I think I have an Idea of the next Melee Class!

[Hank_Hotspur]

I was kind of disappointed by everyone jumping on the "Apothecary is a future job!" bandwagon from 5.3, particularly because it was addressing a story beat from 5.2 and people's reactions were the opposite of what was intended. Recall that 5.2 ended with everyone having a sudden drive to go out into The First and become "Warriors of Light" like Ardbert and his friends (this was later revealed to fuel Elidibus plan) and there was a fear that with everyone rushing out to play hero adventurer, there would be nobody around to actually make The First livable again. The First needed carpenters, doctors, merchants, guards, craftsmen, farmers, etc. much more than it needed "Warriors of Light" as we knew them. This was also the crux of 5.1 story in Eulmore, about how to get the Talos industry up and running again to help mend fences between settlements and literally mend places now the threat of certain extinction was over. 5.2 ends with a sort of bittersweet moment of our character wishing well a Hyur/Hume and Roegadyn/Galdjent on their path to becoming Warriors of Light but with the absence of two competent members of the Crystarium Guard being a concern.

Come 5.3, before Elidbus' final plot kicks off, we have a nice little arc with a Miqo'te/Mystel girl who wants to be a Warrior of Light but unlike the others we've seen, she doesn't want to run around as a fighting adventurer but as a traveling apothecary to treat the sick and tend the wounded. It was a relief for the scions and those worried about fixing the state of the world that there are people out there who will be Warriors of Light in many different ways, not just adventurers. Everyone jumped on this and thought about what combat abilities you could get from this role really seemed like they missed the point.

In short, cat girl was basically a lesson in "Disciples of the Land/Hand are Warriors of Light too" and people got too wrapped up thinking of a future combat job to understand it was completely the opposite of what they were reading in to.

[Seraphor]

I was kind of disappointed by everyone jumping on the "Apothecary is a future job!" bandwagon from 5.3, particularly because it was addressing a story beat from 5.2 and people's reactions were the opposite of what was intended. Recall that 5.2 ended with everyone having a sudden drive to go out into The First and become "Warriors of Light" like Ardbert and his friends (this was later revealed to fuel Elidibus plan) and there was a fear that with everyone rushing out to play hero adventurer, there would be nobody around to actually make The First livable again. The First needed carpenters, doctors, merchants, guards, craftsmen, farmers, etc. much more than it needed "Warriors of Light" as we knew them. This was also the crux of 5.1 story in Eulmore, about how to get the Talos industry up and running again to help mend fences between settlements and literally mend places now the threat of certain extinction was over. 5.2 ends with a sort of bittersweet moment of our character wishing well a Hyur/Hume and Roegadyn/Galdjent on their path to becoming Warriors of Light but with the absence of two competent members of the Crystarium Guard being a concern.

Come 5.3, before Elidbus' final plot kicks off, we have a nice little arc with a Miqo'te/Mystel girl who wants to be a Warrior of Light but unlike the others we've seen, she doesn't want to run around as a fighting adventurer but as a traveling apothecary to treat the sick and tend the wounded. It was a relief for the scions and those worried about fixing the state of the world that there are people out there who will be Warriors of Light in many different ways, not just adventurers. Everyone jumped on this and thought about what combat abilities you could get from this role really seemed like they missed the point.

In short, cat girl was basically a lesson in "Disciples of the Land/Hand are Warriors of Light too" and people got too wrapped up thinking of a future combat job to understand it was completely the opposite of what they were reading in to.

Thing is, they outright told us there was a hint at one of the next jobs in patch 5.3.

In hindsight, is there anything in there that hints at Sage?

If not... could we in fact be getting Mystic Knight or Rune Knight, using SoS as the 'hint'?
(I'm still writing off anything portrayed in Heroes Gauntlet.)

The end boss of e12 was Artemisia/Ultimecia just not in a form we were expecting. Eden's Promise is based on a statue of Artemis and Oracle of Darkness uses many abilities that originated in FFVIII's final boss battle with Ultimecia.

The model is also based around the 'skeleton' of Ultimecia's final form, and uses many of the same animations.

Chemist was for the most part the result of a red herring that concealed that the actual job hint in 5.3 was in the G-Warrior fight.

I never considered G-Warrior as a hint for Sage... and I still think it's a pretty tenuous link tbf, Sage isn't a magitek job, it uses magic and aether, the Nouliths aren't actual guns.

[Hank_Hotspur]

I never considered G-Warrior as a hint for Sage... and I still think it's a pretty tenuous link tbf, Sage isn't a magitek job, it uses magic and aether, the Nouliths aren't actual guns.

It's not "magitek" as we've come to expect from Garlemald or the Ironworks, but its still crystalline technology that uses aether and the "hint" doesn't need to be as overt as a character going "I'm THIS job now!". G-Warrior was as close you could get to a Gundam pastiche without actually causing a lawsuit (they even had the Newtype Flash) and the reveal of the Sage with "Nouliths" were even joked about during the reveal that they are a "wholly original idea and in no way similar to Gundam funnels".

So people latched on to the idea of job "hint" that was in fact the opposite of that and could never work and now in hindsight we have a pretty 1-to-1 of what was in 5.3 and the revealed job and you still refuse to see it as the actual hint.