5.0 leaks (that I don't believe)

[Kalise]

The only notable change to DRK would be needing Blood Price to lock out Blood Weapon and vice versa, if they even want to go that route. It's already better to stagger them as it is.
Anything that relied on emnity from tank stances can gain higher emnity modifiers to compensate and anything that specifically was meant for DPS stance is likely what would be adjusted anyways, given what the meta is. And enough effects depended on Dark Arts that as long as those bonuses stayed it wouldn't matter if Grit was available or not.

Everything else inherits the better secondary effects they got from whatever stance the tank was in otherwise.

The issue with just slapping both effects onto DRK, while other Tanks remain having "DPS Stance" and no-stance (Which is the new "Tank Stance") is that you now give DRK's everything all at once.

That's why it's a bigger issue for DRK than it is for other Tanks, because currently, DRK's "DPS Stance" IS no stance.

The change only mentions removal of TANK Stance not stances as a whole, presumably with the intention to make "Tank Stance" simply not have the -15-20% damage modifier and to buff pre-level 30 Tanks whom have gimpy enmity output.

Thus, giving DRK all the benefits of their "Tank Stance" in addition to all the benefits of their "DPS" stance, at the same time, would be a massive upset in balance.

I haven't forgotten the mess that was the split str/vit weighting that actually made secondaries way too good on them in comparison. I'd expect them to simply delete STR entirely from any gear exclusive to the tanks instead. There's some DRG + Tank gear in ARR that wouldn't get touched but that's not a big deal.

Then we get another meta where Tanks get BiS for the expansion via crafting gear overmelded for STR...

Unless they do in fact remove primary stat Materia and remove overmelding (Which would make Crafted gear terrible... Even for Crafters... Their BiS stuff will be the Yellow Scrip garbage...)

An alternative that comes to mind though is just using Tenacity instead of Strength. As in elevate Tenacity to a primary stat specifically for tanks and keep the or improve the defensive bonus in addition to adjusting the damage to that of a primary stat. Then replace Tenacity with either direct hit or a new secondary stat that does something tanks want thanks to other balance changes.

What do you mean "Replace Tenacity with Direct Hit"?

We already have Direct Hit. 2/3 tanks quite like the stat and it's their second best stat outside after SkS breakpoints.

"Replace Tenacity with a new secondary stat that does something tanks want"

... You mean like Strength? Which Tanks want, because it increases their damage.

As that's the only thing Tanks actually want. Given how more defences are useless 99% of the time due to being able to already mitigate all relevant damage via CD's and healers massively OP oGCD heals.

Seriously. I came up with like 6 hours worth of dissection covering lore, story, and mechanics, and you want to know the biggest reason Arcanist can't be removed from SMN?

Carbuncles.

I'm not kidding. They alone screw up every aspect related to splitting Summoner away from Arcanist and integrating Scholar in instead.

Not really.

Egi Glamours, every instance with Alphinaud and Tataru fighting get partial overhauls and the Carbuncles get explicit animation reworks to account for fairy abilities. Egi being direct upgrades of them could survive mechanically as is but something would have to give elsewhere. The entirety of the ARR SMN questline would need a complete rework to account for not having something to upgrade your Egi into as it's explicitly tied to that area. Nevermind accounting for what happens in Shadowbringers or how it affects Scholar's questline.

Again not really.

Egi Glamours can easily be removed. Given they haven't improved on the system in like forever...

Alphinaud and Tataru can still have attacking Carbuncles. There's no reason why playable ARC having healing Carbuncles (Emerald and Topaz) means that things like Alphinaud's unique Onyx Carbuncle can't still do damage. Or Tataru just having an offensive Carbuncle randomly, in the like 2 fights she actually participates in.

Also, nothing about the SMN questline requires Carbuncles.

You don't "Upgrade" your Carbuncles into Egi. You simply gain the ability to summon Egi.

