Elemental damages

With some of the abilities and weapons skills and with the revamp of SMN we see the elemental damages making a return. Do you think we will see mechanics, mobs and even our character with elemental resistances again?

Short answer....no.

Long answer, by adding in elemental damage, you risk a DPS doing less than the desired damage and so having it be shunned from certain fights. Since the philosophy is, everyone should be able to do everything as whatever they want, having enemies resist an element will just go against that philosophy. Imagine a fire resist enemy being fought by a BLM, where the majority of their damage is fire based as an example.

No, I don't think we will.

We used to have elemental materia and potions and it was fun to imagine what niche ways you could use them, but I think developers asked themselves if they really want someone stacking elemental resistances, especially out of ignorance and the answer would be no.

They were removed when eureka was being put in the game because eureka is all about adjusting your elemental wheel to be the same or opposite element depending on if the enemy is stronger than you. If they were put back in the game they could influence your elemental resistance in eureka more than intended, although that doesn't matter at this point when you can get full eureka element gear, 2 extra magia board slots and the echo and in the last two you have logos actions. You can become a god in there now.

Do we really have a return of elemental damage, or do we have flavor text?

It is all just flavour. All the elemental attacks have 'deals X element of damage ' in their descriptions, even Dragoon has Elemental fire on Dragonfire Dive (I believe that and the elemental Ninjutsu are the only ones outside of casters).

While I don't doubt that mechanically speaking within the game engine the elemental damage still exists and functions, I do doubt it'll ever be calculated to be different.
You're not going to start healing Ifrit with fire attacks like in 1.0 anymore, sadly.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

No, I don't think we will.

We used to have elemental materia and potions and it was fun to imagine what niche ways you could use them, but I think developers asked themselves if they really want someone stacking elemental resistances, especially out of ignorance and the answer would be no.

They were removed when eureka was being put in the game because eureka is all about adjusting your elemental wheel to be the same or opposite element depending on if the enemy is stronger than you. If they were put back in the game they could influence your elemental resistance in eureka more than intended, although that doesn't matter at this point when you can get full eureka element gear, 2 extra magia board slots and the echo and in the last two you have logos actions. You can become a god in there now.

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I'm fairly certain this is semi-false information. This would be like saying they removed Piercing, Slashing, Blunt Debuffs from regular jobs so they wouldn't unintentionally buff Blue Mage abilities.

It's more likely that while elemental/physical resistances were removed from base content, there were still legacy/spaghetti code variables available that let them easily transition an elemental system into Eureka. "The remnants of the code are still going to be floating around, so why not use it in this one specific place still."

Speaking of BLU though, it's similar in that base content doesn't care at all what elemental/physical properties their abilities have. That only comes into play for BLU during the Masked Carnival (and interacting with the Condensed Libra debuffs applied by BLU).

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Originally Posted by Rowde

I'm fairly certain this is semi-false information. This would be like saying they removed Piercing, Slashing, Blunt Debuffs from regular jobs so they wouldn't unintentionally buff Blue Mage abilities.

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So you are saying it's false information that they removed elemental resistance materia and character page elemental stats right before eureka was released and despite this interesting timing it had nothing to do with eureka?

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

So you are saying it's false information that they removed elemental resistance materia and character page elemental stats right before eureka was released and despite this interesting timing it had nothing to do with eureka?

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Yes. Correlation doesn't equal causation.

I've never seen a direct quote/interview that states this.

What has been said on multiple occasions is they're constantly having to deal with the remnants of legacy code from 1.0 whenever they make adjustments to systems, to the extreme where they sometimes are unsure if they can even make adjustments.

What I was saying... from my limited perspective... by "removing" elemental resistances from the base content, in reality they probably just "zeroed out" the elemental values on the superclass (or set them all to whatever they determined is a neutral value, whether that be 0, 1, 50, 100, etc.) and obfuscated those elements from the player UI. So in future design of base content, they effectively never have to think about what those values should be set at for enemies anymore. However, the variables still exist, they didn't have to rewrite every existing method argument/parameter to no longer deal with actually removing them.

So it's more, we don't want to deal with elemental resistances anymore, but the codes still there... so maybe we can do something extreme with it in isolated content now.

Which is also just a guess on my part, you could ultimately be right in your assertion. The falsehood is stating it as a certainty that one was done because of the other.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

So you are saying it's false information that they removed elemental resistance materia and character page elemental stats right before eureka was released and despite this interesting timing it had nothing to do with eureka?

