Revamp Elemental Spells to Be More Logical and Realistic

[Windblade]

There has always been a problem with elemental spells.

If you're casting an elemental spell on a monster that has no weaknesses to elements, then Thunder does more damage than Stone.

If you're casting Thunder on a monster that is weak to Water, but has no weakness nor special defense against Thunder, Thunder will still do more damage than Water, even if it's in the same tier. This makes no sense.

So I suggest simplifying and revamping the elemental spells by having ELEVEN tiers.

At Lv.1, a black mage would get all six elemental spells of the first tier, and against monsters with no weaknesses, all six spells would the same amount of damage. Then, if a monster is weak to Water, Water will do more damage than any other spell. I think this is how it works in offline FF games, but not in FFXI.

Then, for BLM:


Lv.II Tier Spells - Lv.11
Lv.III Tier Spells - Lv.21
Lv.IV Tier Spells - Lv.31
Lv.V Tier Spells - Lv.41
Lv.VI Tier Spells - Lv.51
Lv.VII Tier Spells - Lv.61
Lv.VIII Tier Spells - Lv.71
Lv.IX Tier Spells - Lv.81
Lv.X Tier Spells - Lv.91
Lv.XI Tier Spells - Lv.99


Sorry, I don't know how to make the spaces stick in a message board. It didn't save my formatting and " " doesn't work.

IMHO,
Windblade

[Zyeriis]

This is something I don't believe they can "fix" even if it's never made sense. Why? How would they accomodate every Black Mage that already has all of their spells? How will this be fair to the money and time they put into obtaining said spells only to have them massively downgraded and then need 6 extra tier sets to fix their black mages?

They could make these spells automatically learned upon leveling up but that wouldn't fix the "slap in the face" level 90 black mages would get after having to buy or farm their spells all these years. It would also piss off other jobs that would still have to. Especially Blue Mages. On top of this, they would need to rework how spells are obtained (i don't know how little or vastly time consuming this would be as I don't know how they have things coded).

I don't knock the common sense idea that it should've been this way from the start, I am merely pointing out that because it wasn't, it is highly unlikely that it can be now after all these years. You would think they would've fixed this major oversight years ago if they could have. They tried with potency merits but in the end, whatever your highest level spell is, thats where you put the potency, so it didn't work.

The only thing they can (and aren't) do now is to make the 90-99 spell tiers obtained at one specific level but that would break the chain. Though, I wouldn't personally care if they did.

[Seriha]

Damage multipliers correlating to a mob's resistance stat would help with this damage offset (+1% for every -1). I'm also of the mind that it is too late to completely retrofit the nuke system. Either way, a good thunder on a thunder weak mob would still totally decimate a stone a similarly weak resist rate, but without knowing how SE truly handles resist mechanics for mobs, the above may very well be way too much.

[Arcon]

This is something that bugged me from the start. I would love to see it adjusted in some way. However, Zyeriis concern about the current state of things is valid, and a complete revamp of the spell system may not work at all, or be in any way viable. It does work this way in XIV, so I'm guessing they learned from that mistake.

However, there are still a few things they could do, for example simply adjust the potency of the current spells. Reduce the difference in potency of same-tier spells significantly, or even make them the same, but adjust the level correction for calculating magic damage. That way, obtaining Stone at a lower level won't do nearly as much damage as obtaining Thunder at 21 (or using Stone at 21).

Personally I'm not a mage, so I don't really care much one way or another, but it makes a big aspect of the game (elemental weakness) almost useless. Would be nice to see SE address this, one way or another.

[..] How would they accomodate every Black Mage that already has all of their spells? How will this be fair to the money and time they put into obtaining said spells only to have them massively downgraded and then need 6 extra tier sets to fix their black mages?

They could make these spells automatically learned upon leveling up but that wouldn't fix the "slap in the face" level 90 black mages would get after having to buy or farm their spells all these years. [..]

Sounds like a solid argument (or rather, it should be), but tell that relic owners. Or really owners of any notable gear pre-Abyssea. Literally years of effort down the drain. So I don't know if that would stop them.

[Karinya_of_Carbuncle]

If you're casting an elemental spell on a monster that has no weaknesses to elements, then Thunder does more damage than Stone.

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.

The tradeoff between casting your highest level (highest base damage, but also highest MP cost) nuke and the one least likely to be resisted works pretty well, IMO, for pre-abyssea exp. (The lower max damage spell can easily become a higher average damage spell when taking resists into account, and becomes even more attractive when you look at damage per MP.) It's when you become so geared up that resists are practically inconceivable that the system starts to break down.

