Fresh classes.

[Sanguisio]

I really want to hear what ideas are floating around.

I recently thought it would be cool to introduce a progression on the job system where 3 classes are required incl some DOH, or DOL.

Saboteur(sorry couldnt think of another name) ACN+PGL+ALC uses reagents to apply debuffs, capable of small burst damage and DOTs.

I've seen geomancer thrown around a few times, so obviously a MIN+CNJ+?

What else can you guys think of ?

[Lollie]

I'll bite

Geomacer: min btn fsh
Abilities> sink hole tree crush and trout smack

Marteler: bsm thm gld (think hammer brother)
Consept ranged tank with repeling skills. Eliminates auto attack dmg but would add dodging issues due to positioning on farther back from enemies.
Native converts all attacks to mid-ranged 8yalms

Pulse: static ability prevent all enemies coming within 6yalms of you. When initiated act like fluid aura.
Boltkreige: ranged reduce blunt resist
Byrgeots rage: ranged potent dmg (scaled to tanks) chance to cause fear based off inner quiet stacks.

Inner quiet ticks up when abilities (not attacks) used. Increases parry rate as stacks go up

[Melithea]

An Onion Knight style class that gets stronger based on your number of level capped jobs would be interesting. No idea how that would fit into the Holy Trinity, though.

If Geomancer makes it into the game it should be the other CNJ job, seeing as CNJ is pretty much already Geomancer with a Cure spell. I'd like to see a focus on adding more "classic" jobs first. Like, finish off the list from FF5 before anything else, minus stuff that will never happen like Mime and Mediator. Mystic Knight? Hell yeah.

[Kitru]

An Onion Knight style class that gets stronger based on your number of level capped jobs would be interesting. No idea how that would fit into the Holy Trinity, though.

There's already something like this in game insofar as you can run as a base class and use 10 CC skills drawn from all of your classes instead of a job with 5 drawn from 2.

However, if you're talking about a class that actually grows in power based upon your number of maxed out jobs/classes, it would be broken as hell. It would need to be balanced around having all jobs maxed out because, otherwise, if you maxed out all of the jobs, it would end up being stronger than any other job. At that point, it then becomes weaker than any other job until such time as you have maxed out all jobs.

Onion Knight/freelancer works in other FF games because they're single-player games where balance across classes isn't really needed because you're not competing against anyone else. Freelancer starting terrible and becoming the greatest fighting force in the universe is simply a reward for completion in a game where completion isn't really required. It's kind of like the ultimate weapons found at the bottom of the uber-dungeon after the uber-boss: you've already beaten the only thing that said weapon would actually help against, so it's only really there as a "you are this kewl; have a badass weapon to show off and demonstrate your awesomeness" feature.

The same logic is there for elemental weaknesses in MMOs as well as a bunch of other stuff. MMOs absolutely *have* to be balanced amongst the classes so as to not render one or more classes irrelevant for running content and play has to be both fun and approachable so a lot of the classic tactical/mechanical options that other games used are outright impossible as well.

Honestly, when considering mechanics, it works better to think about ARR as an MMO, rather than a Final Fantasy game. The theme/aesthetic can be derived from FF, but the mechanics most definitely need to be MMO.

[Minimefuzzy]

Red Mage!
- GLD+THM+CNJ

A mage that relies on buffs, such as speed and evasion, but can also do some offensive and defensive magic ^_^

[Enkidoh]

Keeping away from Jobs and just focusing on classes for now, some ideas I've come up with:

Ronin (role: tank. Weapon: Ronin's arms and Ronin's two-handed arms (ala, katana and great katana) - legendary warriors from the Far East, driven westwards to Eorzea by Garlean purges, they employ quick attacks and martial arts to strike their target's weak spots. Masters to no one save themselves, the lone-wolf nature of the class is right at home as an adventurer class.
Job upgrades: Ninja (DD/debuff hybrid) and Samurai (tank/DD/healer hybrid)
Acrobat (role: healer. Weapon: Acrobat's arms and Acrobat's two-handed arm (ala: chakram and 'silks') - street entertainers that delight audiences with their dexterous moves and extraordinary fluidity, these mummers have crossed into the arts of war by fusing their traditions into a unique form of fighting to befuddle their opponents while granting succor to their allies. Job upgrades: Dancer (healer)
Mystic (role: healer. Weapon: Mystic's arms and light shields (ala: fencing swords and rapiers) - a discipline long thought lost due to the collapse of Sharalyan, these legendary swordsmen and women found ways to enchant their blades with aetheric energies, infusing their attacks with added power while granting them warding effects to protect them and their allies from harm. They are also well versed in arcane healing magics unheard of in Eorzea. Job upgrades: Rune Fencer (DD) and Red Mage (healer).

