What Classes Do You Want to See Next?

[Wavaryen]

A dot class now that summoner is no longer one.

That is it.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Water or Ice themed dps or healer. The lack of water/ice aspected or visual attacks that players have access to in general content as their main damaging means or big damage button is almost baffling.They're nonexistent (I only remember NIN's Hyosho Ranryu, and maybe Midare(?)). Mostly are just more flashes, lights, and explosions. Any remaining hopes that I have that WHM will get some sort of water aspected spell is gone now that they've announced the deletion of Fluid Aura in EW.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Consider GW2 and their mounts, for instance. Had they merely matched other MMOs' mounts after having centered its experience for so long on having no mounts, it would have perhaps felt a betrayal; but by going beyond it to have one of the most involved mount experiences, it was applauded both by its players and those outside it, forming one of the largest contributing factors, allegedly, to new players joining with Path of Fire (the expansion in which mounts were finally released).

Simply put: Going half-assed will put development on its ass and make it look ass; actually doing a great job, though, forgives nearly all past encounters with a given subject, and often carries its own redemption or innovation story just through the contrast.

True, I agree that a massively different take could mitigate player complaints, but look at what we are working with:

a) a team that notoriously adds underdeveloped dead end features like BLU or Deep Dungeon or Chocobo Racing.

b) a pretty rigid role system that every class must be balanced against or players complain.

c) a fanbase that already has expectations of a beast master being implemented ala FF XI.

Even if the devs were able to design such an awesome job, it would still likely need to be toned down to match the rest of the meta, unless they are suddenly willing to completely retool some 20 jobs to match that level of uniqueness at the same time.

And even if they did, and it fell anywhere close along your proposed idea, players would still complain that it only has X animal companions and that they couldn't collect Y pokemans.

And while I personally would be totally fine risking that third barrier because popular opinion tends to be terrible, I still feel like the other issues are fairly significant.

Water or Ice themed dps or healer. The lack of water/ice aspected or visual attacks that players have access to in general content as their main damaging means or big damage button is almost nonexistent (I only remember NIN's Hyosho Ranryu, and maybe Midare(?)). Mostly are just more flashes, lights, and explosions. Any remaining hopes that I have that WHM will get some sort of water aspected spell is gone now that they've announced the deletion of Fluid Aura in EW.

Samurai is kinda ice themed (along with BLM and NIN). I think NIN is the only class with a water spell now that WHM lost fluid aura.

BLU is kind of a soft water/ice mage, but we don't talk about BLU.

Given that we have SAM and I love keeping it unique, I would go for a water class first. A chemist could do a lot of work with tinctures, elixirs, poisons, acids. Also a blitzballer could have water attacks.

[Shurrikhan]

True, I agree that a massively different take could mitigate player complaints, but look at what we are working with:

a) a team that notoriously adds underdeveloped dead end features like BLU or Deep Dungeon or Chocobo Racing.

b) a pretty rigid role system that every class must be balanced against or players complain.

c) a fanbase that already has expectations of a beast master being implemented ala FF XI.

While I certainly understand the idea that we must make use of the resources available to us, I don't think we can afford to assume that our resources are limited to those failings. We've seen some oddly great executions, too, after all, and if the shortfalls really were the end and crown of development thus far, there's just not really much left to us. Better to push that boundary, in my opinion, than oversell the realist angle.

Even if the devs were able to design such an awesome job, it would still likely need to be toned down to match the rest of the meta, unless they are suddenly willing to completely retool some 20 jobs to match that level of uniqueness at the same time.

Indeed, but I'd suggest the solution then is to build the others up first via small steps. While I don't think the dev team can afford to rush ahead to such drastic changes as I've proposed, I do think small steps in those directions could be, themselves, healthy and immediately gratifying.

Let's take a quick example:

In terms of diversifying roles, a suitable first step wouldn't require any more than perceptibly greater cross-role output and active defensive play. That might sound big, and its necessary corollaries would quickly ramp up, but the initial concrete changes involved are really quite straight-forward, e.g.,

• Increase the effectiveness of mitigation and self-sustain tools like Third Eye, Fists of Earth, and Life Surge,
• Increase the effectiveness of curative tools like Everlasting Flight and Vercure (at compensatory increased MP costs or the like),
• Give Warden's Paean two other versions/modes, based on one's current Song.
• You offer reduced button bloat where buttons are utter non-decisions (in the vein of Dream Within a Dream -> Assassinate or even just click-on-CD skills like Lucid Dream that may as well be passive) and in their place offer back some CC, such as Tri-bind and Miasma's slow; Tether and a slow on Verstone and interrupt against regular mobs on Verthunder; Freeze, Blizzard, and Blizzard II again having their effects; etc., etc.
• You free up 2 charges of Enkindle on Summoner to generate a specific ability based on your current elemental Trance. Two of the five would be relatively pure damage and therefore the place where you'd most often use them in role-constrained play, but the other three trances' uses would now have significant utility atop a decent but still inferior bit of damage (e.g., a Reflect if at melee and Gaol if at range for Titan, Charge if at range and Stun at melee for Ifrit, Knockback from melee and draw in at range for Garuda).

