3.0: Elemental Weakness/Resistance?

[Giantbane]

I don't have a reference but I believe they spoke about tweaking the battle systems for 3.0.

At some point they have to add more diversity, 14 has an incredibly bland system for gear.

The astral/umbral cycle is far more interesting than the previous version of "spam ice at ifrit" system that we're talking about here.

Elemental resistances in this sort of game is bad because there's really no point. There's no skill in just using whatever nuke the current monster is resistant to, the *only* time this gets interesting is if you have changing vulnerabilities, but that's not something you're going to just stick on every boss.

While it may seem bland from a lore standpoint, from a gameplay standpoint it's really much, much better to ditch the elemental resistances as part of the base skill set.

[Estellios]

Or, it could be like FFXI..

Hey guess which game had content that specifically excluded jobs? Oh that's right FF11. Why take melee to anything when AOEs are a pain in the ass or instant death when we can just bring RNG and BLM that not only stay out of AOE range but do more damage anyway. Oh sorry PLD these enemies 1-shot even you we need a NIN instead.

[Kimikryo]

Oh I welcome this so much

For those qqing about that blm will be "unplayable"

yeah. If BLM only gets more fire and more ice type as its offensive skills (with the odd thunder) . I can see how much fun it is to play.

And I too would welcome again differences to blunt/piercing/slashing damage on mobs. For that obviously we gonna need more weapon than just one. You know ... diversity would be awesome


@Estellios:
Yeah right. Because Nin was not excluded as tank. Or BLM as DD. Or DRG. Or every single job that had less benefits than the others.
If someone really took a NIN over a Paladin as tank, 9/10 fights this was a very very bad idea. Especially because Paladin/Nin had the + of both worlds.

[Magis]

People will prefer blm and whm mage for content than smn or sch due to having elemental advantage.

Uh, you do know SMN's summons are based on different elements (fire,earth,wind)? Now they don't have spells now but in a system with an elemental wheel, those summons would have abilities to do elemental damage.

Course everything was stripped out (in terms of BLM) and streamlined cause it would be too hurd.

[HakuroDK]

Like Odett stated, there is already weakness/resistance to physical attacks and the manipulation of those weaknesses and resistances. Why can't that be done for magic? I mean, BLM and WHM can still have their respective elemental split, of course (especially with how Conjury works lore-wise, I wouldn't want to remove the split).

What I would like to suggest are these:

-Re-instate the Elemental Wheel.
-Keep all weapons (except Primal Weapons) element neutral, while giving each primal weapon their respective element. At that point, it would be up to the player whether the damage increase is worth the loss in base damage and stats or not.
-Revamp BLM as thus:

Keep Fire, rename Fire II to Fira, rename Fire III to Firaga. Keep Firestarter as-is. All Fire Spells and Flare now inflict 100% Fire damage.
Keep Blizzard, rename Blizzard II to Blizzara, rename Blizzard III to Blizzaga. Cause Blizzard III to now inflict "Slow" on all affected targets for 8 seconds. All Blizzard Spells and Freeze now inflict 100% Ice damage.
Keep Thunder, rename Thunder II to Thundara, rename Thunder III to Thundaga. Change Thunder and Thundercloud around so they operate backwards from how they currently act. In this case, Thunder spells would do full damage without any natural DoTs, and Thunderstorm would enable a chance of causing the next Thunder spell cast to create a Thunder DoT on the enemy. All Thunder Spells and Burst now inflict 100% Thunder damage.

Remove Astral Fire/Umbral Ice as buffs. Instead, add two toggle buffs, "Astral Annihilation" and "Umbral Meditation", which would act precisely the same as Astral Fire and Umbral Ice, but works on any spell cast rather than being dependent on Fire and Ice spells. These toggle buffs would completely replace "Transpose".

Change Flare to maintain an AoE field, inflicting the same amount of damage as a Shadow Flare field.
Change Freeze to be as powerful and cost the same amount of mana as Flare, and have it create an AoE field that causes all enemies inside to be afflicted with Heavy and Slow.

New Spell: Burst. Same amount of damage and MP cost as Flare, have it create an AoE field that causes every enemy to be under the "Chain Lightning" debuff, causing a DoT dependent on how many enemies are inside the circle and how close they are to one another.


Add three new spells to THM Arsenal:

Emblem of Nald'thal: Target's Fire Resistance is reduced by 50% for 20 seconds. (120s cooldown)
Emblem of Halone: Target's Ice Resistance is reduced by 50% for 20 seconds. (120s cooldown)
Emblem of Rhalgr: Target's Thunder Resistance is reduced by 50% for 20 seconds. (120s cooldown)

Add 1 new spell to BLM arsenal:
Insignia of the Black: User's Fire spells inflict "Emblem of Nald'thal" on all targets, Blizzard spells inflict "Emblem of Halone" on all targets, and Thunder Spells inflict "Emblem of Rhalgr" on all targets for 30 seconds (360s cooldown)

-Add Geomancer Job for CNJ, granting DPS potential for Aero/Aerora/Aeroga/Twister, Stone/Stonera/Stonega/Quake, and Water/Watera/Waterga/Flood.

-Revamp Arcanist to do more of what an Arcanist should be doing: Analyzing the battlefield and acting accordingly.

