With the dificulties that FFXIV has had in the last 12 months I, as a long time fan of the Final Fantasy franchise have been playing the game as it is and looking foward for any and all updates in the game. I might not personally agree with all changes which have taken place but if these make the game viable as an investment for Square Enix and atrack a wider range of players I think I'll take those changes for the overall good of the game and it's future.

Now that most of the main problems in the game have been adressed and a certain ammount of content has been added into the game (I understand we would like some more but so far so good in my opinion) I'm starting to look not just to the overall player but to the niche target which this game seemes to also be aimed at from launch and one which I am part of; the Disciple of the Hand/Land.

Most of of the players will be aware that one of the main draws in FFXIV is the statement that both crafters and gatherers can and will be full classes but some of the newer players might not be aware of the various promisses that were made, some by the old team. Since the fighting in FFXIV is starting to be fleshed out enough to saciate those players I would be looking for some kind of Official response on the future of DoH/Ls in FFXIV.

Since before release the official Final Fantasy XIV web site defines the role of Miners as:

In addition to their unexcelled prowess at throwing rocks, miners also use their skills to debilitate enemies with mineral composition.
This and other pieces of information released at the time had people like myself thinking of ways that both DoL and DoH could help fights. Myself I envisioned these classes to be a new kind of buffers and debuffers with DoL improving damage to the whole party against the specific mob family while DoHs like ARM could increase defense to everyone, BSM increase attack and so forth. With the issues the game was experiencing it was axpected that any such possibility would have to wait till the actual fights were enjoyable by the comunity at large so I waited...

But then in Jne of this year an official forum post informed us of the following:

Q: It was initially claimed that all disciplines (War/Magic/Hand/Land) would be of equal focus in regards to content/gameplay. Is this statement still accurate?
A: It will still be possible to enjoy the game just as a gatherer, but the battle content and main scenarios to be added will make it necessary to obtain ranks and skills/actions for battle-related classes.
I might very well be wrong but it now seems that any chance there might have been in the past of crafters and gatherers of joining fighting classes in a meaningful way has been completly removed from the game. Since that appears to no longer an option we can now only expect to have content dedicated to DoH/Ls as engaging and as varied as the one in existance to DoW/M.

The new Materia and "Colorant" systems seem to be a step in the right direction alowing more involving crafting which will make it more engaging but on the other hand the simplicity in obtaining HQ items just appears (to me) to be counter producing. Overall I would be looking for a clear statement from Yoshi or the team whether we can expect Disciples of the Hand and Land to be considered as independent, engaging and stand alone classes or should we just get ready to have these as support skills for real classes like on every other game available?

I would also like to take this time to bring something to everyone's attention, on the latest post about crafting the following was written:

We plan on sharpening this from Rank 50 on with the implementation of ingredients that can only be gathered by miners with STR 100+, ingredients that can only be gathered by miners with VIT 125+, armor that can only be created by armorers with DEX 115+
Acording to Ask the Devs! (11/5/2010) the stats associated to Mining are Strength and Mind while the ones associated to Armourer are Vitality and Strength. Are we to assume that this information is no longer valid and has since been changed or do the examples given today not reflect the actual stats and should only be taken as examples?