I don't get how you can stretch shared abilities to gear. I think they are more or less talking about how bard and machinist are mainly bow/gun mages and follow some of the same general rules as black mage and summoner. You might end up losing internal release and blood for blood. However, that doesn't mean that they won't replace it with something else altogether. They may even give machinist and bard a new TP regeneration skill. Or maybe not and those skills will still be shared, somehow. In my honest opinion, their buffs should be trimmed down just a little bit and offer buffs to their skills instead to help offset the loss of buffs.

I wonder if bard would get swiftcast? Their songs are listed as spells; I wouldn't mind seeing something along the lines of a swiftcast Foe's Requiem. They already got a 45 second cooldown esuna that prevents and removes a debuff.