Why are the dev’s allergic to Water magic?

Just to preface this passionate rant; I’d be a Waterbender if this was Avatar: TLA. What can I say, I like tidal waves and floods?

This been really bothering me for years now that the ONLY element that there’s a severe lack of in our repertoire is water. It feels like they’ve rubbed salt in the wound with giving Y’shtola Water IV as well! They’ve completely ditched Earth and Wind on WHM now too, so now we only have Red Mage’s lesser versions of those as well, while still obviously having NO water spells. Red Mage could have filled that aesthetic void easily. But nope. Why? Who knows. You’d think with Red Mage being all about balancing the elements they’d at least make SOME offensive use of Water, but nope. You’d think after witnessing the raw power of the great flood they’d be inclined to use that abundance of water for offence. But nope.

To make things worse they continually nerf Fluid Aura every expansion... just get rid of it at this point, it’s such a shell of what it used to be it’s a waste of space now. They explained that even the healing spells are wind-aspected. So what gives SE? Do ya’ll hate water that much? I just think it’s such a cool element and seeing it get ignored by all our jobs yet used frequently by enemies and allies is so frustrating.

GIVE US WATER MAGIC ALREADY!

I-I'm so sorry..

https://i.imgur.com/4lDAWKn.png

Ah, it says a lot about Blue Mage that I completely forgot about its existence... damn. Normally I’d concede there but until we get useable water magic in most content (as in after level 50 and in duty finder lol) my point still stands! Trust them to dabble in water magic on the only limited job there is... will my dream of using water spells on any other job ever come to fruition? Who knows.

Ninja has Suiton Ninjutsu as well. I think the question should be, why are the devs allergic to giving WHM offensive water magic? Fluid Aura just doesn't cut it....

If I'm not mistaken don't the Geomancers later on have water magic? I don't know what their dungeon is called but I remember seeing a huge water tunnel there. I think that might also be the reason why White Mage got more light magic in order to shift more of those spells towards Geomancer in the future.

Y'shtola, as a Thaumaturge, runs through pretty much every element. Fire of the Seventh Dawn, Ice of the Seventh Dawn, Stone of the Seventh Dawn, *Water of the Seventh Dawn*, etc, she casts each element once, then casts stronger versions of each element once, then casts Foul of the Seventh Dawn.

So, yeah. Y'shtola has a Water spell. Maybe one day it'll be incorporated into a class, or made into a class of its own.

This isn't the only FF game to throw water elemental spells under the bus, FFVII also did not have many player-useable water themed spells (there was no 'natural' water spells at all - there was the Blue Magic Enemy Skill Aqualung, the Leviathan summon... and that was it really) - although enemies seemed to use water spells freely. Instead you had fire, ice and lightning as the main 'elemental' damage spells (Earth spells were later gained, but even those were less effective than Fire, Ice and Lightning as the Float buff would render an Earth elemental spell completely useless, and Wind spells seemed to be entirelly enemy used, like the commonly used enemy attack 'Aero 3'), something which I presume SE were actually emulating here back in 1.0 when the battle system was redesigned and CNJ lost some of it's elemental spells to THM.

Maybe the actual spell 'Water' will return in the future, but as it stands Fluid Aura is the limit of your water spells for CNJ (and for what it's worth I too am not happy at how SE has consistently neutuered that particular spell - it was far more potent back at ARR's start but now is practically worthless, the damage it did did not need to be removed as players could hardly spam it after all due to it's long cooldown, which was by design. But that's another barrel of moogles...).

The Water magic line was always a classic black mage thing... Except for this game where it was a conjurer thing in 1.0 and then an enemy only thing now.

That IS a little weird.

Geomancer could be a class in the future, though, they could possibly learn water magic.

It isn't just this game, the actual Water line of spells usually isn't available for the player, and when it is half the time its only Water with no upgrades. X was the first game to actually give the player access to Watera and Waterga that I've seen, and after that only XIII had those two as well. So this isn't really all that new for FF.

Water-type magic on the other hand has had various spells to their name, via Geomancer spells, the Ninja's Flood ability, Blue Magic, and various summons usually via Leviathan. So as someone said above if we ever get Geomancer it will most likely have plenty of water magic to its name.

Maybe they are saving it for another class? There's some small water based skills here and there but nothing that defines a job. WHM used to be big on air and earth, but this expansion transitioned the job into a light/holy focused one. So I'm guessing the reason WHM is losing its earth/water/air identity throughout the expansions might be because Geomancer is in the works. So by the time it becomes a thing, WHM won't have any air, earth or water based skills in the arsenal to clash with Geomancer's concept. That's just my guess though.

I always thought it was strange how excluded Water magic is, to the point you only use it as certain Blue Magic spells. Is it because of the Sixth Umbral Calamity?

I’ve been secretly getting my hopes up that they’re planning on introducing Geomancer next expansion.

