The New Job (If Any) Added In 7.0 Will Likely Be Scouting Melee DPS

[SweetPete]

I’d take Geomancer, Puppetmaster or Psychic as potential new jobs for 7.0 do I think we will get any of them? Nope, but hey a girl can dream.

[ICountFrom0]

So, one Ranged DPS to fill out the set of 4, and one caster to fill out a set of 4.

Maybe we'll see scouting used on the new limited job? Dress a beastmaster in scouting gear maybe?

[Renathras]

I highly doubt they'll do another Stormblood, that was an absolute shitshow.

This is why I highly doubt we'll get 2x DPS in an expansion. When NIN came out, it destroyed DPS que times. When SB came out with SAM and RDM but no new Tanks or Healers, it did a similar thing.

People argue that adding a new Tank or Healer class doesn't increase the total number of Tank or Healer players (the data's not QUITE that cut and dry - GNB seems to have increased Tank NUMBERS at least slightly, for example), but what they neglect to realize is that if players of a given role, even if the numbers in each role were static, don't have a new Job, they may que less for roulettes because they aren't leveling said new Job and may play less content if they don't have a shiny new thing to try out. Even if many people stick to their old favorites, it's clear that adding a new Job increases the amount of people quing in the role that Job comes from.

The NIN and later SAM/RDM additions show us that. ShB had a healer shortage for a number of reasons, but the Tank shortage and Tanks always being AIN lessened when GNB came out. Even if people didn't decide to stick with or main the Job, it DID decrease que times for all those DNC levelers and all the other DPS out there, at least during 5.0 itself, which is when ques are the tightest due to all the people leveling at the start of an expansion to the new cap. In EW, we likewise saw in 6.0 a bit less of a healer shortage with a new healer. As a healer main that levels all four, I know I was in more ques than I'd have been in JUST leveling SCH (mostly MSQ), WHM, and AST. And those extra Healers quing up helped there, too.

The only way I see them adding just DPS Jobs for a given expansion would be if they decreased to adding only ONE Job in an expansion. If they add two, at least one will likely be a Tank or Healer. And since they seem to not really know what to do with Healers right now (and just added SGE), Tank makes the most sense.

So I'm thinking they'll either go Tank + DPS (probably Caster since the last one added was RDM in SB) or JUST one DPS Job, probably Caster, possibly Scouting. Though at this point, they should just let ROG/NIN wear Aiming gear. Most of their gearsets are just Aiming recolors anyway. Whether a Job can or can't wear gear is just a flag on the gear, so it's not like there's some hardcoding that prevents this. Old ARR had many parts with only three sets - GLD-PLD/MRD-WAR, "DoW" (all of Tanks, Melee, and ARC/BRD, the only ranged at the time; when ROG/NIN was added, it was added to this type), and "DoM" (all of the Healers and Casters, so CNJ-WHM/ACN-SMN/SCH)

[EDIT: Come to think of it, the Striking type gear in Crystal Tower I think is flagged for MNK/NIN and just has both STR and DEX as stats on it...I think.]

There's nothing in the game code that prevents this, as we can see with NIN being able to equip Aiming right side, and how the "...of Slaying" STR right side exists for both Maiming and Striking users.

[Seraphor]

I doubt we will be getting any new Tanks or Healers, period.
It was clearly a struggle for them to come up with the job design for Sage as it was, coming up with a fifth healer job mechanic doesn't seem likely. Plus we are looking at 20+ jobs now, it's getting very hard for them to manage.

We know from interviews that their process for designing and implementing new jobs is as follows:

1. Mechanics. Do we have a fun and interesting mechanic to base a job around? This is by far the most important. They need to have the mechanics down first before they can begin to fit a job around it. They're likely workshopping multiple job mechanics at any given time.

2. What's needed? What role hasn't had anything for the longest time? This is fairly nebulous, because by design, roles can be allocated in any numbers. If you look at roles as Tanks/Healers/DPS, then we're due a Tank. But if you look at roles as Tanks/Healers/Melee/Phys/Ranged/Casters, then we're due a Caster. And you can go even further to Fending/Healing/Maiming/Slaying/Scouting/Aiming/Casting, which brings us around to Scouting... and we know they can use gear sets as justification, as this was their reasoning behind Reaper. The different role paradigms are likely intentionally flexible, to allow them to target the role that they deem is in need the most, without having to be constrained by a singular definitive timeline.

3. Job fantasy. What previous FF job class fits this mechanic/role? How does it fit into the games lore? Still important, but it is the last step and the lowest priority.

There may have been outcry at first when SB launched with no Tanks or Healers, but this was the games second expansion, no pattern had been developed yet, and our one and only expansion so far had given us 1 of each role. We now have four of each role, and I don't think anyone can claim we have a shortage of Tank or Healer jobs right now. Four options is sufficient. By comparison, we only have three Caster DPS and Physical Ranged jobs.
We are simply not in need of any Tank or Healer jobs right now. All the jobs/roles currently in need by the combined factors of 'number of jobs in that role' and 'length of time passed since their last iteration', are DPS jobs.

