Revamp Elemental Spells to Be More Logical and Realistic

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Originally Posted by Byrth

Well, the definitive proof is a link to the update notes where they broke it. After they "fixed it," it went back to being how it was before the update. So if there was something in the update notes about adjusting magic, then it was intentional and later dubbed a bug.

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I did find the update notes for 4/9/2009 on the official site and BG, but it did not mention an adjustment to elemental resistances.

It's early and I can't think of any examples at the moment, but under the old Dev Team, it was not uncommon for them to sneak in unannounced nerfs. I still believe the adjustment to elemental resistances was intentional, and if you think about it, that adjustment did make sense in terms of how the game 'should' work. It just came 6 years too late.

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Originally Posted by Eeek

I did find the update notes for 4/9/2009 on the official site and BG, but it did not mention an adjustment to elemental resistances.

It's early and I can't think of any examples at the moment, but under the old Dev Team, it was not uncommon for them to sneak in unannounced nerfs. I still believe the adjustment to elemental resistances was intentional, and if you think about it, that adjustment did make sense in terms of how the game 'should' work. It just came 6 years too late.

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1. dyna mobs are not dark! they are too easy to aspier if they had any dark base to them ( baring some mobs)

the old dev team made lots of mistakes, being a thf mean i am sure you remember sneak attack from the front, what makes you think this is any different?

that bug was not an experiment to potency changes vs elemental def. If it was there be varying rates ( not just 50% durations on everything that is "NM")

there is even mobs now that take hard damage off (hard def, i do not know how to word this)

water on leech (50% water damage)
wind on ATU bird (50% wind damage)
water on pugal (50% water damage)
ice on former (50% ice damage)
ice on ghost (50% ice damage)
elemetal mob ( immune to it's element (cap 1/8 damage) and what it is strong to)
prime avatar ( immune to all element, (cap 1/8 damage) heals its element, only takes damage to what it is weak to)
etcetc

I think 1/8 is cap, people made a thread before on Ki talking about if anyone seen 1/16

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Originally Posted by Karinya_of_Carbuncle

This is only true at a few levels. For most levels, you have a higher tier Stone spell than your highest tier Thunder, so the reverse is actually true.

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Most levels? Maybe. Most of the time? No. For eight years a thunder spell was always the strongest to cast. Ice wasn't natively stronger, but people used the INT and Elemental Magic Skill on the Ice/Aquilo's Staff to their advantage. So when magic accuracy still mattered, ice was the way to go, otherwise thunder had a consistent reign over the elements for almost a decade. MP and casting time all matter, but they can be adjusted as well. Right now (especially now with Abyssea) there's really no point in using any element other than your highest nuke (except for staggering the mob of course, but don't really think that should count).

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Originally Posted by Eeek

SE got burned once by messing too much with the magic system, and I hope they don't do it again. Aside from certain mages wanting access to certain spells (for example, RDMs and SCHs seem to want Cure5), the magic system works fairly well.

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Of course it works, the question is what happened to the other elements? Why would anyone use any of them again, unless there's a mob that completely resists/absorbs one element? It's not the same as with outdated weapon skills (that would be lower tier weapon skills, comparable to lower tier spells). It's a game element that is mostly ignored, which, I think, is sad.

THFs only enjoyed the broken Sneak Attack for a day. It was fixed very quickly.

I'm still very surprised that a self-proclaimed serious mage completely missed such a a fundamental change as the unannounced magic resistances adjustment. It was in place for several weeks.

That's not a random bug like the Sneak Attack example. No, the magic resistance adjustment was intentional and only rolled back since it pissed off so many people.

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Originally Posted by Arcon

...the question is what happened to the other elements? Why would anyone use any of them again, unless there's a mob that completely resists/absorbs one element? It's not the same as with outdated weapon skills (that would be lower tier weapon skills, comparable to lower tier spells). It's a game element that is mostly ignored, which, I think, is sad.

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I think that's exactly the issue SE wanted to address with that ninja adjustment to magic resistances. And to be fair, I think you (and SE) have a good point. The adjustment just came 6 years too late, and that's not a good time to make such a fundamental change to the entire magic system. Players were simply too accustomed to overpowering a mob's elemental affinities, especially in regards to enfeebling spells and songs.

