Will Beastmaster appear in any Endwalker content patches?

[Sequora]

Even if it’s true that BLU has its own team, that team could be doing something else.

[aveyond-dreams]

Even if it’s true that BLU has its own team, that team could be doing something else.

Exactly this. Since BLU's team is apparently focused on making...animations? I suppose they could be redirected to something like new primal glamours for Summoner so that we don't have to wait until 7.0 to finally break free of the Ifrit/Titan/Garuda trinity.

So... charming random monsters with diversity of traits, collecting and placing them in pens and training them, the whole she-bang. That's a little more complicated than random rangers with generic pets with almost nothing unique or interesting about them.

If you think that SE will put in the work to code a variety of pets with different AI and abilities for Beastmaster then you I would like to remind you how many of Blue Mage's spells are the exact same potency with just different animations. I would rather get a full job with 1 or 2 decent pets that can be called for a short duration like Summoner's demis than 100+ useless recycled mobs with nothing functionally unique about them.

[MellowMink]

I would like to remind you how many of Blue Mage's spells are the exact same potency with just different animations.

It's a minority of the total spells, and as someone else already pointed out before, how many of those spells that you're referring to additionally have the exact same range and radius attributes, not just non-elemental effects? Very few of the spells are literally the exact same in terms of things besides animations.

[Auryan]

It's a minority of the total spells, and as someone else already pointed out before, how many of those spells that you're referring to additionally have the exact same range and radius attributes, not just non-elemental effects? Very few of the spells are literally the exact same in terms of things besides animations.

This is par the usual with discourse when it comes to BLU. The same tired talking points get thrown around endlessly.

[Auryan]

If you think that SE will put in the work to code a variety of pets with different AI and abilities for Beastmaster then you I would like to remind you how many of Blue Mage's spells are the exact same potency with just different animations. I would rather get a full job with 1 or 2 decent pets that can be called for a short duration like Summoner's demis than 100+ useless recycled mobs with nothing functionally unique about them.

That's not what I'm suggesting at all. Why create codes for pet AI when you can simply reuse the systems that are already in place. Repurpose the now defunct egi-system and give pets an aggressive, defensive and passive stance. And while we're repurposing unused assets, why not just throw in all the plethora of monster abilities that are in-game? Need a support/healing pet? Charm and train a Mandragora for Photosynthesis (Regen) and Leaf Dagger (Poison). Need a tanking pet? Get yourself a Crab friend and have it use Metallic Body for defense. You get the gist of it. The point is you don't have to take ridiculous suggestions like yours when there are plenty of sensible alternative avenues.

And why reference Hunters from WoW as being a good iteration on the Beastmaster trope when you have a disdain for "recycled and functionally non-unique mobs" and that kind of being their entire deal in that game?

[Archwizard]

Reaper wasn't an obstacle to a real job being made for Reaper... because it was made a real job, not a limited one.

No, the fact that BLU exists had no impact on Reaper. But if Reaper had likewise been made a limited job, it sure as hell would have an impact on people's enjoyment of Reaper. Just as it has had on BLU itself.

As Auryan noted, my aim was not to draw direct correlation between BLU and RPR, only to highlight what you and I both know well and have discussed several times in the past: provided that there is a unique playstyle and role afforded, there is little reason two jobs of similar aesthetic or background cannot co-exist, a la RPR and DRK.
I've brought this up many times in discussions of GEO and TIM ("as long as they're not healers stepping on the toes of WHM/AST, then it's possible"), and the principle holds true with Limited Jobs as well. If people want a "traditional" Blue Mage job that isn't Limited in the content it can broach, there is no reason the devs should consider the existing Limited Job such an obstacle or even in the same sphere of development in the creation of such a candidate. If anything, the existing iteration of Blue Mage only serves as an obstacle to the design of future Limited Jobs (eg not repeating the same gimmick), not to future Disciples of Magic; the key obstacle to a future "traditional" Blue Mage stand-in -- if such a job were ever going to happen, mind -- is in designing a fitting, unique, and functional playstyle.

Which I repeat, nobody has yet suggested.

Even if it’s true that BLU has its own team, that team could be doing something else.

Again, could be said of literally any other aspect of the game with exactly equal weight and merit, by which I mean it's still a petty and non-constructive comment. I shouldn't be too shocked to find the high-end raiders in here complaining about how BLU won't enter their lane have similar sentiments about, say, the Ishgard Restoration -- or how they respond to casual players with similar thoughts about Ultimate raids. Just 'cuz it's not made for you doesn't mean nobody wants it or that the devs are wasting their time making it.

[aveyond-dreams]

Again, could be said of literally any other aspect of the game with exactly equal weight and merit, by which I mean it's still a petty and non-constructive comment. I shouldn't be too shocked to find the high-end raiders in here complaining about how BLU won't enter their lane have similar sentiments about, say, the Ishgard Restoration -- or how they respond to casual players with similar thoughts about Ultimate raids. Just 'cuz it's not made for you doesn't mean nobody wants it or that the devs are wasting their time making it.

