How the ability reforms made Flans annoying
This has been on my mind for quite some time already, but I guess it doesn't really matter much since no one cares about Flans (they're really not that common).
When elemental magic was split between Conjurer and Thaumaturge, Water attack spells got lost in the process. They're MIA.
• Conjurers get Stone and Aero.
• Thaumaturges get Fire, Lighting and Blizzard.
• No one gets Water.
Now consider this... The 6 elements are split up into 2 dominance triplets. In-game lore states that Water erodes Earth, Earth grounds Lightning and Lightning boils Water. The same lore also states that Wind extinguishes Fire, Fire melts Ice, and Ice obstructs Wind.
This is exactly what applies to Monster's elemental nature:
Water > Stone > Lightning > ...
Wind > Fire > Ice > ...
All elemental attacks from one triplet will hit at normal efficiency against monsters with an elemental nature from the other triplet. Dominance applies for elemental attacks against another element of the same triplet:
• Element stronger than target's: Monster is weak, damage improves
• Element identical to target's: Monster is attuned, magic is resisted OR ABSORBED.
• Element weaker than target's: Monster is very resistant, damage is greatly reduced.
Generally, this means that in any circumstances:
• 1 spell hits HARD.
• 3 spells hit for normal damage
• 1 spell hits for crap.
• 1 spell either hits for crap, or worse: heals the monster.
Fortunately, both mages have attack spells from both wheels. In ALL circumstances, at least 1 spell will show at least positive results. But we all know this famous, famous Internet adage:
Attack the enemy weak point for MASSIVE DAMAGE. (Giant enemy crab)
And that's where Water's total absence hurts. Flans CHANGE their weak point. Everytime you hit a Flan's weakness, it will change flavour. A typical Flan battle nowadays usually goes like this:
• Flan starts out Fire-elemental (this is random)
-> Use Aero for massive damage.
• Flan panics and switches to Lightning-elemental (random)
-> Yawn and cast Stone for massive damage.
• Flan flips out and switches to Wind-elemental (random).
-> Your THM buddy Dark Mage casts Blizzard for massive damage.
• Flan cowers and switches to Earth-elemental (this eventually happens whether you like it or not).
-> You're forced to either heal it with Stone, damage it for crap with Lightning, or damage it with only moderate efficiency with Aero or Fire (which will most likely cause other monsters to join the fray, yay AoE).
• Flan laughs at you (and there's nothing you can do about it).
Nice. Going. Square-Enix.
Seriously... Give ANYONE a water-elemental attack. Give us water balloons as throwable items, anything. Please. Or make Flans unable to become weak against Water.
You broke this, now fix it.