Predictions for job(s) in the next expansion?

[Macleod]

We

You're not a necromancer.

[MagiusNecros]

You're not a necromancer.

Thank you for contributing.

Have a kupo nut.

[Archwizard]

How would Necromancer be a healer? That's literally the opposite of what Necromancers do.

Glad you asked!

One of the concepts I've been trying to float about is having a dark healer that uses sacrificial magic. Leech and drain health from enemies, then displace that health onto allies. A Battle Healer type job.

You can have the staples -- Drain and Pain as damage spells, a Numbing spell as a basic heal or barrier, some necromancy-flavored Raise -- but each attack you deal builds a secondary resource that you can burn off with an oGCD like Soul Spiral to heal allies. If you don't have enough of that resource, burn your own health instead, creating a bit of risk-reward.

And that's just the basic stuff. Then you can get to the real flavor, like summoning up ghosts you can sacrifice to heal allies en masse; cursing enemies to deal less or take more damage, flee in terror with Hysteria, or even turn on their allies with Zombie; giving allies status effects like Vampire, Ethereal, Lichdom or Damage Reverse to increase their survivability; or even getting Death as a finisher spell like Urianger does in Trusts.

There's tons of untapped spells throughout the series that could work with this, some that would otherwise just be consigned to BLU. It could also be a good place for underused tools like AST's Synastry -- cast on an ally and you are free to keep Green-DPSing with Drain spells. Ultimately though, the big thing is that it would be a sheer departure from the healers we already have access to while forcing re-examination of the existing healing model, which is what the next healer should be and do.

And after all, what could be a more fitting Limit Break for a Necromancer than raising the entire party?

You're not a necromancer.

You've got no clue how far she's been in PotD. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Macleod]

You've got no clue how far she's been in PotD. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

PotD Title =/= Job, and jobs are what are being discussed here. My point still stands, and is completely valid.

[Archwizard]

My point still stands, and is completely valid.

Ok ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ty_taurus]

snip

One thing that's important to note is that when a party member's HP hits 0, they're considered "Knocked Out" by the game's terminology, not dead. Raise isn't literally reviving a dead ally, but restoring consciousness to an unconscious ally.

More to my point from before, Necromancers are defined by their communications with the dead and the use of death magic to kill others in attempts to be able to animate their dead corpses for their own use. Additionally, our only reference point for Necromancer in Final Fantasy is from FFV where their Dark Arts magic enables them to use these abilities:

Drain Touch - Absorb an enemy's HP to heal themselves.
Dark Haze - Non-Elemental AoE damage that inflicts Old and Confuse
Deep Freeze - Ice Elemental ST damage that inflicts Stop
Evil Mist -Poison Elemental AoE damage that inflicts Poison
Meltdown - Fire Elemental AoE damage that inflicts Sap
Hellwind - Wind Elemental AoE damage that inflicts Petrify
Chaos Drive - Lightning Elemental AoE damage that inflicts Paralysis
Curse - The wiki just says "causes various status ailments"
Dark Flare - Dark? Elemental AoE damage that ignores magic defense
Doomsday - "Deals incredible damage to all enemies. Non-reflectable"

None of those sound particularly healer-y to me.

[Archwizard]

One thing that's important to note is that when a party member's HP hits 0, they're considered "Knocked Out" by the game's terminology, not dead. Raise isn't literally reviving a dead ally, but restoring consciousness to an unconscious ally.

If we're at the point of splitting hairs like so, then I think that's more because the Echo makes us exceptional, as canonically those with it can return to a fight after sustaining lethal damage several times over (just look at the Warriors of Darkness encounter in Heavensward, where they revive via the Echo every time you put them down).

Meanwhile all terminology referencing revival from "KO" includes statements like "returns all fallen party members back to life" (Cairn of Return), or straight up calls it Resurrection.

Additionally, our only reference point for Necromancer in Final Fantasy is from FFV

I think it's pretty arbitrary to choose now to limit a job by its tiny pre-existing reference pool, considering FF14's entire MO?

Scholar for instance was never a pet or summon class until 14, and was as much a hybrid caster as Red Mage; Summoner was never focused on DoTs and has more examples of using White Magic while substituting summons in place of attack spells; Dark Knight was frequently an HP-sacrificing damage-dealer through its Darkside ability; Bard and Dancer were support jobs instead of damage-dealers; Gunblade-wielders like Squall and Lightning were JoATs rather than being particularly tanky (and Lightning was even one of the squishiest members of her party, relying on evasion over damage mitigation); and if we take Astrologian as its own entity, it has nothing in common with its Tactics iteration, and much more in common with Time Mage and Gambler.
And yet, here we are, each one of these jobs having scratched out a new identity with 14 as a vehicle.

