Predictions for job(s) in the next expansion?

[Raikai]

While I don't think we've really had overt counterparts previously, I think a Zodiark linked/themed job might be plausible because I feel like the Nouliths are potentially inspired by Hydaelyn and this is meant to be the end of that storyline.

If you compare the nouliths shape, the crystal looking sections of them, and the way they float/rotate around it all really reminds me of the crystal fragments that surround the crystal.

Combine that with death shirts and also the lore against necromancy, I'm wondering if the melee class might have some link to Emet-Selch/Hades. Possibly the weapon could resemble the arms sticking out of his back, scythe-like claws on one side and zodiark looking crystal on the other.

Yeah... Alternatively I kept reading some theories about the new melee dps job being the Mystic Knight instead, as in:

- There is some Arabic-looking text on top of the shirt (so the skeleton would be just a fake clue) - Dunno what it says, tho;

- Traditionally, always at least one of the jobs tie in with one of the featured zones lore-wise. In ShB GNB didn't tie necessarily with a major zones, but Bozja and Gunhildr is a big feature side-plot as well. Given the Sage's aestethics most likely resembling Sharlayan things, and not having that place available... Only makes me think that Mystic Knight tying with Thavnair aesthetics;

- Looks like a good candidate for the Maiming gear with DRG;

- We got a glimpse of the "imbuing weapon with magic" in the latest WoL trial;

- Wields 1h Scimitars... Yeah, another sword, but it would warrant at least a unique sword aesthetics to it. Also nothing holds them of bringing Mystic Knights with a different weapon, even the scythe itself;

[Rymi64]

Yeah... Alternatively I kept reading some theories about the new melee dps job being the Mystic Knight instead, as in:

- There is some Arabic-looking text on top of the shirt (so the skeleton would be just a fake clue) - Dunno what it says, tho;

- Traditionally, always at least one of the jobs tie in with one of the featured zones lore-wise. In ShB GNB didn't tie necessarily with a major zones, but Bozja and Gunhildr is a big feature side-plot as well. Given the Sage's aestethics most likely resembling Sharlayan things, and not having that place available... Only makes me think that Mystic Knight tying with Thavnair aesthetics;

- Looks like a good candidate for the Maiming gear with DRG;

- We got a glimpse of the "imbuing weapon with magic" in the latest WoL trial;

- Wields 1h Scimitars... Yeah, another sword, but it would warrant at least a unique sword aesthetics to it. Also nothing holds them of bringing Mystic Knights with a different weapon, even the scythe itself;

With these aspects people expect it to be a source version of whatever Ranjit does because of where his family hails from and the fact that his name is sorta sanskrit. I personally wouldn't be opposed to this

[Sairys]

Yeah... Alternatively I kept reading some theories about the new melee dps job being the Mystic Knight instead, as in:

- There is some Arabic-looking text on top of the shirt (so the skeleton would be just a fake clue) - Dunno what it says, tho;

- Traditionally, always at least one of the jobs tie in with one of the featured zones lore-wise. In ShB GNB didn't tie necessarily with a major zones, but Bozja and Gunhildr is a big feature side-plot as well. Given the Sage's aestethics most likely resembling Sharlayan things, and not having that place available... Only makes me think that Mystic Knight tying with Thavnair aesthetics;

- Looks like a good candidate for the Maiming gear with DRG;

- We got a glimpse of the "imbuing weapon with magic" in the latest WoL trial;

- Wields 1h Scimitars... Yeah, another sword, but it would warrant at least a unique sword aesthetics to it. Also nothing holds them of bringing Mystic Knights with a different weapon, even the scythe itself;

So, first up, I think Mystic Knight could be it but the logic is just different heh.

For example, it's been pointed out that the script actually just spells "nbhd" in english just with an Arabic looking font, it's just an abbreviation of the band name (neighbourhood) for the shirt. Also, we do have a Thavnair job thanks to DNC, however, Zodiark is either imprisoned in or is the Moon we're visiting so the tie in concept would be maintained without doubling up.

The reason I think Mystic Knight might be up is mostly that a Hades-style weapon could conceivably be a magitech construct/hack to use spells in melee. The crystal/staff on one side channelling aether and imbuing the other side with spells which you then hit the targets with.
Personally, given nouliths are probably what the melee weapon is going to be compared to it'd even more disappointing if it turned out that melee ended up with just another sword variant rather than trying something more out there, especially given scimitars are already available to PLD beyond just pure glam.

[Ariki]

Lyon rem Helsos is holding a green scrythe.
he is a "beastmaster"?

in ff11 beastmaster hold a axe though...

[Zohar_Lahar]

Lyon rem Helsos is holding a green scrythe.
he is a "beastmaster"?

in ff11 beastmaster hold a axe though...

Lyon's weapon looked like an axe to me.

[Calysto]

Was the "we're adding a 4th tank/3rd ranged so everything is balanced" in 5.0 a lie ? now there's a distinction between melees and a subclass between healers.
Next classes they should add are a limited job since blu is alone and a new rng gatherer since fisher is alone

[BasicBlake]

Was the "we're adding a 4th tank/3rd ranged so everything is balanced" in 5.0 a lie ? now there's a distinction between melees and a subclass between healers.
Next classes they should add are a limited job since blu is alone and a new rng gatherer since fisher is alone

That was my issue as well. They went right back on it. All because of "dragoon gets invited too often over the other melee so we added another melee".