Now if I was being optimistic, I would suggest that the pattern for new jobs over the next 3 expansions would look something like this:
7.0: Scouting and Caster
8.0: Tank and Phys Ranged
9.0: Healer and Melee

But given how we're rapidly reaching unmanageable numbers of jobs in this game, with each expansion giving us less and less content per job due to the exponentially increasing workload, I wouldn't be at all surprised if our new job trajectory looked like this:
7.0: Caster
8.0: Scouting
9.0: Phys Ranged

At which point we'd likely be done for new jobs entirely, and the game would be on maintenance mode like XI.

[Ayche]

I finally had the vision, the "second melee weapon that intuitively uses dex as a stat" weapon.
Yo-Yo. Combat Yo-Yo.
Think about it.

[Seraphor]

I finally had the vision, the "second melee weapon that intuitively uses dex as a stat" weapon.
Yo-Yo. Combat Yo-Yo.
Think about it.

I feel like a Whip would be the more likely candidate, with a Yo-Yo as a potential Gold Saucer weapon for it.

[CKNovel]

Doubt so, it's been 4 years since new tank&ranged, 1 year since healer&melee, but a whooping 6 years since we had a caster.

It's been mentioned that SQEX doesn't want to do double DPS anymore but that's not impossible.
Since caster and ranged only have 3 jobs (not counting BLU for obvious reasons), they're the highest chances of getting a new job.
Tanks are in the best spot right now and don't need a new job despite having big chances.

I doubt armor plays a role in their choice of jobs.
MNK was the only job with Striking gear until Stormblood, for 4 years.
DRG was the only job with Maming gear until Endwalker, for 8 years.

If there's any pattern, it's that a melee is added every even expansions. Stormblood being the second expansions and Endwalker the fourth.
If a Scouting job is added, then I believe we can expect it for 8.0, not 7.0.

After all, if they were following the armor rules, they we would've had Reaper on Shadowbringers.
But again, this isn't impossible, Rune Knight has been a popular demand for a long time.

[Seraphor]

I doubt armor plays a role in their choice of jobs.
MNK was the only job with Striking gear until Stormblood, for 4 years.
DRG was the only job with Maming gear until Endwalker, for 8 years.

Yoshi P specifically cited the armour class as the reason they choose Reaper to be this expansions DPS job.
We can debate how much of a factor that really was, considering how Reaper is also heavily tied to the lore of this expansions as well. But they could have made it Scouting or Striking if they wished.

Otherwise, I agree that we're likely to get a Caster before a Scouting job, but they are both the roles currently in need of representation, so it could go either way depending on their reasoning.

[Teno]

So, one Ranged DPS to fill out the set of 4, and one caster to fill out a set of 4.

Maybe we'll see scouting used on the new limited job? Dress a beastmaster in scouting gear maybe?

Beastmaster is the dream. I can picture it donning scouting gear, but I'd rather see it be a non limited job.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'm not quite sure how this would work. The Devs are pretty good about not removing content from the game. Not ALWAYS, but ALMOST always. And a lot of people like BLU as it is today. The only way this would work is if they allowed BLU to level to the level cap of other Jobs, and you had two spellsets you could swap between a set for "normal Job" play, where it would just be something akin to a BLM or RDM with reskinned spells, and then a second set for the Limited Job version, where it's effectively treated in the game code as a different Job branching from the same base (think how SMN and SCH come from Arcanist). When you que for content right now (say as a DPS with a long que), you can swap to other Jobs or even DoH/DoL, but when the que pops, it says the Job you qued as and you have to swap to it to accept the que.

Basically, they'd have to leave in current BLU and just let you shift to a "standardized BLU" to do actual content, and "True BLU" wouldn't be able to que for content above "last expansion's" level.

...I have no idea how they'd program that, but just removing existing BLU is probably not going to work. When they do that with far more standardized Jobs (MCH rework, MNK rework, majorly with SMN rework), every time they do it, it infuriates tons of people to the point they'd be better off just adding a new Job. Like new SMN a ton of people love, but a ton of people hate because of what was taken from them. If new SMN had been added as a new Job with old SMN being a separate Job, even with a new name (e.g. Green Mage), people would have been far less angry about the change.

I can't see them dumping BLU, especially after spending all this effort with new spells, level cap raises, and entire content made just for it/Limited Jobs. They may never add ANOTHER, but...

cough

On a serious note though, no, we shouldn't be advocating for the 'removal of content', but that's why the above idea doesn't 'remove' content, just repurposes it slightly. Though thinking about it now, I've not really put any thought into the Morbol achievement. But we can just move it from 'challenging BLU only content' to other 'challenging BLU only content'. Easiest solution would be to move it over to getting every secret achievement (Perfect Blue etc) I guess. With the exception of A8S, every 8man BLU raid's hardest mechanic is gonna be 'getting 7 other people who play BLU' (lucky me I did it when it first came out)

Don't think of Carnivale/learning as 'content that will be removed', think of the pitch as 'BLU is as real a job as BRD, and Carnivale/learning is it's Performance side-content'