Hinting at New Jobs? [ Small Spoilers for Patch 5.3 ]

[Vahlnir]

They didn't create cutscenes of Archers/bards gathering materials for arrows, with like 5-8 quests to finally start making them. This is what happened in that Msq quest, a very long and convoluted quest showing us how intricate of a system it is for a chemist to acquire materials to heal someone. Whether chemist is the next job or not, it's as much as a possibility as any other take on the matter.

Right, but someone had to make their arrows. So by your logic BRD simply can't exist. Believe it or not, there is a difference between a crafting job and a combat job. Just because an Alchemist has to get their ingredients doesn't mean one more suited for combat does. Perhaps they have some sort of tech that makes creating potions easier on the fly. An Alchemist and a "Chemist" (no idea what they'd call it so I'll just roll with that I guess) might both create potions but both would have to utilize completely different methods to do so.

[Amnmaat]

Right, but someone had to make their arrows. So by your logic BRD simply can't exist. Believe it or not, there is a difference between a crafting job and a combat job. Just because an Alchemist has to get their ingredients doesn't mean one more suited for combat does. Perhaps they have some sort of tech that makes creating potions easier on the fly. An Alchemist and a "Chemist" (no idea what they'd call it so I'll just roll with that I guess) might both create potions but both would have to utilize completely different methods to do so.

They have a long precedence of using in game narratives to poke at the fact that they didn't add such and such feature. It's not about that bard has to go through a similar process, it's the fact that they're poking fun at how long (how many steps) it takes for a chemist to create a few potions. In the end it's one theory among many, it does have solid grounding though. Just like they poked fun at Necromancer, Berserker, and some others.

[kaynide]

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Could be! Ultimately I don't think they really care about balance of job numbers so much as "What's gonna sell this expansion more/excite people into playing, and therefore using subscription time, on the job".

I'd suspect Mystic Knight/Rune Fencer to be more in line with FFV (Turban/Scimitar)..and more or less a DPS with DoTs.

Though, to counter my own points, YoshiP did say we might want to review the HW story/content, which seems to point at Sharlayan? And the only classic job I think ties into that off hand would be Time Mage (possibly tied to Alexander). So while I personally would still bet Melee DPS, I wouldn't die on that hill and would welcome anything.