The two new jobs, Geomancer and Rune Fencer, continue the trend of primarily including jobs from Final Fantasy V, leaving only Time Mage, Berserker, Chemist, and Mime as the only jobs not included. Those jobs will more than likely never be added due to Time Magic being included in White Magic, Berserker having no function in an MMO, Chemist being unusable due to the expense of items in FFXI, and Mime being an intentionally overpowered job in the game it comes from.
Analysis of the new jobs after the break.
In FFV, Geomancer simply attacked enemies with magic based on the terrain, but Final Fantasy Tactics expanded on this by making every tile have a designated terrain type, which appears to be how Geomancer will work in FFXI. Humorously, Geomancers will continue to use their trademark bells as weapons, while also gaining the ability to enfeeble monsters with un-resistible abilities. Geomancers also get stat bonus based on where they are standing in relation to the enemy, with party members getting the same stat bonuses if they are close enough to them. Geomancers will also apparently have the ability to create artificial Geomancer fields, although they have HP and can be destroyed by monsters.
Despite being called Rune Fencer, they are not Rune Knights like Celes Chere and Dycedarg Beoulve. The kanji used to express this job is the exact same kanji as the one used for Mystic Knight, AKA Spellblade, AKA Spell Fencer, and should be literally translated as "Magic Fencer." The change was probably done because Mystic Knight's ability is traditionally to enchant their swords with magic, causing attacks like Firaga Sword, Holy Sword, etc. In FFXI, this ability was partially given to Red Mages in the form of Enspell because the traditional Spellblade would make Black Magic totally useless.
Rune Fencer will have access to 2 categories of runes to enchant their blades, element-based runes which both add elemental damage to their attacks and increase resistance to elements, as well as Enchantment runes, which increase either their attack prowess or their ability to defend. One job ability is described as cutting an enfeeble's duration in half at the expense of the effect increasing by 1.5x, a small penalty to pay for a potentially dangerous enfeeble to go away faster in the heat of battle. Most importantly, Square Enix has outright said that Rune Fencer is a tanking class, meant to be on par with, and compete with, Ninja and Paladins. Obviously, this can only mean that Rune Fencer's subjob will primarily be Warrior. In the images of Rune Fencer, their Artifact armor can be seen, but their weapon is not. In the artwork, it is unclear whether or not they use 1-handed or 2-handed swords, which would make it incredibly interesting if a job was finally given an A+ rating in Great Swords.
In reality, unless every job gets more fundamental changes, the existence of Rune Fencer, a job that specializes in magic defense to tank, will absolutely annihilate both Ninja and Paladin, despite those 3 jobs now making up a trinity of defense: Ninjas are masters of evading, Paladins are master of mitigating physical damage, and presumably Rune Fencers will be the best job at mitigating magical damage. Currently in endgame scenarios, every melee class takes about the same amount of damage, Paladin only being useful if they have an Aegis because of the serious boost to magic defense.
Seekers of Adoulin will be released sometime in 2013, well after Final Fantasy XIV will have launched Version 2.0. No video game company has ever successfully maintained 2 active MMOs, with one version always outdoing the other. Everquest 2 was seen as vastly inferior to the original, as was Asheron's Call 2. Guild Wars 2 is currently in beta and has garnered nothing but positive reviews thus far, looking to make the original passe.
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