monk vs bard, new player questions

[Shirai]

and 2nd or 3rd best AoE dps

I am going to debate this part, while monks are able to do AoE damage we're long from second best, I'd even say we're last on that scale.
Especially between the DPS roles.

Our AoE potential comes in burst and is highly restricted by cooldowns where pretty much any other DPS role can AoE whenever they want with the only restrction being their TP/MP.