Shocked at the reduction in mage damage, quadruple mp cost, and lowered resources

[Dubont]

You really are ignorant, aren't you? No sense trying to respond to your post..

how am I ignorant? I obviously know more than you do about the game and it shows with your lolr29. Auto attack is fine and if you're missing, which you are, then you don't have optimized gear which means you are playing incorrectly.

[MerkinValefor]

I'm so tired of this..HOW is CON OP now? Their dmg sucks, they can't solo for crap and now their cures use more MP. They are also auto locked into party healer. How is that OP? At least THM got a freaking dmg buff, unlike CON. Also, I don't like CON. I only played CON because it was the closest to BLM that we had, but now that it is heal-mule, I can't stand it.

CON isn't OP and if you think it is just because it has it's own unique skills, then so is every other class because EVERY class has unique skills. Derp.

How is Conj op? You are now the sole healer, you have all the important raises, you have ele nukes and dots, almost all buffs are native to conj, and you have the most unique spells. You can still equip all thm spells which leaves no use for thm at all. If people want a dd they would prob just grab a rng over thm. And its not soo much that the made conj op as that they made it the only viable mage now. If they had give some unique abilities or spells to thm there wouldnt be a problem. Now you must have a conj to do anything because it is the healing/buffing/raising/debuffing job while thm can dd and debuff. Conj can now fill every roll. THM has shadowseer as its only unique ability while conj has raise 2, rebirth, curaga, curaga II, so it is in no way equal.

[Teknoman]

Thaumaturge will be getting more unique skills, I assure you. Everyone knows this is the base battle system patch. Adjustments will be ongoing.

Also as far as soloing goes: Do guildleves or sidequests.

[Dubont]

How is Conj op? You are now the sole healer, you have all the important raises, you have ele nukes and dots, almost all buffs are native to conj, and you have the most unique spells. You can still equip all thm spells which leaves no use for thm at all. If people want a dd they would prob just grab a rng over thm. And its not soo much that the made conj op as that they made it the only viable mage now. If they had give some unique abilities or spells to thm there wouldnt be a problem. Now you must have a conj to do anything because it is the healing/buffing/raising/debuffing job while thm can dd and debuff. Conj can now fill every roll. THM has shadowseer as its only unique ability while conj has raise 2, rebirth, curaga, curaga II, so it is in no way equal.

you must not use other class skills on your GLA very much...ok this is how CON ISN'T OP.

1) They get the main buffs...they are the healer, why shouldn't they?
2) They get all of the good raises and heals...they are the healer, why shouldn't they?
3) CON can't effectively use THM debuffs due to affinity. Con's THM affinity = 0. This means that a CON's thm spell is NOWHERE near as effective as a THM's thm spell
4) They have unique skills...so does every class...
5) Their nukes do terrible terrible dmg and they did not receive a buff while THM's spells DID receive a buff.

Here's how THM isn't completely useless

1) THM still has 100% affinity with THM spells so their DoTs, Debuffs and nukes will be better than if used on CON
2) THM isn't gimped into being main heal so they can actually use their skills rather than having to save MP for healing
3) THM got a potency buff on their burst dmg spells.
4) THM can still heal single targets which make ensures that they are not useless as they can keep an eye on the tank while the CON watches everyone else.
5) THM still has a raise which will be very effective in parties as CON's new raises are a high MP cost and have a very large cooldown (30mins..really?)

CON is the new WHM, THM is the new BLM

[zaviermhigo]

Its still in no way smart to not change both mages at the same time so one side wouldn't feel so awful. Honestly we told them we didn't like the idea of class changes coming in waves, this is what it creates discontent. THM is useless unless its endgame. Its just like BLM in XI come to endgame but no one gives a *** about you otherwise. If you don't give thm more unique abilities it just becomes nothing better than a sub class. You don't need to even play as a thm for know this ***, you just have to think.

[MerkinValefor]

Thaumaturge will be getting more unique skills, I assure you. Everyone knows this is the base battle system patch. Adjustments will be ongoing.

Also as far as soloing goes: Do guildleves or sidequests.

totally good point, and it wont matter if conj has all this if they can give thm something to make it needed as much as a job that can raise and heal other than being a dd.

[Teknoman]

totally good point, and it wont matter if conj has all this if they can give thm something to make it needed as much as a job that can raise and heal other than being a dd.

