Is There a Reason Why Conjruers and White Mages Don't Use Water Spells?

[Ghost_of_Ebina]

They really need to re-introduce element-based damage / defense as a part of the game mechanics to make sure this plot / setting element makes sense.
It would obviously be a nightmare -- having to add element-based data to every existing enemy / equipment / skills.
However, that level of complexity will destroy the currently monotonous skill / job optimizations.

[Shurrikhan]

They really need to re-introduce element-based damage / defense as a part of the game mechanics to make sure this plot / setting element makes sense.
It would obviously be a nightmare -- having to add element-based data to every existing enemy / equipment / skills.
However, that level of complexity will destroy the currently monotonous skill / job optimizations.

While you can certainly involve elements, an actual traditional elemental strength/weakness system basically exists only to rotate a reduction of choices, making it so only certain jobs are viable (and others barred) and only certain parts of even just those viable jobs' toolkits actually see use. While perhaps more technically 'complex' in itself, it usually results in a significant net loss in complexity for the game overall.

Moreover, do you really want up to some 8 sets of gear just so you can play optimally via Wind Resist/Penetration gear for Barb, Fire Resist/Pen gear for Rubi, Umbral Resist/Pen gear for armored cyclops man, etc.?

[MikkoAkure]

They really need to re-introduce element-based damage / defense as a part of the game mechanics to make sure this plot / setting element makes sense.
It would obviously be a nightmare -- having to add element-based data to every existing enemy / equipment / skills.
However, that level of complexity will destroy the currently monotonous skill / job optimizations.

On top of that, it would also destroy any point of the BLM job if there’s an enemy resistant or immune to fire or ice and would make them even more monotonous or downright useless since according to the setting, they only have access to 3 elements. RDM would be more awkward to play as well since it revolves around having to use all of its elements in balance. Melee that deal fire damage like DRG, NIN, and MNK would be objectively bad jobs to play in certain content by losing DPS against fire resistant enemies

Not having FFXI’s elemental weakness system means the game is less complex but it also means cutting down on the list of abilities and not having to play mages through menus. At this point it’s way too late to redo the combat system like that and it would be almost an ARR-level overhaul to adapt to it since the casters would need to all change.

For everything else, there’s still Eureka as a FFXI-in-FFXIV simulator.

[Cleretic]

Basically: there are games that benefit from an elemental strengths/weaknesses system, and one of the many things the FFXIV developers realized over the course of making ARR was that they didn't make one. That's fine, not every game benefits from every possible mechanic (elemental strengths/weaknesses would also be bad in, for example, a fighting game), and once you realize that you're making a game that doesn't benefit from one, it's best to de-emphasize it.

In this case, as Mikko said, it'd basically just cause very specific jobs to fluctuate wildly in usefulness--and therefore demand--depending on what content you're doing, and does so in a way that's so blatant as to be a false choice. P8S, for example? Well that guy's obviously resistant to fire damage, let's bin BLM, DRG and MNK (NIN can maybe sweet-talk their way in with Suiton). And on the other side, there's so many jobs where it wouldn't even matter because they just don't have elements; what would adding elemental strengths and weaknesses do for, say, a Paladin who doesn't wield any elements?

I didn't play FFXI, so I can't say how well that actually does implement elemental affinities. But I'd say that a game needs to be built like more typical Final Fantasy games to make that system work: the player needs to have at least theoretical access to all elements, so that way they control what elements they can use, and theoretically have access to all of them. Or you could approach it like SMT or Pokemon, and basically take the angle of 'you can't cover every base at once, so build your strategy'. But honestly, I'd say none of that works for an MMO with co-operative play, because if a Pokemon player decides Charizard's not useful for this gym, nobody gets screwed over by swapping them out; if the playerbase of FFXIV realizes Machinist just can't contribute to this raid, then Machinist players don't get to play.

[Naraku_Diabolos]

Just so you know, back in 1.0 we had the ability to make a full party of Black Mages to take down Garuda when we did have the elemental weaknesses in the game.

[MikkoAkure]

Just so you know, back in 1.0 we had the ability to make a full party of Black Mages to take down Garuda when we did have the elemental weaknesses in the game.

