Additional Variant Jobs?

[Seraphor]

I don’t put much stock in the “branching jobs”/“split jobs” since it has been a continued issue with SMN/SCH for years, but a lot of people were expecting Geomancer to be the fourth healer after all the Geomancer teasers in Stormblood. Between the AST job quests and Swallow’s Compass, and then the removal of elemental aspects from WHM in ShB, that’s what healers were putting their money on when it came to the next healing job. Instead we got SGE. Which is still cool, don’t get me wrong.

Time Mage/Chronomancer was another job people speculated on after they removed the Time Mage aspects from AST. I think people generally expect it to be a caster DPS when they talk about adding it to FFXIV. Ranger is another (physical ranged DPS), since a lot of people dislike Archer becoming a Bard. I just think that Ranger would end up too similar to MCH, except with a bow and arrow or crossbows. So it would be a bit difficult to really give it an identity and set it apart from the other physical ranged.


I’d be all for them adding any kind of new job. I just don’t think that variants or “branching” jobs should be a thing. Simply because they seem to cause more trouble than they’re worth when you could just add a new job separate from the others.

I never saw much healer potential in a Geomancer tbh. Most of it's portrayal in the game has been as offensive sorcery, the only healer-like portrayal was via the AST job quests, which didn't showcase an awful lot, and well... no new job has ever been something that was already featured in another jobs job quest. It would end up being way too similar in style to a Conjurer using wind/earth/water spells. If Geomancer would be anything, it would be a caster dps loosely based around the Yanxian branch of Geomancy.


Also AST hasn't had nearly enough of it's Time Mage influence pruned to give Time Mage enough to work with yet. It's still holding onto Gravity and Lightspeed, Celestial Stasis, etc. along with the space motif and the pointy hats with the moon and stars on them.
Classic Time Mage signatures are basically just: pointy purple hat with moon and stars motif, Haste, Slow, Stop and Gravity. (in much the same way as Thief being nothing more than a green bandana, daggers and Steal/Mug)
AST still has the controlling share of that aesthetic.