Beastmaster's weapon?

[Jettinson]

I am curious on that since it's not a caster class either way so It definitely gotta get something going other than commanding pets

[Thighland]

We don't really have maces in the game yet.
I can picture Beastmaster with a one handed or two handed mace.
Maybe with a buckler shield.

[Garnix]

I hope they stick to axe and shield.
Because, with it being a pet based limited job, obviously the amount of animations with the weapon itself will be quite minimalistic.
If they ever add a whip, a mace or whatever I want to have cool animations with them.
An Axe and Shield job probably couldn't move much differently from PLD, so they can have that.

[kaynide]

Ans as shields are effectively now associated with PLD (I mean, back out, a shield is PLD's symbol), I doubt BST would feature one. Because, what is the point? They're not going to be rushing into the fray to defend themselves or others, that's what their pet is for.

Your other points are fair regarding NPC gear, and we can only speculate, but I still would bet shield and axe for a few reasons:


1) the only other time FF has done BST in an MMO it was designed to fight alongside the pet itself, not in the background like a ranger or Pokémon trainer. It needed to be tanky on occasion. It would often be the tank with utility or dps pets unless you went full on crab which itself was a fantastic tank, in which case dual wield axes was the norm.

2) Seeing as viper will be a dual wielder, I doubt they would add another to steal its thunder. So probably not dual axes.

3) shields already exist in game and general sword stance/animations from removed abilities can easily mean less dev time

4) I doubt they would use a weapon that would bring a lot of hype in an entirely new, very flashy job (like whips), or iconic weapons from other jobs (like bells)

5) Axe is just “cool” enough that it’s fine here because the pets….but not cool enough to merit an entire job around it. We already have WAR which kinda melds fighter/viking/berserker.

So, of course who knows, but precedent has been set.

[Covenant]

its gonna be 1hand axe and shield, but i've wouldve preferred double handed small axes.

[Dyvid]

[Iscah]

NPCs aren't a good guide though as they often throw the Armoury System to the wind, dual wielding different weapon types in ways players have never been allowed to do.

Stahlman/Rostnsthal has dual wielded a pistol and single handed axe since 1.0, and yet that has never appeared as a player ability, ever (players have long assumed a hypothetical COR class would allow that, but...)

Raubahn dual wielding swords as GLA

Gaia's infamous use of a giant hammer

NPCs do indeed tend to ignore the rules of equippability, but that's more about wearing gear that doesn't match their weapon.

The thing with those examples is that they are deliberately portraying unique fighting styles not available to player-characters. (Or evidently different to the variety available, in the case of Raubahn's gladiator style – assuming he is indeed a gladiator as in GLA and not in the same way that half the Scions are scholars but not SCH.)

So, if they have unique styles and we're not even told they're a specific class name, it's a very different situation to the current knowledge we have of beastmaster, where we can point to a specific group of people who already use that term as their job identity and have a consistent weapon type that they all wield.

Besides, weapon is technically irrelevant anyway if BLU is anything to go by - sure it has a weapon, but that weapon's 'type' is basically just copied from an existing class (let's face it, BLU's weapon is just THM/BLM's wands given a touchup)

I disagree on that – it's a different style of cane, held and wielded differently to either of those mage classes. The small amount of models is disappointing but that's no reflection on the form of it. WHM and BLM are closer to each other than to BLU, and it's not like we haven't got multiple varieties of other weapon types like swords.

[Eraden]

Mao kinda hopings it would be ranged weapon. Would fit with pet being kind of ranged weapon. Mao thinkings melee weapon would kinda negate advantages of being able to send pet out to attack from distance.

[Hasrat]

While I could see the axe/shield argument for the usual reasons.. I feel like it'd be opening up a whole mess of worms giving another job a shield at this point. For two reasons:

For one, any "cool" shield design BST gets will immediately cause PLDs to declare that they should also get that shield design, and vice versa. Going to run into the issue of wanting to keep things separate and unique without overlapping, but inevitably, one job will essentially be stealing designs from the other.

Two, I feel like it just reopens the 1h+shield mage debate. While nobody's actually using that combo in any real content (except maybe Bozja), it's still at the least a valid glamour option.. kinda? Idk, in my head there was a stronger point here somewhere before I started typing..

Point is, for better or worse, I suspect shields may only always and forever belong to PLD and nothing else.

But, that's my personal speculation.

[Iscah]

For one, any "cool" shield design BST gets will immediately cause PLDs to declare that they should also get that shield design, and vice versa.

On the contrary, the very simple solution to making BST an axe+shield job would to just let them directly use the same shields that PLD already has. Some are already shared between PLD and mages at lower levels, so they don't have to be linked to the job.