New Job: Wild Speculations Inside.

[Kirin]

They could also use the XII set: Belias, Famfrit, Mateus, Hashmal, Chaos, etc.

Their use of the Zodiac could correlate with the 12 gods that currently exist. Might not be that far fetched...

[Reve]

I love SMN, but there is nothing I hate more than the Ivalice Summons.

[Kirin]

I love SMN, but there is nothing I hate more than the Ivalice Summons.

How could you hate on Lich? And those summon quotes!

Please bring back poorly translated summoning chants!

[Lonely]

They could work BST in pretty easily. Make it the second level 30 job for Maurader. Don't give it charm and all that nonsense. Give it a call ability for established pets gained via subquest and such. For parties keep the tanking capabilities and give them a hate swap ability and let their pets get a powerful cover ability to protect mages. Likely give them 1handed axes + shield over 2h Axe to seperate it from Warrior.

[Gokulo]

I don't think they're going to change weapons like that for jobs.

[Makwa]

They could work BST in pretty easily. Make it the second level 30 job for Maurader. Don't give it charm and all that nonsense. Give it a call ability for established pets gained via subquest and such. For parties keep the tanking capabilities and give them a hate swap ability and let their pets get a powerful cover ability to protect mages. Likely give them 1handed axes + shield over 2h Axe to seperate it from Warrior.

Heh, I had that thought the other day. Hell have the Marauder's guild point you to a famous Marauder that invented the technique with his pet Opo-Opo, Bubbles.(>_>)
And I dunno, it'd make sense to make one-handed weapons for 2H classes, but only if they slap great swords onto Gladiator for a DRK unlock.... Might help if they do decide to go the route of 2 jobs a class. Of course, this is just speculation anyway. Besides, what the hell kind of second job would a Lancer get anyway? Can't think of anything besides Templar that would use spears.

[Grey Jorildyn]

DRK is better suited to branch off MRD and giving it GLA and LNC as subjobs. Bloodbath, and all those HP cost abilities would make for a good DRK in the end. The issue really lies in the traits that come with the classes, and is a big reason I want classes to cal at 30 then branch then jobs to acquire their own abilties AND their own traits. As is, anything branching off GLA that doesn't use a shield and tanks will have a bunch of wasted traits. RDM could do well there though, especially if designed as a nice offtank, but in that capacity it will butt heads with jobs like WAR. The whole thing is a clusterfuck when you think it through over a long period of time. Here's hoping 2.0 fixes that.

[Manako]

DRK is better suited to branch off MRD and giving it GLA and LNC as subjobs. Bloodbath, and all those HP cost abilities would make for a good DRK in the end. The issue really lies in the traits that come with the classes, and is a big reason I want classes to cal at 30 then branch then jobs to acquire their own abilties AND their own traits. As is, anything branching off GLA that doesn't use a shield and tanks will have a bunch of wasted traits. RDM could do well there though, especially if designed as a nice offtank, but in that capacity it will butt heads with jobs like WAR. The whole thing is a clusterfuck when you think it through over a long period of time. Here's hoping 2.0 fixes that.

Yup, just give them scythes only as a weapon to stick with the theme it does seem more suitable. Can make gladiator have beastmaster thematically seeing as it could make sense to have gladiators train monsters to fight for them in the arena. Whips would be necessary though!

[Alkar]

DRK makes a lot more sense if it comes from GLA. Remove daggers from it and add Great Swords and you're good to go.

[Milo]

DRK is better suited to branch off MRD and giving it GLA and LNC as subjobs. Bloodbath, and all those HP cost abilities would make for a good DRK in the end. The issue really lies in the traits that come with the classes, and is a big reason I want classes to cal at 30 then branch then jobs to acquire their own abilties AND their own traits. As is, anything branching off GLA that doesn't use a shield and tanks will have a bunch of wasted traits. RDM could do well there though, especially if designed as a nice offtank, but in that capacity it will butt heads with jobs like WAR. The whole thing is a clusterfuck when you think it through over a long period of time. Here's hoping 2.0 fixes that.

I've been meaning to touch upon this topic for a while, I think it'd fit in here better than making a whole new thread.

So... branching job trees. For instance, having the jobs Bard AND Ranger unlockable for Archer. So, in theory, Archer would be used for more solo/low-man content where individual survival skills are more important. Alternately, the player could choose to develop Bard and/or Ranger for situations in which more team support or higher DPS is needed. I like this idea in theory, but it makes me a little hesitant. It already feels a little strange to me that you could potentially level up ARC to 50 before unlocking BRD, and you would already be a level 50 BRD. Sure there will be quests to unlock abilities and gear for BRD, but you've just gained access to a 'new' job without having to level it up. I think this system is interesting and seems to work pretty well, but where might it go from here?