Replace Ruin/Ruin II/Shadow Flare with following spells:
Libra (Same Damage/Casting Time/Mana Cost as Ruin, reveals all Elemental and Physical Weaknesses and Resistances on one target permanently or until weaknesses/resistances shift)
Librara (Same Damage/Casting Time/Mana Cost as Ruin II, reveals all Elemental and Physical Weaknesses and Resistances in AoE permanently or until weaknesses/resistances shift)
Libraga (Same Damage/Casting Time/Mana Cost as Shadow Flare, reveals all elemental and physical weaknesses and resistances in AoE field while enemies are in the field, even if weaknesses/resistances shift)

New Spells:
Emblem of Swords: Target's Slashing Resistance is reduced by 50% for 20 seconds. (120s cooldown)
Emblem of Spears: Target's Piercing Resistance is reduced by 50% for 20 seconds. (120s cooldown)
Emblem of Strikes: Target's Bludgeoning Resistance is reduced by 50% for 20 seconds. (120s cooldown)

All other Arcanist spells can remain untouched.

-For every enemy, the weaknesses and resistances should be mirrored between "White" and "Black". Example: A Fire-elemental would be weak to Ice and Water, and would be immune to Fire and Wind.

With a few exceptions depending on the enemy, the elements would be mirrored thusly for the sake of weakness/resistance:

Fire = Wind
Ice = Water
Thunder = Earth

-Summoners would have an Egi for each Primal, and each primal's attacks would be 100% of their represented element. Also, "Tri-Disaster" would be replaced with "Primal Essence", a spell that inflicts damage potency 100 of the same element as the summoned egi. If no egi is summoned, the damage is neutral.

[Yumi_umi]

SE will require more monies from us if they were to implement dat elemental wheel :/
Other than that itd make this game a bit too complex for magic users.
Thus making ppl have headaches and switch over to bard cuz they don't want to be told on how to use their spells.
Blms and smns will have to learn new rotations for each boss ^^ to maximize dps and not gimp the party by spamming fire for stacks on ifrit.

[Exstal]

x

I'd like to let you know that every other language except English has the 'ra / 'ga ending except for French because I'm not sure how that works.

German - Feuer, Feura, Feuga
French - Feu, Extra Feu, Mega Feu
Japanese - Fire, Firera, Firega
English - Fire, Fire II, Fire III

-Add Geomancer Job for CNJ, granting DPS potential for Aero/Aerora/Aeroga/Twister, Stone/Stonera/Stonega/Quake, and Water/Watera/Waterga/Flood.

This would require a massive overworking of CNJ given how rooted it is in healing.

[Sapphic]

I always thought weaknesses and high resists to elementals actually dumbs down the game. Weak to fire? spam fire abilities. Weak to thunder? spam thunder abilities. No weaknesses and strengths, use your full arsenal of abilities which is a much better system than being limited on what you can use depending on the fight.

Weak to blunt and high resists against piercing? You just excluded 2 jobs from the content.

By adding elemental wheel, they would need to make each elemental worth using, skill wise. With the battle system.

Any system that excludes is better to stay where it belongs, out of FFXIV. Lets keep it balanced where all content is completeable with all jobs.

[Tupsi]

Hey guess which game had content that specifically excluded jobs?

Pretty much every MMORPG when there's a specific strategy that's deemed the most "efficient" - Or is this truly your first MMORPG?

[Lemuria]

The astral/umbral cycle is far more interesting than the previous version of "spam ice at ifrit" system that we're talking about here.

It really isn't though. It just becomes "Spam fire at Ifrit" instead. Toss in a Blizzard spell to regen MP and then its back to fireballs again.

The beauty of having elemental vulnerabilities is that each enemy becomes its own encounter. Instead of spamming the same boring combination attacks. Every. Single. Time. On. Every. Single. Mob. you can actually be smart about it and mix things up during combat. Some of the BEST fights in FFXI were due to elemental resistance or weakness, or using the right skills to defeat the opponent.

And that's what this game is REALLY missing. Each fight needs to feel different, but they don't. Random mob runs up, you hit it with the same tired combo you've used on EVERY mob til now. Doesn't matter if you're a Paladin, or a White Mage, a Black Mage or a Summoner. Every single job does the same thing they've always done on every single opponent. Booooring.

Bosses mix things up only in how you dodge their attacks. How you assault them makes no difference in the long run, with the few minor exceptions being mob that shouldn't be attacked at all. Elemental weaknesses might not be the ultimate cure for this monotony, but it would sure go a long way to livening up battles.

No weaknesses and strengths, use your full arsenal of abilities which is a much better system than being limited on what you can use depending on the fight.

Except, you're still limited. Black Mage is limited by their game mechanics, so they basically use Fireballs for Astral, regen MP with Umbral. It's so robotic, I daresay it couldn't be much more limiting. Summoner is basically limited to Garuda, since both Ifrit and Titan suck for any real content. Monk is HIGHLY limited, with most of their skills unusable until they're in the correct stance, so it follows a very predictable pattern. Would you like more examples?

The point is the game shoehorns everyone into neat little cubicles so that everyone plays like everyone else. Those who don't will invariably suck at their job. Every job has a rotation, whether it's Dragoon, Bard, Black Mage or Warrior. So every job is 'limited' in the sense that everyone has to play the same way, or fail at their job.