Lorewise it's not relevant that you had Carbuncles. The only relevance is a gameplay one where your Summon I and Summon II actions are altered after completing the relevant quests. With Summon III being a completely unique skill only obtained by SMN from the relevant quest, which is why it has an Ifrit icon instead of a Carbuncle.

SCH only requires you to change some costs and convert some Aetherflow cooldowns to be based around the Fey Gauge as well as altering their introduction at level 30 to support them being an independent job and doesn't affect anything beyond that.

SCH has to have you balance out them not having Aetherflow for MP generation as well as a "CD" for their oGCD's.

It requires having to think of a new way to generate Fey Gauge.

If they consume Fey Gauge you have to rework Fey Union's mechanics/potency.

They would have to rework Dissipation as that gets a large portion of its power through the extra refresh of Aetherflow to allow more oGCD heals.

They would need a new set of DoT's to work with (Since Healers seem to have this DoT focus with all of them having at least 1 DoT effect to maintain while spamming their nuke)

SMN requires the same amount of expenditure not only on Aetherflow but also on rethinking their DoT interactions and that doesn't even begin achieve what people want out of the class.

What people want out of the class is irrelevant. Since the same can be said about literally any change to any class. Including actually keeping SCH and SMN both branching off ARC.

SMN requires, DWT being put on a 1 minute CD.

A new way to utilize their oGCD's.

That's it.

They don't interact with Carbuncles at all. They don't use Aetherflow for anything other than spend it > get DWT once a minute. They don't necessarily need DoTs (There isn't really a precedent for having DoTs in the Mage role) and could just get nuke potency instead (Or temporary pet buffs, or pet actions that simulate DoTs)

I'd argue that alongside Carbuncles Aetherflow and DoTs are what makes Arcanist the class it is to begin with

Which, SCH actually has more in common with than SMN.

SCH is more revolved around Aetherflow and DoTs than SMN (The majority of SMN's DoT application comes from Tri-Disaster which is used for Ruination moreso than actually applying the DoTs)

The current set up of Carbuncles also leads into SCH more easily, given that there are 2 Fairies and 2 Carbuncles (As opposed to the 3 Egi)

-Snip the lore-

None of that is relevant.

Just because SMN has more interaction with things that are MSQ relevant doesn't make and difference in being based off ARC, which finishes its leveling way before literally any of that stuff comes into play.

Like, the reason why we get Ifrit-Egi first is because that's the only Primal that we have slain at level 30. We haven't even gotten Hydaelyn's blessing at that point, let alone met Ascians and the Allag technology arcs...

Simply put, there's no good way to seperate Summoner from Arcanist that couldn't be better achieved by simply splitting Scholar off instead.

I disagree.

ARC > SCH is far easier to do, given that they share the most similarities between their core gameplay structure.

SMN is a wild-card, because for the longest time, it had literally no job gauge focused around what a SMN should be focused around... SUMMONS.

In ARR it was "DoT Mage" because it's only thing separating its gameplay over BLM was it had 2 DoTs instead of one and had Fester which did more damage when you had DoTs on (With their AoE being entirely Bane because Lol-Bind is and was garbage)

In HW it was "Trance Mage" because it just worked on going into DWT once per minute with an artificial 60s CD via Aetherflow.

Now it's somewhat of a "Summoner" in SB because they finally tied Demi-Bahamut to their kit. Though, it still doesn't care about Aetherflow and just wants you to DWT twice.

Literally, Summoner's entire kit could be remade without Aetherflow really easily, by simply just putting Dreadwyrm Trance on a 1 minute CD and giving them a potency boost to cover the loss of Bio/Miasma. That's it. That's all that is "Required" and you'd still play the same way, spamming Not-Ruin constantly, proccing Not-Ruin IV, using DWT once a minute and every 2 DWT's allowing you to use Demi-Bahamut. All the while, using Tri-Disaster to apply Not-Ruination for extra potency.