The Elemental Wheel

Hey guys. I've been thinking that aspected damage really doesn't do anything right now and this disappoints me to no end. as a lover of final fantasy and yes final fantasy xi i remember how fun it was to try and match the strong spells vs the correct type of target.

now before you all dig at me about this game not being ffxi i know that they are two different games and can't work the same way. It's just impractical and yes that is true, you can not have black mages being utterly useless vs certain primal fights that's just not fun.


so I've been wondering, is there is a way to make the elemental wheel important again without breaking the whole game? I do think there is a way to do it. instead of thinking what a target might resist instead think about what they might be weak too. Take titan for an example, if you throw a large rock at titan i think he will feel it but (as per the lore of this game) douse him with water then it will make it harder for the primal to form the earth to damage you.

i think a system of weaknesses would make the game more interesting and make people feel good about them selves when they figure something out, for example making a monster take slightly more damage from certain spells without penalizing the spells it might logically be immune too.

this boost would not have to be big heck it could just be 5% damage but since no two mobs might be weak to the same things it doesnt make certain classes wanted over others but makes mages have a little bit more flavor.

with heavensward adding in a new spell caster of sorts and likely more egis i think this could make more people enjoy playing these classes without breaking the game.

would also be nice to see astral and umbral elements come back as well at some point to round the system out more.

By using a system like this as well it gives the idea of more roles that might be practical in the future ( a red mage that gets a buff that makes the team do a % of elemental damage on hit for example or spells to give monsters certain elemental weaknesses)

i know my idea may sound simple and a bit far fetched but i think if people with some experience could expand on it, it could make the game just that little bit more interesting.

thanks for reading

I wouldn't mind it having a slight damage increase and decrease based on the element of an attack, though your proposed method will certainly go over far better with the community who are either constantly begging for changes to the classes that aren't over powered or are constantly complaining that the other classes are too over powered, despite there being a clear balance between them all. Still, in the vein of complaining, I have always found it pointless to have the elemental types to begin with if they have no bearing on combat in any way. Especially since they also saw fit to include that the Arcanist attacks are "unaspected" meaning that they would remain equally effective or ineffective against all enemies. As it is, this serves as nothing more than flavor text, (don't get me wrong, I love delicious flavor text), which begs the question of why include it to begin with?

Would be a little difficult since black mage doesn't have stone or water I know whm dose but then wed get into the whole the healer isn't dpsing when they may not be comfortable with it yet then there's the thing that would exclude certain jobs.

I can't see this being a thing unless the above are taken care of and implement it in a way so they don't become a thing but it would still be good to have don't get me wrong.

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Originally Posted by Gamer3427

I wouldn't mind it having a slight damage increase and decrease based on the element of an attack, though your proposed method will certainly go over far better with the community who are either constantly begging for changes to the classes that aren't over powered or are constantly complaining that the other classes are too over powered, despite there being a clear balance between them all. Still, in the vein of complaining, I have always found it pointless to have the elemental types to begin with if they have no bearing on combat in any way. Especially since they also saw fit to include that the Arcanist attacks are "unaspected" meaning that they would remain equally effective or ineffective against all enemies. As it is, this serves as nothing more than flavor text, (don't get me wrong, I love delicious flavor text), which begs the question of why include it to begin with?

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yeah the system might be hard to put in but you hit it on the head with flavor text, and really i love flavor text so even if nothing could be done with the elemental types i wouldn't want the system that's in to go.

hell i want the dark and light damage that was in back in 1.0 (called astral and umbral) back if possible. i like unaspected for some casters but i wouldn't want every new caster to only have unaspected as a lore point it would make the game slightly dull.

lore aside though it would just be nice to see them revisit this system somehow in the future as right now as you said it is kinda pointless.

Resistances are more relevant right now than people think. Someone tested it pretty well and found resistance stacking has a sizable effect on successfully protecting someone from a confirmed elemental attack.
The issues, though, are obvious. Needing a gearset for each element isn't efficient. It's generally safer after a while to just burn stuff down. Attacks with enough damage WORTH mitigating generally appear unaspected, unless you're just REALLY into pony farming with some terrible luck on your side to justify resisting those high damage blows. And it can still get expensive to max out resistances in crafted armor.
I'd imagine piling on resistances goes hand in hand with piling on VIT melded accessories in new content. Useful for learning, shaved off bit by bit once it's figured out, removed to the minimum (zero, in resistances' case) once it's mastered.

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Originally Posted by KikoriL

And it can still get expensive to max out resistances in crafted armor.

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Not to mention the limiting factory of inventory space. If you have most classes leveled then you're armory chest is half full with regular or best gear, then you'd have to add all different elemental gear sets. Costly, space consuming, of little benefit (at this point at least).

I do agree with the OP tho, elemental advantages are key in most single-player FF games. It wouldn't be impossible to implement in this game, but instead of relying on melded gear (due to inventory space concerns), I'd rather see something like enflame, enthunder, etc kind of damage buffs. Abilities that each class has vs loaded inventory. Could even make them cross class skills so you could equip them for just a single battle and then swap for the next.