That's a few I've come up with so far. Feel free to criticize my ideas.

[Exstal]

Ronin (role: tank. Weapon: Ronin's arms and Ronin's two-handed arms (ala, katana and great katana) - legendary warriors from the Far East, driven westwards to Eorzea by Garlean purges, they employ quick attacks and martial arts to strike their target's weak spots. Masters to no one save themselves, the lone-wolf nature of the class is right at home as an adventurer class.
Job upgrades: Ninja (DD/debuff hybrid) and Samurai (tank/DD/healer hybrid)

2 things;

1) Katana / Great Katana isn't something you should assign to Ninja and Samurai. Ninja would be ninja knife/dagger/short sword whereas Samurai is just straight katana. Great Katana is an odd weapon which I believe shouldn't exist ever and left with the more ridiculous type jobs (ie Dark Knight) for that "cool" factor.

2) Ninja is to Samurai as Thief is to Knight. The only thing that connects them is where they originated. You wouldn't have Thief play like Knight (or Paladin), so having Ninja play like Samurai is, for lack of a better word, absurd. They'll play like each other because majority of your actions are from your class. Maybe at 60 cap when Job has 15+ skills then you can differentiate from each other but traits and basic skills are from the class so even then it may not be that much different.

[Nahara]

1) Katana / Great Katana isn't something you should assign to Ninja and Samurai. Ninja would be ninja knife/dagger/short sword whereas Samurai is just straight katana. Great Katana is an odd weapon which I believe shouldn't exist ever and left with the more ridiculous type jobs (ie Dark Knight) for that "cool" factor.

"Great" was simply the prefix used in XI to differentiate between the one and two-handed variants of different weapon types. Greatsword vs Sword, Greataxe vs Axe, you get the idea.

Great Katanas were the two-handed weapons used by SAM and modeled after the real life katana, while the Katanas were the one-handed weapons used by NIN and modeled after weapons like the wakizashi.

[Kitru]

Great Katanas were the two-handed weapons used by SAM and modeled after the real life katana, while the Katanas were the one-handed weapons used by NIN and modeled after weapons like the wakizashi.

Actually, Ninja used the Ninja-to. It had a shorter straight blade compared to the wakizashi's curved blade, which allowed for the scabbard to be used for other purposes (a curved scabbard is actually pretty weak thanks to physics). Wakizashi was specifically the small sword of the Samurai daisho (lit. "big-small"; the pairing of katana and wakizashi that were the trademark equipage of the Samurai to such an extent that wearing either when you were not of the caste was a capital offense). Calling it a katana is like calling an English longsword a scimitar.

It's for this exact reason why you actually end up seeing the ninja weapons called "Ninja Blade" instead of some variant of "katana" in FF games with both Ninja and Samurai (in those games with just Ninja, Ninja use katana because there's no need to distinguish between the specialist swords of the two class/jobs). If both NIN and SAM are added, NIN should use daggers and/or ninja blades, which is what they have historically used in the FF series for those games with both SAM and NIN, and SAM should just use straight-up katana (likely just a single one in a 2h grip because, in the FF series, dual wielding has been the providence of ninja).

Also, random note, the larger "katana" designed to be used only in 2 hands as opposed to the hand-and-a-half (one or two handed) design of the katana were actually nodachi (lit. "great sword"). There was no such thing as a daikatana or great katana because katana referred specifically to the large portion of the daisho.

The problem with Ninja and Samurai both coming from the same class, however, is what Exstal already paraphrased from my points on previous discussions (which he seems fond of doing, given his signature): a Ninja and a Samurai fight in completely different ways, to such an extent that any job change would require such monumental changes to the base class that it would require as much work as simply making a new class entirely (new animations, new attacks, modified CDs, etc.). The only link between the two is the asian theme, which is not enough to have them stem from the same job.

[Exstal]

A likely error by the English then. I'm sure the Japanese simply used wakizashi for Ninja and katana for Samurai.