Now, how does one follow that up?

• Since DPS are otherwise now "further stepping on healers' toes" or "left with insignificant bloat skills", you make healing duties more frequent, numerous, and integral; there's now plenty of footwork to be done and any help in that regard is no longer "insignificant" or "bloat".
• Since you've made healing more than sequencing oGCDs between Glare/Broil/Malefic spam, you might need provide slightly more involved, deep, and in-context instruction for healers. Well, that would already have been important for reducing community tensions; we've merely placed learning opportunities more tightly against the average player experience.
• Since CC would otherwise seem mere bloat against bosses, you might re-envision its effects or raid/trial encounters slightly, such as by actually having (CC-able, though perhaps at reduced duration) adds appear in raids and trials again and/or having alternate, interesting effects for each CC for when it fails to deal its status effect.
• Now that CC is back, you might invest a bit further into content types that'd make use of it, or at least needn't quite so constrain new content to the straight-and-narrow.
• Since other jobs now have versatility available to them that can step into the domains of those for whom MP is (somewhat of) a real mechanic, you might reevaluate the point of MP, rather than leaving it mostly bloat.
• Now that healers, due to the increased frequency/number/depth of healing tasks/play within a given encounter, actually make use of GCD heals again, you might use that opportunity to further reshuffle the powers in their toolkit towards the healthier.
• Since DPS will now have further self-sustain skills, we might want to further leverage that in solo content and in group content, such as by having enemies hit for more than a pittance and by having more enemy skills naturally skillshot (hit the first enemy within the given angle), trample (deal decreasing damage with each victim hit, or as if facing cumulative mitigation across each), or split.
• Since we've already combated bloat on less often used skills, we may as well take that further. Xeno and Foul, Guren and Senei, and The Forbidden Chakra and Enlightenment, for instance, have no reason to be separate buttons so long as you'd never chose in AoE to focus just the one target over dealing greater total damage via the AoE version. That said, we've now got CC back, so our best solution is to make situations where we might want to focus the one over that total damage.

While that may sound like the natural implications of those first few simple, concrete changes (a stronger Third Eye, Life Surge, and Everlasting Flight, for instance) are rapidly spiraling out of control, I'd argue otherwise. They add up quickly, but each is sound, healthy, and still immediately gratifying.

And even if they did, and it fell anywhere close along your proposed idea, players would still complain that it only has X animal companions and that they couldn't collect Y pokemans.

That, I think, is fine. I think what people get sold on most in a new job is neither quite just the practice or just the principle, but the overall vision, which isn't quite divisible to either single side. Simply put, the largest factor here would be the initial presentation, and I do think that could be done in a way that would be broadly and deeply well-received. Both those dimensions are vital, but I think the devs tend too often to overlook the latter in the attempt to be as universally appealing as possible. Heck, if there were absolutely no detractors, I'd almost think that a bad sign.

But again, this would be a 7.0 thing at the earliest. For the time being, this would all be about the small steps, such as a new sort of Exploratory that finally learns from Diadem's, Eureka's, and Bozja's mistakes making the case for this or that coming back or being a tiny bit more powerful, and then the chain of events, each small and even individually understandable, that could flow from there.

Samurai is kinda ice themed (along with BLM and NIN).

Wind, predominantly. All but a some six skills (related to flowers or sight) have to do with the sky or wind. Even the one seemingly ice-type spell, Yukikaze, is still a type of wind (literally: Snow-wind).

[SeverianLyonesse]

Wind, predominantly. All but a some six skills (related to flowers or sight) have to do with the sky or wind. Even the one seemingly ice-type spell, Yukikaze, is still a type of wind (literally: Snow-wind).

Some of those ideas are honestly very good. I have no idea if the devs are on the same page on you, but fingers crossed some changes like that happen in 6.x patches.

