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

[Shougun]

There's really no point into foreshadowing something if the hint you're giving is not close to what you're going to give people. That's giving people false expectations which is something you absolutely want to avoid.

Not really. We have beserker to line to warrior, and Thief for Ninja/Rogue. Neither of the bosses shown were 1:1 of our real jobs. If the dungeon carried on with this motif, as we can argue it did, then therefore if Necro was a teaser it wouldn't be a 1:1 either. (Nor called necromancer in that situation lol).

You might say it's not a good teaser because it's teasing a concept while also admitting it'll be different lol, but it could easily fall in line with thief / beserker concept.

Although again of personal note I don't really care what the bosses did, I would assume a bigger hint would be what is happening with soul magic all through the entire expansion. Like through the whooollleee expansion lol. That we even have someone going out of their way to learn it now, such stuff like that.

And none of these are good examples of lore. Lore involves the cultures and history of the elements of the world. Saying we can't have more than 3 egis because of the limits of aether impriting is lore. Saying that SMN can't have anything better than egis is more of an opinion; you can get around it it just can't be whatever an egi is. Expecting beast tribes from beast men is a player expectation because every expansion until now has had exclusively beast men beast tribes; I don't recall anywhere in the game do NPCs discuss that Beast Tribes have to be beast men. And just because Jobs lose elements it doesn't change the lore of what that Job is; WHM still has their elemental spells leveling up and still draws upon the elements to heal. AST still has Time Mage because their Benefic spells still alter fate/time and their LB3 shifts timelines for the party, even if their obvious time-related skills got removed.

Whether you like it or not lore is important for speculating anything for future Jobs. It's a fundamentally important part of the scientific process to use viewed prexisting evidence when forming a hypothesis otherwise you could speculate about literally anything happening during an experiment. No one's trying to bully anyone out of Job ideas that they have but we have exhausting evidence why this one in particular will not work at all and people are willing to throw them away or ignore them.

Honestly not sure we disagree here, as much as one might think, and I think you misunderstood me. Those examples are examples where people used the lore to bludgeon their point that something is IMPOSSIBLE, and not worth discussing. I'm not saying their perfect examples of using the lore properly. I'm saying their proof of concept of people using something to say no (and being wrong- also disagree on the importance of your two job notes, irrelevant that white has some elements, relevance is that a new job can now take those elements without stepping on the imagery of white mage, the new job could also use cnj in it's lore, again all of this is just exampling a lack of vision for the future), some of them are those that have spoke out against necro already, a few are lucky winners to using lore no against all the examples that later then proved them wrong; although, to be fair MOST people here said unlikely rather than "never ever I wont try to work with you or listen to you even if it's 90% necro like with a different name 'lalalalalala'".

The part we disagree is some people are actually bullying others by saying with certainty things can or can not happen, as I've seen it a few times, on this and many other topics. Of course I note again and again just saying unlikely is not the same (probability based on current information is different than using probability to claim a 100% outcome).

Also on the Egi thing again that's just an example of lack of vision. Lore is important but lore is not static. If I tell you right now the best we can do is a 5 inch tv you can't tell me 20 inches is impossible, well unless you want to stifle conversation just because. That we will go from 5 to 20 in one day unlikely, that we'll NEVER get 20 is just hot air shutting a conversation down just because you can. In this way I'm saying it's best to think of lore like technology, it's grows and what was not possible can absolutely become possible and to treat it 100% static would be a great way to be wrong.

For egi simply that we're 9/14 whole could be the new lore that allows us to imprint 4 times instead of 3. Or whatever. So you mention aether imprinting but then refuse to accept we might have something beyond that, maybe refuse is aggressive wording but you know what I mean- you've presented the problem but refused to generate a solution and then said it's an issue worth telling people no over (at least I assume you're using the 3 egi thing as an example of lore preventing us, in which case I say perfect example where it clearly doesn't if the devs don't want it to). We can easily surmount that issue. It's worth mentioning it as a concern, but I believe you're killing conversations under false guise by saying it's impossible because of X lore like that. Just squashing desires on something that's shown to be solve-able.

