Elemental Spell Reform

[Geabrielle]

Alright, this isn't to start a ruckus but it has to be asked...

If any of you arguing for spell reform ever played FF11, did you really ... honestly .. TRULY use anything OTHER than the Thunder or Blizzard line. Be truthful.

I was a career BLM and took pride in having full access to all of the elements. I even tried to make use of them as the situation demanded and know what? "Thunder -- or Bliz -- are better, only use those for higher damage output ok?" The only time I used Aero-Tornado was Kirin. Only time I bothered with Water .. uhm... yeah. Or the lucky playing with the Fire line... uhmm yeah. For a moment I just realized I never even bothered to remember I had earth-based nukes save on that eyeball BCNM. I had a massive spell list that was 95% wasted. Yes I know FF11 is NOT the only FF game but it was the first FF MMO and they are most probably taking cue from the player base usage data in building this one on -some- things.

This being pointed out, it is also very classic FF to be restricted to those three spheres as a BLM/THM and I see no issue with it outside of the duration of the enfeebling effects outside of combo as well as the rate of resistance building by the mobs. I have a lighter spell list, I have to choose how and when to apply what I have to the best effect. I like it.
However, I do agree that I am annoyed that only the fire-line is AOE and isn't very cost effective but then again AoEs have always had that pitfall, ne?

Here is where I expect pitchforks : Conj/WHM do NOT need freaking astral based spells. They are NOT holy priests in any sense in this particular FF. Conjurers are liaisons if anything and WHM are a step up in harnessing elemental granted magic to bring succor. EI they are given access to the healing abilities of water rather than it's more destructive aspect. I don't see why they even gave WHM Holy ... it's has no real usage, it should have been Reraise or something instead.

So do we need the full elemental wheel as thms/blms? Honestly, no. Would it be nice? Perhaps. I'd rather fully explore my capacity as a blm with what I have first before asking for any more due to the restrictive spaces of the action bar. ( I hate the action bar thing btw. Hate hate HATE. But one must adapt, ne?)

[Jinrya-Geki]

Alright, this isn't to start a ruckus but it has to be asked...

If any of you arguing for spell reform ever played FF11, did you really ... honestly .. TRULY use anything OTHER than the Thunder or Blizzard line. Be truthful.

I was a career BLM and took pride in having full access to all of the elements. I even tried to make use of them as the situation demanded and know what? "Thunder -- or Bliz -- are better, only use those for higher damage output ok?" The only time I used Aero-Tornado was Kirin. Only time I bothered with Water .. uhm... yeah. Or the lucky playing with the Fire line... uhmm yeah. For a moment I just realized I never even bothered to remember I had earth-based nukes save on that eyeball BCNM. I had a massive spell list that was 95% wasted. Yes I know FF11 is NOT the only FF game but it was the first FF MMO and they are most probably taking cue from the player base usage data in building this one on -some- things.

This being pointed out, it is also very classic FF to be restricted to those three spheres as a BLM/THM and I see no issue with it outside of the duration of the enfeebling effects outside of combo as well as the rate of resistance building by the mobs. I have a lighter spell list, I have to choose how and when to apply what I have to the best effect. I like it.
However, I do agree that I am annoyed that only the fire-line is AOE and isn't very cost effective but then again AoEs have always had that pitfall, ne?

Here is where I expect pitchforks : Conj/WHM do NOT need freaking astral based spells. They are NOT holy priests in any sense in this particular FF. Conjurers are liaisons if anything and WHM are a step up in harnessing elemental granted magic to bring succor. EI they are given access to the healing abilities of water rather than it's more destructive aspect. I don't see why they even gave WHM Holy ... it's has no real usage, it should have been Reraise or something instead.

So do we need the full elemental wheel as thms/blms? Honestly, no. Would it be nice? Perhaps. I'd rather fully explore my capacity as a blm with what I have first before asking for any more due to the restrictive spaces of the action bar. ( I hate the action bar thing btw. Hate hate HATE. But one must adapt, ne?)

I didn't play blm in FFXI very long. I did play wizards in other mmos.

I would settle for fire/ice/lightning if they were all as cosr effective and had a INT combo boost. If all three were equal I wouln't be upset. How often are we gonna see all elements resisted by 1 mob. Versus lightning as our only effective one when earth and lightning mobs would resist.

