Another "Maiming" class?

[Jonnycbad]

Samurai would have made a perfect Maiming class, and Dancer could have been made Aiming, as they would use Chakrams.

[SpeckledBurd]

One possible reason they're keeping DRG and NIN separate on the left side for now is that it makes gear slightly easier to design. It's hard to make generic shared gear that looks appropriate for SAM/MNK and DRG at the same time, since the former are more light armoured strikers while the dragoon aesthetic is more heavy armoured. Same for ninja vs ranged gear.

You say that but the devs really don't care at all about that when assigning models to gear. Generic Gear models are the norm, not something they avoid. Monk gear in the past has shared models with the tanks (Hellfire Sets) and Ninja frequently shares gear appearance with the ranged. Dragoon occasionally gets special snowflake armor models to itself but more often than not it's just a recolor of the striking set.

At this point the only mechanical result of the Maiminf/Striking/Scouting split is that it's mechanically more of a pain to be an Omni-Melee than it is to be an Omni-player for any other role for no reason, not even job aesthetic.

Think about it:
Fending: Works for the 3 tanks.
Casting: Works for the 3 casters
Healing: Works for the 3 healers.
Striking: Works for Monk/Samurai.
Aiming: Works for Bard/Machinist
Scouting: Works for Ninja.
Maiming: Works for Dragoon.

Scouting and Maiming Gear at this point just make it less cost effective to invest in gearing a DRG/NIN than it is to gear a caster, a tank or a healer. They really should fold Maiming and Striking gear into one category (either bringing Monk and Samurai's physical defense up or Dragoon's down because the days of Dragoon trading Magical Defense for more Physical Defense are gone) and fold Scouting into Aiming, it would clear up the loot tables and make Omni-roling less of a hassle for Melee.

[wereotter]

Well, it might help to talk about Job history because "Blue Mage being a tank" is simultaneously a good point but also one with mixed context.
Red Mage in its history was always capable of decent melee capabilities, often having the ability to wield swords and wearing decent armour. However, they've never had ENOUGH of a focus on melee beyond perhaps FFXI, but even then another job did its role of "magic melee fighter" (Rune Fencer) to a better degree. Red Mage has generally just been a Jack of All Trades, Master of None, with its major emphasis being decently armoured, decently deadly with magic and decently good at healing. Its ability to melee was always an afterthought. As a result, its ability to use a sword isn't entirely forgotten, nor is its healing but neither are entirely major parts of the Red Mage identity.

Blue Mage, however... is weird, even among mages. Its "magic" are enemy skills, and throughout its history, Blue Mage has often had to take said spells to the face to learn them. In the case of FFXIV, it'd make sense for them to be a tank, due to their history of having to be struck and even FFV, their origin game and codifier, had them wielding shields and relatively durable through HP. Heck, some of the most notable Blue Magic spells include the support spell Mighty Guard (which is currently a Limit Break for tanks, I might add), the self heal Vampire, Strago's Rippler that exchanges status effects with enemies, Auto-Life, and even more in FFXI. It wouldn't be that hard to tool Blue Mage into a tank using their identity of "get hit get magic".

I would disagree here. When you look at classic red mages in Final Fantasy 1, 3, and 5 they definitely were capable of being physical fighters primarily with magical backup. And so to that end getting the idea of them being more capable if melee fighting in this game isn't far-fetched. Additionally when we look at how some of these roles translated into later games, Celes in Final Fantasy 6 could be looked at as being something close to a red mage, and she was more than capable with a blade.

Also as a side note, Strago never had to be hit with blue magic to learn it. The game was coded so he had to actually see the spell being cast, which was interesting, because if he had blind status when the spell was cast, he wouldn't learn it, even if it hit him, and it would learn the spell if he wasn't blind and the spell hit another party member. Also there are many more modern blue mages like Quina and Khimari who learn blue magic through other methods making their implementation as a tank very lore friendly, and why I brought it up, but also not the only option.

[Jandor]

They should do away with Maiming and Aiming tbh.

Roll Dragoon into Striking and Bard/Machinist into Scouting.

Fending: Heavy armor
Striking: Medium armor
Scouting: Light armor
Casting & Healing: Cloth armor

Neater than what we have now, makes gearing alt jobs less of a pain.

[Shurrikhan]

They should do away with Maiming and Aiming tbh.

Role Dragoon into Striking and Bard/Machinist into Scouting.

Fending: Heavy armor
Striking: Medium armor
Scouting: Light armor
Casting & Healing: Cloth armor

Neater than what we have now, makes gearing alt jobs less of a pain.

Couldn't we just axe the suffixes altogether at that point?

[Luin]

Except that's not longer quite the case. Dragoons now have the same magic defense as other melee jobs, but still higher physical defense. Honestly I feel like they could just combine their gear sets with Samurai and Monk at this point and eliminate maiming as a set entirely.

god no we don't want MORE skill speed.

Scouting and Maiming Gear at this point just make it less cost effective to invest in gearing a DRG/NIN than it is to gear a caster, a tank or a healer. They really should fold Maiming and Striking gear into one category (either bringing Monk and Samurai's physical defense up or Dragoon's down because the days of Dragoon trading Magical Defense for more Physical Defense are gone) and fold Scouting into Aiming, it would clear up the loot tables and make Omni-roling less of a hassle for Melee.

Yeah, but you're still going to take a DRG and a NIN.

Besides that, MCH and SAM were added as DLC. Previously all physical DPS had their exclusive sets.

All it means is we'll see at least 1 maiming/scouting DPS next year, if they have 1:1:1 like they did in Heavensward.

Couldn't we just axe the suffixes altogether at that point?

I don't trust 75% of players to not equip monk gear when tanking

[Jandor]

Couldn't we just axe the suffixes altogether at that point?

I like them, just personal preference though.

Preference is why I said BRD/MCH into NIN rather than NIN into BRD/MCH as well, I think Scouting sounds better than Aiming.

[Shiroe]

dragoon glamour (best class glamour of ffxiv) must never be shared with other classes xD

and be happy your the only class rolling on your gear in savage xD

[Seraphor]

NIN/BRD/MCH all in Scouting, and DRG/MNK/SAM all in Striking would make for a nice set of triplets. But new jobs would disrupt that anyway.
Besides, a DRG in a yukata or a MNK in heavy armour would be weird. Not to mention a Ninja dressed up as some flamboyant drag queen.

I think I’d rather we just got new jobs that fit into Maiming and Scouting.

My personal hopes for the next two expansions are as follows:

Magitek Knight: Blue Magic & Gunblade wielder, closest thing to a ‘Magic Tank’. Gains job gauge by getting hit to power Blue Magic.
Geometrist: Healer that uses ground-based aetherprobes to deploy AoE healing fields with terrain specific bonuses, Calculator/Geomancer combo.
Dancer: Scouting gear user that wields Chakrams with positionals, some token ranged attacks (like a boomerang) and debuffing dances. Sort of an opposite-Bard.
Breaker: Maiming class that deals Blunt damage, wielding Maces and/or Hammers. Uses ramping-up combos like Monk with a stackable Dark Arts style mechanic.

[Jandor]

Dragoon and Ninja (and every other job) can already dress like a total weirdo though.

More jobs being added would throw the nice set of 3's out of sync, still would be a better situation than now though.

4 tanks (assuming extra tank in 5.0)
4 healers (assuming extra healer in 5.0)
3 casters
3 dps
3 other dps

Is still a lot nicer than:
4 tanks
4 healers
3 casters
2 dps
2 other dps
1 solitary dps
another 1 solitary dps