Almost all these lore no's, almost all, comes down to a lack of creativity and vison. You don't need to break the lore to figure out how to make something work. If you don't care to make it work of course the answer is "it can't happen" but that's on you for lack of trying.

I'd rather be surrounded by those who try to critically think of solutions than those who'd rather shutdown conversations until proven wrong. Prematurely shutting things down, imo, is worse than trying to critically think through the hoops of the story if it seems difficult (especially if it's difficult). Some people have done that here, some people actively have not. Some have done an interesting line of both sides, trying to think of things that match the vibe but arguing since it's not 100% classic it's therefore 0% embodiment lol, which seems like an aggressive devaluation XD, interestingly some of these people use the argument the dungeon had berserker and thief as embodiment of our current jobs while then also arguing something like that done to necromancer would therefore not make it necromancer.

[reivaxe]

That's your point yes, but it's not mine and it's not others but you're forcing your point into others where it doesn't belong. And I don't mean that like "your opinion isn't valid" but like someone says "maybe it's hinting at necromancer" and you go "no way will it look like that job, it's raising the human dead- do you seriously think we'll have that?" and then someone goes "I said hinting, not that we're going to get that as 100% representation, besides the other bosses seem to have counterparts too that aren't 1:1" and then you ignore everything there after.

But lets reverse it, let's imagine we didn't have warrior in one world and we did in another. In this world you point out berserker and say it's not far off from warrior. So it's drawing a parallel, and assumably likely therefore that we're not also going to get a job that it already draws a parallel to. BUT berserker and warrior ARE different they do not have the exact same spells, moves, and weapons, there is clearly a parallel but it's not like 1:1 perfect. Now if someone says Necro is hinted at, they might very well be saying like rogue is thief, like necromancer is whatever, it wont be exactly like the boss but it could be a hint yeah??? When the actual jobs only sort of match our own player jobs, then it would logically follow that a dungeon that alludes to our current jobs but is from boss format would have an even looser but potentially hint like nature to necromancer. Berserker - > warrior, but these are bosses and therefore the skill and name relationships are event more by vague theme than any sort of strict naming and gameplay convention. We can tell an npc is a samurai, like, job but often it does their own special things off that. When you're dealing with a weird mirror (berserker, or the other jobs) then this means it's even more potential for wiggle.

Just because the boss does X doesn't require the job to do X, especially if we use the other jobs which seem to have direct comparisons from that dungeon. Especially when other vague jobs NPCs have do that too. I've not see anyone demand a 1:1 from the boss, only some people suggested it might be a hint, like our good guy soul person might also be a hint (when they use their magic they go all evil looking too to be honest).

Ultimately I don't care about the boss though, personally, I find it far more likely the good guy soul magic would be a influence and then the necromancer is the "weird" variant, the good guy being the main influence and the bad 'guy' being the awkward mirror of it (just as you might say Thief is an awkward, 'other shard', mirror of Ninja and Berserker a mirror of Warrior). Regardless of my personal feeling though people are, at least from what I've seen, not suggesting a 1:1 port they are thinking "it was a hint, it was foreshadowing, it was a murmur on the wind" and you're like "well if it doesn't look exactly like the boss then it doesn't count as being a hint in any sort of way, but meanwhile I'll draw allusions to the other jobs in that dungeon to our own content even though those are not 1:1 ports either".

Not really. We have beserker to line to warrior, and Thief for Ninja/Rogue. Neither of the bosses shown were 1:1 of our real jobs. If the dungeon carried on with this motif, as we can argue it did, then therefore if Necro was a teaser it wouldn't be a 1:1 either. (Nor called necromancer in that situation lol).

You might say it's not a good teaser because it's teasing a concept while also admitting it'll be different lol, but it could easily fall in line with thief / beserker concept.

