My “Next job” predictions: “Scouting” and “Fending”

[Omedon]

I’m bored at work and revisiting a point of prediction that I often come back to: The next jobs, if any, to come to FFXIV. I say “if any” because I have a very strong feeling that either 7.0 or 8.0 are going to try to adjust expectations of expansion format, but that’s another thread for another day.

In case it needed to be said, this post is 1000% speculation and opinion.

Assuming we get two jobs for 7.0, here are my early, highly speculative soft predictions and how I’ve settled upon them:

First, I believe we’re finally getting a second scouting job. Its weapon will be a double ended spear like Zidane, a Jian-type single sword or pair of upward-held swords. The theme will place it either in the “holy family” of jobs with white mage and Paladin, or the “performer family” with dancer and bard. There’s a lot of wiggle room in the concept but I mean, we’re well past due for a second “scouting” job, and If we don’t get it this time I predict non-artifact ninja gear may get merged into either aiming, striking or maiming somehow. Don’t ask me how, I just feel scouting is this weird, incongruous outlier and if we’re changing expansion expectations and thus potentially capping ourselves on new jobs it shouldn’t be allowed stay that way.

Secondly, and this is my “way out of left field” choice, but I think the teases we’ve received throughout the years of the forbidden art(s) of transformation (don’t want to get too spoilery there) are going to bring us a tank that will fit into a very loosely related family of “forbidden arts jobs” that I’ve observed as being shared by dragoon and summoner. I’m not going to call it “FFXIV’s answer to the WoW Druid” because it won’t be multi-role, but I do imagine it’s going to have an egi-glam-like functionality that will allow for a degree of personal taste. Weapon-wise it could be anything, but I wouldn’t be surprised by something staff-like or hammer-like, perhaps something like the long warhammer we’ve seen held by everyone’s favorite sapphic goth of the first.

So, why a tank? We’ve got four of them, why would we need more? If you look at the state of the adventurer in need, FFXIV still has a vested interest in lowering queue times for players by tempting more people to try tanking for roulettes. Particularly in a game where the sheer interdependence of queueing to level in dungeons with live players has been *blissfully* diminished by duty support, the more people we can tempt to try tanking roulettes, the better. Furthermore, let’s be real here: for single player, “on my own time” undertakings, the tank is hands down the default, best and most efficient, approachable role, particularly in the open world, and there is absolutely no harm in it potentially being the only “armor type” to have five jobs.

So that’s my prediction/speculation, and how I’ve come to them! I’m excited to see what happens next, and what perhaps more experienced players come up with. If you look at the cadence of jobs that have been added starting in Stormblood, they’ve covered pretty much every base once, so almost anything is possible really, and the only jobs easily ruled out might be of the armor types we just touched with reaper and sage.

What do you think? Am I crazy? What are your predictions?