2.0 Mage "ultimate" spell disappointment

So: Flare, Holy, and now Gravity. Three of the most intimidating spells in historical FF lore, now reduced to shadows of there former infamy. Flare seems to have fallen off of the BLM rotation considerably with the addition of Fire IV.

Ideas:
Holy: Double the MP cost, and increase potency to 500, split evenly between every enemy hit. 1=500, 2=250, 3=165, 4=125, 5=100, etc. down to 50. Still stuns, and if spread between 10 or more enemies, additionally blinds.

Flare: The same, but add a scorch DOT to all enemies hit. Something normal like 50 potency. Critical damage inflicts an extended DOT.

Gravity: 300 potency to all enemies within range and deals more damage the more HP the enemies have. 100%=100% potency, etc, etc.


I'm only blabbing about my dream setup, just like everyone really. I just wish they would remain a symbol of their respective job's pinnacle achievement like they used to be.

It's called game balance.

I would rather play a balanced game, than some lopsided mess due to peoples "dreams" about spell names that they are nostalgic about.

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Originally Posted by m3eansean

It's called game balance.

I would rather play a balanced game, than some lopsided mess due to peoples "dreams" about spell names that they are nostalgic about.

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Exactly the point of my closing statement.

The spells don't need to be OP, nor do they have to be the programming nightmares that I suggest (god help anyone who actually attempted to implement these specific changes), I just wish that after one expansion these ultimate techniques wouldn't turn into garbage that no one likes to use. Flare, Holy, and Gravity as they are now, are all the same spell with the knobs turned a little, and they're only relevant to about lvl 55.

I wish they were viable in meta rotations, and I wish they were more unique.

Coming from someone who mains BLM, I have to say I would love to have Flare back to its former glory. Honestly, our AoE DPS is crap now. It's still doable thanks to Leylines speeding the process up, so you can throw more spells out quickly. But, with the lower damage it feels like stuff takes forever to die.

And I don't want to hear "but you have Fire IV now!!" Okay, that's nice. But that's not an AoE...in mobs with 4+ monsters Fire IV of course isn't even worth it.

They kinda overdid it with the AoE DPS nerfs in 3.0. Right now SMN is the king of AoE DPS ironically enough.

Why was it bad for BLM and WHM to be really good at AoE dps? All it really did in the whole world was make dungeon grinding slightly less awful.

Something about a WHM--a healer job being able to spam 900-1200 damage spells that AoE stun, repeatedly, vs an actual DPS job like BRD or DRG which could barely deal 400-550 with their AoE skills (which ate so much TP they could barely do 5-6 without being completely drained on TP and needing Invigorate/Paeon).

Why they nerfed Flare? No idea. Maybe they figured their AoE damage was *too* high. Or maybe they just hate AoE cleaving fodder in dungeons and want us to progress slower and so they punished the "GATHER ALL UP ALL THE THINGS AND BURN THEM DOWN" mentality" which makes dungeons less mindless but slower and thus more boring.

My suspicion is that they wanted to cut down on the massive AoE pulls, or at least make them slower. It certainly did make them slower, but you can still mass pull just as well as you could back in 2.5.

They didn't nerfed it because of making big pulls taking longer, they did it because BLM could burst a crowd of mobs in a speed like other dps could burn single targets. So it was to easy for BLMs in dungeons because of doule- / triple-flare and cya 10-15 mobs.

That's what i think.

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Originally Posted by Paindark

They didn't nerfed it because of making big pulls taking longer, they did it because BLM could burst a crowd of mobs in a speed like other dps could burn single targets. So it was to easy for BLMs in dungeons because of doule- / triple-flare and cya 10-15 mobs.

That's what i think.

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But why is that bad?

It's not like someone can say "Ok, Duty Finder, now you listen here! You will give me 2 black mages for my dps and you will LIKE IT!" You get what you get. If you get a BLM, great.. your run got marginally faster.

SE seems to be doing a fine job preventing the "evil" speedruns by just putting artificial gates everywhere so that you can only pull 2 or 3 groups max anyway. Why was it ALSO necessary to nerf AoE dps?

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Something about a WHM--a healer job being able to spam 900-1200 damage spells that AoE stun, repeatedly..

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I totally agree that Holy was a bit much for a healer, which is why I'd prefer it just had a crazy high potency that is evenly split through all affected enemies and has a dangerous MP cost to discourage overuse.

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Originally Posted by Callinon

But why is that bad?

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SE seems to be doing a fine job preventing the "evil" speedruns by just putting artificial gates everywhere so that you can only pull 2 or 3 groups max anyway. Why was it ALSO necessary to nerf AoE dps?

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Agreed. It's not like it made a difference in endgame where it mostly came down to one enemy. They were the AOE specialists, and now they're just a magical version of the other DPS with less utility.