Elemental Resistance change.

Can we have a change in the future over how elemental resistance works? Or rather, a buff to them in general. As it stands now, it takes a lot of Materia and gil just to make a significant difference in the elemental damage you suffer and the effort does not match the reward. If anything it would add more depth to the game to give players a choice to put resistance materia on their armor in order to decrease incoming damage.

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Allow me to be perfecting clear here. Crystal clear.

I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT THE DAMAGE YOU DO BEING SCALED WITH ELEMENTAL RESISTANCES.

That would just ass a whole level of complications and exclusions from parties that we don't really need. Tanks are already being excluded from some parties apparently for not doing a certain amount of DPS and that already is insanity to me. I'm talking about the damage you receive being lowered as you increase your elemental resistance through melds of CRAFTED GEAR, NOT DUNGEON/RAID GEAR. We already can't meld materia to dungeon gear--that isn't happening ever, and there's nothing showing that it would ever happen as they made a point before in saying "No. Meld to your crafted gear. Also eat more greens. They're good for you." I'm pretty sure Yoshida said that about eating greens... or if he didn't he should. They are good for you.

Dungeon/raid gear is unique in the fact that it comes with a preset build of stats for you already there and cannot be changed. If you were allowed to change what stats are on raid gear, it makes that gear far less unique and just stronger mirrors of crafted gear.

The whole elemental wheel should be brought back, damage and defense as well as the affinities for casters. :/

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Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

The whole elemental wheel should be brought back, damage and defense as well as the affinities for casters. :/

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WHM, BLM, SMN, actually pretty much every class that has access to spells would need to be reworked. Those 3 just come to mind that would need to be drastically and fundamentally reworked to function with an elemental wheel in regards to damage. Bad idea overall.

As far as adding a real purpose to elemental materia for defense, SE would need to add materia sockets to end-game gear other than crafting and buff their bonuses. Not keen at all on that idea. Would also make fights even more gimicky where you need to stack x materia for this fight and y materia for another, leading to having to have multiple sets of identical gear with just the materia melded to them being different. Imagine having to farm/collect 4+ complete sets of Dreadwyrm gear (pre-unlockable spam) and then having to stack a different elemental defense to them in order to get the most benefit when fighting bosses that use different elemental attacks. (obviously BiS isn't fully Dreadwyrm gear so no one would farm a complete set if they want toe benefit the most from their gear, but the general meaning is there)

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Originally Posted by SDaemon

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No, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have to have dungeon dropped gear have materia slots as they don't do that now despite the fact that the far more "useful" critical hit and determination materia COULD be slapped onto dungeon armor if they allowed it but they don't and you can't. To be honest, I firmly believe that having identical gear with different materia melded onto them is the point as it adds variety to crafting and the battle system. I currently have a set of Wootz armor for each element. I don't have to imagine it as I did it. Was it expensive? Yes. Was it fun? In my opinion, yes as I had to make each armor myself and raise up the money in different ways to afford the materials, materia and carbonized matter (I got lazy, I'll admit it there with the matter) in order to make the armors.

If they would put in a system where you need to use dungeon gear for melds they would have done it already considering we could have made our own BiS gear from Coil 1 with savage aim and might materia. I'm talking about crafted gear. I'm even betting it would be better for the market boards as it would give people more incentive to buy or sell elemental materia for melding.

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Originally Posted by SDaemon

WHM, BLM, SMN, actually pretty much every class that has access to spells would need to be reworked. Those 3 just come to mind that would need to be drastically and fundamentally reworked to function with an elemental wheel in regards to damage. Bad idea overall.

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First off I totally agree, elemental resistances aren't really a thing in this game because Yoshi-P wanted to make it so no one could get discriminated against based on the elemental damage they deal. While on the DEFENSIVE side this means everything is a bit oversimplified, it also gives leeway for the designers to create more interesting fights without absolute gear requirements. I've played games with resist gear. It wasn't as fun as people think it would be.
That said...
SMN actually wouldn't need much, their damage is unaspected.
BLM, WHM, and BRD all deal aspected damage, though the latter is physical instead of magical.

