The job nobody predicted. Well, sort of. Everyone predicted a healer, but definitely not Sage. And definitely not floating daggers. Frankly I'm certain noulith is a completly made up word. Anyroad it looks fabulous. Suits a teenage elf perfectly. Yes, I know they are called Elezen, but they are the versions of elves here.
Now where things get truly interesting is the discussion regarding healer roles. Now I'm not an Ultimate raider or even a Savage raider. I don't dictate the meta and I barely follow it. So what I'm saying now migth be utter horseshit. Still I think all the proposed changes are great news. First they are going to divide healers into pure healers and barrier healers. Two of each type. This ensures that regardless of how homogenized job design will end up, there will be at the very least two different player experiences as healers. Plus they can design encounters around having one barrier and one pure healer. Of course it will likely possible to pull it off with any healer composition outside of Savage, but this suggests that there won't be a single healer that can domniate the meta. There needs to be a pair. So now you will only have a 50% chance of being excluded from content by elitist wankers just because of your job, up from 25%.
The downside of all this seems to be the retooling of Astrologian yet again. Summoners and Machinists are no stranger to this phenomenon, the latter looking nothing like the job we've had in HW or SB for that matter. But Astro keeps loosing what made it Astro. First all the various cards you can pull were replaced by slight variations of balance and now the two playstyles Astro can switch between will be replaced by one. Now I must stress that not everyone is unhappy with these changes. MrHappy for example, appropriately enough welcomes the retool as it will likely lead to a more focused design than the current one that is all over the place. Also, people kept demanding Balance so all the other cards were changes. The dev team doesn't just make unpopular design choices for the hell of it. It's all in service of the meta, the bane of creative ideas. If this were a single player RPG we would still be playing Heavensward Astro and Ninja would have the most utility skills out of all the jobs.
Speaking of which, we have a second job ahead of us. A melee DPS job. Details were scarce, but Yoshie-P did reveal in a later interview that the job will be using heavy maiming gear. Sooo what happened? Shouldn't we not have a melee DPS job? We have lots of those and nearly everyone hoped for a caster or another physical ranged DPS. Where is the balance? Welll about that.....
I really disliked the mogtalk episode after the Showcase as it was riddled with points I couldn't agree with, to the point that I was unable to even finish it. But an excellent point was raised regarding this issue. Encounter design doesn't give a rats arse if you are physical or magic damage. You are either melee, or ranged. The only fight in the game where damage type has any sort of meaning is Leviathan. Now Heavensward gave us a physical ranged job. Stormblood gave us a melee and a magic ranged job (two magic ranged if you count Blue Mage) and Shadowbringers gave us yet again a physical ranged job. Since 2.4 gave us ninja, we were given only one melee DPS job. This gives us a grand total of four melee jobs and six ranged DPS. When looked at from this angle, it appears blatantly obvious that we need another melee DPS. Also the heavy maiming gear I mentioned above? Currently only the Dragoon uses those. It is very underused.
Okay so we know damage range, damage type and armor type. Also we know the why. Now it is time for the what. You would not expect this from a heavy armor wearing melee job, but Necromancer is still in the race. Then again the Diablo 3 and Immortal Necromancer does wear heavy armor and carries a scythe that it often uses to slice and dice. I did mention the scythe that was glimpsed in the teaser, but there is another reason Necro is still suspected.
For those who are new to fan fests might not know, but Yoshida likes to provide clues with his t-shirts. This is why his no comment shirt during the first part of the Showcase was so funny for old fans. During Heavensward's reveal no job was revealed on the first Fan Fest, but Yoshida pulled off his sweater saying that it is too hot, revealing a Batman t-shirt. He claimed he simply likes Batman. Well as luck would have it, the next Fan Fest saw the introduction of the Dark Knight. After that he revealed a James Bond t-shirt and said that his favorite in the franchise is The Man with the Golden Gun. This lead to the reveal of the gun wielding machinist. Red Mage was pretty self explanatory with the Scarlet Witch t-shirt. Samurai was a bit more abstract. He wore a Spiderman. Well, remember the Sam Raimi trilogy. The japanese way of pronouncing his name would be Samu Raimi. And there you have it.
So what does this have to do with Necromancer? Well this time the freakin Grim Reaper was on his shirt. Well an album cover with the GR on it, but that's beside the point. This is a pretty major hint. The only problem I have is that they name dropped the Necromancer job several times, and they tend to be more sneaky about it.
Another tip is that we will get a scythe wielding Beast Master, cause some people really want Beast Master. I honestly can't see this at all. If I had Beasts to help me I would pick up a ranged weapon and shoot everyone from a safe distance. With Zenos constantly referring to the world as his hunting ground, I could maybe see him job changing into a BM, but it wouldn't be a melee DPS.
Another popular candidate is Templar. You see, the album also includes the title: The Filth and the Fury. That happens to be title of a movie about Sex Pistols directed by Julien Temple. This is the same weird ass logic used for the Samurai, so it just might be true. Having both Paladin and Templar might seem too much, but they are fulfilling different roles. Plus a showdown between a Paladin WoL and a Templar Zenos just sounds poetic.
So long story short, we have a new healer, three candidates for the next DPS job, and lots of development that will serve to longterm health of the game. More on those in a later plot.
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