Say a level 50 ARC unlocks BRD and (hypothetically) RNG on the same day. The devs would want to create BRD and RNG to be similar to ARC in that they are ranged attackers, but they would want to make them all different from eachother to preserve an identity for each one. So how is this ARC going to know how to play these new jobs with completely different play styles that they have just unlocked, already at level 50? Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of eliminating unnecessary level grinding but it seems like a strange situation even to have a level 50 ARC/BRD, and suddenly unlock a brand new level 50 RNG.

So I started thinking, maybe job branching would happen a different way? Maybe in order to unlock RNG (again, I am making this job up) you would need to have ARC at level 40 and MRD at level 30, or some such combination. This way newer jobs could be unlocked at a low level and need to be raised up a bit to get a feel for how they work. Honestly, sometimes I loved the feeling of 'starting fresh' at level 1 with a new job that I was really excited about in FFXI. But would this be a class or a job being unlocked? This brings about a bunch of other questions and complications that I think would be challenging to implement and understand.

So I think the simplest route might be to just keep the 1 job per class design. Perhaps to take it a step further in the future, classes could be fleshed out a bit more and given their own unique abilities and equipment like jobs have. (I think they mentioned that this type of thing would show up in the future?) So, instead of requiring a split job tree from ARC to BRD and RNG, just focusing on Archer and Bard would pretty much cover the spectrum of ranged attackers who use a bow.

I'm not sure which way they are going to go with this, but for some reason I'm that worried. I feel like they could take any of these approaches and make something interesting out of it, I'm just overthinking all of this because I'm feeling a little procrastinatey and I love talking about job concepts. Lemme know what you guys think!

[Makwa]

I'd prefer a "branching" concept really. Gives each class a different form of play if they wish. Don't really know, classes seem so...unneeded save for a few situations, and people only level them for the job. Making a brand new class for say, DRK would seem unneeded, when GLD or MRD could just use GS/Scythe as a sub-weapon, like CNJ or THM with 1H/2H weapons. I thought I read somewhere that in 2.0 abilities might change for classes, like either adding new ones or reworking existing ones? I remember hearing he wanted to re-add enfeebling magic though.

[vadre]

I don't see the point of 1 job per class at all. If that's the case, just slap the new names over the old classes and be done with it. The point of jobs is that they effectively become talent trees for the classes. In WoW a druid could level to 85 as a cat and then switch to a healer spec easily enough. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to suck ass, and WoW has far, FAR more spec-specific skills and nuances than FFXIV's selection looks to have.

The way I'd like it to work out in future would be like this, using Arcanist as an example and an addition job of MY LIKING (a lot):

1) -Unlock arcanist via a quest or whatever -> Level arcanist to 30 with a broad selection of skills including pet/familiar (summoning from texts or some lore BS) and position-based spells such as gravity field, some DPS field etc. These skills would effectively play off the positional playstyle originally outlined.

2) Unlock quests at 30 telling you about your potential specialities and additional class levels required (In this case, Summoner might be + Conjurer, and time mage might be + thaumaturge.. or something).

3) Complete the quests, now you have 2 jobs (obviously there could be more). Summoner locks out some of the positional skills of Arcanist in exchange for more pet skills and Time mage locks out pet summoning in exchange for more powerful buffs/debuffs/damage positional spells (haste field, slow field, stop field, demi field, COMET FIELDjustsayin).

The result would be that jobs feel significantly departed from each other and their root class. The class provides obvious benefits of a broader skill selection for low mans etc, and by having a selection of the basic skills of each job it gives players an early preview of their playstyles they'll experience later on.

TL;DR = Jobs are like talents, switching between them wont cause too many derps. Give classes more skills relevant to future jobs, but lock out ones irrelevant to the selected job when using it.

[Makwa]

I like that idea. Pretty much how I was thinking it could be.

[Gokulo]

God, can't wait for SMN reveal, don't fail on the AF S-E!

[Polux]

What do you think the job requirements will be for DRK? I think marauder with thaumaturge makes the most sense. Some said gladiator but I don't think so, only because gladiator has too many tanking abilities. I think just making scythes for DRK only would make sense too when they eventually make the class.

What do you guys think?

[Gokulo]

Who says that we will ever get DRK

[Grey Jorildyn]

No need for them to have THM sub. Sharing any basic black magic spells is ghetto. They ought to have MRD as a base class and get GLA and LNC subjobs (but would prolly get PGL for mp recovery instead, bleh). DRK should get class-specific spells like PLD got with succor and avoid crap like fire and blizzard which won't help anything. Stun comes to mind but so does a spell like Dark to combo with.

[Osmosisdave]

Need THF base class so we can have NIN job!

[miokomioko]

The only thing that gets my partially excited about the idea of an eventual melee/mage hybrid (rdm/drk/blu/etc.) is having weaponskills and spells in the same combo line. That sounds fun for some reason.

[Elcura]

Need THF base class so we can have NIN job!

You didn't think this through.