[Archwizard]

Putting all my money on:

* A Mage Knight hybrid-type melee job (a la Mystic Knight, Rune Fencer, Templar, Ravager, etc)
* Maiming/Slaying gear, for an Armored Knight aesthetic
* Fighting style is an homage to the classic "Spellblade/Sword-Magic" command, based around enchanting its melee swings with elemental attributes a la Seat of Sacrifice

I wish I could be more specific on what its name or weapon would be, but as shown above, the wielder of "Spellblade" is perhaps the least consistently-named job in the series (for all we know it could be straight-up "Moon Knight"), and as we've seen with Nouliths, the latter could be literally anything including weapons the devs have made up. Hammers, scythes, dual swords, whipblades, magic glowsticks, whatever.

"A job that enchants melee swings? That's too close to Red Mage!" If you believe this unironically and advocated for Time Mage healer, Thief, Assassin or Berserker, I don't want to hear it. The series has made plenty of distinction between Spellbladers and Red Mages in the past, Red Mage has never had a monopoly on weapon enchanting, and I'm sorry if you can't see past your personal fantasies for what the devs interpret as a Caster DPS.

Was the "we're adding a 4th tank/3rd ranged so everything is balanced" in 5.0 a lie ? now there's a distinction between melees and a subclass between healers.
Next classes they should add are a limited job since blu is alone and a new rng gatherer since fisher is alone

First I should point out that a new healer was a long-time coming. We haven't had one since Heavensward (and even then it was a result of a fluke), a Healer role rework has been overdue, and the removal of Nocturnal Sect Astrologian comes as little surprise amongst raiders.
Bearing in mind that when the devs went into Shadowbringers, they reworked the tank role with the initial intent to make a Main Tank/Off Tank subclass division -- which was the driving force behind adding Gunbreaker and setting up the "four in each role" balance -- but ultimately went with just giving each Tanking job the ability to perform both functions.

Now with regards to melee, much as I may dislike it, it depends on how the devs choose to count roles to define "balance" among the roles. Several people in this thread have pointed out before that what would have made melee a high priority is that we're currently bouncing 6 ranged jobs (even if they have strict Physical/Magical subdivisions) versus only 4 melee. Assuming a meta raid composition intended to house 2 ranged and 2 melee, the latter two slots have less diversity than the former two. And that's before we touch on armor drops, with Maiming and Scouting being the top priorities for diversity, and Casting/Aiming kind of... bloating.
So no, I wouldn't say the devs "lied", just that it's such a bizarre distinction and broad definition that most of us who took it at face value were blindsided. That's part poor communication on their end, part wistful interpretation on ours.

[Sairys]

First I should point out that a new healer was a long-time coming. We haven't had one since Heavensward (and even then it was a result of a fluke), a Healer role rework has been overdue, and the removal of Nocturnal Sect Astrologian comes as little surprise amongst raiders.
Bearing in mind that when the devs went into Shadowbringers, they reworked the tank role with the initial intent to make a Main Tank/Off Tank subclass division -- which was the driving force behind adding Gunbreaker and setting up the "four in each role" balance -- but ultimately went with just giving each Tanking job the ability to perform both functions.

Now with regards to melee, much as I may dislike it, it depends on how the devs choose to count roles to define "balance" among the roles. Several people in this thread have pointed out before that what would have made melee a high priority is that we're currently bouncing 6 ranged jobs (even if they have strict Physical/Magical subdivisions) versus only 4 melee. Assuming a meta raid composition intended to house 2 ranged and 2 melee, the latter two slots have less diversity than the former two. And that's before we touch on armor drops, with Maiming and Scouting being the top priorities for diversity, and Casting/Aiming kind of... bloating.
So no, I wouldn't say the devs "lied", just that it's such a bizarre distinction and broad definition that most of us who took it at face value were blindsided. That's part poor communication on their end, part wistful interpretation on ours.

Well, tbh adding a Healer was also expected because of the comments around balancing out the roles because it seemed like the target was to bring them up to 4 each. The comments going into 5.0 indicate that they looked at it as a split of five roles, otherwise DNC should have been a melee instead which would have balanced out DPS as 5/5 melee/ranged. Not bumping physical or magical ranged up to four jobs indicates either yeah their previous statements (when taken in context with DNC being released) were misleading or there's a potential pivot in roles to treat ranged dps as one role rather than two.

With the split... if you look at fflogs for Eden's Promise and Verse, you see a pretty consistent 2/1/1 average split of Melee/P.Ranged/M.Ranged. Puppets bunker on an alliance level it seems to be 5/5/4 and TEA seems to be 1/1/1 with the last dps slot varying? In effect, the "ranged slots" really work out as only having three options each as a result on top of those roles typically only having one actual slot they can fill.

[Jandor]

Adding dancer as a physical ranged DPS balanced the physical options vs the magical options in the whole ranged DPS bracket.

I also think people have probably been overestimating how much they care about maintaining some perfect balance between options in the roles, otherwise we'd have had a new healer added sooner.