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

[reivaxe]

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.

Blm is not a dark aesthetic or job. It's power fantasy is very much the wizard whose goto move is "cast fire ball". It's the classic selfish massive destruction wizard trope and power fantasy.

Smn is more akin to creation magic then anything spiritual in nature.

Neither of these jobs have anything similar to the levels of a Necromancer or Drk when it comes to darker themes or aesthetics.

And it's a common staple in Necromancer back stories to have them start off as a mage or healer who tries to use magic to bring someone back to life and finds themselves sliding down the slippery slope of morality so yeah, it can come in the form of a corrupted Whm. Necromancer, how ever, is not parallel to Whm. It's a wholly different beast of a thing that comes about when one goes too far with trying to control life and death (and even saying that, it's not inherently evil either. Even in this Dng, she's still a WoL and the reason she's there is because she's revered as a hero on her own world regardless of what drove her to necromancy or her use of it).

Also, lets not get tied up in names. "Soul Mage" is just 1 of many terms I tossed out to call a job that deals heavily with the aether-of-the-mind/ body/ soul that we got lore dumped this expac.
They could be called ...
Espers
Aetherlogist (made up word but sounds fun)
Witch Doctors
Mambos and Houngans
Shaman
Reapers


There's no lack of names from different cultures to call someone who deals with/ communes with/ commands or ask for assistance from spirits/ souls/ ghost and helps spirits/ souls/ ghost move on. Or people who heal those who have been attacked on a spiritual level ... or attacks others on a spiritual level and has insight on the inner workings of one's soul. I simply like using Soul Mage as it's a blanket term that's not tied to any culture and is easy to understand.

As for Geomancer, I don't think "we GOTTA hit all the elemental types with extreme focus!" is as big of an aesthetic/ theme hole as you think. They could add important wind/ earth/ water spells to the 3 mages that currently uses elements. If you were to point at Geomancer as, say, an Eastern themed job then I'd agree that there's more than enough room for a Eastern themed mage. But the same could be said for anything other than Melee DPS, nothing says Geomancer can't be a healer (and nothing say's a "necro like" job can't be a healer either). They could even make an eastern themed "soul mage" job.

As for Time mage, people have gone into detail about how haste would be a problem. They could fold it in with Ast more imo or just make it a selfish DPS that has to haste it's self I guess. But messing with other people's rotations and movement speed is gonna be a hard sell.