I understand that you're trying to find an example of Necromancer as being more of a classical damage role, but in terms of gaming it has always been a varied archetype due to the sheer flexibility of "manipulation of life and death" magic. You can very frequently find examples focused on vampirism or siphoning health from enemies, which generally has more utility in the hands of a meatshield tank or a substitute-healer.

[ty_taurus]

If we're at the point of splitting hairs like so, then I think that's more because the Echo makes us exceptional, as canonically those with it can return to a fight after sustaining lethal damage several times over (just look at the Warriors of Darkness encounter in Heavensward, where they revive via the Echo every time you put them down).

Meanwhile all terminology referencing revival from "KO" includes statements like "returns all fallen party members back to life" (Cairn of Return), or straight up calls it Resurrection.



I think it's pretty arbitrary to choose now to limit a job by its tiny pre-existing reference pool, considering FF14's entire MO?

Scholar for instance was never a pet or summon class until 14, and was as much a hybrid caster as Red Mage; Summoner was never focused on DoTs and has more examples of using White Magic while substituting summons in place of attack spells; Dark Knight was frequently an HP-sacrificing damage-dealer through its Darkside ability; Bard and Dancer were support jobs instead of damage-dealers; Gunblade-wielders like Squall and Lightning were JoATs rather than being particularly tanky (and Lightning was even one of the squishiest members of her party, relying on evasion over damage mitigation); and if we take Astrologian as its own entity, it has nothing in common with its Tactics iteration, and much more in common with Time Mage and Gambler.
And yet, here we are, each one of these jobs having scratched out a new identity with 14 as a vehicle.

I understand that you're trying to find an example of Necromancer as being more of a classical damage role, but in terms of gaming it has always been a varied archetype due to the sheer flexibility of "manipulation of life and death" magic. You can very frequently find examples focused on vampirism or siphoning health from enemies, which generally has more utility in the hands of a meatshield tank or a substitute-healer.

Except that life stealing aspect has always been a selfish form of recovery--something that heals the caster and no one else. With that in mind, it would make more sense for Necromancer to be a casting tank than a healer.

I understand what you're going on about with how not every job is a perfect replica of its past Final Fantasy representations, but I feel like you're taking those examples out of context. Summoner and Scholar are largely the way they are because of the decision to join them at the hip back when ARR was being developed. Their identities were both compromised to create the Arcanist that would link them both. There was actually plans to include a dedicated support role that would focus on buffs and debuffs, but was ultimately scrapped out of fear that not enough players would play Bard and that would elongate queue times even more. Moreover, Bard was adhered to Archer in 1.X because the role system there was far less strict, but moving that over to 2.X ultimately meant a lot of Bard's traditional identity had to be sacrificed. Dancer is the most support heavy job in the game next to AST. I'll agree that it's always been more debuff focused than buff focused, but seeing as how this game is designed, creating a debuff heavy job that doesn't break things is very challenging, so I understand why the compromise had to be made there. They were even given Cure Waltz to call back to their relatively frequent ability to heal.

Gunbreaker is not a traditional job and stems from 2 Final Fantasy titles that had either no job system, or an incredibly lax one (in which Lightning actually made for a very good dodge tank once Sentinel gets unlocked for her--arguably better than Snow at the role). In fact, you can see that despite this, the design team tried to hold true to specifically Squall's rendition of the gunblade with many attacks being directly named after his limit breaks. I have no idea why you decided to bring up AST though since that's never actually been a fully fledged job in any Final Fantasy until 14. In Tactics, Astrologian is not a real class, but a pseudo class that has only 1 unique ability, Celestial Stasis, which influences the name of AST's LB3 in 14. Saying that it has nothing to do with it's tactics iteration makes no sense whatsoever.

Lastly, we can look at how in other examples, Square is very adamant about holding true to a particular job's fantasy. They refuse to give White Mage any form of support since that's not the traditional fantasy of a classic White Mage. Red Mage was given a melee combo and Vercure/Verraise specifically to ensure that it held true to its origins. Hell, just look at Blue Mage. They were so unwilling to diverge Blue Mage from it's origins that they decided to make it a mini game rather than an actual job solely so that it can learn spells from overworld enemies, most of which are gimmicky nonsense like Doom and Level 5 Petrify.

