Recently, at a Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers event held at San Francisco, Twinfinite and other members of the media covering FFXIV learned a lot about the development team’s plans for job balance and changes that are coming.
While this happens with every expansion, this time around it seems to be more of a focus than ever before. There are sweeping broader moves that will affect entire roles and synergy between them.
While every job will be receiving new actions and getting touched up, there are certain ones that could be categorized as being changes that are bigger than the rest.
Let’s run through the 12 jobs that will likely feel very different to players once Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers releases on July 2, 2019.
Editor’s Note: This article is based on play of an in-development build of Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, and content in the final version is subject to change.
Machinist
By far the biggest changes are coming to the Machinist.
At the event, Yoshida-san described it as being a “brand new job.” The job suffered quite a bit from the changes that were made in the Stormblood era and unlike other jobs, it relied heavily on good latency in order to be effective.
You needed to be playing 100% perfectly and have the right latency in order to even be competitive with other jobs, but even then it lagged behind in many cases. It’s safe to say that this wasn’t what Yoshida-san and the team had in mind.
Machinist is going to be giving up some of its identity as a gunner as there will be less reliance on its gun attacks for keeping up with DPS.
Its identity will now also just as much be about constructing things to fight for it. It already had some of that obviously with the Automatons, but with Shadowbringers, the Automaton Queen will take this to the next level.
Now, you’ll only have the Rook Autoturret. The Bishop is out and your AoE damage will be split across new and re-balanced actions such as the Auto Crossbow.
The Rook however can be upgraded to the Queen. The Queen is a massive mech that will eat up a new Battery Gauge that you’ll charge up through your rotation. The more Battery you have remaining the more damage its mega attack, Pile Bunker, will do.
At the moment its set at 800 potency with the ability to go higher, but that’s subject to change.
