Bard or Machinists

[Vicus]

I played a paladin and warrior to 50 and completed up to titan before I had to quit due to real life reasons. I wish to come back with the expansion and play more of a support role. My wife is a White mage and moves the class so my question is: which will be more friendly to a wm? I've only been able to do a little research but it seems like one buffs the group while the other debuffs the mob? That sound about right?

I like the way bards look and play but I like the idea that playing a machinist will be new to fresh and not as many people playing it. Also is the game saturated with bards or are they kinda rare?

Last question ...I completed the Ultima group mission and did I frit ..titan and the wind boss...is that far enough into the story to unlock machinist at launch?

Thanks

[Arkane]

To your question about progress to play machinist no sorry you have to do more you have to complete all main story line quest to access hw. So that includes the new jobs, the main story line will take you to all primals shiva being your last you gave to do. Then you will have to do steps of faith which will be the last trail in the 2.0 story.

[AskaRay]

Why not both?

I'm gonna play MST when it comes out, but I'll still main my bard. Bards are always needed in endgame, so... no one knows about machinist yet.

[Anova]

To me, both will apply buffs and debuffs. Bard is very well known for their ability to buff mp regen (great for white mage in general) and debuff enemy magic defense (great for black mages and white mage holy spam). The only difference is that the buffs/debuffs move with the bard, whereas machinst places stationary turrets for their buffs/debuffs.

If you want to be unique, you're out of luck. Bards are the most popular dps class. This might change in the future though since everyone's going to be trying out the new jobs when the expansion hits. Sticking with bard might make you an outlier in that regard. Also, Bard players are likely to split between Bard and Machinist as their favorite. Try both out and see which one you prefer. Bards and Machinists will be competing with each other for slots in static groups and premades, but it shouldn't be bad.

The way the game is designed, new jobs require you to talk to the associated job npc to unlock. This is true for rogue/ninja, who requires players to visit Limsa Lominsa to unlock it. If you start in Ul'dah, you don't get to unlock it until lv.15, whereas players starting in Limsa can unlock at 10 (when they can class change). Considering the job npcs for the new classes are in Ishgard, you will have to find a way to get in to Ishgard without completing the 2.5 story first.

It might be possible if a friend flies you there through some unexpected backdoor, but you will not be able to walk through the front door. In other words, you're relying on a glitch or bug to get in to Ishgard before completing the story (which does have some pretty big spoilers). Given SE's QA department and the game's previous history with a lack of QA (remember 1.0), I don't expect that backdoor to be easy to find.

[Zamii]

It might be possible if a friend flies you there through some unexpected backdoor, but you will not be able to walk through the front door. In other words, you're relying on a glitch or bug to get in to Ishgard before completing the story (which does have some pretty big spoilers)..

from a dev standpoint, its extremely simple to program countermeasures to ensure this isnt possible, such as if you enter a zone marked as Heavensward, it could compare to your account to see if you should have access, and if not simply kick you back to your recall point for example, along with notify a GM about your action.
basic version is, if you try to backdoor your way into heavensward, all your gonna end up with is a banned account.

[Vicus]

I'm not going to try to backdoor the devs lol. It does sound like I will just have to play my paladin or just reexperience it all again on my bard thou. Thanks for the information

[Zophar]

See, the great thing is, both jobs will use the same gear, so you can effectively keep both up to snuff with very little extra effort. I personally plan on doing both, and just using whichever one feels right at the time.

[Sarynth]

Going off of what zophar said I'd play brd and get gear for it now because most if not all gear between bard and machinist will be shared. (Screenshot of machinist in bard high allagan is out there somewhere)

[Tharian]

@Vicus: Truthfully we don't really know what the ultimate differences between Bard and Machinist are all going to be. We know SOME of the Machinists abilities and so far it looks like the Machinist will be more of a Debuff class like you said. However since we don't yet know everything that the Machinist is able to do, we can't be 100% certain that this will hold out to be true.

I would also like to point out that the Bard is going to be losing a really HUGE aspect of its support capabilities in Heavensward when it loses the Healer Limit Break. Instead it will be using a DPS-oriented Limit Break from Heavensward forward, which while that seems all well and good, it will limit the Bard's usefulness in certain situations.

As for which is actually more friendly to a White Mage? Well, they both get an ability that regenerates the MP of the party. However the Bard's version of that ability is going to be slightly stronger than the Machinist, so looking at it purely from the perspective of supporting the White Mage, the Bard will be the better class, hands down. The Bard also has an ability that increases the amount of damage magic-based attacks do; unfortunately the Bard can only use one or the other of these two abilities at a time, not both simultaneously.

As far as your second question, no, that is not far enough into the story to unlock the Machinist. You have to have completed the storyline that was released in Patch 2.55, which is significantly AFTER the bosses you said you have completed. Of the bosses you mentioned, the one that I believe is the furthest along is from something like 2.2 I think (don't quote me on that).

I will state that the Machinist draws its Cross-Class abilities from both the Archer (Bard) and the Lancer (Dragoon), so it would probably be a very good idea to max both Archer's and Lancer's levels out as it is possible that when we get access to level 60 we may be able to gain higher level Cross-Class skills, even though the number of Cross-Class slots won't be going up. At the very least if you plan on leveling Machinist you need both Archer and Lancer to be level 34 to gain access to all of the currently available Cross-Class skills.

[RiceisNice]

...

No one ever brings in a bard for healer LB exclusively, you're overexaggerating the usefulness of a healer LB (when it's arguably pretty garbage in most circumstances).

Both can bring something to the table that makes them worthy of a raid slot; Bards have their stronger song regen (at the cost of damage), while machinists do not suffer as big of a damage penalty in exchange for their weaker regens. Machinists also have more debuffs at their disposal to help mitigate damage with weapon break/mind shot.