The announcement of the new Beastmaster limited job for Final Fantasy XIV answers a question in an interview I had years ago with Naoki Yoshida about a tamer class he had in the works at the time, but was shelved due to issues. With the long-awaited reveal of the FFXIV Beastmaster limited job, I feel like there’s a lot it could do to improve upon from Blue Mage.
Blue Mage is the first of its kind, as it is a limited job in FFXIV. It came out during the Stormblood storyline as part of Patch 4.5. Unlike other jobs, Blue Mage, and soon Beastmaster, functions a bit differently from the others. The Beastmaster will likely take after the Blue Mage in having a compendium of creatures for players to collect.
More than likely, players will roam around the world, fight against enemies, and capture or tame them in some manner. It could be similar to Island Sanctuary, using a net or just letting us befriend them. Regardless, Beastmaster players will presumably then summon these creatures to use various attacks in combat. However, I feel like there’s a lot Square Enix could learn from Blue Mage and other jobs when designing it.
The FFXIV Beastmaster needs to feel better integrated than the Blue Mage
One of my largest complaints about the Blue Mage stems from how separate it feels. This is understandable since it is such a broken job, but players have to go too far out of their way to enjoy content like dungeons and trials with it. If you don’t have some friends or Free Company members to play with, you’re sore out of luck since you need a private party for them.
I would love to see Beastmaster have a better integration into the Duty Finder. For instance, Beastmaster may have a max level of 50 at launch. If this is the case, only let it queue up for up to level 50 content. I get if it seems too broken. In that case, have a Beastmaster or limited job-exclusive Duty Finder queue. This way, only Beastmaster and Blue Mage players do dungeons and other content together.
Unique Pokemon-like side content would be nice
The Blue Mage has the Masked Carnivale, which is essentially involves challenging boss battles with all of the spells you’ve learned so far. Beastmaster should have its own exclusive side content like that. I would love to see something Pokemon-like, where you take your beasts and battle them out against NPCs and perhaps other players in turn-based combat.
This would be a massive minigame-like in my mind, one that could be similar to Triple Triad. That alone might be enough reason to get people hooked on the job, if the existing premise doesn’t. I could even understand if this came after Beastmaster’s initial launch.
Beastmaster should be what the Summoner should’ve been in FFXIV
Perhaps the most important part about Beastmaster is the chance to make up for the controversial and, in my opinion horrible, job changes to the Summoner in recent years. Summoner doesn’t feel worthy of its name anymore, and Beastmaster has the chance to change that.
I fully expect Square Enix to nail this, but the tamed beasts need to matter in combat. Personally, I would like to see them matter more than pressing a button to bring out a single Cactuar to use a skill like Thousand Needles. That would be no more than a glorified Blue Mage at that point.
Instead, I would love to see players being able to bring out one or more beasts at once and have them essentially be their semi-permanent weapons on the battlefield until they switch. This would be like how Summoner was back in the day with the Carbuncles and Egis. For now, though, we will have to wait and see. Beastmaster won’t release until after Dawntrail, so it could come out anywhere between patches 7.1-7.55 or so.
Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail will release for the PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC in Summer 2024. Beastmaster will drop later on in the Patch 7.X series. FFXIV is available on the PS4, PS5, and PC now.
