Removing elemental nukes from WHM

[Kallera]

To try and steer the conversation back out of a "class vs. job" war, I am going to post the pro's and cons, pointed out by people regarding the OP.

Pro's
- Elemental affinity would improve if the spells were simplified onto one job.
- BLM's would become a little more flexible to the situation, and overall mechanic would be slightly improved.
- WHM's would have access to their iconic divine spells in previous FF's, beyond Holy.
- WHM's spells would resist less, but be strong against less.
- All elements would be on an even playing field.

Cons
- Lore would have to be modified.
- WHM would lose elemental affinity of the standard elements.
- BLM would lose some skills
- The animations would have to be reworked.

Well that is the current gist of what everyone has been saying in here. If I have missed an obvious one, please don't hesitate to correct me and I will edit this post.

We can throw back arguments at each other all day and get nowhere, however a dot point list of pro's and con's is potentially a good start to making some form of middle ground.

Wouldn't this also screw with new players and conjurer's progression? You asking changes not for one, but two occupations. would you make it be holy only too? Which doesn't seem to gel with how its guild involves people who listen to the forest.

[Altena]

Wouldn't this also screw with new players and conjurer's progression? You asking changes not for one, but two occupations. would you make it be holy only too? Which doesn't seem to gel with how its guild involves people who listen to the forest.

That is lore - and is already stated in the list.

When you say "Holy", then no, CNJ would get Banish & Dia (divine) line of spells. In a battle mechanics sense, CNJ shouldn't be affected but yes the CNJ lore would have to change.

[Bowen]

This won't fix the wheel, though. Giving all the elemental spells to the already OP BLM will not fix anything.

[Kallera]

That is lore - and is already stated in the list.

When you say "Holy", then no, CNJ would get Banish & Dia (divine) line of spells. In a battle mechanics sense, CNJ shouldn't be affected but yes the CNJ lore would have to change.

It it also the class from the view of a new player learning conjurer. Classes are meant for solo play and you are making it more dependant on other classes(or players) for battles because you want "White Mage" to change.

[Altena]

This won't fix the wheel, though. Giving all the elemental spells to the already OP BLM will not fix anything.

I understand the argument that "opening up all spells on BLM won't effect BLM's gameplay all that much" or only slightly make it less boring, but balancing all elemental spells to the same potency and number of spells, simplifying them on a single class that can make use of them, I believe it would improve the use of elemental affinity significantly to what it currently is.

At the moment we have 2 out of 6 spells that have 3-combo chains with a decent amount of potency.
- Fire & Thunder
4 out of 6 are either not usable in the elemental chain, or are limited by the class in which has them.
- Aero & Stone has 2 spells each, mainly based on utility rather then damage, with the inability to really go much further then that in the future patches (due to the job that is associated with them, in my opinion).
- Water, we all know that issue. NDA is also present here.
- Blizzard has 2 spells, both of which are more for utility as opposed to damage.

So at the moment the chain is extremely lop sided. Giving one job, all 6 elements, with 3 spells for each line would improve elemental affinity, yes.

If you don't agree that it would improve the use of affinity, how do you propose it to be improved and turned into an actual mechanic?

It it also the class from the view of a new player learning conjurer. Classes are meant for solo play and you are making it more dependant on other classes(or players) for battles.

Specifically, no.

Replacing Aero/Stone with Light based nukes would have no true battle mechanic effect. CNJ's would still be able to solo the same as they would with Aero/Stone..

Think of it as changing the animation from green wind & brown rock to beams/balls of light. The potency, utility and purpose would remain.

I would be completely fine with WHM having "Aero and Stone" based spells, then giving BLM 3 seperate spells associated with those elements to balance the chain, however unfortunately changing WHM to a Divine based nuker seems to be the cleanest way in my opinion.

[AdorraEloom]

Both sides have good points, but we are all missing one key factor here, we don't really know what has become of a blm in ARR yet, they have revamped many abilities/spells in ARR, as far as we know, BLM could very well have Quake/Tornado in ARR instead of basic Earth/Aero spell which a conj/whm gets.

As far as we know summoner could get basic thunder/fire spells (dot version) and BLM would just get all the big Ancient magic spells. Hard to assume ATM with out having all the info on blm yet.

[Shougun]

I don't accept an unofficial translation.

<text start="3242.244" dur="8.956">
[Matsui] This is the pet that will be utilized by summoners. Instead of Carbuncle, summoners can call upon pets that are imbued with the power of primals.
</text>

Instead of means in replacement of so.. Pretty sure that means they wont be getting Carbuncle (though I've seen some speculation that the summoner spells is just Carby imbued with primal power).

Which would mean in ARR they will be introducing class only abilities.. at least for the Arcanist.

