@NaClKnight There are some boss fights in the early game which benefit greatly from being able to deal elemental damage. Without it, you need higher level characters to do enough damage to finish those fights because of counter-attacks or attrition. Byblos is one of them, here's the entry for that boss on the new Four Job Fiesta wiki. As noted, Monk at least gets the command Focus (noted with an ! at the start), but it takes longer to execute than a normal attack.
@NaClKnight There are a few bosses in the early game which Bard can use a song to cause the stop status on, but it either doesn't last long on those or the boss fights happen before that job becomes available.
Bard is going to be able to make my other characters really strong in the late game, with songs that consume their actions, but increases the party's stats while they sing them. Bard also lets you do silly things with !Hide, such as this video by BorealRobin.