At the very least, each job that has diverged from its original source material is at least playing within the same realm of its initial design--The Summoner job by itself is a damage dealing spellcaster with heavy burst damage; Scholar is typically supportive, though not a potent healer; Bard has at least typically had some form of burst damage even in FF3 (where it literally has a song that deals % damage, including to bosses), and if we take Bard for what it more accurately is: Ranger, then it makes even more sense having actions that hail back to the Ranger such as Barrage; Dancer has always done a little of everything.

Saying that we should take a job that is defined by its association with bad status conditions,death magic stronger than black magic, and selfish HP draining and turn that into a benevolent healer makes absolutely no sense.

Fine, you want a healing Necromancer? Go for it, but then I want an Assassin that's a tank because a job associated with stealth and fast, powerful damage should be a low DPS dodge tank, and then we should add Beastmaster, but we can make it a magic DPS and we'll say that they're just magically conjuring animals to attack.

[Archwizard]

Saying that we should take a job that is defined by its association with bad status conditions,death magic stronger than black magic, and selfish HP draining and turn that into a benevolent healer makes absolutely no sense.

Fine, you want a healing Necromancer? Go for it, but then I want an Assassin that's a tank because a job associated with stealth and fast, powerful damage should be a low DPS dodge tank, and then we should add Beastmaster, but we can make it a magic DPS and we'll say that they're just magically conjuring animals to attack.

Not to get too sidetracked here by spending six paragraphs picking apart your argument line-by-line, but the difference between these is aesthetics versus mechanics.

The jobs you're referring to with regards to "original source material" are pulling their identities from the greatest hits amongst a dozen different entries.
By contrast, Necromancer itself as a playable job is only in one entry -- which is as much as we have for Astrologian and its 1 unique ability (which functions nothing like the LB3 and only shares the name), mind -- and was considered for another FF MMO in some form we never got to actually see executed. However, several of the concepts I mentioned, like a healer with access to Death magic (Urianger's Trust Avatar), use of hostile status conditions to reduce incoming damage, sacrificial healing and a number of survival-oriented undead status bonuses, do have isolated appearances throughout multiple entries or are already in XIV in some form, just inaccessible to raiders. The aesthetic of a Necromancer just ties the disparate floating elements together.

Now on the one hand, having an Assassin job be a tank is... not without precedent necessarily, since Ninja was exactly that for a time in XI, but an "Assassin" by definition is foremost a murderer, so an evasion tank would probably have another name, even if it used similar rogue-like aesthetics.
Mechanically, Beastmaster could maybe conjure animals to attack, though the game wouldn't have to necessarily specify it as "magical" to have that same type of effect when you push the button. Or if you still want it as a caster, just upgrade SMN because nobody's happy with it as a DoT caster right now.

In that same vein, while "Necromancer" is just as valid a term as any for the concept posed, I would happily accept not slapping the name "Necromancer" on a dark, life-leeching battle-healer job, because I care more about the mechanics and tangible impact on the game than I do about nomenclature and appearance. This is why I originally said I've been floating ideas "like" Necromancer, because I wouldn't be averse to something mechanically similar having a name like, oh, Witch Doctor -- which are an established part of Meracydian culture that we just haven't seen in person, and could also be an opportunity to fold in elements of the classic Chemist without having to rely on another failure of a Mix mechanic or creating confusion with Alchemist.

I mean after all, I'm just as happy to call FFXIV's Time Mage "Astrologian" as some people are to argue that they're two different things. At the end of the day, the game gets the representation and fills the gap.

[Laphicet]

I have no idea why you decided to bring up AST though since that's never actually been a fully fledged job in any Final Fantasy until 14. In Tactics, Astrologian is not a real class, but a pseudo class that has only 1 unique ability, Celestial Stasis, which influences the name of AST's LB3 in 14. Saying that it has nothing to do with it's tactics iteration makes no sense whatsoever.

Astrologian was introduced as a job in Bravely Second, which is part of the Bravely series (Spinoffs of FFIV). The game came out before HW and was in development before HW and the Astrologian in such had buff-focused gameplay so that could be the inspiration alongside time mage (which SB and HW ast had a lot of similarities to, not so much ShB ast). As well as the one reference to tactics with the limit break.

As for new jobs, well, Necro is indeed unlikely due to how it's treated lorewise, as you said. most likely healer is chemist at this point but the devs could throw a curveball and go another expac without a healer in the name of "fixing healers"