Elements

[MikkoAkure]

The hundreds of years of war depleting the elements is why the 5th umbral calamity was water aspected

Water is just canonically an underused element in the magical professions

Off-topic, but I think this is a frequently misunderstood part of the lore on these forums because "white mages not using water" is not actually a reason for the 6th Umbral Calamity (the 5th was ice) and best I can tell is that like a lot of other things in this game, it got made up by players somewhere and spread around as if it were true.

"Water" as a spell existed for players before Conjurer turned into a healing class halfway through 1.0 and the reason they don't have them today is job streamlining rather than lore. Otherwise they wouldn't have given them a new water ability in EW in Aquaveil, the quest "Trial by Water" where one of the Padjal asks us to commune with the "third art of conjury - water", and they wouldn't have had Fluid Aura, which itself got streamlined away. The aether situation was out of whack during the War of the Magi and then a water-themed disaster on another shard is what caused the Flood.


On-topic, the game is not made to operate on elemental weaknesses anymore. I'm sure there are games where it works, but this one just isn't designed around that anymore and it's not worth it to change it because it's just not about that.

Frankly, it's better off because otherwise mostly just DoM would be penalized for playing mages by having to keep track of elemental weaknesses and changing jobs accordingly unless we were to bring back bludgeoning/piercing/slashing resistances too. And even if they all got updated spell lists to cover everything, I don't want to play menu instead of the game or make my own macros just to deal damage.

[Supersnow845]

Off-topic, but I think this is a frequently misunderstood part of the lore on these forums because "white mages not using water" is not actually a reason for the 6th Umbral Calamity (the 5th was ice) and best I can tell is that like a lot of other things in this game, it got made up by players somewhere and spread around as if it were true.

"Water" as a spell existed for players before Conjurer turned into a healing class halfway through 1.0 and the reason they don't have them today is job streamlining rather than lore. Otherwise they wouldn't have given them a new water ability in EW in Aquaveil, the quest "Trial by Water" where one of the Padjal asks us to commune with the "third art of conjury - water", and they wouldn't have had Fluid Aura, which itself got streamlined away. The aether situation was out of whack during the War of the Magi and then a water-themed disaster on another shard is what caused the Flood.


On-topic, the game is not made to operate on elemental weaknesses anymore. I'm sure there are games where it works, but this one just isn't designed around that anymore and it's not worth it to change it because it's just not about that.

Frankly, it's better off because otherwise mostly just DoM would be penalized for playing mages by having to keep track of elemental weaknesses and changing jobs accordingly unless we were to bring back bludgeoning/piercing/slashing resistances too. And even if they all got updated spell lists to cover everything, I don't want to play menu instead of the game or make my own macros just to deal damage.

Emet selch specifically mentions that there has to be an excess of the energy of the requisite shard of the umbral calamity

The shard consumed by the 6th umbral calamity (the 10th) was consumed by water but the rejoining only happened because the source was overflowing with excess water energy (specifically because the war of the magi overused the other 5 elements), if the source wasn’t overflowing with water aether then the 10th would have become like the 13th

WHM doesn’t completely ignore water but it’s by far the least used element of the 6 between the black and white mages, and nym also used a lot of wind