Predictions for job(s) in the next expansion?

[Seraphor]

The entire PotD plotline is what makes me think Necromancer is never gonna happen.
We've seen what Necromancy means in Eorzea, and it's not something the WoL would ever get involved with.

Even the boss in the Heroes Gauntlet has clearly gone insane just like Edda.
Which btw, just like Ink Mage, Thief and Berserker, is another indication that it's not going to happen.
It'd be pretty awkward if an example of an alternate job on another shard suddenly becomes a real job.


My predictions:
Healer 100%, 90% chance it's a Chemist in some form.
90% chance at a caster dps, my monies on Geomancer.
Remaining 10% of a melee dps, possibly some new interpretation of Mystic Knight with a hammer.

[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.

[silentwindfr]

The entire PotD plotline is what makes me think Necromancer is never gonna happen.
We've seen what Necromancy means in Eorzea, and it's not something the WoL would ever get involved with.

Even the boss in the Heroes Gauntlet has clearly gone insane just like Edda.
Which btw, just like Ink Mage, Thief and Berserker, is another indication that it's not going to happen.
It'd be pretty awkward if an example of an alternate job on another shard suddenly becomes a real job.


My predictions:
Healer 100%, 90% chance it's a Chemist in some form.
90% chance at a caster dps, my monies on Geomancer.
Remaining 10% of a melee dps, possibly some new interpretation of Mystic Knight with a hammer.

i support this, however until the drop the class system (means no more elementalist for the whm) geomancer futur is grim, but who know

[Seraphor]

i support this, however until the drop the class system (means no more elementalist for the whm) geomancer futur is grim, but who know

I think it being different role is a decent caveat. We have SCH and SMN, so why not GEO as a dps?

[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.

[MagiusNecros]

Necromancer would fill in that Dark magic aesthetic that the game lacks. BLM and WHM utilize elemental magic for the most part. WHM/PLD have holy magic. BLM has the Xeno spells but are more aligned to pure non elemental force. Or maybe even Void magic.

RDM uses a mix of both BLM and WHM.

Closest we have to evil magic(aesthetically) in playable form is Dark Knight's instant casts that see little use. And maybe a few of the BLU spells.

Geomancer would be a safe DPS choice because it uses more of what we already have which is elemental spells based around natural disasters. And they use Bells to do that. If you want an overall idea on how GEO might play out in XIV you can take a look at the mooks in Swallow's Compass. Pretty much standard Geomancers.

If they want to take notes from FF5 they will probably consider that Necromancer was also a learning job like BLU and if integrated might make it a Limited Job Class.

But I do see potential in a Necro healer specifically doing damage to enemies which will be how they heal themselves and the party.

TLDR: Heal by dealing damage.

But eh I think we've talked about Necro long enough and we really are only focusing on it because of the most recent dungeon showcasing a WoL being a full on Necromancer which is unprecedented and a rare case.

[Archwizard]

On the other hand, Yoshi-P has said the latest MSQ included hints about the next job, and there was an out-of-place sequence about the girl wanting to be a potion healer. Given the years-long demand for Chemist it seems likely it will at least have influence on the next healer, if it isn't the full job.

That said, I hope it isn't "Chemist" outright.

As we well know, the iconic ability of Chemist was it's ability to Mix consumable items to create a unique effect of greater potency. The last attempt that was made at creating Chemist ended with it being split into AST (with the ability to "Mix" cards) and MCH (with its intended pistol and several chemical attacks).
I would be loathe to see the devs introduce a healer that recycled elements of an existing job, like AST cards or NIN mudras – and the difficulty with creating a unique or balanced Mix system was cited as the reason Chemist failed to see the light of day in the first place.

So the two main options I see are either "release Chemist without Mix" or "rehash of another job in an attempt to recreate Mix", which will leave everyone unsatisfied.

However, as I touched on before, there is a third option: sidestep the issue.
Do what they did with AST, and combine the elements of multiple jobs into something unique. Create something that is Chemist in aesthetic and role, but unique in ability so it doesn't need to be 100% faithful.
Which is another reason why I've been posing Meracydian Witch Doctor, as it not only gives space to compromise with the Battle Healer crowd, but allows the freedom to include the potion-tossing (the only aspect of the job that we know it has) without being limited by Chemist's interpretation.

[Kesey]

On the other hand, Yoshi-P has said the latest MSQ included hints about the next job, and there was an out-of-place sequence about the girl wanting to be a potion healer. Given the years-long demand for Chemist it seems likely it will at least have influence on the next healer, if it isn't the full job.

That said, I hope it isn't "Chemist" outright.

As we well know, the iconic ability of Chemist was it's ability to Mix consumable items to create a unique effect of greater potency. The last attempt that was made at creating Chemist ended with it being split into AST (with the ability to "Mix" cards) and MCH (with its intended pistol and several chemical attacks).
I would be loathe to see the devs introduce a healer that recycled elements of an existing job, like AST cards or NIN mudras – and the difficulty with creating a unique or balanced Mix system was cited as the reason Chemist failed to see the light of day in the first place.

So the two main options I see are either "release Chemist without Mix" or "rehash of another job in an attempt to recreate Mix", which will leave everyone unsatisfied.

However, as I touched on before, there is a third option: sidestep the issue.
Do what they did with AST, and combine the elements of multiple jobs into something unique. Create something that is Chemist in aesthetic and role, but unique in ability so it doesn't need to be 100% faithful.
Which is another reason why I've been posing Meracydian Witch Doctor, as it not only gives space to compromise with the Battle Healer crowd, but allows the freedom to include the potion-tossing (the only aspect of the job that we know it has) without being limited by Chemist's interpretation.

It will be Chemist and it will most likely be a combat medic aesthetic. I say this because leader of the Bojza resistance states that he was a combat medic healing with other means beyond magic. So coupled with the hint in the main story has highest chance of panning out.

Guess we'll know by the time they do the online fan fests.

[Kesey]

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.

Astro in Tactics just spammed Galaxy Stop (now known as Celestial Stasis). The ff14 devs took the job and built it into what it is today--by fleshing it out more. Not sure that you can limit them by building on a good idea, especially one that exists in their lore.

And since I'm on the topic of minor classes that could come to this game in a distant future, would love to have FFVI's General Leo's class (you control him for like a hot minute). Which is General? He had shock and melee weapons, but I'm sure that can be fleshed out with more abilities and if they wanted to add something thats melee and fights with lighting.

[Seraphor]

Astro in Tactics just spammed Galaxy Stop (now known as Celestial Stasis). The ff14 devs took the job and built it into what it is today--by fleshing it out more. Not sure that you can limit them by building on a good idea, especially one that exists in their lore.

And since I'm on the topic of minor classes that could come to this game in a distant future, would love to have FFVI's General Leo's class (you control him for like a hot minute). Which is General? He had shock and melee weapons, but I'm sure that can be fleshed out with more abilities and if they wanted to add something thats melee and fights with lighting.

Shock is a classic Knight/Paladin skill, it's used by Steiner and Beatrix too.
General Leo is just a watered down PLD.