Please add more Water to WHM’s identity

[Shurrikhan]

Yeah in this case it's just unspecified damage, aka non "holy" magic, think of most of the spells in the game as glamored unspecified damage into the element or type. It has no impact on doing double damage or whatever to voidal mobs or undead, just like lightning won't do more to water or water to fire.

Then by that logic, there aren't any of the spell types you say Holy was sacrificed to make room for, either...

There is literally only Magical and Physical (and therein Slashing, Piercing, and Blunt as sub-categories) damage.

[Brightshadow]

I honestly wish that instead of WHM dealing so much with the elements they would just do the following: (Also added what I would like them to do with SCH/SMN)

1.) ACN (Role Changed: Healer) / At level 30 ACN = SCH
-ruins would get replaced with broils
2.) CNJ (Role: Healer) / At level 30 CNJ = GEO (A elemental based healer)
3.) SMN (unlocked at level 30) (Similar to criteria used for AST/DRK/MCH/RDM/SAM)
-bios / miasmas replaced with pet moves?
4.) WHM (unlocked at level 30) (Similar to criteria used for AST/DRK/MCH/RDM/SAM)
-wind spells replaced by dia/earth spells replaced by banish/water spells replaced by radiance/blight?

[KisaiTenshi]

Just my 2 gil here, but isn't WHMs identity supposed to be either Holy, or nature in general?

Not really. FF1, literately ripped off Wizardry/Ultima, which in turn ripped off the original Dungeons and Dragons.

So the "white mage" / "white wizard" of FF1 was a JRPG twist on the traditional Cleric of those games. However, in those original CRPG's, healing magic tended to be exclusive to the Cleric, while damaging magic was exclusive to the "Wizard", but there were exceptions (because they were single player games, and "holy" stuff was often in the context of Christianity.)

You have to look at Ultima 3 or the first Wizardry game to see where FF got these from.

In the case of Ultima 3, the game had two kinds of magic, "prayer" magic" and "sorcery". So the Cleric was exclusive Prayers (but could wear chain mail), the Wizard was exclusive Sorcery (cloth mail), the Druid could do both (cloth mail), but their int/wis(mind) was half. The Alchemist could do sorcery (cloth mail), the Illusionist could do prayers (leather mail), and could disarm traps (So they were half thief, half cleric, or half thief half wizard.) The Ranger could disarm traps, do both schools of magic, and wear plate armor. Then you had Lark who was half wizard, half fighter (cloth mail), and the Paladin who could do Prayers while wearing plate mail.

In Wizardry, You had 4 classes, the Fighter, Mage, Priest, and Thief. The advanced classes Bishop (half priest, half mage), Lord (aka Paladin), Ninja and Samurai (Fighter/Mage)

The White mage in FF is basically the Ultima 3 Cleric/Wizardry Priest. The Red Mage is the Ranger of Ultima 3, or the Bishop from Wizardry. The Black mage is the U3 "Wizard" or Wizardy "Mage". The Paladin is literately unchanged from these games into FF1, except having a different name (Lord in Wizardry, "Knight" in the NES FF1).

AFAIK (I don't have any of these books, so I'm looking on wikipedia), the 6 bases classes of AD&D 1, where sub classes were introduced, had Bard, Cleric, Monk, Thief, Fighter, and Magic user, and each had a sub class except bard and Monk. Essentially "Cleric" spells are all about divine magic (healing), no destruction. Where as Magic users have access only to destructive magic. That's completely consistent with what wound up in Wizardy Online. The exception comes when dealing with undead, where Holy magic is destructive against "undead" hellspawn type of creatures.

Final Fantasy was always about finding the 4 crystals, defeat the big-bad who is going to destroy the world. AD&D, Ultima and Wizardy all tended to be based on tomb-raiding , hence the chances of encountering undead, was frequent, and thus "holy" magic would be far far more useful in that context than in Final Fantasy. In Final Fantasy, "White Mage" was a Cleric with it's own twist. FF kept the same 8 levels of magic that Ultima had. Cure, Heal, Life, Dia (Holy), Nul (Esuna), Protect buffs. The only offensive spell that was in FF1 for the white mage was "Holy" that worked against all enemies. Dia only worked against undead.

As Final Fantasy became more story-involved FF2 onwards, you could not create characters. However you could assign jobs in FFIII, V and X-2

Guess what comes up in FFIII?
Wind Crystal - Warrior, Monk, Red Mage, White Mage, Black Mage
Fire Crystal - Thief, Knight, Ranger, Scholar
Water Crystal - Geomancer, Dragoon, Viking, Dark Knight, Bard, Evoker, Black Belt
Earth Crystal - Devout, Magus, Summoner, Ninja, Sage

See those overlapping job names from Ultima 3 again? So they removed the "Thief" skill for disarm traps/pick locks, just like in FF1, which reduced the complexity down to "Fighter, White Magic, Black Magic" So lets' focus on the magic jobs again.

Red Mage, White Mage and Black Mage are just like FF1, however the Ranger could use white magic in the NES up to level 3, and the Scholar, level 3 of black and white magic. Dragoon could use white magic up to level 3, Magus was black magic 1-8, Devout was white magic 1-8, and the Sage could use level 1-8 black and white magic AND summon magic.