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Originally Posted by Arcon

Most levels? Maybe. Most of the time? No. For eight years a thunder spell was always the strongest to cast. Ice wasn't natively stronger, but people used the INT and Elemental Magic Skill on the Ice/Aquilo's Staff to their advantage. So when magic accuracy still mattered, ice was the way to go, otherwise thunder had a consistent reign over the elements for almost a decade. MP and casting time all matter, but they can be adjusted as well. Right now (especially now with Abyssea) there's really no point in using any element other than your highest nuke (except for staggering the mob of course, but don't really think that should count)

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I had good INT gear back in the day so when i leveled when i got stone II i spamed that, when I got aero II i spamed that, mob element def is mostly a joke, unless it is one of those hard core DEF

level off pug and mb flood? bad idea, crab that is ok.

very rarely i use such knowlage the best exmaple I can think of where I actally changed element because of mob is vally of sorrow. I used AM mbs back then and i would call flood on crabs when i got it but on pugal i would call for something else ( depend on ws people had i would combine best ws for best potional damage)

Back then I was leveling with drg friend so say with rng we could do double thrust > sidewinder for reverb to mb flood, on pug i would have them do sidewinder> raiden thrust ( or something i do not remember, sometimes i had to recomnd gimp ws but ws back then was not that damaging past sidewinder and good rampage back then)

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Originally Posted by Eeek

THFs only enjoyed the broken Sneak Attack for a day. It was fixed very quickly.

I'm still very surprised that a self-proclaimed serious mage completely missed such a a fundamental change as the unannounced magic resistances adjustment. It was in place for several weeks.

That's not a random bug like the Sneak Attack example. No, the magic resistance adjustment was intentional and only rolled back since it pissed off so many people.

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why are you not understanding? I said I did not miss "bug" i said i am REFUTING YOUR VIEW on that bug.

SE did NOT make that change in the respect of change potency vs element def because what I said earlier:

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Originally Posted by Rambus

1. dyna mobs are not dark! they are too easy to aspier if they had any dark base to them ( baring some mobs)

the old dev team made lots of mistakes, being a thf mean i am sure you remember sneak attack from the front, what makes you think this is any different?

that bug was not an experiment to potency changes vs elemental def. If it was there be varying rates ( not just 50% durations on everything that is "NM")

there is even mobs now that take hard damage off (hard def, i do not know how to word this)

water on leech (50% water damage)
wind on ATU bird (50% wind damage)
water on pugal (50% water damage)
ice on former (50% ice damage)
ice on ghost (50% ice damage)
elemetal mob ( immune to it's element (cap 1/8 damage) and what it is strong to)
prime avatar ( immune to all element, (cap 1/8 damage) heals its element, only takes damage to what it is weak to)
etcetc

I think 1/8 is cap, people made a thread before on Ki talking about if anyone seen 1/16

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if you are right it was done very very poorly, you can't just 50% durations everything NM and call it potency change vs element def.

I think SE could even out the potency of the different elemental spells, and make it just look like any old FF style game. I don't think it is necessary to have the BLM learn every spell at the same level though. Older FFs rarely allowed you to do that. Simply keep the learning levels to what they are now, and even out the potency of elemental nukes just like Ancient Magic is. Having elemental weaknesses play a major role would surely give this game some of the fun it lost lately, and give mage a reason to get all spells. Not to mention, it would allow BLMs to personalize their merits at will, instead of being forced to pick ice and thunder for the party's sake. For example, I like the picture of a tides sorcerer more than the one of an ice witch.

in regards of enfeebling vs element def issue, this is anther reason why it is hard in the game to make a mob immune to stone but can be slowed.

take FFVIII for example, when you try to slow a mob the mob will not slow because it is immune to slow, not earth.

same apples for you, you can 100% element def but get silence and such because you have to set enfeebling defense too.

I guess you can say this game is too element dependent, everything in this game is tied to element in some way.

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Originally Posted by Rambus

why are you not understanding? I said I did not miss "bug" i said i am REFUTING YOUR VIEW on that bug.

SE did NOT make that change in the respect of change potency vs element def because what I said earlier:



if you are right it was done very very poorly, you can't just 50% durations everything NM and call it potency change vs element def.

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Are you really the only mage that didn't notice this adjustment?

And SE absolutely did make the change regardless of anything you said. You're incorrect and your words do not magically change the past.

Most mages immediately noticed something was changed, and the smarter ones pinned down the change. You claim that "SE did NOT make that change in the respect of change potency vs element def ..." but this runs contrary to everyone's anecdotal experiences and actual test data. Kaeko (one of FFXI's best mages, prolific tester, theorycrafter, and strategist) pinned down the adjustment after reading through posted experiences and running his own tests.

His position? "Early conclusion for this is simply that SE has FINALLY made magic users take into account elemental strengths and weaknesses. You still don't get a damage bonus for using an element the mob is weak to, but you will get the penalty for nuking/enfeebling against the mob's element."

{Click Here to View the BG Thread on the Adjustment: "Elegy nerf or HNM Buff"}

{Click Here to View Kaeko's Post and His Preliminary Conclusions}

Calling the bug intentional is a bit of a stretch. I'm more inclined to believe it was a side-effect of introducing the augmenting system to the game where we can see things like "Resist Paralyze"+1 and such. Sloppy code and player/mob relations/function mirroring probably had a weird default value or other calculation error that basically lead to either nigh-immunity or severe potency reductions.