Yeah, you have a good point about Mage's Ballad there. I think the problem here is just me, and not the class. Bard is held as the premier support job in the game for good reason-they bring downtime to pretty much nothing. Some people at other forums have gone as far as to say they might even be *too* good, but that's open for debate. Conversely, white mages *are* the downtime. Parties never wait for anyone but the whm.

I've tried Warrior, Thief, Red Mage, and Monk through the early levels of soloing (about level 5), and decided they weren't for me. I immediately unlocked Bard on reaching 30, and I took the class to around 13, and decided that I liked main healing more than support. What had drawn me to Bard initially was that I wouldn't be the reason parties stop to rest. That's my biggest grief with being a WHM. I'm the only limit to a party's chaining ability.

I had levelled summoner too, and lost interest for several reasons. One was that I felt inadequate not pt'ing with all the spells I'm capable of. As a whm, I never partied with anything less than every spell possible, plus the spells for the levels I hoped to gain in my inventory. As a summoner, I had Carbuncle, Earth, Fire, Wind, Ice and Water. That's not even half the spells a summoner could potentially have at my level (13). I was a gimp by my own definition. I was like a white mage that didn't have all the cure spells.