With the upcoming Eden NPC, Gaia, maybe it could be based on her aesthetic with a hammer (that would be cool). I know it was a coincidence that she got designed with a hammer but it would be cool right? Besides that, her name literally means “Earth” much like Geo does, so who knows...

But yeah, the severe lack of water spells bothers me greatly. I’ll pray to the 12 that one of the best jobs they add will use it. Who knows, maybe they’re gonna blow us all away and add an “Aquamancer” job? That would be hilarious, I’d main that for life.

I was hoping for VerWater as one of the AOE for RDM...hopefully in 6.0.

It's always been a classic FF magic thing. Main spells are Fire/Thunder/Ice and their lines. Then you have Water/Wind/Earth existing usually as only one or two spells being Water/Aero/Quake. This had been the case pretty much up until X/XI where they started adding more. So it's likely just being more in tone with classic FF, especially with element having no real purpose in this game, outside of Eureka.

Probably because Viera are highly vulnerable to water...
Make them wet and the die of stroke, or ear infection.

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Originally Posted by Cled-cat

I’ve been secretly getting my hopes up that they’re planning on introducing Geomancer next expansion.

With the upcoming Eden NPC, Gaia, maybe it could be based on her aesthetic with a hammer (that would be cool). I know it was a coincidence that she got designed with a hammer but it would be cool right? Besides that, her name literally means “Earth” much like Geo does, so who knows...

But yeah, the severe lack of water spells bothers me greatly. I’ll pray to the 12 that one of the best jobs they add will use it. Who knows, maybe they’re gonna blow us all away and add an “Aquamancer” job? That would be hilarious, I’d main that for life.

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CNJ is literally GEO already (GEO in FFXIV is in fact just what the Far East calls Conjury), so unless SE are planning on retconning CNJ specifically into GEO (which I doubt somewhat), I don't see this happening I'm afraid (really I would have prefered actual GEO to have been CNJ's Job with WHM instead coming off a hypothetical 'priest' class which would also gain CNJ's healing/buffing spells... but Yoshi made his choice).

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

CNJ is literally GEO already (GEO in FFXIV is in fact just what the Far East calls Conjury), so unless SE are planning on retconning CNJ specifically into GEO (which I doubt somewhat), I don't see this happening I'm afraid (really I would have prefered actual GEO to have been CNJ's Job with WHM instead coming off a hypothetical 'priest' class which would also gain CNJ's healing/buffing spells... but Yoshi made his choice).

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That's why I'm hoping if they do make a Geomancer job that it works absolutely nothing like the Hingan conjurers we saw in Stormblood.

I say if we get a water caster, then we should get some tweaked version of Viking.

As others said, Fire, Lightning, and Ice have taken the spotlight for many games. Its only FF Record Keeper that uses the other elements in any real capacity.

...I want Water spells now.


Especially if they're as fun to use as in KH3 XD

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Originally Posted by Hezzlocks

Y'shtola, as a Thaumaturge, runs through pretty much every element. Fire of the Seventh Dawn, Ice of the Seventh Dawn, Stone of the Seventh Dawn, *Water of the Seventh Dawn*, etc, she casts each element once, then casts stronger versions of each element once, then casts Foul of the Seventh Dawn.

So, yeah. Y'shtola has a Water spell. Maybe one day it'll be incorporated into a class, or made into a class of its own.

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I haven't run any trust with Y'shtola yet, so I haven't seen her use both light- and dark-aspected spells while on the same job, but I'll take your word for it.

Let's keep in mind, though, that the NPCs still borderline follow the old 1.x route where what you learned from, say, Conjurer, could in many ways carry over to whatever other caster you take up. And, she was a Conjurer just last expansion... and also the original user of Collective Unconscious (or it's bubble defense at least)...?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I haven't run any trust with Y'shtola yet, so I haven't seen her use both light- and dark-aspected spells while on the same job, but I'll take your word for it.

Let's keep in mind, though, that the NPCs still borderline follow the old 1.x route where what you learned from, say, Conjurer, could in many ways carry over to whatever other caster you take up. And, she was a Conjurer just last expansion... and also the original user of Collective Unconscious (or it's bubble defense at least)...?

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Yeah, I didn't really think much of it when she threw a Stone in, as she has roots in conjury, but the Water spell in particular caught me off guard. I forget if she used an Aero of the Seventh Dawn, I only watched her once during the Qitana Raval, but considering she uses all the other elements (fire, ice, lightning, earth and water), I can only assume she did. Both Water and Aero are also Conjury things, but since conjurers these days barely even touch the element, Water was surprising to see. Good graphical effect, too.

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Originally Posted by Hezzlocks

Yeah, I didn't really think much of it when she threw a Stone in, as she has roots in conjury, but the Water spell in particular caught me off guard. I forget if she used an Aero of the Seventh Dawn, I only watched her once during the Qitana Raval, but considering she uses all the other elements (fire, ice, lightning, earth and water), I can only assume she did. Both Water and Aero are also Conjury things, but since conjurers these days barely even touch the element, Water was surprising to see. Good graphical effect, too.

