Yes, from a solo aspect, I am enjoying it. Radiance is 1000 TP, but get a couple of spirit darts in there, and it's pretty easy to get. Use it to get a little more mp, and walla.
Yes, from a solo aspect, I am enjoying it. Radiance is 1000 TP, but get a couple of spirit darts in there, and it's pretty easy to get. Use it to get a little more mp, and walla.
I like how you make it sound like the MP problem is gonna be a permanent thing. As they've said before, this patch would be raw and alittle unbalanced. Balancing issues will be for later update. maybe 1.18b?
Also i'd like to add this comment right from patch notes.
Variations to auto attack motions, as well as the ability to cast spells while in passive mode will be implemented in a later patch.
Casting spells in passive mode means regening WHILE casting.
But yes ATM there needs a balance fix. Stop being pushy and acting like this games destroyed. Your argument sucks.
Why didn't they just hold the MP changes till the ability to cast in passive was added? Or make them less extreme? That doesn't even make sense.
They have good intensions, and plans. But not the most experienced group of people either... Most MMO's would of held a change like that back.
I can deal with it though. I haven't ben playing my conj for the past few months becuase was tired of it being a big newbie spamfest. I can wait alittle longer for balances...
yeah, well, that's a pretty massive thing to not think through.
Well I can see where the Development Team is coming from. They had this content that they wanted to release (i.e. instanced dungeons), but it required that spam-curing be nerfed or it (and any future content) wasn't going to be as challenging as they wanted it. So they had to go ahead with the cure-nerfing ahead of time.
I guess they could have held it back, but that would have meant holding back any new party battle content as well.
So far I think that THM are pretty fine right now, but solo-ing as a CON is ridiculously hard since a mage is required to have Slow on the enemy or else they get absolutely eaten by auto-attacks....
If making mages suck was the only way they could think of to make content challenging, then they should have asked the playerbase for more ideas before going ahead.
Let's be honest here - if they had made cures cost this much when cross-classed - I wouldn't have a problem with that.
If they had, instead of making cures drain a whole mana pool (making it un-strategic for mages to do anything but heal most of the time) put a cool down on each cure spell that forced more strategic cures, without making it so they can't afford to use almost any other spell - that would be cool, AND achieve the same goal of reducing cure spam.
Cure: 20 second cool down
Cure II: 30 second cool down
Cure III: 40 second cool down
Curaga: 50 second cool down
Curaga II: 60 second cool down
There! In five minutes I came up with a system that makes healing more strategic without forcing mages to stand around waiting for mp all the time. Wow.
I am not saying it is the be all and end all, but really, the only thing the developers could think of to make dungeons hard was to make mages suck? That's pretty weak.
Speaking of which, Suz, if you can find them (unlikely) iron hide unguents and the shell equivalent, might save you some mp from casting shell and protect....
they are easy to make - come from helmet crabs (protect) and turtles (shell)
too bad the duration on shell and protect sucks so much.
Ideas in general are awesome. I really and truly appreciate any post that offers constructive ideas. :D
That being said, the problem this this particular idea is that an R50 Conjurer can rotate those cooldowns so that they are still spamming cures every 5 seconds simply by alternating the spells.
But I do understand where you are coming from, sir. I just ask that you give it a week and see how things work out before you make too harsh a judgement.
yes, but then the devs could make the enemies in the dungeon be doing more damage, so that the pace of being a mage remains nice and fast and mp management would still exist (some increased mp costs would be okay but they went overboard) but instead of it being final "stand and watch your mp bar"tsy it would be gameplay that is fun.
Also five seconds is a long time when mobs be bashing you.
I dunno. I've been playing whm in XI, and personally I love the way it is now - where my reflexes and my targeting skills are being tested, not my ability to stand always having to sit around and getting uber slow exp...