Although again of personal note I don't really care what the bosses did, I would assume a bigger hint would be what is happening with soul magic all through the entire expansion. Like through the whooollleee expansion lol. That we even have someone going out of their way to learn it now, such stuff like that.

So much this.
Even if people want to ignore the focus the Necro gets or how unique her situation is compared to the other 2 (wanna make up w/e reason you want for her getting a full blown dramatic monolog and minion compared to the other 2 bosses getting 3 generic lines be my guess, fact of the matter is that she's the only one outta the 3 who doesn't have a parallel job we can play. They coulda made a waifu Gunner, they chose this) what I find important is looking at all the pieces of the puzzle.

I think we're getting a 4th full caster, that the whole story behind this expac lore dumping the aether of body/ mind/ soul and Aliesa training with "A researcher of the power of souls" who dresses up like this when fighting point to a job that has something to do with souls. The twins being hinted at getting new jobs soon and Aliesa's arc leading her to continue her studies/ training and try to treat others on the source makes me think it's going to develop into it's own job.

And anything that focuses on those themes would basically be necro adjacent. Thematically I feel like there's the most room for a dark themed caster. That's not to say that Gaia can't be a hint at a Time Mage with dark purple themes and a goth-like look but I could easily see a "Soul Mage" or w/e you wanna go with working.

[ADVSS]

So much this.
Even if people want to ignore the focus the Necro gets or how unique her situation is compared to the other 2 (wanna make up w/e reason you want for her getting a full blown dramatic monolog and minion compared to the other 2 bosses getting 3 generic lines be my guess, fact of the matter is that she's the only one outta the 3 who doesn't have a parallel job we can play. They coulda made a waifu Gunner, they chose this) what I find important is looking at all the pieces of the puzzle.

Necromancer from V(and only that one version, was it advanced?) was literally a reskinned Summoner job though, theres your parallel(Ranjits class is supposed to be what Dragoons are in Norvrandt). Though you make a lot of great points. Gunbreaker technically isnt really an official classic job, but they made it work and into a new job this expansion and im willing to bet we will see some more of that same. We could get something new for sure. Also have to remember, Red Mage and Blue Mage would never be added into this game because they would be too hard to implement. Yet here we are. Because Gunbreaker is here, it leads me to believe that popularity and requests(for a type of job) will still be a real possibility. I also believe they will mostly prioritize classic jobs, because this is a Final Fantasy. Anything is speculative at this point, but that also means somethings are on the table, and others may not be.

[Shougun]

And anything that focuses on those themes would basically be necro adjacent. Thematically I feel like there's the most room for a dark themed caster.

In the end this is what I think too.

If you make the dungeon important, which I think we all agree doesn't have to be, and say there exists a strong relationship between the jobs such that we would never see Berserker cause we've already warrior then:

Berserker -> Warrior
Thief -> Ninja
Necromancer -> ?

Summoner someone might say but I hardly got those vibes (may use ink mage to further distance that), unlike I could see clearly where berserker and thief were lining up from. Though I wouldn't die on that hill if someone was willing to die on the hill that necromancer was somehow summoner's mirror lol. As ultimately even if the boss means nothing you've still the entire good guy soul magic that is also teaching another.

The reason why I think this is relevant, and I've seen you said so we're really just choir agreeing now lol, is that the entire freaking expansion has had relationship to soul magic, and there is actually a character going out of their way to learn it, and on top of souls clearly being in the wheelhouse of necromancer (being very literally part of their general /non/gamer specific definition) that then there is this guy who looks kinda evil like when in battle mode.

I would toss my gil into the likelyhood that the mirror of necromancer is that dude over any other job we've got.

