Quote Originally Posted by SaitoHikari View Post
There'd be even less reason to take a Monk then (Mantra).
You'd still want to take a MNK. The combination of Mantra plus this BRD idea would be strong as hell alone, before you throw in SCH and Eos abilities.

Personally I'd like to see another debuff song, but I can't think of one that wouldn't throw off the balance with Machinists completely. Shame on SE for creating another class that is functionally similar to Bard in terms of support. :/
Only real similarity support wise is the MP/TP regen. MCHs can boost physical DPS (including their own) and magic users (BRD can only do the latter), have a Silence and Stun (BRD only has the former), a Bind and Slow (again, BRD only has the former), and can mitigate physical and magic damage (BRD can do neither). The only things BRD can do that MCH can't is preemptively remove a debuff before it occurs, and aid in healer DPS via Rain of Death (but healers meld to meet acc caps anyway, so this one doesn't really count).

One idea I had was for BRDs to get a counter part to Dismantle/Rend Mind, but instead of applying a debuff to a target you instead apply a buff to the party that reduces incoming damage by x%. Unlike MCHs, which is based on whether the damage is physical/magical, BRDs version would be based on the potency of the incoming damage, so would operate similar to AST's Disable.