First off, what mage damage are you talking about? Nukes are horrid right now, you're better off darting a mob, or switching to a DoH and throwing a stone at it then trying to damage it while on CON. Second, MP cost was ridiculously low. There was no skill in playing mage, just a spamming fest while melee zerg mobs. It is harder to main heal now, but all CON was ever good for was main healing. Until nukes get fixed there will be no versatility with CON. THM got a nerf, it needed one. You shouldn't be able to use Emulate to tank every mob in the game. Sacrifice III was epic, it needed to be nerfed. SE is forcing players to use skill while fighting, not just hitting a button over and over.
This really sums up how I feel.
Well, Conjurer was a fantastic solo class up until now? Are you really trying to base your statement on its solubility on the past 24 hours? The Conjurer I know is great at soloing.
Maybe this sums up how I feel better.
I agree.
Why would you assume Conjurer's wouldn't no about their own skills? Sounds like you are the one that just found out about them.
I am for the toggle. They needed to get rid of the prompt, but aoe on every ability was great. Much better than what we have now.
Mages do need a challenge, but your post doesn't well apply here. Conjurer is a black mage and white mage, but the black magic requires ONE QUARTER of the management as the white magic… does that seem ok to you?
Hahahaha.. brilliant. I think your vision of the future is true! How sad.
i think we're already shown this line of thinking to be irrelevant here..
There is another class.. Black Mage. Where is it?? It's not on Thaumaturge.
Just because they could do incredible things doesn't mean they needed to be nerved. You should be content playing the class you enjoyed enough to pick.
So your point is that you wasted an hour by wiping at the end and thus Thaumaturge is not broken? Hahahahah.
Here is an instance of the word NM going in one ear and out the other. I was referring to the NMs that were my level or below, not the bosses or world NMs.
I think we've already shown your line of thinking to be poorly informed.
We're not talking about Red Mage here.. we're talking about Conjurer, and the affinity goes down when using debuffs. Debuffs should be used anyway, but that doesn't take away from the issues at hand.
Yes that's right, what's wrong with making the game an actual challenge with problems you have to be resourceful enough to solve in mid battle? It was possible to solo the mid-tier NMs with great skill before and I don't think it makes sense to solo higher level NMs.
I appreciate your thoughts. Stygian Spikes doesn't work if the enemy doesn't have MP, or has a small MP pool. So there's still an issue there. Even with all the abilities at hand, still something has been lost. Spirit Dart needs to be on a 3 second cooldown like you said, along with Nature's Fury and Elemental Shroud. Soloing for sp should be fine still but soloing tough fights is going to be needlessly complicated by the shift to party gameplay.
This is actually a very good suggestion. I will try it out.
All of what you're talking about needs to be described as White Mage, not Conjurer.
This isn't necessarily the case. Casting a spell in passive mode could just move you into active mode the second the spell hits. We need the dev team to respond to this issue before they screw it up even further.
I would favor this system over what we have. If the dev team can't get with the times, they should take a cue from Final Fantasy XIII and make MP management a thing of the past.
was mage damage reduced?
are you talking only solo?
Mages were totally nerfed, its true. There is no longer any purpose to us having offensive spells because we can't spare the MP for it. And with the 10 second timer on spirit dart, it will take mages an age to get any TP.
Can't solo NM? I haven't even seen one yet. I came back to the game just 3 days ago after having heard the news of 1.18 but now after having played it for a few hours... I can't even do a rank 10 leve (solo difficulty) without dying once or twice. I just barely get though a grouping of 3 mobs before I run out of mana. So much for being a healer. I always play healers and was having fun until tonight. Now with the reduced gil for leves an dying constantly I am not sure it is even worth doing them solo. In fact it doesn't seem like the game is soloable any more, from my perspective anyway.