This also plays perfectly with providing a necromancer like theme'd job while also not taking a huge jump into the piranha infested waters of summoning skeletons (which is why I suggested when I made my dark healer thread, avoiding the human corpse enslavement). I still believe if you tried ridiculously hard and did things like shade beasts, using the blood of monsters only, with the use willing souls (this can be both malevolent and benevolent) and your own creation magic to create 'undead / undead' like apparitions- that you could get hyper close to necromancer without breaking lore AND without having to double censor yourself for China, to the point any foreign person to the game would see the job and say "yo, that's a necromancer", but man you're really trying at that point. Although I do enjoy coming up with those ideas lol- still my point of putting in that creative work was just to argue being creative and trying hard can move entire seas and mountains (without breaking lore), of course it only makes sense to try hard if it'll be worth it / fun (which is where I guess I can see some people holding tightly to the game and saying "NO GET BACK STAY AWAY" lol, but at least I hope wherever possible to see more creative communication and less walls for the sake of preventing something).

I suppose people worry about others running around a chainsaw near the lore, but seeing as I've guessed (more likely) and or helped influence (less likely but possible) a few direction shifts in the lore already I feel like I'm at least half capable of emulating what seems logically plausible. (SMN, Beast Race, Beast Tribe, Job progression, I've done a fairly decent job on getting close enough they read very similarly, which either makes me believe SE absolutely listens to feedback regularly or I'm this forums budget Nostradamus, heck even on non-related content like SE response would be for the two races (Viera / Hrothgar).. I had did fairly close emulation of what would be said /done. Not saying I'm perfect but hopefully people might think to trust I'm not going to purposefully take a huge dump on their game, and am not completely unhinged, because it's 'my game' too lol.

Like if we're being serious, soul mage has been more discussed and exampled MORE than chemist. Because soul magic has been of massive import for basically the entire expansion, and shown as a learnable skill as well (so it's not just 'fae magic only'). And in relevance to the discussion beyond using "google defines necromancer to commune with the dead and spirits" is that the soul mage did have a very evil / dark magic vibe when in their battle format.

On top of that one of the favored jobs story of this game is dark knight, and the most popular expansion also is playing with dark and chaotic things (for much of the expansion there is an exceptional burden)- that this makes something necromancer-adjacent seem possible to me, as necromancer could continue what has proven to be popular concepts. And like I said before while I wouldn't gamble on my suggestion of getting hyper close to necromancer, I would gamble a little bit on a soul magic job that was FFXIV's response to players wanting something dark and something necro related. I only put so much thought into ways to make it happen as I don't appreciate conversations being obstructed due to overconfidence, much rather swim in the unprotected dangerous waters and hit a few sharks on accident and SE if they liked what they saw would perfect it up before going forward (I have faith SE both cares of feedback but also the mind not implement the most wackadoodle idea someone came up with 1:1, they'll only be inspired rather).

Not that it has to be that fae's job even, just if we're sitting here arguing references that fae is worth pointing out as they've far more presence than chemist does (and a fairly easily arguable relationship to necromancer, but in a more positive light obviously). Not that I'm discounting chemist.

Necromancer from V(and only that one version, was it advanced?) was literally a reskinned Summoner job though, theres your parallel(Ranjits class is supposed to be what Dragoons are in Norvrandt). Though you make a lot of great points. Gunbreaker technically isnt really an official classic job, but they made it work and into a new job this expansion and im willing to bet we will see some more of that same. We could get something new for sure. Also have to remember, Red Mage and Blue Mage would never be added into this game because they would be too hard to implement. Yet here we are. Because Gunbreaker is here, it leads me to believe that popularity and requests(for a type of job) will still be a real possibility. I also believe they will mostly prioritize classic jobs, because this is a Final Fantasy. Anything is speculative at this point, but that also means somethings are on the table, and others may not be.

Their Oath skill is more like Ranger's skill than a Summoners though, since they had a pet but also then had a lot of other side magics. Maybe I would call them a unique dark element theme'd black mage with a dark element ranger pet lol. Although what I find more likely that FFV reborn is that they're going to make something new, well if they were going to do something at all, in which case it's a brand new frontier.