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Yes. Eureka's elemental wheel is just a hidden % buff that's applied to the damage you deal and take based on a binary check of your magia board slots vs the enemy's element, it's not using the actual element stats. If it were using the actual elemental stats, you'd be seeing a ton of attacks being straight up negated with a certain amount of magia defensive slots. (Video of what I mean - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2e6EcPlytM ) (Explanation at 1:50+ mark)

The element stats are all still there though, they're merely just hidden. You can easily realize this due to the plethora of -X resistance down- debuffs that still exist like in Shinryu Normal/EX where standing in a puddle back in the day lowered your lightning elemental stat to 0, making you take metric tons more damage. or how Scylla's puddle in Syrcus tower gives you Fire Resistance+, which back in the day multiplied your fire attribute by 10x over to give you like 80% damage reduction on her flare. (Coincidentally, any of said elemental attacks are also coded to be true damage to make sure they can't be negated outright from the increased elemental resistance)

As far as the topic, no. Elemental damage on tooltips is just for lore flavor. BLM's existence alone prevents elemental damage from ever being a thing, since it would completely annihilate that job's ability to do anything and make them dead weight if the boss happened to be Fire element.

Elemental damage in an MMO with random parties is a terrible idea. You run the risk of having party members basically unable to participate. Imagine if fire damage healed Ifrit and you got into a party with two thaumaturges; it would take forever to whittle him down with Blizzard 1. Or, for that matter, getting black mages in a version of Shiva healed by ice attacks; they'd run out of mana and basically have to sit out big chunks of the fight. And then there's red mage, which uses all elements in their rotation.....

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

Yes. Eureka's elemental wheel is just a hidden % buff that's applied to the damage you deal and take based on a binary check of your magia board slots vs the enemy's element, it's not using the actual element stats. If it were using the actual elemental stats, you'd be seeing a ton of attacks being straight up negated with a certain amount of magia defensive slots. (Video of what I mean - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2e6EcPlytM ) (Explanation at 1:50+ mark)

The element stats are all still there though, they're merely just hidden. You can easily realize this due to the plethora of -X resistance down- debuffs that still exist like in Shinryu Normal/EX where standing in a puddle back in the day lowered your lightning elemental stat to 0, making you take metric tons more damage. or how Scylla's puddle in Syrcus tower gives you Fire Resistance+, which back in the day multiplied your fire attribute by 10x over to give you like 80% damage reduction on her flare. (Coincidentally, any of said elemental attacks are also coded to be true damage to make sure they can't be negated outright from the increased elemental resistance)

As far as the topic, no. Elemental damage on tooltips is just for lore flavor. BLM's existence alone prevents elemental damage from ever being a thing, since it would completely annihilate that job's ability to do anything and make them dead weight if the boss happened to be Fire element.

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Huh. This actually brings up something interesting, though. Even if class abilities shouldn't use elemental traits for the sake of fairness, there are other ways elemental traits could be implemented that are class-independent.

You could have things totally player-blind like Scylla's puddle, whereby the boss mechanics grant elemental buffs/debuffs that affect every player's damage output/resistence. I think a few bosses have stuff like that but I think overall it's kind of rare.

You could also have a system that, although job-indifferent, would still depend to some extent on player equipment like the materia system. Which is what we already had, I guess. Tbh I'm not sure why they didn't keep elemental materia around as a defensive system. I can see it creating balance/flavor problems as offensive imbuement, but defensively it's not much different than other stat materia or the potion system, both of which are still in place. My suspicion is that it was removed because materia melding as a mechanic is kind of stupidly implemented. I don't know why melding even exists...it is inconsistent, it is slow, it's soulless. The way it exists in XIV, it's just not fun.

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Originally Posted by Myrhn

With some of the abilities and weapons skills and with the revamp of SMN we see the elemental damages making a return. Do you think we will see mechanics, mobs and even our character with elemental resistances again?

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Extremely unlikely. It seems like every MMO that started with elemental damage/resistance mechanics eventually gave them up in favor of using a generic magical damage. Despite some players wanting more complexity in damage design, the majority want simplicity.

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Originally Posted by Myrhn

With some of the abilities and weapons skills and with the revamp of SMN we see the elemental damages making a return. Do you think we will see mechanics, mobs and even our character with elemental resistances again?

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No with a but. They should create a caster job that revolves around the elemental wheel.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

No with a but. They should create a caster job that revolves around the elemental wheel.

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Blue Mage doh...

Elemental damage and the whole weakness/resistance/nullify/absorb mechanics with it cannot be a thing without an overhaul to most of the caster jobs in the game to give them access to most if not all of the elemental types that doesn't involve some kind of build up mechanic and every element having a consistent output potency.