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Originally Posted by kyuven

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Allow me to be more clear here. I am not referring to damage you DO should be scaled with elemental resistances. That would add a whole level of tombuggery that no one really needs. I'm talking about damage you receive. Opening up another avenue for choice in the matter to decrease the damage you receive by not only focusing on materia melds that currently are all about the big numbers you DO. Creating a choice between increasing damage and decreasing damage taken to a personal preference.

If SE would do this, why restrict it to crafted gear? Without the benefit of the added crit, det etc etc on crafted gear, dungeon/raid gear of higher ilvl is superior by far. So slapping the element materia on crafted gear is horrible for you unless they made the elemental materia incredibly OP.

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Originally Posted by kyuven

First off I totally agree, elemental resistances aren't really a thing in this game because Yoshi-P wanted to make it so no one could get discriminated against based on the elemental damage they deal. While on the DEFENSIVE side this means everything is a bit oversimplified, it also gives leeway for the designers to create more interesting fights without absolute gear requirements. I've played games with resist gear. It wasn't as fun as people think it would be.
That said...
SMN actually wouldn't need much, their damage is unaspected.
BLM, WHM, and BRD all deal aspected damage, though the latter is physical instead of magical.

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SMN can cross certain spells, like blizzard and aero. While it isn't really a staple to them, the fact that they can cast those spells impacts them too. (oh sorry, thinking of SCH w/ aero lol)

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Originally Posted by SDaemon

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Because as it stands dungeon/raid gear is a gradual increase of pure power and damage output/increase in healing. It should stay that way as dungeon/raid gear is your reward for beating a hard challenge. Crafted gear is your reward for grinding for hours until you make what you want and gives you the option of customization. If you were to make dungeon/raid gear have slots for elemental resistances all that does is kill how unique they are and makes crafted gear pointless as you can customize that. I'm not talking about making elemental materia useful to the point that you turn every attack that was 2000 damage down to 100 but at the very most cut that damage by 20%-30% when you meld out your gear completely. You have to understand that even with elemental resistances NOT being prominent/overly important in this game for each armor I've dropped at least 1.3 million gil in costs and that is excluding the accessories.

There's six elements in this game, meaning a minimum of 7.8 million gil spent overall---again, not accounting for accessories. For most people this could be seen as not worth it but for some it could be if the resistances were made worth while to them. I'm talking about opening an avenue for those who would be fine with losing dps in favor of gaining defense. More or less a shield oath that you would have to work and pay for.

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SMN can cross certain spells, like blizzard and aero. While it isn't really a staple to them, the fact that they can cast those spells impacts them too. (oh sorry, thinking of SCH w/ aero lol)

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That would be the case if I were talking about changing how much damage what attacks do depending on what enemies you are against... which again--for the third time I am not. I am talking strictly about the damage players receive from attacks. Again. Damage that players do to enemies is not the subject here. Damage you take from enemies is.

I'm not really for this change exactly, but I think they should just remove (or at least hide in the UI) elemental resistances if they're not going to make them matter in the slightest. Even in FFXI where they did have a noticeable effect everybody ignored them most of the time (mostly gear with a lot of resistance was otherwise terrible). The biggest problem I see with this is that it might affect what tanks do with their armor, but nobody else. Certainly nobody is going to sacrifice damage on a DPS class to get elemental resistances unless it's completely mandatory to pass some incoming damage check, and I don't think the devs want to open that can of worms.

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Originally Posted by Ramzal

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Than what would be the benefit of it over superior gearing/melding? Other than the gimmick of having melded your gear with elemental materia, as you already have, why would players do it? If it doesn't offer something meaningful over the current gearing/melding system.

Also why would I need to understand that you dropped 1.3 million gil on doing it? You dropping over a million gil on something doesn't make it important to the overall game....

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Originally Posted by Ramzal

if I were talking about changing how much damage what attacks do depending on what enemies you are against... which again--for the third time I am not. I am talking strictly about the damage players receive from attacks. Again. Damage that players do to enemies is not the subject here. Damage you take from enemies is.

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You DO realize that the responses about damage are in response the 2nd person that posted in this thread and not you? Stop being overly defensive over comments not directed at you.

