Astrologian Speculations! How will it fit in?

[Zaft]

I'm personally tired of hearing "if AST has XYZ then no one will bring WHM or SCH cause of ABC"-- so what? As it is now, a full party can't bring every job along for the ride. Please get used to 1 healer and 1 tank being left out of the picture in 3.0. The sooner you acknowledge this fact, the better.

That's the thing. Look at WoW. Look at Mythic raids. You can only bring 20 people to a Mythic raid. There are 11 classes and 34 specs that you can be. Some people get left out. But that doesn't change the fact that nobody has ever been "HURR NEVER BRINGING X CLASS" since the class/ability revamp in Burning Crusade. Some specs are stronger than others, sure. Resto Druid had a rough spot in early Mists of Pandaria where it wasn't nearly as good as any other healer, but it was still brought to plenty of content, because unless a class is SEVERELY weaker than another, people generally don't care.

[Brightshadow]

That's the thing. Look at WoW. Look at Mythic raids. You can only bring 20 people to a Mythic raid. There are 11 classes and 34 specs that you can be. Some people get left out. But that doesn't change the fact that nobody has ever been "HURR NEVER BRINGING X CLASS" since the class/ability revamp in Burning Crusade. Some specs are stronger than others, sure. Resto Druid had a rough spot in early Mists of Pandaria where it wasn't nearly as good as any other healer, but it was still brought to plenty of content, because unless a class is SEVERELY weaker than another, people generally don't care.

And on top of that healers and tank tend to be harder to find than DPS, so its very unlikely you'll get kicked for being a white mage, and not a scholar (Just an example if White Mage are the weakest healers in 3.0)

However, while we still don't know much about the astrologian; I do believe they should have there own unique healing niche because if they can heal like a white mage, and shield like a scholar what would be the purpose of even adding the job into the game it wouldn't add anything different other than animations. And it would damage the other 2 healers because currently its not a wise idea to bring two of the same healers, but rather one of each; astrologian could potentially be devastating to scholars and white mage.

[Menae]

That's the thing. Look at WoW. Look at Mythic raids. You can only bring 20 people to a Mythic raid. There are 11 classes and 34 specs that you can be. Some people get left out. But that doesn't change the fact that nobody has ever been "HURR NEVER BRINGING X CLASS" since the class/ability revamp in Burning Crusade. Some specs are stronger than others, sure. Resto Druid had a rough spot in early Mists of Pandaria where it wasn't nearly as good as any other healer, but it was still brought to plenty of content, because unless a class is SEVERELY weaker than another, people generally don't care.

People at the bleeding edge care a lot and will absolutely stack good classes/specs in WoW or any other game. It's less likely that groups will stack as much in FFXIV because of the LB penalty, but some will certainly be inclined to PREFER classes over one another, and that attitude can and will bleed down into the prejudices of less talented free companies. I'm not arguing that it'll kill game balance or anything, but it can affect what FCs are looking for. You might have to parse slightly better as one class to make it in. As Brightshadow alluded to, this is less prevalent for healers (and parsing as a healer isn't really a thing anyway), but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Also, to rebut: the "fact" that nobody has ever been "HURR NEVER BRINGING X CLASS" in WoW has abso-freaking-lutely not been a fact. People say it all the time; it's usually for poorly performing melee specs. Come to think of it, that was during and before BC too. WoW's never been very good about melee.