't bother reading the log). Plus these guys all have action surge IIRC, they do concentrate their fire pretty smartly and they do use those nasty bone-chill arrows. To top it all off, they all seemed to have higher initiative than any of my guys (whose initiative isn't all *that* bad for level 5 characters).
In any case: I had to re-load because they were simply massacring me during the first round, often, as mentioned, without me even being able to get any turns in. And if I did get a turn, at least one of my dudes was either downed already or very near to it. On my fourth attempt (I think) Lae'zel saved the initial attacks on her and she didn't get hit too hard, so she was available when it was my turn. The funny thing was that having her available, this almost felt like it was scripted, because she was able to take out two of the enemies in a single turn and all of her attacks had real crappy chances to hit (like 55% max... possibly lower). But all her hits did connect, each one dealt a lot of damage and then the fight was much easier to win. I didn't even use a Potion of Speed or Haste on her. Like I said: It almost felt as if because Lae'zel was available in the fight (and not incapacitated), the game *let* me win this one for some reason. Of course: Could've just been near lottery-jackpot-winning luck on my part..
In any case: I think I'll do what you suggested and just stick with my current play-style. I'll probably visit Withers to correct my mistake from the lvl 4 level-up, but I'll keep my Tav more or less as is for now, hoping for moar powaa through future level-ups. Being able to regain Bardic Inspiration after a short rest should help quite a bit already, but I haven't done much combat since I acquired that trait at level 5.
From what I've read, I should probably stop leveling Bard at level 8 (IIRC) and branch out into fighter? I haven't done multi-classing in any of my previous runs (don't really like the idea), but I might try it on this play-through.
S.