At least with TotM staves we've (theoretically, for those who have done them) moved away from the point where ice spells have +int and skill compared to all other spells, so they're better even on mobs with no weakness to ice.

...I would support a move to increase the difference between resist rates for different elements at high levels, if SE was inclined to do that, but I don't think the OP's proposal is necessary, or possibly even desirable. There are enough different nukes already and the fact that the tiers are really more like steps on a continuous scale is fine with me.

[thefinalrune]

I wouldn't much care for even more tiers of magics nearly as much as just a general balancing of the potency and accuracy of all the elements in each tier along with a unified casting cost across all spells in the same tier.

[Rambus]

Elemental weakness is a joke, and I really do not care if they add more spells to get around this problem.

This is something I don't believe they can "fix" even if it's never made sense. Why? How would they accomodate every Black Mage that already has all of their spells? How will this be fair to the money and time they put into obtaining said spells only to have them massively downgraded and then need 6 extra tier sets to fix their black mages?

who cares about past spell cost? it is like QQing over 10 mil salavge gear.

anyways they do have different system in ffxiv so i think they see the mistake in FFXI system so it is likey they feel they cannot change it.

the AM II seemed to address this a bit but many stuck to freeze and thunder due to merit potencies and the fact of if you cannot ice something you can thunder it and vice versa. there is VERY SMALL amount of excpetions like bombs take damage off spells all but fire. Last time I did tav though and nuked those bombs, aero as SCH or BV from BLM or the highest JA would outdo past fire spells hands down.

when you go stone V > water V for example the jump of damage is a lot bigger then people realize. the jump is so big is that water V is able to compete with AM II where stone V is less able.

then you have aero V+ that mops the floor over AM II

the biggest jump is next line of spells, like thunder IV > stone V is HUGE, the base increase with the new TIM is the reason for it.

there is mobs with hard core damage off spells, like ice on ghosts/ dogs/ formers is my BIGGEST pet peave. (note i did not say "undead". skeles take full ice damage and i can't remember if undead blobs do)

Also there is pup nuking not able to read those defenses, I remember auguring with someone telling him formers 1/2 ice damage so can you get the pup thing to cast something else, he said there is no such thing because the pup scanner would not allow it to cast spells that a mob is strong to.

wonder if that bug still exists...

in the past when people did that it useally killed me because i would be double the damage output over anyone else so there was no hate bouncing.

[Eeek]

...I would support a move to increase the difference between resist rates for different elements at high levels, if SE was inclined to do that, but I don't think the OP's proposal is necessary, or possibly even desirable. There are enough different nukes already and the fact that the tiers are really more like steps on a continuous scale is fine with me.

SE did do something along these lines in the spring of 2009. SE changed magic accuracy and potency so that it was no longer possible to overpower a mob's natural elemental resistances.

All hell broke loose.

SE eventually rolled back the unannounced nerf to magic and went so far as to apologize for the 'mistake.'

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.

[Rambus]

SE did do something along these lines in the spring of 2009. SE changed magic accuracy and potency so that it was no longer possible to overpower a mob's natural elemental resistances.

All hell broke loose.

SE eventually rolled back the unannounced nerf to magic and went so far as to apologize for the 'mistake.'

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.

I do not think so, I think you are talking about the NM damage change crap like if you nuke NM with ice over and over again damage gets less.

it was a stupid concept.

this is why, say you have a rdm chainspell nukes ( happened on a CoP NM) and each time I would get a cast off my damage was so pethic vs the last one i did was a lot less.

I think that change was not even elemental specific, if you did too much magic damage everything was hurt. I think people assumed it was element specific.

that is why it was so retarded. then you had issues of like sprits within effecting it too.

No the system does not work well, people dealing with a poor system is different

[Eeek]

I do not think so, I think you are talking about the NM damage change crap like if you nuke NM with ice over and over again damage gets less.

it was a stupid concept.

this is why, say you have a rdm chainspell nukes ( happened on a CoP NM) and each time I would get a cast off my damage was so pethic vs the last one i did was a lot less.

I think that change was not even elemental specific, if you did too much magic damage everything was hurt. I think people assumed it was element specific.

that is why it was so retarded. then you had issues of like sprits within effecting it too.

No the system does not work well, people dealing with a poor system is different

No Rambus, you're not talking about the adjustment I mentioned. Here's a post I found that adequately described the problem: {Click here to read the thread}.

If you want, I can find and link the BG thread that described the same problems and documented SE's response to the player outcry.