Of course that is hinging on the definition of "instead". (though unofficial translations seem to agree with it)


Transcript of the Special Talk Session:
http://video.google.com/timedtext?lang=en&v=_737hYbSCEs

Arcanist / Summoner Talk is around here:
http://youtu.be/_737hYbSCEs?t=52m51s


(This relates to the topic in the fact that it would mean SE has class only abilities already so there is a logical precedence available)

[Altena]

Both sides have good points, but we are all missing one key factor here, we don't really know what has become of a blm in ARR yet, they have revamped many abilities/spells in ARR, as far as we know, BLM could very well have Quake/Tornado in ARR instead of basic Earth/Aero spell which a conj/whm gets.

As far as we know summoner could get basic thunder/fire spells (dot version) and BLM would just get all the big Ancient magic spells. Hard to assume ATM with out having all the info on blm yet.

Yes this is true, and speculation is the worst nightmare for this kind of stuff.

If Arcanist in fact has fairly equal power to BLM, but with Wind/Stone/Water, then the elemental issue is done and dusted.

Yoshi has said in a live letter that all classes have been changed / have planned changes - and mentioned MNK being quite an extensive change, but yes we have heard absolutely nothing about BLM. I do fear that silence = not much change... Although it could mean the complete opposite.

Like I said, speculation is the devil.

[Kinseykinz]

- Elemental affinity would improve if the spells were simplified onto one job.
- BLM's would become a little more flexible to the situation, and overall mechanic would be slightly improved.

If you gave all the elemental spells to one mage, then yes, it would be easier to design in-game content and not worry about a party role being valid due to elemental spell resistances. There are however, other types of resistant mobs.

What if SE designed a Magic Resistant Boss?
Then what would Black Mage do?
Should SE just never introduce these types of mobs?
Is that fair to non-mage DD type jobs to not include them simply because mages might be 'gimp'?

The only mechanic that would be 'improved' is Black Mages could cast all the elemental spells. It wouldn't inherently fix any other issue...but it would create many more for Black Mages and all the other Jobs. Not only that, the skills you actually want are not truely unique to the White Mage Job but to CNJ. So really, you're asking for these skills to be put on THM. But in order to give THM 4 more abilities, they'd either have to take away 4 of THM's current abilities, or add 4 abilities to every other Class (to keep everyone balanced). So now it's not a simple CNJ-BLM re-balancing, but a whole class/job rebalancing... for an improvement to Black Mage that is so small, that it is easier to compensate for and work around in other ways.

- WHM's would have access to their iconic divine spells in previous FF's, beyond Holy.

1. As we level, there is room for White Mage (not CNJ perse) to unlock some of these spells.
2. Some have pointed out that the Air and Earth spells have in some past FF titles been White Mage DD spells.

3. More importantly though, some of those 'iconic whm dd spells' will be reworked for Arcanist and Summoner...and other mage roles we have yet to see. So I know what you mean is White Mage should have spells like Dia or Banish, but these spells very well might be slated for Arcanist/Summoner. Just like these 'Black Magic Spells' Bio, Gravity, Poison all are 'on hold' at the moment for either unleased Mage roles or for post level 50 current classes/jobs. And don't forget, Arcanist/Summoner won't be capped at 50 forever as well.

WHM's spells would resist less, but be strong against less.

Actually, unless they changed the CNJ/WHM DD spell modifier, to healing or enhancing magic, CNJ/WHM DD output would be exactly the same as it is currently. Sure there'd be differences between Astral-weak mobs and non-astral weak mobs, but it would work about about the same as it does now. (I'm not factoring gear in for this as they would obviously invent astral DD wands/ringbands etc if our dd spells were changed)

Which makes me wonder:
What if SE did give THM all the elemental spells,and gave CNJ Astral nukes in it's place, but kept all the mobs still weak to the same mages damage type(ie pigs are now resistant to elemental damage but weak to astral)?
How would you feel about the difference in damage between the mage classes then? Because, it would be what we have now.
It is possible that SE could release bosses and endgame content weak to Astral Damage and resistant to Elemental? Would you be against these bosses?

Cons
- Lore would have to be modified.
- WHM would lose elemental affinity of the standard elements.
- BLM would lose some skills
- The animations would have to be reworked.

It's not just the lore, but the entire game balance. I know you think 'really, just to move 4 spells?' But it really would because once THM/Black Mage is rewritten, then other classes/jobs need to be rebalanced to make sure everyone is equal in their own way. As I said above, they would have to either add 4 skills to every class or take 4 away from THM.
- If they go the 'Subtract 4 skills from THM to add the 'missing' elements route': The skills most likely lost would be the 'survival' or MP restoring skills THM/BLM has (or both).
-If you take away more of THM/BLM's survival skills, there are literally battles they won't survive, no matter how good a WHM you have in the party. (White Mages can't mitigate you being 1-shotted even if you are fully buffed/healed etc.) Even soloing on THM would be problematic and SE would have to make sure your DD spells hit hard to compensate the lack of survival. So now you have an overpowered job that can't survive a sneeze.
-If you take away their MP restoring skills, you are making them dead weight in any party content that lasts longer than their mana pool (which is now made smaller due to less MP restore).
If instead they go the 'add 4 more skills to every class route' Now SE needs to come up with 4x7 or 28 more skills (counting the THM spell additions). That's 28 skills they need to cross-balance not only against each class against each other, and each job role against each other, but game play as well. That's almost enough skills to create 2 entirely new classes/jobs up to current level cap.