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki...Fantasy_V_job)

They actually have quite a few pretty neat skills. Their ultimate makes them turn undead like a Lich .

[ADVSS]

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki...Fantasy_V_job)

They actually have quite a few pretty neat skills. Their ultimate makes them turn undead like a Lich .

Okay... this makes a lot of sense then, considering most of DRK magic like abilities are stripped and the term "Dark Arts" is nothing more than a buff they can rename to anything, just to keep Darkside active now. This could definitely be either a full on caster dps with some raid healing utility, or a dark themed healer that heals through damaging and or the use of 12's Arcane School of magic primarilly. I got you. Guess we will have to see, but if thats the case then I won't be as mad

[Shougun]

Okay... this makes a lot of sense then, considering most of DRK magic like abilities are stripped and the term "Dark Arts" is nothing more than a buff they can rename to anything, just to keep Darkside active now. This could definitely be either a full on caster dps with some raid healing utility, or a dark themed healer that heals through damaging and or the use of 12's Arcane School of magic primarilly. I got you. Guess we will have to see, but if thats the case then I won't be as mad

<3

Definitely has a lot of cool potential that hasn't been fully tapped by the game yet, and I'm of the mind the darker jobs have some of the best unique story potentials due to the requirements that are needed to make them flow in our game universe (they, generally, demand some more creative solutions than a straight forward story), but of course I'm not claiming it will happen just that something around that 'area' could and also has some hints existing in game if we want to play the reference game lol (with considerations like we don't raise human corpses as slaves for battle lol).

With 400 walls of text I might look like the most stubborn dodo but I was just merely protecting the ground of potential with my fat cat bum. If someone wants something different that is fine, we only get 2-3 jobs per expansion so everyone is going to want a piece of that delicious pie- and I love hearing peoples ideas on what they want to see (just not on how other people can't see what they want ).

I personally would love a dark theme'd job of any sort, but I would extra love if it was built around the concept of transformations, as I think the gameplay, visuals, and story that would result from that would be really fun (dynamic gameplay, curse/burdened story line, varied and viscous visuals). Inspiration from like Dante's devil trigger, Yuri's harmonixer transformations (Shadow Hearts), Vincent's Chaos Materia (dirge of Cerberus), etc.

Of course what I want doesn't actually have much of a historical job beyond Vincent, Terra Branford (esperkin), and maybe what's going on in FFXVI's trailer - annndd it's not like it has ever made any polls. Pretty sure Necromancer was much higher than morpher (closest FF 'job' to the concept) and it's not like I even want morpher since that'd probably be a limited job. So I'm on the real pipe dream train lol.

Or you know.... ink mage... it's totally going to be ink mage next!

[ADVSS]

Or you know.... ink mage... it's totally going to be ink mage next!

That one threw me for a loop. And then I remembered Relm from FF6, that is essentially what an ink mage is, i think. I'm not entirely sure cause they seem to be arcanists, but when I think about the term ink mage, thats what popped in my mind.

[Seraphor]

That one threw me for a loop. And then I remembered Relm from FF6, that is essentially what an ink mage is, i think. I'm not entirely sure cause they seem to be arcanists, but when I think about the term ink mage, thats what popped in my mind.

I mean, isn't Relm just an Arcanist who makes up her own geometry?

[Seraphor]

So much this.
Even if people want to ignore the focus the Necro gets or how unique her situation is compared to the other 2 (wanna make up w/e reason you want for her getting a full blown dramatic monolog and minion compared to the other 2 bosses getting 3 generic lines be my guess, fact of the matter is that she's the only one outta the 3 who doesn't have a parallel job we can play. They coulda made a waifu Gunner, they chose this) what I find important is looking at all the pieces of the puzzle.

I think we're getting a 4th full caster, that the whole story behind this expac lore dumping the aether of body/ mind/ soul and Aliesa training with "A researcher of the power of souls" who dresses up like this when fighting point to a job that has something to do with souls. The twins being hinted at getting new jobs soon and Aliesa's arc leading her to continue her studies/ training and try to treat others on the source makes me think it's going to develop into it's own job.

