Can I stay Archer?

[DeafJohn]

New player here, going on about 15 days now, so much information its difficult to process.

I was wondering if I stay as Archer am I gimping myself? Am I supposed to switch to bard or machinist with a soul gem?

I enjoy both gathering and crafting professions, pretty much my new favorite thing ever. I do not care for dungeons, raids, pvp, or anything else really. Only need a disciple of war to farm mobs for skins, bat wings, and the (personally hated) main story quest.

Everything seems great now, not sure once I get past level 50. Just want to role play a self reliant hunter.

[Eclipse12187]

Bard is the “natural progression” from archer in this game, you’d be lowering your damage output however by staying as an archer. Not to mention past level 50 you will not learn any new skills since they’re tied to job quests.

[DPZ2]

You can't take up machinist until you get to the Heavensward expansion, which will require you to play through the main story quest. You shouldn't pursue the main story quest past level 30 without equipping the Bard soul gem (or, pick another class to try out).

You are seriously hobbling yourself by not going for the Bard job at level 30.

Now then, if what you want to do is role-play as a self-reliant hunter, go ahead and role-play. You can still do that even if you equip the Bard soul. Role-play is a separate thing from leveling through the main story. Dungeons and trials are going to be a thing, but you only need to do them once.

Good luck.

[Jeeqbit]

You should switch to Bard. Don't worry, it doesn't really become about music. The music serves as a "buff" while doing supernatural archery.

It's not like how when Rogues become Ninjas a lot of the focus goes on their mudras and they stop feeling like a Rogue. Bards just feel like really good Archers.

[cheolsu]

Sure you can stay archer. You’ll annoy people if you run dungeons with them, so might want to work on bard too. But whenever it’s just you, you don’t have to use that soul gem.

But, if you don’t mind people telling you to unlock bard, you can run dungeons as archer too.

[Brightamethyst]

Am I supposed to switch to bard or machinist with a soul gem?

Classes don't switch to jobs. They upgrade to them. Bard is an extension of archer, not a completely different class.

A soul crystal is basically just piece of gear that gives a class you more stats and spells when they equip it. A bard is still an archer. It gains archer exp and has all the archer skills and traits. It just also has songs and a silly hat. There is literally no reason to ever stay as a class after level 30.

[Naoki34]

New player here, going on about 15 days now, so much information its difficult to process.

I was wondering if I stay as Archer am I gimping myself? Am I supposed to switch to bard or machinist with a soul gem?

I enjoy both gathering and crafting professions, pretty much my new favorite thing ever. I do not care for dungeons, raids, pvp, or anything else really. Only need a disciple of war to farm mobs for skins, bat wings, and the (personally hated) main story quest.

Everything seems great now, not sure once I get past level 50. Just want to role play a self reliant hunter.

If you want to get kicked out of all the PvE content, do it.

[Anhra]

I do wish that Archer would have a alternative Jobpath which would be called Ranger with a focus on deployable traps or having some sort of shortsword for melee atracks, but Squeenix seems to care more about homogenisation than all else, because lord forbid if any Job has anything unique on it.

[Iscah]

Am I supposed to switch to bard or machinist with a soul gem?

While you've had plenty of answers by now about needing to upgrade archer to bard, I haven't seen anyone touch on the other half of this directly.

Machinist doesn't have any link to archer/bard besides sharing equipment. It doesn't have a base class like archer; you just equip the gun and immediately have the soul gem equipped as well.