Ishgard restoration helped me and many others get into crafting and gathering in record numbers and served as a source for some of the more coveted glamours and mounts this expansion. It is impossible to walk around any major city without running into someone who has not participated in or benefited in some way from the rewards of that content. By all accounts it was a success.

Ultimate and savage raids also provide huge amounts of rewards in the form of glamours, mounts, with varying time investments depending on what fight you're doing. The best thing about these raids is that you can go in as any job and get the things you like. A lot of people do these raids when they are current and once the new expansion drops we will be preoccupied with doing the latest tier of raids.

Then you have midcore content, like Bozja/relics, Extremes, and so on. You could also add deep dungeon into this mix if we had one this expansion, along with the time investment many of us make to level multiple jobs using a variety of methods, which we then proceed to use in new content like raids/msq/Bozja/etc.

So why then would I want a limited job that can *only* do old content I already cleared and gotten the rewards from already? Why should the aesthetic of a naturey beast hunter be co-opted by people who want to turn it into pokemon? Blue mage cannot even do new game plus. It might be good at fates but then they decided to lock out of Eureka of all places. The decisions made for this job are baffling at best and the last thing we need is to take away another classic job with an even more popular aesthetic missing in this game (that is not fulfilled by Bard with all its thematic confusion) and turn it into a pokemon minigame.

7.0 will almost surely have a new scouting job and a ranged/caster. I would much rather them focus on making a full fledged Tamer/Hunter/Ranger that uses hatchets or a crossbow with maybe 1 or 2 pets that work similarly to Bahamut and Phoenix and some single abilities that summon a pet as an animation to do an attack similar to Reaper's avatar. That is the kind of job even the WoL could take on in a trailer and build massive hype for a new expansion. Limited beastmaster though? That *dampens* hype and would probably elicit groans from the audience just like in the infamous 2019 fanfest when failing to read the room got a whole new definition.

It's clear to most of us looking in from the outside that limited jobs have a very limited future ahead of them, and in a game where there is a lot of content competing for our attention, the last thing we want to do is years old content we already beat countless times-especially during the content drought we suffered during the lull between 5.2 and 5.3. A job that is only relevant during moogle events (unless you already have the rewards or get the currency passively doing other things) isn't a job, it's worth less than a free to play gacha limited time summon. We already lost one fan-favorite job, we do not need to lose another. If they want to keep these mini-games as "extra" content-fine-but balance the actual jobs so we can use them in the latest content that we are literally paying for too.



*This* is not a meme job, it is a serious job with an aesthetic that many people enjoy and would gladly make the compromise of less pets than in Octopath in order for the ability to do content with other people. I can totally see female Hrothgar being the postergirl for this. You will never convince the vast majority of people that a standard fantasy trope-the party's "Hunter" is so quirky and special that it can't play with others in content that isn't over 2 years old, if not older.

[Archwizard]

It's clear to most of us looking in from the outside that limited jobs have a very limited future ahead of them, and in a game where there is a lot of content competing for our attention, the last thing we want to do is years old content we already beat countless times-especially during the content drought we suffered during the lull between 5.2 and 5.3.

During content droughts there's nothing for us to do but revisit old content. BLU actually generates some interest in revisiting, which is beneficial to new players and veterans alike -- and gives the devs a buffer so they don't have to rush to put out half-baked content just to beat a drought.

That's the lovely thing: LJ content is optional. It hurts nobody in its existence. If you think you have too much on your plate without it, you don't have to more on. And if you decide you have nothing to do because the game is in a drought, it must mean there isn't too much content "competing for your attention," is there.

7.0 will almost surely have a new scouting job and a ranged/caster. I would much rather them focus on making a full fledged Tamer/Hunter/Ranger that uses hatchets or a crossbow with maybe 1 or 2 pets that work similarly to Bahamut and Phoenix and some single abilities that summon a pet as an animation to do an attack similar to Reaper's avatar.

And if they think that's a plausible avenue to take and manage to follow through, I will certainly not begrudge them for not making a Limited Job. They want a new pet job? They think BST is the best fit? They think it will be different enough from SMN to be worth adding? Awesome, I'm happy for you, hell I'll try it myself.

I'm simply pointing out that Limited Jobs are an avenue for them to continue to represent such jobs in the circumstances that they did not believe they could do so in a full capacity that is unique from an existing job or balanced for current content. Which is why extremely lofty ideals of BST and PUP often come up in these discussions.