And anything that focuses on those themes would basically be necro adjacent. Thematically I feel like there's the most room for a dark themed caster. That's not to say that Gaia can't be a hint at a Time Mage with dark purple themes and a goth-like look but I could easily see a "Soul Mage" or w/e you wanna go with working.

Berserker -> Warrior
Thief -> Ninja
Necromancer -> ?

Summoner someone might say but I hardly got those vibes

The reason SMN doesn't fit, is because it's not SMN.

WHM, her parallel is WHM.
She has a staff/cane, and Edda the OG necromancer in the story was a WHM.
Necromancy was a corruption of White Magic after all, finding its home in Gelmorra and the Palace of the Dead.
The WHM job quests in HW deals with raising the dead, and how this can be corrupted.
Nybeth, the lich necromancer on floor 100, also wields a staff/cane, and came from another world after failing to resurrect his own love interest.

All in all, every single WoL in Heroes Gauntlet is a representative of an alternate job, from one of our existing jobs, so I don't think any of them, even Necro, are meant as any kind of hint or set up for future jobs. It would be weird, if they're presented now as a set up for a future job, and then we end up playing that job.
You'd be battling that Necromancer boss... as a Necromancer... it would just be a weird clash of ideas.
If anything, the three bosses are likely meant to show the implementation on these often requested jobs, because they don't intend to ever actually make them real jobs.


Anything 'Soul Mage' related would be covered by Arcanist.
SMN creates aetherial simulacrums to fight with and SCH is literally giving agency or 'a soul' to it's aetherial simulacrums, or rather using one with it's own soul.

BLM is our 'Dark Mage'. It's entire job quest line is about summoning Voidsent. It's signature moves, Foul, Xenoglossy, Despair, are dark-related.
Our 'dark mage' enemies, the Ascians, capitalise on Fire, Ice and Lightning magic.


The 'thematic space' or room left for casters should include Geomancy (earth, wind and water spells) or Time Magic (would need to steal Gravity from AST though).
There's plenty of Groundwork for Geomancy via the Four Lords quest line, so not much more to say on that.
Time Mage could be built upon Gaia, and could sort of provide more of a dark slant to it if that's what you want, but it's not that overt.
The other alternative is an Omnyoji, the Geomancy counterpart that deals with status magic and blood magic. That could fulfil the Geomancy slot as well as ticking the 'dark mage' box. It would probably mean stripping SMN of some of it's DoTs though.

[Shougun]

The reason SMN doesn't fit, is because it's not SMN.

WHM, her parallel is WHM.
She has a staff/cane, and Edda the OG necromancer in the story was a WHM.
Necromancy was a corruption of White Magic after all, finding its home in Gelmorra and the Palace of the Dead.
The WHM job quests in HW deals with raising the dead, and how this can be corrupted.
Nybeth, the lich necromancer on floor 100, also wields a staff/cane, and came from another world after failing to resurrect his own love interest.

All in all, every single WoL in Heroes Gauntlet is a representative of an alternate job, from one of our existing jobs, so I don't think any of them, even Necro, are meant as any kind of hint or set up for future jobs. It would be weird, if they're presented now as a set up for a future job, and then we end up playing that job.
You'd be battling that Necromancer boss... as a Necromancer... it would just be a weird clash of ideas.

For the first part ah yeah, thanks for reminding me lore wise I do feel white mage isn't a bad comparison- it would be a bit weird in the sense that gameplay wise the other two jobs have a sort of similarity (vague but there) while necro is 180 but you could argue that's because when white mage goes wrong it goes soooo wrong lol.

But also just the 80th repeat (not because I need to repeat to you , just want it clear I'm not fixing the potential existence of a concept to the dungeon as if it's the only lifeline), I don't think to hint at a dark necro-adjacent job requires the dungeon since we've got the soul mage dude. May argue any potential is tenuous at best but eeeeehhhyy we've done more with less lol.