Yoshi didn't want to alienate any jobs based on which elements they have access to. Therefore player elements don't mean much, but by that token, why should any spells players use have any aspect? Dragonfire dive says in its description that it's fire damage, but since player's elemental damage has no differential effect on any mob, it might as well be unaspected.

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Yoshi didn't want to alienate any jobs based on which elements they have access to. Therefore player elements don't mean much, but by that token, why should any spells players use have any aspect? Dragonfire dive says in its description that it's fire damage, but since player's elemental damage has no differential effect on any mob, it might as well be unaspected.

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Lore, as some one who loves the games lore having the aspected damage removed fully would hurt more then just leaving it as is.

i feel that there are still other ways to make use of a system without making some people op over others, the enspells are an example of this. i understand that the game was made simpler when it was rebooted but they said they were going to make things more complicated as time goes on. i don't know if anything will be done with this old system but i can hope they do something cool with it to make it relevant again, i mean right now even player resistances are not used for anything.

no one buys the elemental meteria and no one uses the resistances potions, it also doesn't help that the games battle log gives minimal information as well. with the system we have right now we have no idea what aspect of damage is being cast on us only the name of the skill and it isn't always possible to tell the aspect of damage just from the skill name.

right now there is no point to the system at all on both sides monster and player, and i think that is a shame.

I am very, very glad magic damage isn't put on a rock-paper-firenation wheel in this game. It's drab, it's outdated, it requires alot of good design and customization to get right, and almost no MMO ever does this. Magician classes in MMOs are typically either borderline OP or completely subpar thanks to this. I remember playing TERA and realizing how awesome it felt to just blow stuff up, dealing massive damage without having to respec my abilities everytime i switched areas. I think centering Black Mage around MP management, cast-time and stack mechanics was a way better idea than just convoluting their skill tree with a crapload of elemental equivalents. It's really just added redundancy more than anything. There's nothing special or clever about it.

Seriously, 99% of the time you have it figured out before you even hit the monster, and if you're wrong, you just go down the list until you're right.

I feel like they went down the right path with Fire = damage and Ice = MP regeneration. Hopefully in the future we can get some Thunder / Arcane synergy that promotes Spell Speed & Crit Rate, and maybe juggle those to along with Fire/Ice. The possibilities are endless when it comes to creating good mechanics with the spells. But shoehorning everything into a counter wheel is really boring.

This. It's kinda sad that we have 6 elemental Resistances that are quite undesirable in many ways (Converted gear to Wind Materia IV? FUUUUUU!!!)

Elemental Wheels may be fun for some (like me), but it does introduce a whole new game balance issues. I've heard they removed its concept because THMs don't have every element at their disposal.

-> Ifrit absorbs Fire but weak to Water, making THMs pretty much useless in an Ifrit fight (or any primal for that matter).

I suppose a good way to balance this is to also consider the elements of THMs and CNJs. Nullifies and absorbs may be too unfair, but resistances are a bit okay.

-> Ifrit reduces Fire dmg taken by half, but Ice dmg by double. That way THMs won't be too disadvantaged since Blizzard is also one of their core rotation spells.

-> On the other hand, Shiva will have Ice dmg taken by half, but only take +25% Fire dmg, this is for THMs to NOT speedrun through Shiva with Triple Flares.

I say they should really take caution balancing out resistances, but they should still be there and actually be noticeable to matter.

Alternatively, another use of Elemental Wheels are to give slight boosts to magic. Your fire resistance increase damage of Fire Spells by XX% and stuff like that. For DoWs without proper elemental attacks, I was thinking if they could add elemental attributes to auto-attacks (probably respective with their selected Deity?) so they also enjoy elemental benefits.

As for Earth, Wind and Water elements... I really think they really should implement a Geomancer job for Conjurers to balance out elemental damages. :P

ARR had to deal with many relics of 1.0 amongst them include the class/job system and the elements being divided amongst the mage classes.

The absence of elemental wheel is unfortunate but I think, at the very least, the current system is working out quite well and no point fixing something that isn't broken (unless of course if the dev has nothing better to do)

The elemental wheel is a bad idea for several reasons. You can't play an MMO like a typical RPG party where certain members are more useful in certain situations. In a single player game this rewards the player for building a balanced party and having effective tactics versus all opponents, but in a multiplayer game this punishes the player who can't act in certain scenarios. In a single player game you're rewarded for finding weaknesses and exploiting them, but in a multiplayer game this sets one player above the others. MMOs aren't about finding these things, but of the right tactics of the group as a whole.

Also consider existing design. Black Mages (for example) are not designed around spamming one particular school. You've have to make every element have self-sufficient rotations which would involve adding many spells and cluttering bars. You'd have to balance all enemies to take 'normal' damage from their 'weakness' otherwise mages would overpower everyone.

maybe in patch 5.0

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Originally Posted by ZodiacBrave

~I was thinking if they could add elemental attributes to auto-attacks (probably respective with their selected Deity?) so they also enjoy elemental benefits.

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This sounds awesome!!!!

what about the elemental resist pots? so far these alchemist recipes have been pretty much useless.