At the moment ice spells are completely useless. Fire being way too situational on weak mobs,and terrible on most bosses, these spells need to be changed to be similar to thunder/thunara combo at the very least. And fire not to be aoe only spells.

[Jinrya-Geki]

Finally seeing more people noticing the horrible Disciple of magic ability system in newer threads. This is encouraging, but the lack of developer response is not.

Do you developers really have nothing planned? Your keeping this repetitive system the same for 2.0? Spam thunder or be useless on bosses that resist lightning or absorb it?

[Duelle]

Finally seeing more people noticing the horrible Disciple of magic ability system in newer threads. This is encouraging, but the lack of developer response is not.

Do you developers really have nothing planned? Your keeping this repetitive system the same for 2.0? Spam thunder or be useless on bosses that resist lightning or absorb it?

As I mentioned in the thread about magic revamps, the devs went all Suikoden on this game's magic system. Each element has a specific use and/or purpose. This wouldn't be bad in itself...were it not for the fact that as I've said before, BLM and WHM should both stem from CON. It stands to reason both in lore and basic design (which like it or not is still a throwback to how CON was at launch). You can't really have elements mix because the elemental wheel is split between two classes. That needs to change before anything else can really be done to fix things.

[Shurrikhan]

As I mentioned in the thread about magic revamps, the devs went all Suikoden on this game's magic system. Each element has a specific use and/or purpose. This wouldn't be bad in itself...were it not for the fact that as I've said before, BLM and WHM should both stem from CON. It stands to reason both in lore and basic design (which like it or not is still a throwback to how CON was at launch). You can't really have elements mix because the elemental wheel is split between two classes. That needs to change before anything else can really be done to fix things.

Would be nice then to see Conjurer itself be a viable raid-caster in combination with Black Mages in order to complete some of those cross-wheel combinations. If that were so, I wouldn't mind the spell wheel being cut in half for the two CONJ specialty classes (err... Conj and Thaum, grr). But either way, a system would need to be in place that makes whipping together something like Fire and Wind, Water and Ice, Water and Lightning... do something...

[Lewiz5]

Ok, I think I have an idea that should make everyone happy. The main issue everyone seems to has with the current magic system is how 1) Thunder is far more useful than Fire and especially poor Blizzard and thus THM/BLM is forced to spam the same spell chain over and over again and 2) BLM can't take advantage of all the elemental weaknesses present in the game due to not having access to all of the elemental spells.

The solution to this is to simply 1) Give CON Water and Watera. 2) Allow all classes to be able to use Stonera and Aerora as well as the new Water and Watera spells. 3) Allow BLM to be able to use CON spells. And of course 4) Balance Blizzard and Fire to be more useful.

Doing this will allow for BLM to be able to use all the elemental spells without having to fully rework the magic system present in game.

Also an easy and effective way to make it so BLM can have access to CON spells is to make it so all of the jobs can use three other classes abilities instead of just two. For example, Paladin could use CON, MRD, and let's say PUG abilities in addition to it's base GLD abilities. This would not only fix THM/BLM's problems, but would also give everyone more choices for Jobs making it a bit more interesting.

As for the 15 ability limit, you could either get rid of repose and make Sleep available for every class (since they do the same thing with a slight difference in MP cost) as well as ditching one of CON's class only abilities like Blissful Mind or Cleric Stance, or get rid of the 15 ability limit and give every class two extra abilities that they lost from 1.21.

Either way, I think this would be the best route since it would definitively be the easiest way of fixing everything and would leave Scourge and Banish available for a new Magic class.

[Kafeen]

Alright, this isn't to start a ruckus but it has to be asked...

If any of you arguing for spell reform ever played FF11, did you really ... honestly .. TRULY use anything OTHER than the Thunder or Blizzard line. Be truthful.

Yes, thought less often than those 2. The other did have their situations, such as when fighting elementals. But this was because the damage increased in the order you learnt the spells and Blizzard and Thunder were the last 2 to be learnt and covered both dark and light elements respectively.

If the base damage of all the spells was equal with the only effecting factors being resistances and THM/BLM's equipment, then you would make a lot more use of other elements depending on what you're fighting.