Removing elemental nukes from WHM

[Altena]

For the nine billionth time, >>>CONJURER<<< is not a "healing class."

>>>White mage<<< is a healing job, which happens to use Conjurer as its base class.

Conjurer is a basic job that can (and hopefully will) branch in other directions. You're asking SE to take those possibilities away.

What part of that is so hard to understand?

I could say the same to you..

I have already stated that
a) Yes CNJ is a mage with nukes & heals. It is not a main healing class
b) CNJ it is a class
c) It does branch into another job that happens to be a main healer.

The advanced job turns CNJ into a strong healer, but does not gimp to any extensive level, WHM's ability to be a DD. In fact it has been said & proven in this thread by many people (a topic that I didn't get involved in because it was a derail) that WHM is actually a more effective solo nuker then CNJ with the addition to Regen.

No one uses the class system currently. If you still used CNJ in patch 1.23 to solo or nuke, then you are effectively gimping yourself.

I am not against changing the class system so that they become useful again at all, however I am against certain elements being tied up into a main healer job (ie WHM) which will indefinitely be gimped due to the fact they will not ever be able to be as strong as a main nuking class - otherwise that would cause an imbalance.

At the moment - WHM is pretty broken, in comparison to other jobs.
You can spiritbond your unfinished relic solo in just a few hours, when other jobs spend a solid day on it.
That isn't broken? Ok, then it's a great solo class... It can also push some heavy nukes when the time calls for it (against wind/stone weak mobs), and main heal a full party of 8.

Remember we are talking about White Mage here, not Conjurer.

CNJ has always been semi-broken, and the nerf in the job patch removed some of that over-power. In the early days, CNJ could solo Dodore . . .

Two thing we can agree on I am sure is:
BLM is currently strong at doing ranged magic damage. (nothing else).
WHM (or CNJ) is currently fairly strong at solo'ing, exceptionally good at main healing, and reasonably solid nuking.

If you don't see an imbalance here then I don't know what else to tell you.
The fact is yes, you are indeed gimping one half of the elemental chain if you were to keep the utility based aero/stone/water on WHM.

These utility spells will never be as strong as a BLM nuke.
These spells are bound to half of the elemental chain.
This means that only half of the chain will be effective.
If they were to expand on CNJ or WHM's ability to nuke, that would push us back to an even more overpowered job then it currently is.

Yes WHM/CNJ is overpowered. It should never have the same or even similar capability to BLM in regards to a nuking job.
Yes it needs to have the ability to solo (hence the light based nuke suggestion).
Once again, forcing half the elemental chain on a job that should be a weaker nuker than BLM, will cause only half of the chain to be unbalanced and gimped. This effectively ruins the whole elemental chain.

[Alhanelem]

If you don't see an imbalance here then I don't know what else to tell you.

splitting the elements could be seen as an imbalance- but just having damaging spells by itself is not an imbalance.

I'm tired of people saying cnj is not a healer and WHM is. WHM is everything that CNJ is, plus a few things and minus a few others. Considering that WHM gives you holy, WHM actually strengthens both ends of CNJ.

And again, just because you're a healer doesn't mean you have to be totally helpless.

Yes WHM/CNJ is overpowered. It should never have the same or even similar capability to BLM in regards to a nuking job.

WHM/CNJ is not overpowered. It did not ever have the same capability to BLM in regards to nuking. Only in very specific situations was it particularly effective to use WHM/CNJ specifically for their damage spells. For the most part they existed to facilitate solo leveling.

Beyond that, it's not up to us to decide what a job should and shouldn't be. Everyone has their own vision of this. Let the devs use their own vision.

[Reika]

The way they currently do classes will prevent them from branching into other jobs. Jobs only add 5 extra skills to these classes, and take none away. And no, the 5 crossclass skills you cant use anymore doesnt count as 'this classes skills'. Like I keep saying, only by overhauling all these classes can they fix the problems with them. And it will also be the only way they open up new jobs for them. Some people simply cant see any problems or imbalance, i'm simply not going to argue it with them anymore....

For ex, how will they be able to add Dark Knight to Gladiator as a mod once said they were thinking about (With the effect of never being able to be pld, which I wouldnt mind) if Gladiator skills are all Paladin-ish sounding? Dark Knights simply dont use Flash, and if they didn't plan on making it a tanking class, it would have way too many tanking skills to be DD oriented! They would have to completely change all the base skills and traits of the gladiator to match Dark Knights personality. If they were to ever add Necromacer on top of THM, they can't, because necromancers aren't elementalists. They would have to go and revert it all back to following its lore of life/death and curses.