Also on the last statement I see where you were going but I think you might not feel that if you consider you can fight the boss as a Ninja and a Warrior. You might respond yeah but you don't fight the boss as a "Berserker" or a "Thief" and I'd just add that a) I wasn't suggestion the necro inspired job (whether very much or just a bit) would be called necromancer, and b) we do have a few bosses already that we fight that have jobs that are 'basically' ours so it's not quite the first time this happened. Besides what we fight in that dungeon is supposed to be the heroes of other shards right? So even further I don't think it's as big as a problem as you initially thought it to be, especially if you simply don't call the necro-adjacent job (whether hyper adjacent or cousin) a necromancer. Can call it that on another shard for goofs, but to make the imagery of that job doesn't demand the name as well- like if you called it a Reaper and people then see trailers of the job and they'd see it and go "yo that's a necromancer" (which isn't the most creative job name for FF but whatever I wasn't trying lol, better name suggested ).

Anything 'Soul Mage' related would be covered by Arcanist.
SMN creates aetherial simulacrums to fight with and SCH is literally giving agency or 'a soul' to it's aetherial simulacrums, or rather using one with it's own soul.

Pretty sure the game said summoning is creation magic, and I don't think it said anywhere that creation magic is what that soul mage is doing. Of course schools of magic often have some overlap, like you might say red with black mage, or dark knight with black mage, but for this I think it's fair to say Arcanist is primarily a creation magic driven job with some internalization of soul magic (to attune to a summon). Meanwhile a soul mage would not really have much internalization as it would be used externally.

Further onto that I would compare soul magic and creation magic to white magic and black magic with one external and one more internal. Soul magic working with what exists without and creation magic dealing with what is within. Sure you can certainly argue there is a touch of soul magic in the attunement process of arcanist but terms of the functional magic you use to blow stuff up with I'm fairly certain we could argue it was pure creation magic. This leaves /a lot/ of space for you to then develop a school of soul magic.

Especially important you don't want soul magic to be from within because if soul magic is purely creation magic then I think Y'sholta is in for a bumpy road in the future lol. I see someone pulling a Matrix 3 Mr. Smith if that's the case XD.

BLM is our 'Dark Mage'. It's entire job quest line is about summoning Voidsent. It's signature moves, Foul, Xenoglossy, Despair, are dark-related.
Our 'dark mage' enemies, the Ascians, capitalise on Fire, Ice and Lightning magic.

Eh I feel Black Mage is pretty sanitary, at least since the whole lala on a ceiling stuff from very early on lol. Besides in this case it wouldn't be 'dark' (elemental), at least exclusively, and technically more so than black mage, since it'd also be soul magic. Say like Dark Knight levels of dark magic, which in comparison to black mage makes black mage 'not that dark'. Some purple crystals and stuff, maybe a funny looking fire, but black mage still largely elemental, meanwhile dark knight has some truly dark magic like abilities. So there is totally room for a 'dark' mage, and especially if you've not pigeonholed yourself into a single element lol.

Like in the dark healer thread I made I was discussing otherworldly magic (think lovecraft), blood, and soul. So 'dark' isn't simply the dark element, but because we're in the FF world of course if I say dark it is probably assumed I'm speaking strictly the dark element lol so that'd be my fault. So yes Black Mage has some dark elements, but they also have lightning, fire, and ice, which I do hope they keep, so any 'dark' mage would focus way more on the dark vibe like Dark Knight did and that may or may not include the dark element to do so.

So I don't think we've a proper 'dark' mage (this not meaning just the element of dark, but could include that). Black Mage feels pretty standard wizard (not said as an insult, but just it feels very much the 'RPG wizard'), even the later spells don't even feel that dark (except maybe Despair, and honestly mostly just in name- one whole skill takes a theme? I hope that's not how we do lol, I'm saying dark as in a concept of 'baaad' like Dark Knight not dark like elemental powers, it's colored purple sure but compared to something like Stalwart Soul makes Foul look like jolly good Christmas and not 'dark'). To me the field for 'dark mage' is very wide open (although as mentioned before I'd like a 'dark' transformation based job which would obviously depart even further from any sort of black mage comparison).

