Is it okay to stay an archer?

And not advance into Bard, or will I just be gimping the character?

You'll be gimping your character and party. The soulstone alone adds quite a bit to your primary stat, you won't have access to your songs to restore party MP or TP, and you won't have access to your relic or AF/Mythology gear

Having said that though, you're still free to do whatever you wish when you're solo though, it's just the Job adds far too much benefit to your base class in a party - think of your Job not as a separate 'class', but rather just an extension of it (the Job has all of the class's abilities after all and uses the same weapon, it just specializes in that class's strengths).

Surprisingly, the issue isn't whether or not BRD or ARC is better than the other. I think it just boils down to the Soul Crystal being a great piece of equipment, and BRD has no drawbacks for an ARC.

Since ARC cannot "wear" a Soul Crystal without being a BRD, that makes BRD better.

I think BRD actually has a number of drawbacks when you are soloing but it is much better for parties. I swap back and forth depending on what I am doing.

I leveled an ARC to 50 and though I switched to BRD for groups it was rarely useful and the ARC got more useful cross-class skills than BRD, especially for solo leveling.

I just don't 'get' BRD based on ARC, seems to me there's little similarity in the traditional 'bard' concept and an archer, I much preferred BRD in FFXI where they had an entirely different and class-unique playstyle to the RNG.

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Originally Posted by wannabesuperman

BRD has no drawbacks for an ARC.

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Many ARCs would dissagree with that - and that's valid for any other Class vs. Job (dis-)advantages - as while being job / having soul crystal equppied you have only half of the possible crossclass skill slots and those are much more limited than on basic class. Those are however mainly usefull in solo or when running with nonstandard parties.

I beg to differ. While it's true you get more crossclass options, how many of those are very useful, especially outside of what bed can use?

In addition, you take a major hit to your stats. Switching to the job gives a stat boost on its own, and a lot of the easier endgame gear like artifact and relic equipment are job exclusive.

Simply put if you want to do coil Bard is a must. Very doubtful any groups would take an archer
Some cross classes i did miss but you get used to it.

There are 0 solo encounters at-or-below level or endgame encounters where you can say you "needed" Stoneskin, Foresight, Bloodbath, Fracture, Provoke, Awareness, Protect, Cure/Physick, Raise, Swiftcast, Virus, E4E, Flash, SavageBlade/SkullSunder, or Mercy Stroke as an Archer. If you want to argue the point, you're delusional or being lazy about unlocking BRD. But feel free to come up with a scenario where you legitimately think any of those matter. Even if you do not use songs as a BRD (which is also lazy, if nothing else do Requiem for proactive healers), you're missing nothing from the extra Archer cross-classes.