Excuse my very strong thoughts on the subject of Scholar branching from Arcanist, but here is my wall-o-text:
- "They didn't announce a class." The "announcement" was basically "So, about Sch.. 'Yes, we have sch, more at E3." There was no fanfare, no balloons, and definitely no info. It makes no sense to take the games 1 pet job and make it branch into Sch
- Whm and blm already share weapons. Their Relics are both Staves.
- Scholars can just use Grimoires, Smn uses Tomes.
- The job system is complex enough as it is, without mixing in that 1 and only 1 class can branch off. Think about it from a new player perspective, splitting jobs is somethign that makes sense down the line, to an established and knowledgable player-base who wants more diversity.
- Additionally, they want more jobs for us to level. Timesinks.
- Think about the job from a LORE perspective. They gave an example of a job that could split:
Glad > PLD or DRK
This makes sense. You embrace the path of dark or light. But how would the Arcanist plotline go?
"Oh you have master the arcane art of summoning carbuncle, go forth and learn to tap into the power of the greater primals!" Awesome. Not so awesome for scholar though.
For 35 levels, you are not a scholar, or anythign resembling one. This is the story you follow:
"You have mastered the art of summoning! Now, go forth and abandon your ability to summon and master the art of studying sh*t and read enemy weaknesses with SCAN!" - Summoner/Scholar would be forced, and contrived. Bard vs Ranger, YES. Pld vs Drk, YES. Scholar to summoner? no.
- LASTLY, they have not finalized what weapon Arcanist/SMN will use. They can easily use a different weapon. The box art shows them weaponless. I know it was previously said they would use a book, but things can change and in the lore of 1.0, Arcanist NPC's (Both the guy in the GC story and the guild in 1.0 used this steam-punky stave.
Here is a picture of a GM, gears as an Arcanist He is also an Arcanist TL;DR: Scholar will get it's own class.
Edited, May 30th 2013 2:38pm by Louiscool