Well isnt Thaumaturge supposed to be based around Astral and Umbral spells, as well as cone spells...so i'd think they should get more damage over time/debuff/buff skills. And of course Dark and Holy damage spells.

[Alyssa]

I see the merit in OP's post.

[Veon]

try to remember all these changes are the base for future 'jobs' , and the 'jobs' are supposedly more optimal for party play. this is just speculation, but if they added a job trait to cut mp cost down, imagine how many heals the old con/thm can cast, maybe more than enough to just watch your drama on tv while spamming a single button to survive. 1.18 seems more like a prelude to the coming patches, which will complete the basic of the game before the devs move on to expand the contents.

[Neptune]

Man some of you are really getting carried away. My OP was in no way about party play vs. solo play, easy vs. hard, or one class versus another. The issue at hand is the dev team significantly changing the type of role we play with our characters without giving us any other options. To fix it, they need to open the job system to Conjurers to choose between Black Mage and White Mage at the very least.

Also Dubont, you are in the exact same boat as me; I don't know why you're trying to fight me on my points. You leveled Conjurer for elemental magic and not curing, and your Thaumaturge is low level just like mine. If you didn't nit pick my points you'd see that we both want the same thing - Black Mage, and to not be a heal mule.

Well then equip Siphon MP, Siphon MP II, Stygian Spikes II, use Tranquility/Exaltation. There's still something you can do about MP recovery. Before this patch I rarely had to use MP recovery skills/spells/abilities. You just have to use your MP smarter.

Roll this isn't gonna work, because I of course used this strategy on NMs before this patch, when cure wasn't quadrupled in cost. There's no way this is gonna happen now. There were a lot of hard solos where you would heal yourself for around one hit's worth of damage, but not if it takes up more than a a tenth of your MP per hit.

I love being main healer. I was looking forward to CON being transformed into WHM (with the Job System, not before it), but this is just unacceptable. You know, when I do 8-man versus Great Buffalo I often run out of MP, but it's because I'm actually doing a lot of shit. I'm curing. I'm DOT spamming. I'm interactive in setting up BRs. We typically have a main healer and then some "support" mages doing what I just described. Now honestly I'm going to be Curing and waiting for MP. I don't think I can go back to that. I don't want it to be like XI. I liked my "all-around" mage and I liked being active and aggressive in difficult fights.

This is a great post. You loved being a White Mage type character but with the ability to contribute beyond that strict role. Too bad the dev team saw the need to lock you in to a strict role. I agree with you, that kind of gameplay was exhilarating. It's really a shame that they are going to dumb down the gameplay in a feeble grasp of solidarity.

YouTube video on the Art of the Spit Take.
I keep hearing that the 2nd is going to be harder than the first one. So I guess I'll just spawn in a die seconds later, instead of it taking me whole minutes to die in the last one.

I'm still not getting the whole spit take thing. It's spitting on someone or being spit on? Or just the element of surprise? lol

the point of NMs is to require good party play by persons around that level.

Negative dude. There is no rule. You pulled that out of your ass, and it should probably go right back in your ass. The reason I can think of that this is not desirable is that just like in FFXI, no one wants to do these NMs after the first 5 minutes. None of these noobs are going to find a group of people willing to go camp these things for 5+ hours. I think it's far cooler if these NMs are more like an extremely challenging solo fight. That's how I did it many times. Soloing by myself for hours. I soloed Sirocco for 25 minutes a pop on my 30s or 40s ish Conjurer, and it was very challenging. But fun too. The dev team has eliminated that thrilling gameplay now.. that was hard, a party kill would be easy.

You've been talking a lot about easy mode but soloing an NM is not easy.. there's no reraise and nothing to cover your ass if anything goes wrong.

ignorant people want mindless gameplay other games mages were always more of a challenge to play you have to keep people alive & keep crowd control. now you have to think a little and now its ignorant??

ignore darkstar...he's just butthurt because his favorite class is no longer OP and mages now take a little bit of skill to play.

Dude you and indira have got this backwards.. you aren't thinking it through. You are thinking LESS with cure spells that cost 130 MP out of 800MP @ R50. It takes LESS skill to cast cure 7 times than to do 30 or 40 different actions during a fight. That should be obvious to you. What is there to think about when your options are limited to cast cure X number of times??

People were complaining about Thau and Conj being overpowered, now they've been toned down and balanced out a bit, and there are still complaints? What exactly did the select mages complaining want?

If anyone complained it was people that weren't mages.. are you really trying to compare the complaints of mages and non-mages?