Yeah man it does suck; I'm sorry to hear that. I really wish the dev team would have pulled their head outta their ass long enough to realize that grouping for 1 dungeon at cap wasn't worth ruining the whole game for mages.
lol
The major problems about solo and party play run thus:
In party play, Conjurer has been turned into White Mage when it was described to us as a class that could cast elemental magic. People who previously thought of Thaumaturge as a good healer class are now totally helpless to heal their parties. And in either case no one can play their class like they did before this patch because now every mage, without a white mage job, has to be a main healer for no justifiable reason.
In solo play, Conjurer can no longer heal itself because MP costs were tripled so they could be a sacrifice on the altar of 8 man dungeons. This means waiting between kills for MP, or not being able to solo lower level NMs at all.
It's really horrible to heal against mobs that have AoEs and you have more than 1 melee, but otherwise it isn't too bad.
I think deep down the dev team just really hates magic.
The game started out with five disciples of War and two disciples of magic (that's totally fair).
We assumed that ancient magic is powerful. But, maybe the dev team have a different perspective on that matter. Those spells are so ancient it's really horrible and does next to nothing damage. (Maybe that's why it takes so long to cast too!)
CON is now a white mage when it should be a black mage.
On the other hand, I'm really excited to see those all Gladiator parties (just like the all BLM parties in XI where we all cast at once). Maybe if you guys all auto attack at once you'll kill the enemy before the party wipes =)
I had said that about Tanaka personally, because look how long it took XI to actually make Mage Gear that actually was useful for what Mages did (in XI). Christ it took until the end of CoP practically and I dare say more like Limbus (end of CoP) & Aht Urghan before real mage gear actually started surfacing.
Noble Tunic & Dalmatica were nice body pieces. 1 out of 5 AF pieces was nice, too (haha 1/5) for most mages. It's like they have no idea what a mage needs, what a mage wants, whatever keeps me in your game, and I'm thanking you for giving it to me*
*after 4 years of waiting and watching melee get all kinds of great shit from Kirin - we got Kirin Staff >.>
Anyway since most of that team is on XIV now, I'm extending this theory to the team and not to the Tanaka himself.
Everyone's response to the conjurer changes: Get more Conjurers. K
Its not only Cures that extremely high now but:
Emulate effect duration lowered from 60 to 30 seconds.
Siphon TP amount reduced.
Drain cost raised from 45 to 90 MP.
Siphon MP Affects only a single target.
So now on mages have to use much more abilities and more macros. There are some abilities that were useless till 1.18 release. Stygian Spikes, Aegis Bloom will be good for MP and HP restoration. Also you can Blind and reduce ACC and Roaming Soul will not only be used once in awhile.
Mages have now to use more about abilities and im sure more people will try to understand more the stats of each spell like Aegis HP recover or if Drain worths the MP and all that kinda things. People need to think more and not just execute.
Yeah Emulate was overdue in my opinon, but I said earlier... in some thread...
1 or 2 moderate changes would have been fine.
4 or 5 relatively extreme changes brutally kill the previous effectiveness in long battles.
Spirit Dart recast, No AOE Toggle, more redundant AOE spells, no THM healer, no Siphon MP
What some people herald as more strategic I see as more dumbed down and watered down than ever.
I'm beating a dead horse with that, though.
If I have to explain 1 more time how many things I did in end-game strategies compared to the 2 things I do now (heal & manage MP, which mostly means doing nothing) my rationale brain functions may explode violently.
The main concern I have for this "foundation" patch until they hopefully fix it is the hate generation- does no-one else find this to be broken?
I played CON yesterday in our usual trio trying out leves to see how the new SP gains were going to work and for the first time in a long time I died.... Now in FFXI I played WHM and RDM so managing hate and casting cure when needed rather than spamming is not alien to me.
Doing a leve last night I waited for our tank to run in, engage the mob and gain a good amount of hate. His HP went down to ~a third so I cast Cure II.... the mob loses interest in the tank completely after this one Cure II and I get hit. This wasn't a one-off occurrence either.
