Ragar looks through old Final Fantasy games for classes he'd like to see in FFXIV

Engineers: Not Just for WildStar and Guild Wars 2

My next wishlist class has plenty of inspiration from previous Final Fantasy games, but a bit of it is influenced by other recent MMOs like WildStar and Guild Wars 2. Both of these games share a unique class with a feel all its own: Engineers, ranged characters fighting off the enemy with gadgets and a rifle at their disposal. A class like this could provide not only a second non-magical ranged DPS class, but also a source of buffs/debuffs/control through gadget abilities, a non-magical option for a pet class, but most importantly, it would give FFXIV a class to add with story connections.

Without spoiling any of the later story elements for FFXIV (Editor’s Note: I haven’t finished that last 8-man or seen the 2.1 additions to the main story, so please don’t spoil any of that in the comments), most players have seen enough to know that the citizens of Eorzea have more and more contact with technology from the Garlean Empire. Considering how long the three nations have been at war with the Garleans, it’s not unreasonable to assume they’ve spent much of that time trying to reverse-engineer Magitek technology from captured soldiers and weaponry. An Engineer class could be introduced with a future patch or expansion as a sign that Eorzea has started to make headway with cracking the secrets of Magitek. We could even organize their abilities to show their progress as masters of Magitek, beginning with simple rifle shots and moving on to gadgets, attack drones and more.

The Engineer’s basic rifle abilities would fit along with the core abilities of classes like the Archer. We could add in some abilities like Arm/Leg Shot from Final Fantasy Tactics to give them some debuff shots, but we’re trying to make the Engineer stand out from the Archer so I see these shots filling more of those filler shot/burst PvP damage role for the class. Instead, let’s look at what we can do with those other types of abilities. Gadgets would be our jack-of-all-trades category of abilities: bombs for damage, stunguns for crowd control, net launchers for snares, and a flamethrower – because flamethrowers are awesome. Depending on the role Square Enix would want the Engineer class to fill, they could use gadgets to provide the class with most of the tools they need for the job. For those last few abilities, they’ll need to rely on their drones/pets.

Pet classes aren’t unheard of in FFXIV right now, but they are a bit limited because only spellcasters have access to a pet. Providing Engineers with controllable drone pets would give a non-magical option to players looking for a pet class, and they could also give the Engineer a way to fine-tune their class for the way they want to play similar to how the Arcanist/Summoner/Scholar work. If you’re unfamiliar with how those classes handle pets, here’s a brief rundown. Each of these classes gains access to multiple kinds of pets – some with tanking abilities, some built for DPS, and some built for healing. You could have two Summoners of equal level with the same job, class and cross-class skills, but their choice of active pet will greatly affect how they play their class in a specific combat scenario. This same concept could be extended to Engineers through multiple types of Magitek combat drones: one built for tanking while the Engineer levels and quests, DPS models with options for AoE and single-target damage, and even buffbots or debuff bots to provide benefits to the group by strengthening the raid and/or weakening the enemy. Between these drone pets, their gadgets and those core rifle shot abilities, an Engineer class could provide FFXIV with a new class that fills quite a few of their current gaps as well as tying in the main story to a new class addition.

Conclusion

The current class offerings in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn provide a nice variety of options for players. In general, if there’s something you want to do, there’s a class to fit your needs. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement though and that’s half the fun in a column like this – thinking of ways to make the game we all like even better.

There are so many other classes we could sit down and write up a quick plan for. Between past Final Fantasy games and inspirations from other MMOs, I could easily write columns like this one for the next few months. If you’ve got any specific classes you think would really add to FFXIV or would just be worth talking about in another one of these columns, let us know in the comments.

That’s it for this edition of the Eorzea Examiner. It’s unlikely that I’ll get to that last eight-man run to write up a column on the original main story this week due to other obligations, but writing this week’s column actually gave me an idea. It won’t be quite the same as this, but there will be some similarities. As one final hint, I will say that I’ll be talking about crafting again. Until then, see you in Eorzea.

Michael “Ragar” Branham