New job (Scholar) confirmed via data mining?

[Ouch!]

Keep in mind that this could all turn out to be a bust, but given Yoshi-P's statement that caster/scout type classes would be a priority in the Live Letter, it might be true.

The following image has surfaced, purporting to be the result of datamining of the beta client:
http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/1716/1361721230460.png

It seems corroborated by a number of other files and images which have apparently been mined, such as the following:
http://images.4chan.org/vg/src/1361752588285.jpg

Only time will tell whether this is legit or not, and it's presence in the source code is not necessarily evidence of implementation. There were a number of classes identified via data mines of the first version (arcanist, musketeer, fencer, and shepherd among them, if I remember correctly) that never saw the light of day. But given that arcanist wields grimoires as their weapon, I would not be surprised to see scholar as the eventual second job associated with that class.

(This mines are apparently coming through as a result of people at FFXIV Pads. I'm poking around to see if I can find the originator. Mines are common, so I'm not willing to discount it offhand given that the beta client just became widely accessible, and this does tend to be how we find these things out.)

[Raistlin]

Do you have a source for this? It sounds frontsite worthy, but I'd like something to link to before promoting. While the source code may not be evidence of immediate implementation, given what happened with arcanist and musketeer, it sounds like the dev team is at least strongly considering Scholar for a future class.

[Loony BoB]

Scholar always struck me as "Another White Mage" in FFXI. I couldn't really figure out why it was there. All I know is that Danielle started with WHM and then was later told that if she wants to be a healer during endgame she should look into Scholar, and that just didn't make much sense to me. I hope WHM won't get marginalised in any way.

[Ouch!]

Maybe when the level cap was still 75, but even then scholar was the second best healer in the game (to white mage) and the second best nuker in the game (to black mage). Although, in certain circumstances (abusing weather bonuses), scholar could out-nuke BLM as well.

I haven't been able to find a source for this, which is why I didn't structure it for a frontsite article. The best I've been able to find is people claiming the source is /vg/ which is not particularly... well, it's 4chan, so there's that. Unfortunately, data mines in the past have been more organized than this. I'm keeping an eye on it, but there's nothing here yet that I'd say would be anything you want to tie the EoFF name to. Don't worry, Raistlin. I know FFXIV is kind of your baby, and I'll let you know if there's real news you've missed.

[Mirage]

Scholar always struck me as "Another White Mage" in FFXI. I couldn't really figure out why it was there. All I know is that Danielle started with WHM and then was later told that if she wants to be a healer during endgame she should look into Scholar, and that just didn't make much sense to me. I hope WHM won't get marginalised in any way.

SCH is very different from WHM in FF11, at least the current game. In FF11, WHM cannot deal damage to save their lives, while SCH definitely can. In FF14 however, WHM can deal a reasonable amount of damage with Stone and Aero, so I am not sure what they would do to differensiate between SCH and WHM in FF14.

[Ouch!]

My guess is that scholar would go in a very different direction from where it is in FFXI. Given that the grimoire is arcanist's weapon, scholar will likely be the second job (after summoner) for that class. This means that scholar will still have access to carbuncle in addition to whatever abilities scholar adds when you select the job.

My guess? Scholar allows you to pick job abilities from both thaumaturge and conjurer and then offers new spells that are different from both. If they wanted to go the FFXI path, those abilities might be helices or they might be the various strategems. Or it could be something completely new!

[Roogle]

Oh, this is interesting. Has there been no official mention or a Scholar in the game? Datamining can often unlock secrets before they are meant to be told, but I think it is a little weird that this was so easily and obviously found. I mean, Scholar Unlocked leaves little room to doubt that there will be a scholar job class in the game.

[Raistlin]

Some caution is warranted, though, because despite Ouch's digging, he could not find a reliable source for this information.

[Loony BoB]

Not to mention that just because it exists in there somewhere doesn't mean we'll be getting it anytime soon. That kind of thing can exist for years without being released, as evidenced by Musketeer etc.

[Rostum]

I remember when version 1's beta was out, someone data mined a huge list of potential jobs, and nothing ever came of it. But this could be a different matter, as Scholar seems like something that could happen.

[Loony BoB]

So did all those other jobs from the previous list (Musketeer & Arcanist obviously already had their guilds, too).

[Ouch!]