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Originally Posted by Nutz

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Okay if you are not for that kind of change, that's cool. But how is this any different than when healers and DPS were putting vitality materia on their crafted gear in order to survive raid wide attacks? When players noticed that certain attacks that would normally kill them when they didn't have a certain amount of HP, they melded vitality materia to crafted gear in order to increase their likeliness of surviving on coming heavy attacks. How is that in any way different from doing that but for elemental raid wide attacks?

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Originally Posted by SDaemon

Than what would be the benefit of it over superior gearing/melding? Other than the gimmick of having melded your gear with elemental materia, as you already have, why would players do it? If it doesn't offer something meaningful over the current gearing/melding system. Also why would I need to understand that you dropped 1.3 million gil on doing it? You dropping over a million gil on something doesn't make it important to the overall game....

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Again. To open up the option of doing so and bringing actual use to the materia that is present in the game. If you aren't going to make it useful, why have it in there? There's no point. The point in my mentioning how much gil I dropped was to give an idea of how it's not -easy- to do. Everyone wouldn't do it as they'd think "That...costs a lot of money just to decrease incoming damage. I'm not sure if that's for me." Which is okay. But some would be fine with that.

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you DO realize that the responses about damage are in response the 2nd person that posted in this thread and not you? Stop being overly defensive over comments not directed at you.

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One: I'm not being overly defensive. I'm trying to not turn the thread into "Lets make this 1.0." As that's not the point of this thread or the intention. Trying to keep it on track here as opposed to it becoming "lets make this 1.0" threads that we've seen thousands of times. People are very likely to see "Let's turn Black Mages into ifrit killers with Blizzard 3" and think "Wellep, that's not going to happen because it would upset the balance in the game and people would get excluded from parties, etc. reasons."

So can we be awesome enough to not take the thread down the road of something it's not about/not begin arguing in the second person and turning into a "well you're doing this even if I couldn't possibly know that and I disagree with what I think you're doing" match? That's just flame war territory and not really a road anyone needs to go down.

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Originally Posted by Ramzal

Okay if you are not for that kind of change, that's cool. But how is this any different than when healers and DPS were putting vitality materia on their crafted gear in order to survive raid wide attacks? When players noticed that certain attacks that would normally kill them when they didn't have a certain amount of HP, they melded vitality materia to crafted gear in order to increase their likeliness of surviving on coming heavy attacks. How is that in any way different from doing that but for elemental raid wide attacks?

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It's different in that vitality is a catch all stat. It uniformly adds survivability to all incoming attacks. Elemental resistances would need to be buffed well above the gains from stacking vitality on crafted accessories for it to be worthwhile, and if doing that actually made a difference then it would become compulsory to pass certain fights.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not specifically against this sort of change, just that I don't think it can logically happen in a vacuum. For it to make any sense at all I think a lot of changes would be necessary to gear and stats in general. Right now if elemental resistances were buffed a lot and certain attacks required more than the standard amount of resistance to survive then it would just create a situation where you had to have them. If there were no attacks that required them then there would effectively be no change, even if the stats were buffed heavily. People would still not use them.

Currently you have to sacrifice offensive stats to incorporate elemental resistances and people aren't willing to do that because it's unnecessary. If there was a wider range of stats and more interesting gear then I think it would fit in nicely. I merely think it doesn't fit with the very sterile and boring itemization that the devs are currently working with.

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Originally Posted by Nutz

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Huh... That's pretty true and I agree for the most part. The stats do seem overly simplified for the most part IMO, thus draining most unique customization gear set ups the game could have.

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Originally Posted by Ramzal

Creating a choice between increasing damage and decreasing damage taken to a personal preference.

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Unless their design philosophy radically changes, the former will always take preference over the latter. There are lots of tools for mitigating damage available in the game, so unless elemental resistances were a complete separate slot from standard materia and stats and were present on EVERY item, there would still be no choice. The less time the fight lasts, the less damage everyone takes. And if you adjust fights to be tough without it, people will just stack VIT materia, which gives more HP and is far more versatile.
In other words, they would need to COMPLETELY rework the way elemental resistances work to make it worthwhile to even have them.
And there has to be a question in that case: Is it worth it?

