TYFP

Preface

This is just speculation, mostly because I read the Wisdom of Nym speculation on Reaper, and I’m very bored at work. Unfortunately for us, unlike the job action trailer we got for Shadowbringers that had lots of different animations for all the jobs, we got very, very short reveal trailers for Reaper and Sage that show off just a couple moves.

I’ve watched the reveal trailer for reaper about a hundred times and now I’m going to take approximately 8 animations and decide that I know how the job will work.

Gauge

I’m pretty sure that the job gauge will be something along the lines of a phantom or void gauges, one meter will fill and fuel special attacks similar to the other melee jobs, and some sort of counter that allows the merge and transform attacks we see, I’m guessing in the form of extended combos a la GNB.

Abilities 

The abilities in the reveal show what appears to be a 1-2 scythe combo then a red phantom strike, then a 3rd and possibly a 4th scythe strike, then more phantom resulting in the merger and more phantom strikes. These last series are most likely the same ability shown multiple times from multiple angles, similar to the first couple scythe strikes at about 20 seconds into the trailer. 

The way the moves seem to flow, especially once the phantom is engaged, really makes me think this is the natural combo progression and that it might play similarly to Gunbreaker.

Conspicuously absent are ranged abilities, gap closers, and other cool downs.

Role

Wisdom of Nym speculated that Reaper may be a new support DPS similar to NIN, however I think it will be a selfish DPS. My only reasoning for this train of thought is aesthetic. It could be possible that it offers party utility in the form of debuffs, but with no further information any speculation is going to be based on what looks right to the viewer. I’ve read comments and thoughts that it may function like a melee pet-managing class, with mechanics similar to SMN, but I doubt that it will be a pet focused job, as this dev team doesn’t seem to like pet styled jobs of any flavor. I’m 99% certain that the phantom is a visual and storytelling affectation, and is not going to be any significantly different mechanical aspect of gameplay.

Closing Thoughts

The overall job design is one of the hardest things to love about FFXIV, for me at least. I absolutely love that performance at any given tier is far more skill based than gear based, and I love the balance of all the jobs in PvE and PvP. The trade off by removing far more individual jobs is bittersweet however.

Regardless, I’m looking forward to both new jobs, and the expansion as a whole, and my wife and I will be in the early access as soon as the servers are live.