In defense of the presence of musketeer and arcanist (and other classes announced at the same time), we will never know what the original plan was for implementation of new classes before Tanaka stepped down from the project. Presence of guilds already in-game indicated that they would be added, but when Yoshi-P took over plans changed and they ended up rehauling all the existing classes before even considering adding new ones.

I'm inclined to believe that this datamining is legit; people have already pulled the entire soundtrack down in .ogg format from these files, and it doesn't surprise me that an unused "JOB UNLOCKED" announcement .dat was found as well. Yoshi-P has said that he wants to bring in as many classic jobs as possible, and the presence of arcanist using grimoires already made this likely. I imagine the addition of scholar (and other staples such as thief, samurai, ninja, red mage, etc.) is a question of "when" rather than "if."

[Loony BoB]

Am I right in saying that both Arcanist and Summoner are summon-based (I think Arcanist uses Carbuncle and Summoner summons 'the essence' of Ifrit/Shiva/etc)? How would scholar fit into that theme? Or do you think that such a thing would be abandoned for the potential second class?

[Ouch!]

You're correct about arcanist and summoner both being pet-based classes. From what I've been able to gather, arcanist will be able to summon different types of carbuncle to fulfill different roles (tank carbuncle, melee carbuncle, etc.) and summoner will gain access to be able to summon avatars of the various primals.

Honestly, I'm not sure yet how second jobs fit in other than the fact that they've been confirmed in discussion with Yoshi-P that each class will get a second job at some point in the future. My best guess would be that going forward jobs will not only add abilities to the base class but also restrict certain abilities. This would give the dev team a lot more flexibility and allow greater differentiation between jobs stemming from the same class.

Take, for example, conjurer. Conjurer gains access to a number of spells ranging from cure and stoneskin to stone, water, and aero. Imagine equipping the white mage soul stone restricts access to higher-tier versions of offensive spells such as stonera, watera, and aerora while augmenting their skill list with additional healing and buffing spells.

Their second job then (geomancer?) might restrict higher-tier versions of the healing and defensive spells while offering access to more damage-dealing spells so that it can play as the water/stone/wind elemental offensive damage opposite black mage.

This would allow them to play up different strengths of base classes with different jobs. Archer could spec to bard for buff songs or ranger for more ranged-based damage specialization. Gladiator specs to paladin for tanking or dark knight for carnage. Thaumaturge to black mage for magic damage or red mage for magic debuffs. Arcanist theoretically specs to summoner for a wider range of summons, or scholar for sacrificing summons in order to gain something else (strategem based abilities?).

[Loony BoB]

My suspicion is that White Mage etc. will, rather than having their abilities (as they are at launch) restricted, will simply have their stats adjusted notably so that their Attack Magic stat is decreased to the point that it's utter crap. :p

EDIT: Arcanist is supposedly to be a DoT specialist, so I suspect that whatever their second class will be will end up focusing on that instead of pets. At a massive, big, whopping, uneducated guess. :D

[Ouch!]

That could work with the concept of scholar as it was in FFXI, what with their line of helix spells (massive elemental DoT) as well as other spells like HP, MP, TP regain that they got in FFXI as well.

And yes, massive stat adjustments makes sense as an alternative to restricting abilities.

[Del Murder]

Based on the way the game is structured, there probably won't be a Blue Mage huh? :(

[Ouch!]

What makes you say that? Yoshi-P has expressed that he wants to bring in as many classic Final Fantasy jobs as possible--not just those from FFXI, but also ones from earlier Final Fantasy games.

Frankly, the class/job system makes it far more likely that we see more jobs than not. They've already discussed second jobs for each class. At the launch of ARR, there will be eight classes, which means when they roll out second jobs, we'll have sixteen jobs. Each new class they bring in from there will introduce two more jobs. The addition of blue mage seems more of an "if" than "when" to me, but maybe I'm optimistic.

[Del Murder]

Well I say that because it seems that the jobs are linked to classes in some way and the abilities are shared among several jobs. Blue Mage is unique in that all of its spells are learned through enemies they don't really fit with any other job or class. Here's to hoping though!

[Ouch!]

The thing is we haven't seen how much they plan on changing that structure for ARR yet. Keep in mind as well that this game includes weapon skills as learned abilities (so the base class could provide the sword-skills you expect of a blue mage while the job provides the monster spells). In addition to the way that BoB and I had discussed as having a base class that branched into beastmaster and blue mage, it's possible that they could introduce a fencer class and from that you'd get both red mage and blue mage.

Because all the classes are new to the series, it could work in any number of ways that you would see blue mage.