I only want more elemental damage stacking if it is for Eureka contents. That place is so perfect to flex your power.



The rest, no.

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Originally Posted by Rowde

Blue Mage doh...

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If you count their Masked Carnival's gimmick fight, sure. Not really feel anything different though. All GCD skills have similar potency and are pretty much just reskin of each other.

I can't see it working, because unless it was fire or frost vulnerabilities black mage would literally become useless without a complete rehaul of the entire class. It would be like that for every other job as well and I for one don't like the sound of having to relearn basically an entire MMO.

From playing other MMOs like Ragnarok Online and WoW that do/did have element mechanics, I can say it was generally more restrictive then entertaining or intuitive; particularly in the latter case where you were gimped into nigh-uselessness against enemies that were randomly immune to whatever magic type you might be specialized into.

There are no elemental damages in effect. The tooltip descriptions of elemental damage are just flavor text. Black mages don't do less damage to Ifrit with their spells. We don't even have spells for each element, there's no water damage spells I can think of. There won't be elemental damage bonus resistances without given each job access to most elements lest certain jobs fall out of favor in some endgame fights.

The singular exception is blue mage and even that's largely restricted to the carnival. The reason that is even a thing is because they aren't even trying to keep that balanced.

There's a very simple reason why they can't really do elemental damages and resistances... Black Mage. Any boss that would resist fire, BLM is entirely useless. And anything that could be weak to fire, 4 BLM meta.

Blue Mage's elements are a part of the mini-game that is kind of the main feature of the Job.

Game design has gone a long way since older MMOs where elemental resistance was a major component. Even in Guildwars 2 it’s largely used to give different secondary buff/debuffs, or to offer more variety of play style rather than as a rock-paper-scissors gimmick.

Personally, I’m fine with that…as is gives opportunities for new kinds of characters which don’t do predefined damage types, and eliminates the need for new damage types (eg. “Gravity damage” wouldn’t need to be created for a time mage).

MMOs that want to be mainstream cater to people who roll their eyes if they have to micro manage anything other than job gauges for specific fights. They have less prep than an actual console hack 'n slash. Preparing your kit for specific elements goes against that.

Something something "daaw that would feel like a job" something.

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Even in Guildwars 2 it’s largely used to give different secondary buff/debuffs, or to offer more variety of play style rather than as a rock-paper-scissors gimmick.

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Well even the boons/condis in GW2 have resulted in certain professions/builds being preferred over others. So I wouldn't necessarily advocate for "elements-but-statuses" as a system, either, except inasmuch as we have in the jobs as they currently exist. Where each job has a limited kit of buffs/debuffs that do not substantially break their kits compared to other jobs, and the elemental affinities are mostly for spectacle/flavor.

The problem is that rock-paper-scissors is universally a power increase in any situation with elemental weakness, and so giving any job access to less than the full range of elements creates job tiers. And buffs/debuffs can functionally result in the same problem, if said buffs/debuffs are made strong enough as to be near-universally better to have than not.

I think an elemental system for attack damage is a lost cause for FF XIV. On the one hand, if it were implemented back into job abilities, you would have de facto job tiers. And, on the other hand, if you made it in any way independent of job abilities/weapons, now you have this massive flavor fail where the visuals of many jobs' attacks communicate one elemental type even if they may have other unseen elements attached to them. It dilutes many job fantasies (off the top of my head, BLM, RDM, NIN, SAM, MNK, and to some extent SMN, WHM, and maybe GLD, DRK, RPR would all have diluted elemental identities).

An elemental system for defense resistence could still work though. Being able to ward against elements doesn't affect visuals or flavor nearly as much as imbuing attacks. It would complement XIV's gameplay well, where oftentimes the limiting factor for duty and raid groups is survivability, not DPS, so it would keep sprouts alive more. It would offer players more opportunities and options with *how* they might build a survivable character (making it a lot easier and cheaper overall for players to intentionally or even accidentally meet other players' baseline expectations of gearing). And, if it were materia-based, it would encourage an overhaul of the materia system (which is generally useless outside of high-level raiding because of how slow/clunky/expensive melding is), where players would be encouraged to be swapping materia in and out from a very early level.

The plus side is that if we had a modular elemental defense system to boost player survivability, we could also incorporate status effects without breaking the game. A fire materia could have a secondary effect of reducing burn status hit%/duration, and ice freeze status hit%/duration, etc. It would add a degree of prep strategy to gaming that would reward players for participating in specific game mechanics, while being completely job-indifferent.

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Originally Posted by SeverianLyonesse

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I wasn't necessarily advocating so much as saying the elemental part of the damage has been rendered largely irrelevant.

