Which Job, in your opinion, has the biggest identity issue?

[Aldath]

This isn't a thread to necessarily say a class is bad, you can have a fun or functional kit yet it can still clash with the intended identity of a class in terms of its lore, aesthetics or even mechanics.

I know some people are quick to say SMN but dang, GNB is a walking crisis from my point of view.

• Inspired by a FFVIII hero, in an expansion with a raid that has FFVIII elements. I don't believe anyone thinks "tank" when Squall comes to mind.
• Has a gunblade, builds up cartridges, doesn't has a ranged phase. Its ranged attack is a small power wave by scratching the gound.
• Its kit and rotation screams DPS, the mitigations feel like an afterthought, and seem to do little for the party when compared to PLD and WAR
• Initial gear makes him look like a Striking/Scouting class, then wears heavy armor almost exclussively unless you glamour.
• Lore says its name is Gunbreaker because they rushed into the enemy backline to cut artillery down, yet nothing in our kit makes it feel that way. We end up tanking because our mentor decided to become a bodyguard.
• GNB wields Garlean Technology, yet the attack animations make it seem you're using any other sword that occasionally uses a fire attack.

[Tsiron]

- Squall is basically Rinoa's bodyguard (or... well, the knight to her sorceress, a recurring motif in FFVIII), so it's not that far-fetched.
- Gunbreaker weapons aren't meant to shoot bullets, instead they imbue the blade with various effects (consistent with FFVIII lore). That there are numerous actual GNB weapons in-game with seemingly functional barrels is... wrong, they shouldn't, yet they do.
- They do not use "Garlean" technology, not sure where you got that from? Gunbreakers supposedly predate the Garlean Empire by quite a bit, going as far back as the Allagan Empire... somehow...

[Tulshe]

We end up tanking because our mentor decided to become a bodyguard.

And he doesn't really teach us anything. We just tag along, while Radovan does his business.

- Gunbreaker weapons aren't meant to shoot bullets, instead they imbue the blade with various effects (consistent with FFVIII lore). That there are numerous actual GNB weapons in-game with seemingly functional barrels is... wrong, they shouldn't, yet they do.

Some blades also don't have triggers. How should we use cartridges? Or triggers are so far away from handle it's impossible to pull with the main hand. And most attacks are single handed.

[ReynTime]

Bard was already mentioned a few times. I'll add AST because it plays NOTHING like its lore implied, and same goes for ACN and SCH since they're talked about in their quests as being all about "strategy" except ACN is the most simple job in the entire game and SCH lost actions that played more to its original fantasy.
DRK has almost nothing to do with Final Fantasy dark knight anymore. Its identity is now "the edgy tank".

- Squall is basically Rinoa's bodyguard (or... well, the knight to her sorceress, a recurring motif in FFVIII), so it's not that far-fetched.
- Gunbreaker weapons aren't meant to shoot bullets, instead they imbue the blade with various effects (consistent with FFVIII lore). That there are numerous actual GNB weapons in-game with seemingly functional barrels is... wrong, they shouldn't, yet they do.
- They do not use "Garlean" technology, not sure where you got that from? Gunbreakers supposedly predate the Garlean Empire by quite a bit, going as far back as the Allagan Empire... somehow...

What a stretch. Then I suppose rogue should be a tank since Zidane protects Garnet a lot more often than Steiner.

[VictorSpoils]

Actually that's one of them I would NOT list as having an identity problem at this point. The Endwalker changes gave it a very solid identity as an Final Fantasy Summoner that really is on target and fits the bill.
Uninteresting in terms of mechanics and complexity in comparison to how it USED to be... well that may be a fair point. Still at present they did nail the Summoner Identity down very well with the new changes.

Even the identity aspect still gets complaints. You're ultimately watching the same three colored nukes every minute, each of which deals the same damage. You still summon Egis until 90, which people complained about before EW, and they still want the other three elemental primals to be included in the kit, which seems like a pipe dream by now. Not even the 2D FF games had summons as banal and lacking in variety.

Oh this was just a stealth thread to whine about the SMN rework, I regret looking in here.

Didn't see anyone else say SMN and the other jobs mentioned were stronger candidates anyway. Guess it's the scion death hysteria all over again.

[Bonoki]

Bard

It's the one job that functionally changes drastically every expansion. Has had probably the most egregious changes between expansions. Is horribly divided between those that want an Archer job and those that want a Bard job fighting among each other for which identity the job will focus with. Rarely get's any job balances, changes, or even potency buffs in patches. If it does, it's like 10 potency gain to Burst Shot and that's it. Has many gutted fan favorited skills that players want back. It's dots are probably on the chopping block after watching SMN and other jobs lose their DoTs. The battle over job identity tends to make the job worse and balanced horribly because it just can't figure it's self out.

[Raikai]

Bard

Agree on this. Plus doesn't help that the playerbase is really divided between wanting the archer versus the music themes.

I'm on the music team, and I wish that BRD could get a rework and the bow and arrow were more used just for the spammable rotational actions while songs and their magicks were used for everything else, but also more interactive songs.

My second candidate is probably a hot take, but ever since forever I personally felt that AST had some sort of thematic identity crisis when they chose to explore 2 different esoteric themes (celestial power and card divination) in the same job. I know both themes are kind of related withtin the lore, but it just feels kind of awkward to me in practice: a mage that uses cards for divination suddenly calls a starshower or a gravity well to damage.

[Luluya]

I'd also go with Bard as most of its later actions are just glowy arrow attacks and not really 'music' themed other than sometimes the name.

Another reason I'd say Bard is that the relic weapons in my opinion do not properly reflect Bard being the advancement from Archer in that they start with a Bard-themed weapon (a 'harpbow') and then later lose the harp portion of it to just become an extravagant bow.

[BRVV]

Also Bard

You are an archer, with two poison(?) DoTs but you also jam one note of a song from time to time with the mentioned "harp-bow" thing... most bard weapons look weird. Not to mention that it has a somewhat difficult rotation (at least for me) for almost no dps because ranged and not machinist.

[Mostly_Raxus]

really depends on what you mean by identity. not talking story ill say DRK;

Dark Knight:
AKA the class that has been reworked, gutted, changed, and re thought to the point of having very little of its original self left.
The class that had its toolkit ripped from its class fantasy and turned in to generic "tank skills" that are passed around to every tank. (looking at you Rampart.)
The tank that has its identity squashed every time it tries to re-find itself, the healing tank? the magic tank? the damage tank? the absorb shield tank? the /gpose tank?

It has gone from the most complicated tank we had,(really fun and rewarding to play,) to being reduced to face roll opening burst dump refill do it again in 2 mins..
Its now called "too easy" to be better then it already is as a result...

we DRK players never asked for it to be gutted, simplified, redistributed, but now its just a dps with a taunt and a nak for making healers frustrated its not a warrior when it queues in to your dungeon.

Went from "DRK can't be the only tank that does X its not fair." to now "We can't give every tank X they will be to homogenized."

(sorry for the edits, typed it in a hurry and had to clean it up a bit)