The levels of magic and the job roles would return in FFV, but now the "freelancer" was an option, and FF6 was basically all-freelancer. It's at this point Final Fantasy got it's own identity separate from Western CRPG's and their underlying AD&D roots.

But still one thing remains the same. White (Holy) magic. In FFX-2 The innate ability of the White Mage dresssphere is Pray.

TL;DNR version: FF's White Mage is based distantly on the Dungeons and Dragon's Cleric. FFXIV V1.0's classes tried to bend towards nature (thus more in common with druids, or "nature wizards") but was bent back towards the cleric in 1.21 by introducing the classic FF jobs, and with it, shoe-horning the lore back towards it's origins in D&D.

[Canadane]

hence why blm using fire on Ifrit does damage to him

I remember in 1.0 when Fire healed Ifrit.
Good times...

[Usho]

For a job SE designed to use Earth, Wind and Water spells, the lack of water spells is a bit stupid. Fluid Aura was pitiful imo. Almost every FF games has water spells/water summons. FFXIV lacks that and it's a bit odd that they give WHM all these wind and earth spells but only 1 water spell and it's not really a spell, it's a ability with a knockback effect that's lame in general. Why bother having whm specialize in earth, wind and water and you don't give them any water spells? It's pathetic. BLM's elemental balance with Fire, Lightning and Ice is perfect, so why is WHM sucking at elemental balancing? If you're not gonna give WHM water spells, give them to BLM then, it will benefit more anyway.

[Jkap_Goat]

I would rather give water spells to GEO

[Shurrikhan]

FFXIV V1.0's classes tried to bend towards nature (thus more in common with druids, or "nature wizards") but was bent back towards the cleric in 1.21 by introducing the classic FF jobs, and with it, shoe-horning the lore back towards it's origins in D&D.

How did 1.0 bend White Mage towards nature when it neither had nor ever intended to have a White Mage? It had Conjurer, which... conjured from the elements, and the priest-like Thaumaturge which, per its namesake, worked miracles around light (astral) and dark (umbral), blood and magic.

There is virtually no similarity whatsoever in design philosophy or vision between 1.0 and 1.2. You merely have the world chunkiest retcon as Yoshida takes over. 1.0 intended to be different, and was until --to borrow your word-- those shoe-horn revisions. As such I don't think the 1.0 basis carries any of that legacy; it merely points out that not all design teams necessarily wanted to follow it verbatim.

[Seraphor]

How did 1.0 bend White Mage towards nature when it neither had nor ever intended to have a White Mage? It had Conjurer, which... conjured from the elements, and the priest-like Thaumaturge which, per its namesake, worked miracles around light (astral) and dark (umbral), blood and magic.

There is virtually no similarity whatsoever in design philosophy or vision between 1.0 and 1.2. You merely have the world chunkiest retcon as Yoshida takes over. 1.0 intended to be different, and was until --to borrow your word-- those shoe-horn revisions. As such I don't think the 1.0 basis carries any of that legacy; it merely points out that not all design teams necessarily wanted to follow it verbatim.

To say that a Final Fantasy game didn't intend to have a White Mage is utter nonsense.

What was intended is for class combinations to form the jobs, rather than linear progression.

[Shurrikhan]

To say that a Final Fantasy game didn't intend to have a White Mage is utter nonsense.

What was intended is for class combinations to form the jobs, rather than linear progression.

Fair enough. But while taking Sacrifice, Dia, and Banish from THM, or Protect, Shell, Raise, Cure, and Cura from CNJ could have given you the basic toolkits of a White Mage over a CNJ or THM base, you'd still be stuck with either every possible element of offensive magics or numerous poisons and non-WHM-traditional debuffs. The lore didn't suggest any particularly White Mage-like intersections between CNJ/Wizard and THM/Sorcerer, either. Perhaps finer customization that would allow for a tighter alignment was in the works though.

[Iscah]

This Water spell line could replace our current Aero > Aero 2 line as our instant cast DoT. I imagine Aero causing DoT by choking, and Water fits that purpose well by drowning.

Wind's effect is explained specifically in the conjurer questline, after you fight a wind sprite:
"Now then ─ what did you learn as you struggled within the air's grasp? You will doubtless have noticed that wind does not strike with the instant, crushing force of earth. Instead, it torments one's form, dancing across every surface and leaving a thousand tiny wounds in its wake. These are the agonies of erosion. Having experienced such pain, you are now intimately acquainted with wind's capacity for patient destruction."

Meanwhile in the trial of water:
"This precious liquid is the lifeblood of the Twelveswood. Without it, naught would grow. But should it rise in too great a volume, and too swiftly, the nourishing flow will become a crashing wave that washes away all before it."


For being used as an offensive spell, there doesn't seem to be a lot of difference between water and earth. I would have liked to see either water used as the primary offensive skill set (with Earth as the knockback skill) or link healing skills clearly with the water element, as the dialogue seems to suggest.



On splitting the six elements between the two schools of magic - it's fine that they've done that, but the split seems off. From the elemental circle (see: Eureka's element system) the two 'sets' of elements are wind/fire/ice and lightning/earth/water. Though the current arrangement does work better thematically.