In 1.0 you could also take down Ifrit without job stones so that’s not saying much. I don’t remember it having much of an effect when you could assign your own resistances either.

If elemental weaknesses/resistances exist but are negligible, then what’s the point of them even being there if you could brute force through it? That seems to have been the philosophy from 1.0 into ARR.

And if they’re enough of a thing where you need to strategize around it, then why bring jobs that deal the elemental damage the thing you’re fighting is resistant to as an integral part of their rotation if it’s going to have a heavy dent in their DPS?

Yoshi-P’s 1.0 changed THM from being just light/dark spells and CNJ having all 6 main elements on the wheel, as well as introducing elemental damage from physical jobs. It was from that point on that the design philosophy changed to an environment where weaknesses/resistances just won’t work.

[SilversLyu]

I never got the elemental conjurer back then, they quickly tossed that idea out the window with whitemage, as traditional of a healer as it gets. The elemental side would fit more into a druid/shaman playstyle, which this game is lacking as it's a combination of dps and healer. If anything it looks like some new caster job will be the elemental mage job eventually.

[Cleretic]

I never got the elemental conjurer back then, they quickly tossed that idea out the window with whitemage, as traditional of a healer as it gets. The elemental side would fit more into a druid/shaman playstyle, which this game is lacking as it's a combination of dps and healer. If anything it looks like some new caster job will be the elemental mage job eventually.

1.0 Conjurer was just fundamentally a completely different class for a completely different game. And... well, I was going to say it probably wasn't a good one for that game either, but apparently Conjurer was the most popular class in 1.0, so they were doing something right.

...or possibly doing something wrong and just overgeared Conjurer to hell to the point where it was just way more fun/interesting to play. I didn't play 1.0, but that'd actually be something of a problem I'd see with 1.0 Conjurer in a game with elemental weaknesses: they just had more game to play, because there was basically a system reserved for them.

[Rongway]

'Conjurers don't use water magic because something something Sixth Calamity' is just pure headcanon

Not conjurers, but specifically the Amdapori white mages; and it's not that "they don't use water magic because the Sixth Calamity" but rather "the Sixth Calamity was a flood (of water) because they didn't use much water magic". You've got the cause-effect backwards.

We know from the Red Mage quests that what separates red magic from its white and black magic origins is that red magic uses just the caster's personal aether, which makes it more environmentally friendly than the white and black magicks of Amdapor and Mhach which used ambient aether. From the EEvol1 we also know that the white and black mages fought for so long that in the end there was so little of anything but water aether left in Eorzea that it brought on a Calamity of Water.

Three centuries of ceaseless assault on the land had taken its toll, the drain of energies used to propagate war sending the realm's elemental balance askew ... A Calamity was upon them, and soon the waters would rise to purge the land of those who had ravaged her so.

We are meant to infer from this that the black and white mages significantly drained the land of all the elements except water. Therefore, the Amdapori white mages didn't use anywhere near as much water magic as they did earth or wind.

[Shurrikhan]

I never got the elemental conjurer back then, they quickly tossed that idea out the window with whitemage, as traditional of a healer as it gets. The elemental side would fit more into a druid/shaman playstyle, which this game is lacking as it's a combination of dps and healer. If anything it looks like some new caster job will be the elemental mage job eventually.

Just and FYI, the classes back then were meant to situate building your own job. As such, the Japanese class names were literally just "Axeman" "Swordsman" "Bowman" "Spearman" etc. The two Disciples of Magic, which did not fit particularly well into the Armory System, simply used perhaps the most basic thematic distinction of all: is it an art born of (humanoid) culture, or prior to / outside of (humanoid) culture?

Mahoushi followed the "Way" of Magic, preexistent to humanity and based anchored in the element(als). Majutsushi followed the (manmade / formal / ritualized) "Art" of Magic, such as of ritual and impacts of a collective unconscious. English went with "Conjurer" for the first simply because it manifested things, and "Thaumaturge" for the second because "miracles" (a THM being a "miracle-maker" / "wonder-worker") are observed with a cultural lens.

All things considered, they're pretty good localization choices, but they hide the initial distinction that formed the two sides of 1.x's Disciples of Magic that's still obvious in the JPN names.