So.... What exactly is this? [Stormblood Speculation]

[Jonah_Greymont]

I was browsing through the Stormblood screenshots and artwork available on the teaser site, and I ran across an image that at first glance appears to be a mage gear preview. As I looked, though, I noticed an object that appeared to be some sort of bagpipe hanging from the left hip. Take a look for yourself: Stormblood media It's the 21st item, last one on the fourth row.

Am I misjudging this item? Could it be an Astrologian weapon, or is it something new, akin to a new class? It could possibly be a blue mage, but if that's the case then they are innovating with the weapon choice. That makes sense, of course, since most previous iterations of the class used swords similarly to red mage (for whom they've already re-imagined the weapon into a swordstaff). The move away from an aggressive weapon such as a sword could be because they want to reclassify blue mage into a healer, and if the third class released is a tank samurai then the trend (one from each role) would continue. Obviously there's a lot of speculation and conjecture here, but the pieces seem to fit... at least for now, anyway. The gear in the artwork is also blue, which admittedly is a weak correlation to blue mage but at the same time this class has normally been defined by the color of its garb, so it's not as huge of a stretch as it may first appear.

What do you guys think?

[jameseoakes]

I'd guess that's the new Bard AF

[mosaicex]

I think it's pretty obvious that that's the BRD new AF

[Shippuu]

Man the reaching you had to do to try and argue for it being blue mage gear makes my head spin.

How you saw bagpipes, a musical instrument, and immediately thought something other than bard is beyond me. On top of the large plume hat and an obvious Moogle playing a horn in the top left, everything about it screams bard.

[Riardon]

It looks too of a mage robe though. Is that a bag pipe? It could be Bard's new AF. I can hardly imagine SE would release spoil images of an unannounced job. If it's indeed for Bard it doesn't look very fitting though at least for my liking.

[RLofOBFL]

Man that DRK & WHM AF....so "lit".

[Atoli]

It's the BRD AF. Sorry to burst your dream bubble.

Also, amazed which hoops people jump through to force bluemage into the speculation..o,o'

[Jonah_Greymont]

Man the reaching you had to do to try and argue for it being blue mage gear makes my head spin.

How you saw bagpipes, a musical instrument, and immediately thought something other than bard is beyond me. On top of the large plume hat and an obvious Moogle playing a horn in the top right, everything about it screams bard.

It's not really reaching. The gear looks very much like mage garb as opposed to what normally qualifies as bard dress. The moogle and the fact that it is a musical instrument made me think bard at first, but then I thought about how the bard instrument is a harp, not a bagpipe or any other wind instrument. I certainly agree that this is most likely new Bard AF, but I felt the slim possibility of it being something else should be examined. The plume is not indicative of anything, though.

[Vexander]

My first thought was, 'Is that a remake of the AST iLvl200 set from HW?' Then I looked closer. It's likely the bard set. Or concept for it.

[Jonah_Greymont]

It's the BRD AF. Sorry to burst your dream bubble.

Also, amazed which hoops people jump through to force bluemage into the speculation..o,o'

No dream bubble here. In fact, if you read my post history you'll see that I actually support samurai speculation moreso than blue mage. Just a slim possibility that I noticed in the difference in what normally looks like bard gear.