There seems to be this disconnect, that the argument for BST is "We need a new, obligatory Limited Job ergo let's sacrifice the concept of a Beastmaster to our new god of cruel and ironic comedy."
In reality the sentiment is "I'd love to see BST, but I feel its potential as a tamer of enemy monsters would be stifled as a full job adhering to current content balance, and that it's a missed opportunity to have it start at level 70+ with a full menagerie of pets over having you at least quest to tame them. So if they're still making a Limited Job... put BST on the list."

Now, if they flip that script instead and make some Pokemon-esque minigame a prerequisite to unlocking BST -- so that you feel you tamed and trained your pets and you have earned their respect to use them on the field of battle -- and it was a full job with a unique and functional pet-focused playstyle, that could satisfy both teams, wouldn't you agree?
Or do you even care, as long as it's not a Limited Job.

If they want to keep these mini-games as "extra" content-fine-but balance the actual jobs so we can use them in the latest content that we are literally paying for too.

And when did Limited Jobs ever provide an obstacle to that?

[Shurrikhan]

If people want a "traditional" Blue Mage job that isn't Limited in the content it can broach, there is no reason the devs should consider the existing Limited Job such an obstacle or even in the same sphere of development in the creation of such a candidate. If anything, the existing iteration of Blue Mage only serves as an obstacle to the design of future Limited Jobs (eg not repeating the same gimmick), not to future Disciples of Magic; the key obstacle to a future "traditional" Blue Mage stand-in -- if such a job were ever going to happen, mind -- is in designing a fitting, unique, and functional playstyle.

This is where I have to disagree. An already-tapped thematic space, without sufficient separation that would in turn affect BLU, too, is naturally going to appear less lucrative than would a still-open space. RPR was able to join that space only because DRK took the form it took, opposite it. I don't think DRK or RPR ultimately lost out as job concepts for that pairing, but they mirrored each other from each side, rather than one taking up the whole center of the space while another was pushed off to one edge.

Yes, I could throw together a very "XIV" original concept for a largely overlapping thematic space such as the Wildling (similarly eclectic, versatile, and morphing, as a hybrid of a sort of Berserker, Morpher, and Blue Mage), but I will have to offset it from and due to what BLU has already put out there. The limited job WILL have an effect there, just as any other job within a shared thematic space. To place add something there as fittingly as RPR has met DRK, I'd have to adjust BLU. But that still begs the question: Why can't I just have a full-fledged BLU from the start, rather than mini-game BLU and an alt-BLU? Why should I add BLU-2 just to make up for already avoidable issues in BLU-1, instead of merely correcting BLU-1?

Adding that BLU-2, or Wildling, or Morpher, or Antimage, or Kineticist, or whatever else, moreover, wouldn't (A) redeem BLU's playflow in any way to make the Moon Flute opener and its subsequent minute-and-a-half loops any more entertaining nor (B) make the resources spent on BLU's non-combat-related gimmicks any more efficiently spent. Yes, the latter faces some demand for uniqueness in gimmick, but the underlying systems can be duplicated to some regard without sacrificing novelty -- such as in having BST's pet-taming work off such. I'll remind you, though, my issue has never been with those systems; rather, it's with those systems being used as an excuse for half-assed playflow, e.g., "Because we provided you with [this dull grind loop] and restricted [this mode of side-content] to your class, we are excused from providing [an engaging rotational loop or meaningful nuance]."

the key obstacle to a future "traditional" Blue Mage stand-in -- if such a job were ever going to happen, mind -- is in designing a fitting, unique, and functional playstyle.

Which I repeat, nobody has yet suggested.

Probably because, again, such was already suggested for BLU itself. If you look back at the HW era, for instance, you could find people just about begging for a BLU that fit the aesthetic of the Sohm Ahl gear on one end -- that would leverage a much more aggressive theme ("chest-out", "shit-eating grin", with "bestial cunning") -- and the likes of the Garlean Omega-weapon on the other ("controlling, tactical, manipulative") -- both deliberately and innately versatile due to the synergies likely to occur across skills of multiple roles when taking from an initial a hypersized toolkit a more normally-sized "deck" of skills. That's got a ton of appeal that a pimp cane and overpowered additional effect gimmicks alone will not make up for.

[Shurrikhan]

"Players who want to be a Blue Mage or Beastmaster or Puppetmaster won't be able to main it! Limited Jobs are just joke jobs!" That would almost be a fair cop... but if anything Reaper is a good example of that not being an obstacle.

Reaper wasn't an obstacle to a real job being made for Reaper... because it was made a real job, not a limited one.

No, the fact that BLU exists had no impact on Reaper. But if Reaper had likewise been made a limited job, it sure as hell would have an impact on people's enjoyment of Reaper. Just as it has had on BLU itself.

There is nothing so special about BLU -- or rather, anything about what makes it special that is so opposed to being usable in a current or matchmade setting -- that'd prevent its being a full job (even if not limited to the same manners of skill acquisition as our current ones).