I would like to see Classes treated as proper, separate "Jobs"

[Jim_Berry]

The annoyance of a new ROG using Provoke and Flash while trying to use Cure would be a problem.

[Dorander]

Create level 30 class quest, to gain class stone. Not job stone, but to further your training in your base class. Give it the stats boost of the Job stone, but do it similar to the crafters with [class] "Specialist." So, an Arcanist Specialist would focus in Carbuncles, a Conjurer specialist would focus more on the elements instead of the Holy nature of WHM, a Gladiator specialist would focus on raw martial prowess, not the healing and support of PLD. And give us all new abilities to go along with the new focus of the class. Create a system where we have a ton of classes of all types, and lock your level to 30, unless you have your specialist, or Job stone equipped.

This is still 'branching' jobs if you think about it from a coding perspective. Which, as they devs have said, they will not be doing again because of how much of a nightmare SCH and SMN are. If you throw in Arcanist into the mix, then you have a job that splits 3 ways, which will be even more of headache. Whatever changes they do to any skills shared between the branches will still have to be weighed and messured on how they affect each branching job. Then they have to take into consideration gear, because they'd all be using the same weapon and armor types and the'd need to rebalance them stat wise. Along with the added headache of needing to use the stat changing hymns every time you want to switch between them.

Example: Let's go with SMN, SCH, and ACN. Since it would be split 3 ways. Three jobs with the exact 18 skills from 1 - 50. Now, unless they gave some really unique 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60 skills to ACN 30+ it really wouldn't be anymore more than a slightly different flavor SMN with Carbuncles instead of Ifrit, Garuda, and Titan. See how it starts getting needlessly convoluted and copy/pasta? That's just ONE base class.. think of the insanity of them all doing something like that. Sorry to burst bubbles, but the devs have way different plans.

As in, they've explained a few times that they want each job to feel exclusive or have some sort of originality to the way it fulfills it's given role. Which is why going forward they are only going to be introducing jobs (without base classes) that are aesthetically unique. Each job has it's own weapon style. Sword and Board for PLD, Axe for WAR, and so on. The new jobs they've hinted at - Red Mage and Samurai would have to have their own weapon style. Which is fairly easy to guess. RDM - Rapier, Samurai - Katana. Both with their own functionality and flair to what they bring to the table.

I know a bunch of you want the base classes to have their own moment in the spotlight. However, they really are just remnants of 1.0 and are being phased out as much as possible. At this point in the game, you'd sooner see them removed completely or continue to collect dust and be forgotten.