In a different area a friend changed to CON and I was PUG tanking. He had exactly the same problem- I had run in, engaged the mob, provoked and laid down a ton of hate tools but as soon as he cast Cure II on me it lost interest. Now if we are both doing something fundamentally wrong (and without the flaming please) I would like to know how people have dealt with this. Using Soughspeak seemed to help a little, although as soon as the effect wore off (it only lasts 30seconds) then there was the same problem again- mob turns immediately to the healer.
I would like to know other people's thoughts and suggestions ^^
People are going to tell you to find better tanks.
No matter what you do or say or how much you trust your tank.
It's his fault.
They system could never be faulty. Square-Enix has such an outstanding reputation for perfect game balance, customer service and quality of work that to suggest otherwise would be supremely unwise, or at least historically inaccurate.
But, yes, I did notice all the best tanks I've ever played with in XI and XIV suddenly were terrible tanks overnight as if someone put "forget all you ever learned about XI and XIV" in their morning tea.
Drain only drains HP? Am I wrong?
Zombie healers aside, many of us enjoyed playing more than doing just healing. People like to criticize others for being incompetent but we were very competent mages, far more useful in a fight than just healing.
From what I understand there is no algorithm any longer. It's simply a cumulative hate system. So I don't know if damage and curing are a 1:1 ratio of hate, but maybe he would have to do more damage then you are curing him for.
I read up to about page 24. I think a LOT of people are missing the point here.
The OP isn't asking for afk 'easy mode' healing, he's saying that for anyone who didn't want to be stuck at the back, reserving MP for heals only, are now stuck at the back, reserving their MP for heals only.
I played FFXI, my main was a WHM and to be honest, it was dull, so dull infact that i changed my main to PUP, way more fun! As WHM, more often than not, you end up eating cookies and resting while everyone else gets to play the game.
That's where i thought XIV had it right, a mage that could do quests on their OWN without fear of dying after one hit; a mage capable of benefiting a party with more than just heals. I totally agree that DoM needed tweaking but typecasting them into specific roles was/is not the answer.
I liked the prospect that this game was going to be different, classes could be played to the players specification. Why should a person who wants to nuke be forced into playing a healer? Would a PGL be happy playing the role of a healer while all their fun attacks get left behind to reserve their mp for heals; spending half there time inactive to regain MP needed for said heals? (Imagine that TP didn't exist and all skills used MP, that way you might sympathise a little more).
I know that there is still much to be done in regards to the battle system (and the game in general) but i think that a lot of you should try and see this from both sides of the coin.
Just because mage's have always been squishy and acted as healers in the past, why should that stereotype stay the same when it's boring? I think that MMO's are all falling into the same trap where you must have the standard set-up of at least 1 tank (who isn't MP based); a squishy mage to heal, but not for anything else (except maybe the odd buff/ debuff when MP allows); and then a couple of DD's in order to succeed in doing anything. Who says tanks need to be melee based? Why can't they be magic based? Why can't healers throw a nuke or two or three or four? I think it's terrible when you can't play a game because you can't find a tank or healer to party with.
Eventually we're gonna have to pay to play this game, and time spent seeking parties is money being thrown away, doing nothing. That is definitely one thing i won't miss from XI.
Apologies for the wall of text.
That makes no sense though. Conjurer IS the healer and nuke class. Either you heal or nuke. Whats the issue? If you play with friends/linkshell, they will let you go as nuke Conjurer. I know mine does. You can even throw a few heals in an emergency if you want. If you are a HEALER in an MMO though, you only need to be healing, and removing debuffs from players.
The issue is that because of these changes, even on the JP forms players have developed a "what are you doing wasting MP on elemental spells? heal me you dumbdumb" mentality. If you for example are you starting off in the game and don't have your "friends/linkshell" do you really think people are going to let you play offensively with a Conjurer now?
Edit:
When I first saw this game and was wondering what class I was going to be, I saw Conjurer as the master of elements and that's why I got into this game. This patch has demoted them to master of heals, and if things don't change I'm going to be very disappointed with this game