And the problem with WHM DD'ing good solo and CNJ DD'ing good solo that some people seem to be ignoring is that SE themselves MADE jobs for PARTYING. none of the jobs should have ever been equal or better than classes solo. But WHM is better, Warrior is BY FAR better, pld is better, drg is better, brd is way better, mnk is way better, blm is sorta better if you play it right.

I would have no qualms if they came in here and renounced that whole idea, but they probably wont. It would however be way better if they reformed these classes and jobs to play completely differently from each other, keep THEIR identities as [Classnamehere] or [Jobnamehere] and could preform both party and solo functions with their identities.

I can only hope that they did jobs way differently in beta, or they are at least reading these comments and are thinking about making it right.

[Altena]

splitting the elements could be seen as an imbalance- but just having damaging spells by itself is not an imbalance.

I'm tired of people saying cnj is not a healer and WHM is. WHM is everything that CNJ is, plus a few things and minus a few others. Considering that WHM gives you holy, WHM actually strengthens both ends of CNJ.

And again, just because you're a healer doesn't mean you have to be totally helpless.

WHM/CNJ is not overpowered. It did not ever have the same capability to BLM in regards to nuking. Only in very specific situations was it particularly effective to use WHM/CNJ specifically for their damage spells. For the most part they existed to facilitate solo leveling.

Beyond that, it's not up to us to decide what a job should and shouldn't be. Everyone has their own vision of this. Let the devs use their own vision.

Actually well said. Sort of where I was coming from early in the thread until people started arching up and calling me the devil because I wanted to take away some of their spells.

Advanced jobs don't remove a whole lot from a class, that I totally agree, and they often have extremely useful abilities/spells to replace what is lost. Pretty much in all situations - a Job is going to be more useful then a class in the current system.

I don't want WHM to be completely useless at pulling their own weight in terms of damage.
And yes I know that currently there are very few situations where WHM is on par or stronger then a BLM (pretty much just DH 15 min runs and SB'ing unfinished relic, but the latter isn't because of elemental nukes).

What I do fear is that the elemental chain is currently lop sided, and in order to fix the chain they would have to increase the strength of the current WHM elements.
This would cause an imbalance because it would push WHM to a closer strength as BLM.

I don't want WHM to be a useless nuker, but then again I don't want them stepping on BLM's toes by being too powerful. This would come with stronger WHM elemental spells, however a lack of these spells causes the elemental chain to be uneven.

[Laume]

WHM/CNJ is not overpowered. It did not ever have the same capability to BLM in regards to nuking. Only in very specific situations was it particularly effective to use WHM/CNJ specifically for their damage spells. For the most part they existed to facilitate solo leveling.

If I may interject here. When I played whm/cnj in 1.21+, clerical stance was a GREAT equalizer. I can do decent damage (not as much as my thm with all the buffs unless I'm using an element that a mob is weak against.) but I couldn't heal myself to save my life... literally... So, given the down time of casting and recasting clerical stance, I had to pick and choose (sometimes, to my death) when I wanted to nuke and when I wanted to heal. My solo strategy with whm/cnj (cnj, mostly.I used some archer skills to keep me alive from time to time.) was to blow as much mp in damage as I can before my stoneskin wore off. Not exactly a good strategy for a nuking job.

And correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like the main concerns are that:
A) cnj/whm's shouldn't be able to replace thm/blm's for their role.
B) cnj/whm's shouldn't be the main DD.

So I'd like to suggest (because I did play thm/blm too) that maybe it's not that cnj/whm's are over powered, but that thm/blm's are underpowered. I mean, I think all people that played thm/blm can agree that burst and flare does a surprisingly small amount of damage for the mp that it costs. Would it satisfy both sides if they just made blm's more powerful? Or/and if they gave thm/blm's a good amount of debuffs?

And as for cnj's being main DD's, the truth is, unless the party is made up 4+ whm's, that's really not going to happen. We just don't have the mp pool to do that and heal. (Not to mention, it's a waste since we're more apt to healing than nuking anyways.)

[Altena]

If I may interject here. When I played whm/cnj in 1.21+, clerical stance was a GREAT equalizer. I can do decent damage (not as much as my thm with all the buffs unless I'm using an element that a mob is weak against.) but I couldn't heal myself to save my life... literally... So, given the down time of casting and recasting clerical stance, I had to pick and choose (sometimes, to my death) when I wanted to nuke and when I wanted to heal. My solo strategy with whm/cnj (cnj, mostly.I used some archer skills to keep me alive from time to time.) was to blow as much mp in damage as I can before my stoneskin wore off. Not exactly a good strategy for a nuking job.

And correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like the main concerns are that:
A) cnj/whm's shouldn't be able to replace thm/blm's for their role.
B) cnj/whm's shouldn't be the main DD.

So I'd like to suggest (because I did play thm/blm too) that maybe it's not that cnj/whm's are over powered, but that thm/blm's are underpowered. I mean, I think all people that played thm/blm can agree that burst and flare does a surprisingly small amount of damage for the mp that it costs. Would it satisfy both sides if they just made blm's more powerful? Or/and if they gave thm/blm's a good amount of debuffs?

And as for cnj's being main DD's, the truth is, unless the party is made up 4+ whm's, that's really not going to happen. We just don't have the mp pool to do that and heal. (Not to mention, it's a waste since we're more apt to healing than nuking anyways.)

In my opinion, what made WHM extremely strong solo was actually a mix between Stoneskin and Regen, along with their elemental nukes.

You could effectively full buff > pop cleric stance > throw on a regen > nuke until SS wore > throw on another regen and SS. I barely ever actually casted "Cure" when solo'ing.

I do like your opinion though.

As for the concerns -
- The game does not utilize the elemental chain/affinity/wheel/whatever, creating a fairly bland magic/spellcasting system.
- Half of this elemental chain is gimped, as it is on a main healer in whom would be overpowered if the Aero/Stone spells were to be buffed or expanded on.
- BLM is currently quite a boring job to play. This is totally just opinion, however fixing the elemental chain would slightly improve their mechanics.
- WHM (based on the original suggestion) would not truly be affected - aside from reduced elemental affinity. Their nuking and solo capacity would still stay the same, however it would not have to tie into the elemental chain and effectively opens it up to be expanded on.

I sort of disagree with the MP pool issue. The only end game content I have experienced where WHM's can run out of MP is IE and from time to time Princess in CC (usually with a PUG :P) just because the fights are long. The other content we have never personally had MP issues that I can think of. Most of our WHM's nuke half the time during boss fights. Garuda was a snooze fest until phase 3..

BLM is definitely not under powered. They are one of the most desired jobs for a good chunk of end game content. The issue is that they are boring to play most of the time (once again, opinion), they don't have very much flexibility in spells, targeting weaknesses and generally become a 123 spam (with slight variation of course.. Throw blizzard and fires in there from time to time).

[Mychael]

The advanced job turns CNJ into a strong healer, but does not gimp to any extensive level, WHM's ability to be a DD. In fact it has been said & proven in this thread by many people (a topic that I didn't get involved in because it was a derail) that WHM is actually a more effective solo nuker then CNJ with the addition to Regen.

I've agreed several times that this is a problem. I even suggested a slight fix, but I don't disagree that there is a problem with WHM. Where we disagree is that you want to "fix" two problems with one solution (i.e. take CNJ/WHM's elements and use them to strengthen THM/BLM), while I would prefer to leave CNJ's elements there and just weaken them as WHM, and give other things to BLM (i.e. dark-based and non-elemental spells).

No one uses the class system currently. If you still used CNJ in patch 1.23 to solo or nuke, then you are effectively gimping yourself.

No argument there, but there's a whole thread going on job/class identity, so I'll leave that alone.

I am not against changing the class system so that they become useful again at all, however I am against certain elements being tied up into a main healer job (ie WHM) which will indefinitely be gimped due to the fact they will not ever be able to be as strong as a main nuking class - otherwise that would cause an imbalance

Once again, you assume that CNJ will only ever produce healing jobs. I don't think that's the case. In time, I'm sure there will be a CNJ-derived job with DDing properties using their elements. That WHM can use them is just a side effect, but given the history of the FF series isn't an undesirable one. What needs to happen is just weakening them on WHM only.

At the moment - WHM is pretty broken, in comparison to other jobs.
You can spiritbond your unfinished relic solo in just a few hours, when other jobs spend a solid day on it.
That isn't broken? Ok, then it's a great solo class... It can also push some heavy nukes when the time calls for it (against wind/stone weak mobs), and main heal a full party of 8.

Being versatile doesn't necessarily make WHM a broken job, it merely points out that there's a lot of room to improve the others. Even aside, if you were to take WHM's DDing power and leave it for CNJ, I'm fine.

Remember we are talking about White Mage here, not Conjurer.

With the current job/class system--not that I agree with it--it's impossible to talk about White Mage without including Conjurer. Someone wasn't thinking clearly and decided that jobs should just be minor extensions of classes, rather than entirely new classes.

CNJ has always been semi-broken, and the nerf in the job patch removed some of that over-power. In the early days, CNJ could solo Dodore . . .

And that was hypothetically fixed in the class reform.