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She uses Tornado of the Seventh Dawn. She also has the IV level spell of I believe all the elements, which leads into her version of Foul if I remember right.

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Originally Posted by Dualblade

She uses Tornado of the Seventh Dawn. She also has the IV level spell of I believe all the elements, which leads into her version of Foul if I remember right.

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Yeah, that's right. When I did Raval, I watched her rotation, she did the normal version of every element once, then the IV version of every element, then Foul of the Seventh Dawn, then back to the normal variants.

Well tbh, not many water spells in the FF universe. Usually water is tied to a water summon like leviathan or just a plain water spell. Ffx is the only one that I remember that had a tier system for water other than FFXI. Ironically if another job gets water spells it would be smn with a leviathan egi. Which I'm curious why we don't have one at this point. May as well have one of every element for flavor. Not like element affinity matters anyway.

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Originally Posted by Ayuhra

The Water magic line was always a classic black mage thing... Except for this game where it was a conjurer thing in 1.0 and then an enemy only thing now.

That IS a little weird.

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In 1.0, before the classes got redesigned for the jobs, CNJ was the elementar mage and THM was the priest mage (astral and umbral magic)

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Originally Posted by Felis

In 1.0, before the classes got redesigned for the jobs, CNJ was the elementar mage and THM was the priest mage (astral and umbral magic)

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This. You had all the individual elements, or an Astral/Umbral "shadow-" or "balance-" priest. Honestly I really liked the original Thaumaturge concept, especially, even if the implementation left much to be desired. (But, this is 1.x we're talking about. What didn't?)

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Originally Posted by Felis

In 1.0, before the classes got redesigned for the jobs, CNJ was the elementar mage and THM was the priest mage (astral and umbral magic)

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yeah , thm was a mix of FFXI rdm / drk , with blood magic even , sacrifice , blood rite , bio , dia , poison, slow , gravity , absorb-X , dark seal ect

while conjurer was a whm/blm , with elemental spells and white magic , cure , protect , poisona , paralyna

water magic existed back then : water I , water II , flood , and dot versions of elemental in case of water drown I-II

At least Divine Benison and Thin Air look watery, but yeah, Fluid Aura in its current state is kind of an insult. More/better water spells are always welcomed

Damage is damage. Does it really matter what the visual effect is?

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

Damage is damage. Does it really matter what the visual effect is?

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That’s a pretty boring way to look at things... Aesthetics and themes mean a lot to many people (like me) so yeah, it does matter. Following your logic we might as well just have no visual effects at all, that sounds fun!

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

Damage is damage. Does it really matter what the visual effect is?

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Yes, it absolutely matters. If we lived in a world where visual effects didn't matter, we'd be playing this on Excel.

Good lord, even pen and paper games like D&D delve into themes, specialties and otherwise "pointless" details and trivialities. Games are all chock full of things that serves no real purpose at all towards the gameplay, but people still love them because they do things like flesh out the world, make things look beautiful, and, of course, the rule of cool.

"Does it really matter what the visual effect is?" you say. To that I could ask you, why did you choose to be a Hrothgar? Does it really matter what your race is? Both your quest and mine very likely have the same answer.

I'd definitely like for the devs to consider adding water damage in a future job. It's clear that white mage has moved away from elemental magic and black mage won't be using it. This only really leaves Geomancer or Green mage, from the list of mages not in XIV yet.

It's really strange considering how deadly water can be: hurricanes, tsunamis, typhoons, floods; which all sound like Geomancer spells, heh. So yeah, even more reason to add said job.

I have this theory that they went with WHM having new unaspected spells instead of stone and aero to make room for a future Geomancer healer job, that will use them, including water aspected things.

I personally want a Storm Mage, that uses wind, thunder, ice and water spells.

Dunno if there's ever been anything like that in FF.

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Originally Posted by Ekimmak

I personally want a Storm Mage, that uses wind, thunder, ice and water spells.

Dunno if there's ever been anything like that in FF.

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Black mage, they just don't have water in FFXIV. But when you say Storm it makes me think of Geomancer, they deal with natural disasters such as Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Lava eruptons, tsunamis, and the like.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

Black mage, they just don't have water in FFXIV. But when you say Storm it makes me think of Geomancer, they deal with natural disasters such as Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Lava eruptons, tsunamis, and the like.

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See, I can come up with reasons for a so called "Storm" mage to use earth or fire spells. Sandstorms are when winds whip up and carry sand. Firestorms are created by winds carrying sparks and soot around.

But neither White nor Black mage has the full set of elements that I'd consider calling them a "storm" mage. White Mage doesn't have Lightning, Black Mage doesn't have Wind.