Final Fantasy XIV: A Knife In The Darkness .

So if you’re following Final Fantasy XIV at all, you probably learned that the developers have announced a new job progression. The Rogue and Ninja classes were announced at E3 to the joy of many and the complaints of the internet as a whole. However, some people may not understand the annoyance of many to the class’ arrival. Ninja has a long and storied history in Final Fantasy, but many of the complaints go back to FFXIV’s predecessor, Final Fantasy XI.

The Ninja of FFXI: A Tank? Really?

Final Fantasy XI was a much earlier release of an MMO, coming out in 2002 in the years before World of Warcraft set a standard for the entire genre. The game was, in a word, difficult. While the game did have quests, they were much fewer than in a modern MMO, and as such one would end up grinding standard enemy kills to level up. This was in a game where the standard enemy could mount your head on a pike because you looked funny, and there was a need for a group to even travel between cities.

Aw, it’s precious. Also, it’ll gut you like a pig.

The game also only had one tanking role – Paladin. When Ninja came onto the scene with the Rise of the Zilart expansion, it was supposed to be another DPS class adding to the mix. However, it was discovered that Ninja had an ability called Utsumemi that allowed them to easily dodge anywhere from three to four incoming attacks. A significant investment in the Evasion stat meant that the enemy would have to hit the player in melee before they could even consume an Utsumemi clone, and the sub-job Warrior allowed Ninjas extended survival capacity so they could take a few hits even if it all went wrong.

All of a sudden, Final Fantasy XI had another tank, and no one had meant for it to happen. Even Square Enix was blind-sided by it. It was supposed to be another damage dealer, but they’d offered it too much evasive survivability. Now, this was before the day where a company could go “oops, didn’t mean that, let’s patch it right out.” After all, some people still had modems that screamed at them.

Do you know what this is? No? Oh, you blessed child.

So Square Enix embraced it. Ninja received health boosts, threat increases, and was generally shoehorned into its new role with abandon. There was still the option to go DPS, but no one expected you to. If you chose Ninja, you chose tank, and that was the end of it.

Flash-forward to 2014, and the announcement of Rogue and Ninja, and now a few things start to fall into place.

The Ninja of FFXIV: The Way It Should Have Been

At E3 2014, the main announcement related to Final Fantasy XIV was its all-new job progression, Rogue and Ninja. This offers a lot of new gameplay options that weren’t there before. The Rogue class has a faster move speed than the average player, lower fall damage, dual-wielding, poisons and stealth. Stealth is something new to FFXIV. Before Rogue, it existed only in the gathering professions, to allow gathering players to get around between nodes without getting killed. Now, it has a combat role. The dual-wielded weapons exist as a single weapon for the player, similar to the pugilist’s knuckle weapons. There is some potential overlap at this point, given that daggers are a weapon that gladiators currently use. Chances are high that instead, rogues will use “kunai” or some sort of variant weapon that is added to the game with their release.

Ninja uses all of those, plus it adds ninjutsu magic to the table, allowing for new variances on playstyle. Ninja will be using combo-based ninjutsu magic, which work in a certain pattern to be used correctly. This sounds like the combo systems that a lot of the classes have to work with already, so it shouldn’t change too much there. It was also stated that ninja will have different positioning requirements than Dragoon or Monk, the other two melee DPS classes. It focuses entirely on combination of poisons and ninjutsu. However, YoshiP made it very clear that Rogue and Ninja are DPS classes. Not tanks, DPS. This is a little less painful than it was in FFXI, since we have two classes of tanks right now: Paladins and Warriors.

“Survival through dodging? Cute. How about survival through superior force.”

Still, this adds a complexity to the game from here on out. With the first new role being that of a DPS, the game – which suffers from a significant lack of tanking and healing players – is sure to get more congested on its dungeon finder for DPS. Devs have stated that the next jobs on the block are coming out with the first game expansion. This means that Ninja will have to directly compete with Dragoon and Monk for positions in raids and duty finder, which could pose a significant problem to the fledgling classes. High-level queue times on the Aether data center already exceed twenty minutes and counting, and that’s likely to get worse with everyone trying to level this brand-new DPS class. Square’s aware of this – unique pets for tanks were offered recently as an encouragement to take up the role. It’ll take a little bit for the game to really get some new blood in it though.

So what does this mean for you? Well, despite the fact that it’s not the Ninja from FFXI, this game isn’t Final Fantasy XI. It may take you a bit of time to get into groups with it, but the new Ninja class should be what Square Enix intended it to be all along.  If you’re looking for a close-range DPS class with a few fun tricks, this may be the class you’ve been waiting for all along.  Give it a try and see how it suits you.  If you don’t like it, well, the Armory System is there for a reason.