What Classes Do You Want to See Next?

[SeverianLyonesse]

Consider GW2 and their mounts, for instance. Had they merely matched other MMOs' mounts after having centered its experience for so long on having no mounts, it would have perhaps felt a betrayal; but by going beyond it to have one of the most involved mount experiences, it was applauded both by its players and those outside it, forming one of the largest contributing factors, allegedly, to new players joining with Path of Fire (the expansion in which mounts were finally released).

Simply put: Going half-assed will put development on its ass and make it look ass; actually doing a great job, though, forgives nearly all past encounters with a given subject, and often carries its own redemption or innovation story just through the contrast.

True, I agree that a massively different take could mitigate player complaints, but look at what we are working with:

a) a team that notoriously adds underdeveloped dead end features like BLU or Deep Dungeon or Chocobo Racing.

b) a pretty rigid role system that every class must be balanced against or players complain.

c) a fanbase that already has expectations of a beast master being implemented ala FF XI.

Even if the devs were able to design such an awesome job, it would still likely need to be toned down to match the rest of the meta, unless they are suddenly willing to completely retool some 20 jobs to match that level of uniqueness at the same time.

And even if they did, and it fell anywhere close along your proposed idea, players would still complain that it only has X animal companions and that they couldn't collect Y pokemans.

And while I personally would be totally fine risking that third barrier because popular opinion tends to be terrible, I still feel like the other issues are fairly significant.

Water or Ice themed dps or healer. The lack of water/ice aspected or visual attacks that players have access to in general content as their main damaging means or big damage button is almost nonexistent (I only remember NIN's Hyosho Ranryu, and maybe Midare(?)). Mostly are just more flashes, lights, and explosions. Any remaining hopes that I have that WHM will get some sort of water aspected spell is gone now that they've announced the deletion of Fluid Aura in EW.

Samurai is kinda ice themed (along with BLM and NIN). I think NIN is the only class with a water spell now that WHM lost fluid aura.

BLU is kind of a soft water/ice mage, but we don't talk about BLU.

Given that we have SAM and I love keeping it unique, I would go for a water class first. A chemist could do a lot of work with tinctures, elixirs, poisons, acids. Also a blitzballer could have water attacks.