Hello, so, I have been playing Bard since 2.0 came out, and it is a class I always loved to play and the need for mp regen from healers was kinda the reason why Bard existed and why they would be brought to raids.

With 3.0 a lot of changes were made to Bard, slowing them down from easily moving and doing abilities and forcing them to time their abilities more than just spam them. While I hated this, with time I got used to this gameplay and it doesn't bother me too much.

With reaching Alexander 3 Savage, I noticed that bard doesn't really helps a whole lot when it comes to crowd control, their bind is useless in almost every enemy in this type of content, their silence while it can interrupt the speed buff from the bigger slimes, it has a very long cooldown.

So I decided to level up machinist, and last night I got to level 50 and noticed that machinist is a lot better option than a Bard would be for most parties. Their damage is close to the same, machinist brings MP and TP regens, silence, bind, but also, they bring damage reduction, stun and heavy.

It simply feels that Bards are slowly losing their usefulness because of these other classes who can use the same abilities, but also bring some extras.

I won't even say anything about the groups out there who opt to not have a Bard or Machinist at all because they are not needed, lowest DPS when compared to all other DPS classes, and their healers do not need the MP regen or Astrologian's mp refresh (even if bound to RNG) is enough to provide them mp when needed.

Anyway my post is just pointing out some things I have experienced as a Bard and new Machinist, please review the class and compare it with the other classes that share the same role as they do.

Also, now that I brought up Astrologian, you should also review their performance in pvp, instant stoneskins and heals are kinda too good in fights where moving around can make a big difference between living or dying. SCH had instant heals with lustrate, but they are limited to their Aetherflow stacks which drain out pretty fast when multiple targets are being hit.