Bard or Machinist?

[Eir_Z]

We haven’t talked much about BRD yet... I swap between BRD & MCH fairly frequently, though I prefer the latter because it’s more challenging, but dependent on my skill.

Bard, a lot of the time, feels like playing whack-a-mole with the various procs you’re looking out for. It’s fun and encourages a bit more party cooperation than MCH, but there’s nothing quite like doing everything right and The 12 denying crits on your dots. People complain about machinist having a lot of RNG, but for me, it’s bard.

[Dralonis]

As much as I like how MCH look, I personally think I'm going to wait until 5.0 since I -really- don't like how they play. It's a bit too tedious to maximize their damage and I'm not a huge fan of focusing all my CDs on one ability nearly. Too much work to do it EVERY fight. There might be people who love complex classes (at least, there's a lot of people on the forums who says they do but they don't speak for most of the players), but if you look at it, a lot of people love playing RDM (maybe close to one of the most played classes. At least, probably would be the most played if it was actually good. I think one of the reasons they dont want to buff RDM is so that they would have less people playing RDM's. Same with Samurais. At least, that's what I remember hearing someone mention) and it's one of the easiest classes out there with MCH as the least played class. It isn't just down to style or else I'd easily play MCH over BRD. BRD is my secondary class.

[EdwinLi]

In my personal opinion it up to how you feel fits you the most.

Bard is currently one of the most played Jobs in the game due to being one of the most simplest job to play. MCH is considered the lowest popular played Job, if not the least played Job in the community as a whole, due to how demanding it can be to keep track on both your skill bar and events happening on the screen.

For me MCH seems to be the only Job that keeps making me come back to when playing max level contents since I enjoy it more. The other current jobs are just not making me feel it when it comes to their gameplay. Maybe I may find some new Job to use for endgame in 5.0 assuming they are decent enough to pull my attention away from MCH or maybe I am stuck with MCh for the rest of FF14 life.

[Connor]

As others have said, Bard is more simplistic than Machinist with a much lower skill floor than Machinist (it’s easier to be an ok Bard than an ok Machinist).
It’s worth considering that Machinist is more dps oriented, while Bard is more utility oriented.

Bard is much more popular because of its simplicity as well as the fact that the extra utility it provides is very useful, and it’s dps capabilities still allow it to keep up with the rest of party’s dps. There are definitely less drawbacks to being a Bard, hence why it’s probably the most popular job in the game right now. As far as I’m aware Machinist does deal more damage than Bard, but it’s harder to excel as a Machinist than it is as a Bard.


All things considered though, from my experience they both ultimately provide the same thing beyond the differences mentioned above; they both have a damage up ability, they both have a party defense cooldown and obviously they share role abilities.

Bard is also very in-demand for raiding, whereas there’s still a bit of a stigma attached to Machinist because of its difficulty. Bard isn’t held back by complex dps mechanics, having to manage pets or gauges, has no cast times and no ‘gauss barrel’ like mechanics besides pressing songs every 30 or so seconds. Bard is only ever going to get stronger, so it’s definitely the ‘safer’ option

The best way to know for sure is to try both and see which one you feel is best yourself.

[Rathael]

I have no idea what MCH is like but I've been slowly levelling BRD.

Frankly, coming from BLM DPS perspective, BRD feels more like fighting fire than other classes. Trying to track several cooldowns at once and smash them as soon as they are needed (bloodletter, empyreal, raging, barrage, Pitch perfect if you're in wanderer's, Iron Jaws to keep the Dot's going, Straight Shot buff, Sidewinder)

I am not thrilled with the implementation of the songs. They only make the fire fighting situation worse in two of the three. Furthermore, I just picked up Troubadour and I am having trouble seeing how you can be expected to work this into boss fights without EXTREME forward planning... like knowing exactly what song order to do right from the start of the fight such that you're in the correct song at the correct times.

The songs can be rotated 1 at a time in a cycle of 3, but their cooldowns make it so that once you've decided upon an order, you are fixed into that order for the rest of the fight unless you want to spend a period of the fight with no song up. That means you have to time boss abilities to activate while you are in the song that causes troubadour to give resistance to that ability's damage type.

Honestly I haven't tried max level bard but so far it is extremely chaotic and convoluted. I can see why people think it's "simple" but at the same time It doesn't seem to be. BLM feels a lot more tight and satisfying to me. I feel like the songs could use some heavy reworking. You don't really get much choice with them. They are not empowering you. They are simply forcing you to constantly play 1 of 3 mini-games while trying to pay attention to several other cooldowns.

I've been told tactician gets better in raids, but so far in dungeons it is seemingly useless on most other party members. Only Warriors, Bards (myself) and Paladins to a lesser extent seem to even use TP enough. Obviously both BRD and MCH have Tactician so I guess it's not really part of the discussion, but It was just to add to my current BRD rant.

[PuppytimusLeoroccanz]

BRD rant.

I agree with you, in regards to what you've stated about bard. There's just plenty of things to track, way more than of a Machinist in my opinion.

As for the role skill tactician. Its great and mostly used as tp restore for progression and/or enmity halving/dump since refresh is priceless for healers.

[Dualgunner]

I've been told tactician gets better in raids, but so far in dungeons it is seemingly useless on most other party members. Only Warriors, Bards (myself) and Paladins to a lesser extent seem to even use TP enough. Obviously both BRD and MCH have Tactician so I guess it's not really part of the discussion, but It was just to add to my current BRD rant.

If a TP user doesn't need TP during an AoE pull, they're not AoEing enough. MNK, DRG, NIN, SAM, BRD, MCH and BRD all will burn clean through their TP pools on AoE without good use of tactician and invigorate. I bring this up specifically in response to "tactician is better in raids", where the case can be made that yes, if a physical dps dies its useful, but no, it sees a lot more and better use in dungeons on big pulls.

[george357]

i main both mch and brd the first brd is easy to get a rotation going and use party buffs and dots on targeted boss and the abiltie to avoiding traps is good over all i like this job as for mch the turret is a big help rotation is decent and dots and cross over skills help a lot to help keep up with the party over all a decent job to party with the higher i get in level the better the gear and weapons are for my jobs so yes try out each job and find what you liketo stay with.