Quote Originally Posted by Evaddaragon View Post
It has indeed been said that jobs would be focused on party play and classes on soloing, however at the same time it's never been said how exactly this affects our ability to use cross-class skills.

Granted that what I'm about to say is purely conjecture since nothing has been officially announced, here is how I was thinking it could work :

Notice how each job gets FIVE skills, one at the unlocking of the job at 30, then one more at 35,40,45 and 50 ? And that to "activate" the job, we equip an item (most likely a "job stone") while currently playing as its related class ?

Well I've been thinking that it actually has TWO effects :

1- It affects your base stats according to the "focus" of the job.

2- It reduces your maximum number of equippable cross-class abilities by the same amount of skills granted by your current job stone's "level", which is determined by the number of quests you've completed on that job.

What it means, for example, is that if you unlock Paladin while you are a level 50 Gladiator, you'd get reduced maximum HP and increased defense by a percentage that's set by how the job works, and since you've just done the first quest, you get the first job skill, which implies that your ability to use cross-class abilities gets reduced from 10 to 9.

Then, as you "level" your job by doing the quests, like what seems to be planned, you get your number of equippable abilities reduced by one for every new job skill acquired, and so once you've completed all the paladin quests, for instance, you can only equip 5 cross-class abilities instead of 10.

My reason for thinking like that is that I think it may outbalance current game content if you completely lose all cross-class abilities by equipping jobs. For example, I'm not entirely sure a Paladin will tank better than a Gladiator without Provoke from Marauder, as none of the Paladin skills seem to be about increasing enmity. Also, if it's no longer possible to equip Raise, I see a sudden problem when fighting an instanced boss if no one can raise the White Mage...

That explains why I've been thinking it will use a system like the one I described. It seemed to make sense, at least to me. But feel free to disagree.
this is along the lines of what i expect to happen as well. once you get all 5 of the job abilities you would only be able to cross class 5 class abilities and not the 10 so they would be limited. they stated jobs would limit the amount of cross class abilities and not remove them.

i could be wrong and they go a different route, but from all the stuff i've seen them say was limit and not remove.