Although to counter myself a bit as well technically it could be a soul mage and also not feel very dark lol. I say dark theme because the soul mage looked like a dragon priest from Skyrim almost, which is a bit dark / evil / brooding, but the concept of soul magic is not required to be that. Soul magic can be painted any color I would suppose, just using the mage's combat form as a reference to brooding / dark - and if you paint it dark it does then happen to sound a bit like the general description of what a necromancer does (commune / interact with the souls / dead).

The 'thematic space' or room left for casters should include Geomancy (earth, wind and water spells) or Time Magic (would need to steal Gravity from AST though).
There's plenty of Groundwork for Geomancy via the Four Lords quest line, so not much more to say on that.
Time Mage could be built upon Gaia, and could sort of provide more of a dark slant to it if that's what you want, but it's not that overt.
The other alternative is an Omnyoji, the Geomancy counterpart that deals with status magic and blood magic. That could fulfil the Geomancy slot as well as ticking the 'dark mage' box. It would probably mean stripping SMN of some of it's DoTs though.

I agree on all that (the mage space includes, but is not limited to what you listed), although I would say there are a few who disagreed based on the lore . Personally that White Mage lost elements pretty much entirely means to me that we've this gaping hole for some awesome elemental earth, wind, and water spells, especially if it's an attack job so we get our Tornado, Quake, and Flood spells. Although for the sake of argument I would like to point at red mage as well to suggest that we don't have to lose the imagery from one job to share it a little with another. Which also goes back to your point on a dark mage and my rebuttal that we don't /have/ to concern too much so long as the new job does it interestingly and new (but that the job doesn't have to be strictly dark element either), of course you might say "Gemoancer would add a lot more than some new dark element spells we can just toss to black mage, sure we can share but I feel the value is better with "x"" buuut just saying in a technical sense overlap is not a forbidden concept (even though I wouldn't suggest to go out of your way to overlap that much, any dark element spell a 'dark mage' (theme not element) shouldn't look like a black mage spell, and ideally should play different as well so it's far beyond just the visual- so a 'dark mage' would overlap more with dark knight than a black mage to be honest and naturally of course be a mage rather than a melee tank).

Do you think time mage has to have gravity? I kind of think no, but I'm also not a huge time mage fan so it's not like I've too much bias in that discussion (not huge fan doesn't mean I dislike it, just that the imagery being very close to a specific style not as important to me as it might be for a fan of the job). You could steal it as you said though, I could see keeping the visual of AST's gravity the similar with some slight star like additional touches and just calling it blazar, black hole, nova, neutron star, solar collapse, or some other star related thing and then giving Time Mage gravity lol (could go further of course, I was just thinking the easy / cheap route).

A Japanese inspired dark magic-esq job could be really neat, would be awesome to get a bunch of quests that amount to little encapsulated stories like if you imagine Mushi-shi and Ginko but with a twist of darkness. The eastern version of being Sam and Dean from Supernatural lol. That would be some fun quests, I'd love to solve some supernatural mystery cases like that, reminds of some of the best quests in the Witcher game series (imo). (I am aware the two shows I referenced are not the only ones to do that, just the first two to come to mind , next up might be stuff like Natsume's Book of Friends or something). A nice contrast of the creepy and scarey (not always but sometimes) and a calm job, like a scene where you're waiting for the spirit and it appears in the dark corner upside down slowly dropping down towards you, makes mad dash at you, all the while you sip that sweet tea, and then it lands right into your trap where you begin to free the spirit (and part of your power could be capturing evil spirits and helping the release their dark energies in more constructive ways, like you using up their negativity while keeping them company, giving them catharsis as you journey around).