A few questions concerning Jobs in the loreFollow

I dunno. The Red Mage, to me, has always been about the perfect mixture of battle, and the arts of white and black magic. At least it was in prior Final Fantasy Series. I will always be a Red Mage at heart, and until they put it in FF14, then I'll play White Mage. I just hope they allow job switches when new classes are added down the road. Would kinda suck to have to stay Conjurer, Thaurmage, etc until expansion just to have the classes.

First off, welcome to the FF and ZAM community.

I can understand how it wouldn't make any sense whatsoever when it comes to having pugilist as a "requirement" when unlocking black mage. It does seem rather counter intuitive. While they were updating the game when the servers were still up, they initially only had the classes. Pugilist, thaumaturge, etc... They eventually released the jobs that branched off the classes. These jobs were meant to fill a role in a party and each one would be a more potent version of its corresponding class. They have designed the classes to be mainly used for solo purposes and thus will be able to use many cross class abilities. They probably intended for black mage to use several pugilist cross class abilities. Every job requires it's corresponding class to be evel 30 and a 2nd class to be level 15 before you can unlock the job. Every job has a different combination needed to be unlocked. This was during 1.0 and may have changed during the development of ARR. Just because it was this way before, doesn't mean they've kept it this way. Also, the reason none of the jobs require arcanist except for summoner and scholar is that arcanist, scholar, and summoner are all brand new jobs/classes that they are adding in for the relaunch of the game as ARR.

They wont be making it possible to unlock the same job with different combinations of classes. For example, Black mage will always use the same 2 classes needed to unlock it. Not thaumaturge + any other class. If this was the case, why bother making a 2nd class even a requirement? With the cross class abilities, you can mage an archer with offensive magic if you choose to. The initial spells for thaumaturge were able to be used on any class or job. As long as the class doesn't say it "requires" any specific type of weapon, it can be used on any class or job. Also, some abilities are limited to disciples of war or disciples of magic. If you choose to, you can have an archer with both offensive and curative magic. It's really up to you how your character works with the cross class abilities. Some work well together, others not so much. Do keep in mind that archers aren't meant to be mainly magic users, so their magic point pool will be rather low. Also, their magic potency wont be as high as it would be for a disciple of magic.

As for red and blue mage, we honetly don't know anything about it. Yoshi knows that those are jobs that people want to see in the future, but other than that, we don't know anything more. After the launch of ARR, we really wont expect to see anymore classes or jobs until the next expansion. As it was in 1.0, the Bard job was meant as a support class. You are correct in thinking it seems that way. It's not the best DD and it's not the best healer, but it does have abilities that enhance both of those. I mainly played bard, so I was always the guy who made everyone else better. They were very important in the party make up for much of the content. This may change though with the release of ARR.

I've always liked the RDM AF...

Hopefully you will come back. This forum is full of lots of useful information about the game, and will only have even more once the game goes live. I've been a zam lurker for almost 10 years now and it's still my favorite gaming forum.