Final fantasy does pretty good with this, as BLM for example has a "This is the main DPS line of abilities", "This is the downtime abilities that also recharges MP", and "This does DoT". It could have been fireballs, or turtle shells, or chucking hammers... but because obviously Black Mage, they went with the traditionally used Fire, Ice and Lightning famous in past FF games.

For me this is good, as the mechanics themselves are the focus, with the elemental bit being more about aesthetics and ease of use.

Samurai does something similar where the three Sen are based on the major traditional seasons in Japanese poetry (Winter, Fall, and Spring; or more literally Snow, Moon, and Flowers). They really just needed something to work into a 3-part rotation that was also Japanese and poetic to match the image of the Samurai. It's much easier to do this and then make it look like and ice-attack or flower petals than to actually have to tie to a specific element. (Like what would "Flower damage" even be..?)

Even for defensive purposes, while it could allow for horizontal progression and/or interesting choices, it just becomes confusing to someone who wants to "just play the game". It boils down to the game just being one you're meant to jump in and just play. Prepping can be fun, but then that's a different game. If I want to prep for 10-15 before getting into something, I'd play THAT game (like Monster Hunter).

This is coming from a person who played in old 2.0 days, who remembers having to get specific tank rings and use Vitality materia -on any job- just to survive Titan EX's limit break. It was tedious.

reading through this honestly it makes me think when a game goes towards MMO style it does casters wrong the reason being is how games treat casters

having a rotation is fine for mele, range and tanks.


However when it comes to casters they shouldn't have a rotation instead they should have a large number of spells and have a knowledge requirement to know what spell is better in certain scenarios. Using the classical fire demon for example to me in games in general it doesn't make sense just because its a mmo that you would cast fire on something that would obviously be immune to it, the solution to this is having other elements water-ice-thunder-earth-air-darkness etc. The reason why this self balances in games that have it (single players) is yes it does more damage however you can also come across enemy's that can change types and non magical jobs have combos that can do almost the same damage.

My point being is honestly (all games) should stop doing casters the same as mele, range, tanks and other job types. Instead give them an as needed type then throw in a half rotation for each typing for example Fire-fira-firage =burn status for some bit on things it makes sense on.


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The other off set is mele moves are basically free to use, same for tanks and rangers. Casters require a source such as MP, Aura and so forth.

Gotta say that is quite sad we don't have elemental resistance/weakness

But as many people said, because of the actual *cough*boring*cough* elemental spells BLMs have (fire and ice) that's currently impossible without making the job useless.

Back in FFXI, BLM had all the elements in their repertory, but the fight system wasn't a must-do-this-button-smash-order-or-gtfo dps rotation -.- ...

Was it a little overwhelming to have all those spells? Hmmm... maybe...

(Fire 1 to 5, Firaga 1 to 4
Blizzard 1 to 5 Blizzaga 1 to 4
Thunder 1 to 5 Thundaga 1 to 4
Water 1 to 5 Waterga 1 to 4
Aero 1 to 5 Aeroga 1 to 4
Then Ancient spells
Flare I and II
Flood I and II
Freeze I and II
Quake I and II
Tornado I and II
Death
Meteor
and all the elemental debuffs to make your spells more effective and many other spells as well...)

Even to choose in what weather or day of the week you had better chances to win (Iceday, Waterday, Thunderday, etc...)

Damn it was fun... But then again, we were all in the same server, that won't work when many players in FFXIV depend on Duty Finder to load Dungeons or any other content.

When you relied on BLM to use Escape spell to bail from a Dungeon when sh*t hit the fan, those were the days xD

It would be awesome to have it, but unlikely with the current DPS system... *sad panda*

Oh well...

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Originally Posted by kaynide

Samurai does something similar where the three Sen are based on the major traditional seasons in Japanese poetry (Winter, Fall, and Spring; or more literally Snow, Moon, and Flowers). They really just needed something to work into a 3-part rotation that was also Japanese and poetic to match the image of the Samurai. It's much easier to do this and then make it look like and ice-attack or flower petals than to actually have to tie to a specific element. (Like what would "Flower damage" even be..?)

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Flower element is clearly the most arcane element. Between Red Mage's chaos spells and White Mage's blood lily...

It started as a joke, and then the more I thought about it the more I accepted it as canon.

Devs throughly dislike it when certain jobs have massive weaknesses or advantages over other jobs, so its just never going to happen with base game which elements woukd certainly create. Its why blue mage is limited, weakness - has to learn skills vs a normal job obtaining by level while advantage - can burn through or survive certain content/mechanics normal jobs cant.