Scholar... SAY WHUT?

[Xeia]

Oh, man, if this SCH thing happens, and it's attached to an entirely new class, I sure hope that wasn't their logic. "We're going to have nothing but parties of Arcanists. We better release a second class." "Good thinking, something physical?" "No, no. Something that'll lead to Scholar, I think. I'm not sure the people want Thief badly enough, yet."

I was thinking more along the lines of, "Oh, yeah, Scholar. In for launch, you say? Good idea. Oh, and incidentally it would also make less arcanists running around!" That seems a more logical progression for the hypothetical conversation to have taken. You watch. The big reveal tomorrow will be that Thieves wear mortar boards and carry books. Stolen books.

I actually want it, too. I actually want all of the things I've argued as being unlikely. I want Scholar because I think it's an interesting and fun class, even if it wasn't terribly useful in FFXI and isn't really even necessary in ARR. I want it to be job branching because hell yeah two jobs for one grind, bitches! And if it's not job branching, I want Scholar to come from Musketeer because, seriously, take that people who are way too pushy about this. Still, if they managed to keep all of that secret this long, just WOW. Yoshida's already kind of a legend... he'd be a development demigod.

MSK -> SCH. The sound of all my Corsair dreams dying would be audible. As for two jobs/one grind, that's sort of my main objection. I don't want a level 50 job I haven't touched.

Besides, with ACN/SMN being confirmed as primarily a DoT job, that still leaves a niche for the more traditional enfeebles (though that might be stepping on the toes of a potential RDM a little). Not to mention the interesting non-combat abilities SCH (/secretary) has had in the past. I'd love to know the actual HP on some of these mobs. Libra me up.

I don't think any other job is really "necessary" at the moment. All core party functions are covered. But I'd love to see more, as would pretty much the entire player base, so why not start with scholar if a forth full mage was the way they wanted to go?

Edit: (I seem to be typing very slowly today)

Scholar is a good fit. In February Yoshi-P said in the Massively interview (when discussing Arcanist) that the game was most lacking "a buff and debuffing role with added crowd control". "Role" could be a big keyword for "job", and maybe one job wasn't big enough to do all that. Scholar has been mostly a debuffer (detecting enemy weakness, removing buffs and even adding weaknesses to enemies). Maybe Summoner will be mostly buffer and crowd control? We'll see.

In... I think the anniversary presentation? In some announcement, I'll hunt the source for you in a minute, Arcanist was confirmed as specializing in DoTs, with Carby having a "casting" and a "tanking" stance. That's all we know about that. But that does appear to still leave buffing, crowd control, and the non-DoT enfeebles up for grabs.

Editedit:
Mm, looks like I was wrong and Arcanist is mentioned as having regular debuffs as well. Which still definitely leaves buffing and possibly leaves crowd control free:



The top part says it's a pet class, below that is listed the types of magic it is proficient with (HP reduction through DoT and weakening enemies through debuffs), then the bottom part mentions Carbuncle and you can obviously read the English for what it has to say about him.