To clarify Samurai, its Sen gauge is based on a Japanese art principle "setsu gekka" (literally "snow, moon, and flowers"), which is kind of like the visual equivalent of haikus. It represents a progression through the light of the seasons: the "blue" white of snow in winter, the "yellow" white of the moon in autumn, and the "pink" white of flowers in spring.

So while you are correct that the Samurai is "sky" themed, and has a lot of wind abilities to complement that, I do consider ice to be a substantial part of its central motif (albeit driven by wind like most other abilities). At any rate, it's certainly more of an ice class than any other job besides BLM.

EDIT: I also looked back on your Green Mage ideas Shurrikhan, and I am on board. I feel like Green Mage and Geomancer could merge very well into a build that would round out the tanks pretty well. Give them a greathammer and some debuffs/buffs from Green Mage. Give them Sinkhole, Tanglevine, Tremor, Quicksand, Sandstorm, Magma Surge Nature's Wrath from Geomancer.

[Kacho_Nacho]

Given that summoner has apparently lost its dots, I'm fully expecting a dot class to be introduced in the future. Perhaps chemist?

[Shougun]

I love these type of threads but I want to preface that I am excited to play Sage and Reaper, am not posting out of disappointment and am very excited to try them (and some others, with intention in the end to level them all). Just some post EW job trailer comments on the subject:

With Reaper I feel that "dark transformation job" (thread desire I made) is mostly taken up as an opportunity, one that doesn't make me sad (Reaper looks cool and captures a lot of the general desires), but just that request seems like a less valuable space to fill as Reaper will do much of the desires topically while coming at it with SE's own twist. So that said I want to more officially shift my transformation request from dark to Esper (Zodiac, FFXII), and FFXVI theme (not stepping onto the primal toes of Summoner, so ensure they're different). I still really want a job that focuses on /transforming/ and using those forms, I understand it'll need to be locked into a role so I imagine DD, though I suppose tank is do-able. I believe one way to keep a sense of personalization while having forms, besides perhaps seeing what WoW did with Druid (can unlock other form visuals), is that a weapon which can be molded and / or fit to other models could be used. Say for example one idea was a cloak, sash, scarf, like weapon which would allow it to be incorporated into animations as well (think Bayonetta, though she uses her hair lol). Another could be bangles that perhaps grow in size, almost like Nezha's rings, or I suppose that most recent Shang-chi movie (so for example you could have these rings round the wrist which could easily apply to other models at wrist joint areas, wolf legs, sephirot arms, etc). Relics could provide opportunity for other fun modifications (AF / relics), where like if the relic was all fiery then the transformation may have extra touches to fit that theme (minor texture, effect, etc changes). Would be nice to see a system that encourages a balance between too fluid and static forms- like rapdily changing over and over wouldn't be ideal (need to give a form time to breathe), yet not changing at all would also similarly be non-ideal. Find some balance between being responsive and flexible but yet not hyper static 1 + 1 always = 2 (like say SMN egi were, X situation = Y answer, this isn't horrible just saying it'd be nice if the job had some system to both encourage being responsive (and maybe being responsive over purely predictive) yet that it doesn't always equal the same exact forms in the same exact order at the same exact time every time). I know it has been suggested to do similar to FFXI's and make it more of a limited job, but I had really wanted to play it as a main job (I'd be all for it being both, or there are two different types of content related to it, but for it to only ever be 'limited' wouldn't be my favorite outcome).

Reaper does a nice melee magic vibe for DD but I do believe there is still some room for a 'crunchy' DD (with some magic) job, such like Geo-Knight suggestion (thinking Golbez, Ex-death, Sauron). Weapons of course being chunky, before Sage I had suggested elemental pylons (to go along with the geomancer theme of area recognition, some use being similar to say how you might see them in Fenrir's fight in the snowy dungeon - naturally with more elemental themes and imbuements), might approach a mix of engineer like vibes with big bulk which could be a nice take (big bulky magical engineer).

A ranged DD that is like a huge gun with a shield on it could be fun, just at least in my mind. Not black mage in cast time but a bit more locked down than Bard or MCH, the imagination of what a Ranger job might have been if it was one (if inspired by FFXI like thought of it).

[Ayche]

Time Mage
Magic DPS, rotation built around funky mechanics involving speeding up and slowing down your GCD.

[Brightshadow]

Pictomancer:
Role: Magic DPS
Concept: Inspirations would be bravely default pictomancer/artist terms for spells, they would use light and dark magic like in bravely default. They will be our new damage overtime magic user since summoner has lost that role.

Would use a mudra type system for different paints.

Just a rough idea of what it could be.