Two thing we can agree on I am sure is:
BLM is currently strong at doing ranged magic damage. (nothing else).
WHM (or CNJ) is currently fairly strong at solo'ing, exceptionally good at main healing, and reasonably solid nuking.

Yes, we can and have.

If you don't see an imbalance here then I don't know what else to tell you.
The fact is yes, you are indeed gimping one half of the elemental chain if you were to keep the utility based aero/stone/water on WHM.

You still seem to think WHM is the same as CNJ. I can't help you understand that CNJ is not a healing class and will not lead to exclusively healing jobs. If it does, there's a bigger problem than WHM-BLM imbalance.

These utility spells will never be as strong as a BLM nuke.
These spells are bound to half of the elemental chain.
This means that only half of the chain will be effective.
If they were to expand on CNJ or WHM's ability to nuke, that would push us back to an even more overpowered job then it currently is.

If they were to expand on WHM's ability to nuke, you're right. However, an extension of CNJ with weakened heals and higher buffs would only be equal to a correctly-functioning BLM.

Yes WHM/CNJ is overpowered. It should never have the same or even similar capability to BLM in regards to a nuking job.

Yet again, you confuse WHM with CNJ. CNJ can have the equal ability to nuke with a BLM as it is not a primarily-healing-based job and was the original elemental nuker. Not THM.

Yes it needs to have the ability to solo (hence the light based nuke suggestion).
Once again, forcing half the elemental chain on a job that should be a weaker nuker than BLM, will cause only half of the chain to be unbalanced and gimped. This effectively ruins the whole elemental chain.

Where do you get that CNJ should be a weaker nuker than BLM? But even still, fix the problem--that BLM's spells suck--and don't break a class that people actually like.

[Alhanelem]

The way they currently do classes will prevent themfrom branching into other jobs. Jobs only add 5 extra skills to these classes, and take none away.

There are going to be more job specific abilities. Also, you DO lose the ability to sub abilties from classes other than the 2 designated for your job.

Yet again, you confuse WHM with CNJ. CNJ can have the equal ability to nuke with a BLM as it is not a primarily-healing-based job and was the original elemental nuker. Not THM.

Stop saying this. You can't have it this way. WHM has everything that CNJ has, and that will never change. Cuire is a CNJ spell, as are the damage spells. WHM simply provides more abilities that (mostly) improve the class' support capability, plus one damaging spell that WHM has always had, and provides job specific equipment that also supports better healing ability.

"Jobs" in this game augment the classes in a particular way, usually nudging them towards a particular role- But you're still not locked into that role, and you can still do *almost* everything the class the job is based on could do.

Also, what the classes did at the beginning of FFXIV's history is irrelevant. The classes were largely redesigned and redefined since then.

[Altena]

stuff

I am at the point where, while we do agree on some counts, I will accept the fact that most of our disagreements won't change either way.

I then ask this question:

Would you (and your WHM/CNJ buddies) be happy with this solution as a compromise (I believe this has already been suggested a couple of times but I can't be bothered to go back and find some posts) -

Upon equipping a WHM soul gem, the elemental spells (aero/stone/water) would be removed from the WHM's spell list and replaced with Light elemental nukes.
Upon equipping a BLM soul gem, some more utility based abilities (including defensive, such as Sanguine Rite) would be removed but replaced with the other elements.

This would basically do a few things-
Change WHM to a healer / divine magic nuker, without affecting CNJ's spell set.
Give BLM all of the elements to take advantage of the elemental chain, but nerfing their survivability.
THM would not get access to the CNJ elements, but maintain the survivability.

We all seem to agree that the class system is pretty broken.. Let's just hope that it has been resolved.

I will leave on one final comment though - simply swapping Aero/Stone with divine spells would in no way "break a class people like" as it's practically a sideways trade. Instead of green puffs of air and a few rocks flying at the mob, you would see beams of light and what not.. The only difference would be there is far less mobs that are resistent to it (ie. higher magic accuracy), but less mobs that are weak to it.

The argument really should be
More consistent damage vs. resists & criticals?

I am actually surprised that a lot of people are so against light based nukes for WHM.. Perhaps they have a bad reputation that has been carried over from FFXI..

[Bowen]

Snip

Maybe, in the future, WHM and BLM can both gain Astral/Umbral spells when the number of abilities they can have will be more than five. If I remember correctly, the whole "15 Class skills, 5 'sub job' skills and 5 job skills" thing was only temporary. If that's the case, then I'd definitely be okay with WHM and BLM gaining Astral/Umbral spells.

But, locking WHM out of the elemental spells for their own class, and giving them to a different job for a different class?
No.