I for one lamented the removal of elemental weakness and resistance in the first instance, but I'll try to avoid digressing from the topic.

A nice happy compromise with the system we currently have in place is to add a new special materia slot onto all existing chestpieces (Yes, even dungeon gear). Unlike other slots, this would have a removable materia crystal which has the sole purpose of giving significant boosts to elemental resistance. The crystals would be crafted through a mutamix quest where you hand in a certain amount of various elemental materia to combine them.

That way there's no overhauls needed aside from the one additional slot, and since you would only be able to equip one element at a time you'd have to choose wisely. The boost should be high enough to be noticeable, but not so much that it trivializes damage of that element.

Just remove elemental materia from the game and call it a day. Do you really want tanks to have to have an ice set for Shiva? A fire set for Ifrit? An earth set for Titan? etc. etc. Elemental resist gear was entertaining in FFXI, like watching a NIN tank a dragon and taking basically no damage from its elemental attacks, but that game was WILDLY unbalanced (and allowed for gear swaps, so you could swap elemental resist gear when needed and put on "real" armor otherwise). I can't think of any particularly good reason to have elemental resist materia exist, be more useful, or do anything besides stop being in the game at all.

Elemental wheel were removed for game semplicity, if I correctly recall a live letter long time ago.

I guess elemental resistance things into the game are leftovers of the cut done.

Primal BLM tanks approve.

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Originally Posted by Hiruke

Just remove elemental materia from the game and call it a day. Do you really want tanks to have to have an ice set for Shiva? A fire set for Ifrit? An earth set for Titan? etc. etc. Elemental resist gear was entertaining in FFXI, like watching a NIN tank a dragon and taking basically no damage from its elemental attacks, but that game was WILDLY unbalanced (and allowed for gear swaps, so you could swap elemental resist gear when needed and put on "real" armor otherwise). I can't think of any particularly good reason to have elemental resist materia exist, be more useful, or do anything besides stop being in the game at all.

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Yeah, due to the severe limitations on armory chest and inventory space, making resistance materia useful would mean having to stockpile six sets of gear for each job you care about resistance on. Talk about a nightmare!

Perhaps if we also reworked the materia system from the ground up it would be feasible... Say, for example, you could freely remove and attach materia at any time on any class, with zero risk. Then you could swap elements in when they are needed, and swap in combat stats when they're not. Or, alternatively, leave the melding system as is but have each piece of gear capable of holding multiple sets of melded materia that you can switch between.

Under the current melding system, though, no, it's just not workable. For your elemental resistance needs, you gotta just rely on battle mechanics, like Scylla's Fire Resistance puddles.

It seems they should remove the resistance stats and materia completely. Are they keeping them around just in case, maybe thinking about reintroducing the concept later? One way I can see them implementing elemental stuff is if they make it an aspect of the Egis, since presumably SMN will have all of them during 3.X. Have them deal/receive more or less damage as applicable. Make Egis and the one they're weak to immune to debuffs of their element. Of course, this doesn't resolve the issue of the stats being on players, but it would at least be an interesting bit of lip service.

To be able to add crafting to dungeon gear should be the FF way.

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Originally Posted by Hiruke

Just remove elemental materia from the game and call it a day. Do you really want tanks to have to have an ice set for Shiva? A fire set for Ifrit? An earth set for Titan?

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Not to mention, some pieces are "unique" and you cannot do two elemental sets using same gear. Yep, if SE dismiss once and for all the 'elemental' part, I think nobody will cry.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

Not to mention, some pieces are "unique" and you cannot do two elemental sets using same gear. Yep, if SE dismiss once and for all the 'elemental' part, I think nobody will cry.

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Oh, people will still cry, don't make any mistake about that! Elemental strengths and weaknesses have been a fundamental part of the Final Fantasy franchise almost from the beginning, and it's sad to see it tossed aside. A damage system where Ice, Fire, and Lightning are nothing more than different colors of the same thing is bland and boring. Given the current structure of the game, though, it's simply not feasible to make any meaningful use of elemental variance.