Elemental Spell Reform

[Vingtdeux]

Only thing I really miss is the Stun spell.

As an added effect to Thundara, it's a waste (would you use Thundara out of combo for Stun with 30s recast instead of 15s when cast in combo ?).

[DeadRiser]

I hate how lightnening is your only pure damage spell. It just kills the point of having fire, ice, and thunder if all you use is lightening spells. Black Mage and Thaumaturge is basically a watered down class compared to all the rest. Rotate the same 3 attacks for everything and throw in a flare or freeze when it's off cool down. What about non-elemental attacks? We can't have those either?

And about Black Mages being OP in content. That SE fault for not making content bad enough for too many ranged members and te communities fault for following the easiest path.

[Enfarious]

Sadly people will always take the shortest easiest way. Just like everything in nature, this is built in to us and very few choose a more diffucult road when given the choice.

After a fair bit of reading, I don't think there's anyone that can say a "good" job was done when forming the classes:
Cnj gets a mix of nukes(that should be thm's) and heals but little by way of support spells and nothing white magic DD(except holy)
Thm gets busted elemental spells and only 1/2 the wheel, setting cnj spells leaves you w/ a couple gimped ones but still no water
Pld the job that makes the most sense to be tanks, as throughout history both real and fantastic and FF has been the uber defense tank that defined the word tank, yet pales in comparison to war, and come on WHM and BLM tnaking shit?
War overpowered but people ignore it's overpoweredness because it gets 3 jobs done at once
Arc becomes brd, arc was headed toward DD and ends up the prime support job???
lnc/drg ongoing adjustments break one thing while fixing another, at least now I land 70% of my attacks vs. launch where 10% was doing GREAT
Mnk probably the closest to balanced and solid, it's dmg outshines other melees but not so much that it's absurd, it takes hits well enough but not better than a tank, it mostly makes sense.

End of the day, full on class/job reforms with a little clear direction instead of patchwork jobs that just further break already broken patchwork classes.

Yeah thm needs the full wheel, cnj needs proper white magics and not elemental nukes. Lotsa jobs need lotsa stuff.

[Estellios]

I actually enjoy the fact that my spells are not carbon copies of each other with just a different graphic. All my spells have a distinct use a purpose, over just using the element that kill the monster the fastest. I also hated when games filled the mage's spell book with useless crap and outdated spells. All of my spells have a use and I have no fluff spells. The Black Mage core spells have always been fire, ice ,and thunder and thats what I have... I don't see a problem.

White Mages even had aero and stone before, in FFIII. So they brought back something from an old FF. It make more sense, to me, since our white mages are not 'divine' priest types. They are more elemental-druid types.

Ifrit is weak to wind, yet we are not stacking CNJs to kill him and lightning work just fine on him. I'm not really worried about my limited ice spell selection on the next primal.

This guy gets it.

Not giving BLM/THM everything under the sun gives more room for more classes/jobs in the future, ones that specialize in different elements or different effects with existing elements. It's better for the game to have more than 1 attack magic Job in the long run. FYI you will still hit Garuda for neutral damage with Thunder just like Ifrit (who you do great damage to), and you are going to absolutely slaughter Leviathan and Shiva when they are released.

It's the same reason why WHM doesn't have a ton of support barring a couple spells, so they can release a class and job for it that specializes in it instead of having 1 person that can do everything.

[Enfarious]

This guy gets it.

Not giving BLM/THM everything under the sun gives more room for more classes/jobs in the future, ones that specialize in different elements or different effects with existing elements. It's better for the game to have more than 1 attack magic Job in the long run. FYI you will still hit Garuda for neutral damage with Thunder just like Ifrit (who you do great damage to), and you are going to absolutely slaughter Leviathan and Shiva when they are released.

It's the same reason why WHM doesn't have a ton of support barring a couple spells, so they can release a class and job for it that specializes in it instead of having 1 person that can do everything.

Not giving the job that as per the lore specializes in elemental magic access to all elements makes sense?

Don't give whm everything, give it what makes sense, banish line of spells, pro/shell(I know it used to be there they removed it blah blah), cures, raises, status removals. Not elemental nukes, not bar-elements, not debuffs.

There's still plenty of room for other jobs that use elements in different ways, that focus on buffs and debuffs.

Saying, "Hmm let's call this the elemental mage, we should let it cast fire and ummmmmm what's another element?"
"Oh I know, thunder. That should make it a very well rounded 'Elemental Specialist' class that really utilizes the elements to dole out damage and can always find the enemies elemental weakness(assuming they have one)."
"Wait don't we have 6 elements, and then light and dark to boot?"
"Oh yeah, let's just toss a couple on whm, that'll make it gooder."
"Ok now that we've really fleshed out these awesome mage classes let's get to work on some EG content that requires people to class stack for the best times, cause racing is what people play RPGs for right?"

