Is FFXIV hinting Berserker, Necromancer, and Chemist next expansion?

[Mhaeric]

I find it interesting that in order to make Necro work as a hero class in FF14, people are willing to near completely remove anything that makes it an actual Necro. Sure that might work gameplay wise (and, as said, if the devs want to do it they can do it) but doing so would just tick off the crowd that is crying for a Necro because they want an actual Necro with the goth visuals and the scythe and the walking dead. Outside of the obvious reasons to not include a Necro in the first place, doing a sort of kind of Necro with most of the Necro removed would just cause the fan base to be more annoyed and I highly doubt that's something SE wants to invite.

Uh, SquareEnix has already included Necromancer as a playable class in the series in the FFV remakes. While the job did have the goth look with skulls and maleficent hats and robes, the job didn't summon undead at all. It was instead a heavy damage caster with attached status effects. Basically they were a more powerful BLM with added status effects on each spell and required to learn their spells similarly to BLU. The closest they got to anything even related to undead was that they themselves were treated as undead in combat and would be healed by spells like Death and Drain Touch but damaged by spells like Cure and Raise. Out of combat they were normal again and could be healed with cure and raise. If they included Necromancer in FFXIV as a job it would likely not summon undead because it's already the precedent and them not wanting an overtly immoral job to exist.

Side note: This undead status thing has reoccurred a few times across the series as one-off spells here and there, but there's never been a playable character that could outright summon the undead. The only thing coming close to undead summoning would be Relm/Gogo's ability to sketch any creature including undead that they are fighting to sort of temporarily summon it. There was also Auron/Tidus who themselves were both effectively versions of spirits/undead, but that was just lore and had no real impact beyond story plot twists.

Side-side note: googling "japanese necromancer" comes up with the Itako which are blind spirit mediums who communicate with both the kami and the dead and perform divinations. That could be an interesting source to pull a theme for a non-undead summoning necromancer from. E.g. blindfolds or masks for the AF gear, etc. Think the Ritualist from GW1.