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Square Enix debuts new FFXIV Evercold tank job Bastion at Berlin Fan Fest
Square Enix has unveiled Bastion, a new tank job for Final Fantasy 14’s forthcoming Evercold expansion, at Fan Fest Berlin. It matters because Bastion is both part of the game’s redesigned “Evolved Combat” system and the first FF14 job not derived from an established Final Fantasy role.
Bastion is a defence-and-offence-focused “main tank” that uses two transforming, aether-powered shields called Skyltborg as barriers, turrets and artillery. Its trailer showed magical shielding, charged ranged attacks, ground-shaking abilities and close-range combos, while also mentioning healing-oriented “curative boons”; Evercold will add a second, ranged DPS job later, to be revealed at Tokyo Fan Fest in October, ahead of the expansion’s January launch on Switch 2, PS5, PC and Xbox Series X.
In short
- Bastion is FF14’s first wholly original job.
- It is a new defence-and-offence-focused tank class.
- Evercold launches in January.
Explained simply
Final Fantasy XIV is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game from publisher Square Enix, where thousands of players cooperate in small teams. Each player selects a "job" or character type that defines their role: some specialise in dealing damage, others in healing injured teammates, and others in absorbing damage and shielding the group, a function known as tanking.
Bastion is a new tanking job for the Evercold expansion, launching in January across multiple gaming platforms. What distinguishes Bastion from previous tank roles is that it is an entirely original creation rather than drawing from Final Fantasy's existing cast of characters; it uses a pair of transforming magical shields as weapons, combining protective abilities with offensive powers including ranged attacks and close-range combat.
The announcement of Bastion at Berlin Fan Fest marks the beginning of a series of reveals for the Evercold expansion before its launch. The introduction of a job type that does not reference existing Final Fantasy material represents a departure in how the game develops its character roster, and comes alongside broader changes to the game's combat systems for the upcoming expansion.
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