Does none of that look horribly wrong, cause really it's the conversation I say having taken place at some point, the one where someone should have stepped in and said, "Quite smoking that shit at work! Now find someone to rethink all of these ideas and get it right."

[Klive]

We have gone over this hundreds of time on these forums. The lore is messed up. The conjurer use to be a elemental nuker and THM a divine nuker. They changed that. SE made the classes to fit the standard roles of FF, due to the terrible condition the old classes were in. They made THM a Black Mage with their standard elements: fire,ice,thunder. They made the conjurer a healer with the same elements from FFIII.

The conjure is a druid and whm is NOT a divine healer. The WHM, in this FF, gets powers from the elements of the twelveswood. Heck, the WHM AF chest piece is an elemental that turned in to it for you. The whole divine powers thing is not this WHM, so banish and dia doesn't fit. Holy, the spell in this FF, doesn't even do astral damage, it is just damage with no element.

[Razen_Arghast]

This guy gets it.

Not giving BLM/THM everything under the sun gives more room for more classes/jobs in the future, ones that specialize in different elements or different effects with existing elements. It's better for the game to have more than 1 attack magic Job in the long run. FYI you will still hit Garuda for neutral damage with Thunder just like Ifrit (who you do great damage to), and you are going to absolutely slaughter Leviathan and Shiva when they are released.

It's the same reason why WHM doesn't have a ton of support barring a couple spells, so they can release a class and job for it that specializes in it instead of having 1 person that can do everything.

Yes slaughter Leviathan and all but what happens when you go fight Quetzalcoatl/Ixion/Ramuh? Use the MP inneficient Fire combo? Spam Fire only (1 spell)?

The way this design is heading Blm can be totally shut down from content by design alone and there's nothing a player can do to change that via skillful play. It's poor design by default if you go like that and it might work somewhat now, when we have that little content, but it will get borked in the future. The reform was short-sighted to begin with.

Biggest appeal for me (and I bet lots of other Black Mages) was the option to play around the elemental wheel and the monster elements. It was my job to know what element every mob type was weak to and strong to and cast accordingly and now it's "steamlined" and boring.

Oh and, "Switch to another Job for the Thunder Primal" does not and never will cut it as an answer. The game might promote multi-job characters but in the end you still have your main. The one you like to play and chose to play. And having your main shut out from content because of mechanics design alone is just fail. This also applies to all the STUPIDLY melee-punishing content we have right now but thats a discussion for another thread.

[SionDurant]

I don't agree with BLM getting access to Dia, banish etc just because that's not typically available unless you're a hero in the FF series to BLM schools of magic:

That said, they should get Bio and Scourge back as well as a spell form of Shadowsear in my opinion.

I don't like the direction they took CNJ with stone and aero but I know it was probably necessary without gutting the entire class storyline.

Abolish all classes, replace them with the jobs we just received, keep the weapon armory system in place with the same set sub jobs and a lot of this having to tip toe around who gets what and what jobs in the future hey can make goes away!

[lordvr]

I actually enjoy the fact that my spells are not carbon copies of each other with just a different graphic. All my spells have a distinct use, a purpose, over just using the element that kill the monster the fastest. I also hated when games filled the mage's spell book with useless crap and outdated spells. All of my spells have a use and I have no fluff spells. The Black Mage core spells have always been fire, ice ,and thunder and thats what I have... I don't see a problem.

White Mages even had aero and stone before, in FFIII. So they brought back something from an old FF. It make more sense, to me, since our white mages are not 'divine' priest types. They are more elemental-druid types.

Ifrit is weak to wind, yet we are not stacking CNJs to kill him and lightning work just fine on him. I'm not really worried about my limited ice spell selection on the next primal.

WHM never, ever had earth elemental spells in any previous FF game. It's only true that they had aero spells.

[Klive]

WHM never, ever had earth elemental spells in any previous FF game. It's only true that they had aero spells.

Valid point, but minor detail. I confused stona with an earth spell when I looked at the lists.

The FF14 CNJ/WHM is still a druid and wind and earth magic does fit that. Earth and wind magic is the least destructive of the 6 elemental magics, fits the nature based magic idea. Fire, ice, and thunder magic is the most destructive of all the elements, thus give to the THM/BLM. Water is probably being saved for another class, besides water is tied to the seas... The Twelveswood doesn't really have those.

As for the other primals, such a Ramuh and Titan, I'm not worried. Fire and flare hurt enough, even if mana ineffective compared to thunder line. The fire line combo isn't horribly behind the thunder line. I've used them on moogles, not often, just to test them out. You actually can pump out a lot of damage due the shorter cooldowns.