When most of us were saying 'but the lore is this and therefore...' we were of course concerned with the in-game storyline. As it does take a team of writers and game developers to re-write and develop new content for a game change this big. But what the 'lore arguement' is really code for is:

The change you think would be simple is so tied to so many other things in the game at the moment, that it can break or force so much to be re-written that many don't see the worth...especially if the underlying complaint is that 'Black Mage is boring to play'. Because having more spells to spam in the exact same manner, won't make you feel less-bored overall. It will fill your action bar more, and make you have to remember not to cast Fire on Ifrit but that's basically it.


_______________________________________________________________________

When SE decided to add jobs in this manner, that was their big 'we're gonna rework the battle roles' moment. They aren't going to swap entire skill sets again, because it literally takes months of labor and patches and fixes to accomplish. I don't remember the exact timeline or patches, but I think it was patch 1.19 where SE removed THM's heals and we only got the actual jobs after a couple more patches 6 months later, and even then, things continued to be tweaked through even this summer.Basically, if SE wanted to give Black Mage all the elements, or fix the Elemental Alignments in this game to something more similar to FFXI's wheel, they would have done it already.

This said, I'm sure their will be smaller, but still significant changes made to all the classes/jobs and how they function for ARR. It is possible (and probable) that many of the battle mechanics have changed. So even though the spell/skill and ability lists might be the same, what those abilities actually do or the conditions you need to meet to use them at a given point in battle might be different. With the addition of Arcanist/Summoner the DOTs and effects of WHM/BLM spells might be changed...but the DD output for those spells might increase. Maybe if you are closer to a mob your magic works differently than further away. We won't know until we play.

I know you think I'm just picking on you, and trying to disagree just disagree. I'm not. But for something that seems so simple, (re-assigning a couple of spells) it's actually a very detailed topic. You think we're always getting off-topic when we start talking about class vs job... other party roles...lore etc. But the fact is, those 4 spells don't happen in a vacuum. When you start moving things around in a MMO, balance etc matter, and people go on these 'off-topic' paths to try to sort it all out.

[Altena]

Woah long post

If you gave all the elemental spells to one mage, then yes, it would be easier to design in-game content and not worry about a party role being valid due to elemental spell resistances. There are however, other types of resistant mobs.

What if SE designed a Magic Resistant Boss?
Then what would Black Mage do?
Should SE just never introduce these types of mobs?
Is that fair to non-mage DD type jobs to not include them simply because mages might be 'gimp'?

Not at all, but what I mean is it would allow more freedom in battle mechanics. To simply have a couple of elements that are strong, a couple of elements that are circumstantially strong, and a couple of elements that are utility, restricts us to being able to use the elemental chain. Locking the elements to one design (damage/circumstantial/utility) is developing the system into a corner.

There will always be mobs strong to magic, weak to melee (look at Flans as an example), and as long as there is a reasonable balance there - then it is ok. Currently though, there are mobs that are weak to elements that are tied with weak spells.

The only mechanic that would be 'improved' is Black Mages could cast all the elemental spells. It wouldn't inherently fix any other issue...but it would create many more for Black Mages and all the other Jobs.

If, and only if the elements were balanced by a 3rd job, that was designed as an elemental nuker in some form, and that had access to equally strong Wind, Earth, Water spells as BLM has, then that would be perfectly fine - as all elements have equal strength in some form - across the board. The simple fix would be to give the weak spells to BLM.

Not only that, the skills you actually want are not truely unique to the White Mage Job but to CNJ. So really, you're asking for these skills to be put on THM. But in order to give THM 4 more abilities, they'd either have to take away 4 of THM's current abilities, or add 4 abilities to every other Class (to keep everyone balanced). So now it's not a simple CNJ-BLM re-balancing, but a whole class/job rebalancing... for an improvement to Black Mage that is so small, that it is easier to compensate for and work around in other ways.

We have touched on that, this is simply a point about lore for CNJ, and as far as THM is concerned, it would just be removal of some abilities. I am open to ways around this though, such as opening another job with wind/earth/water elements of equal potency to BLM. Stem it from CNJ if you want, but this isn't the quick fix. I have already pointed this out in the past but people still fired up about it, despite it not changing CNJ. . .

1. As we level, there is room for White Mage (not CNJ perse) to unlock some of these spells.
2. Some have pointed out that the Air and Earth spells have in some past FF titles been White Mage DD spells.

1. Yes that is once again just a lore adjustment, if it were to follow through. Learning aero/stone/water spells would simply be replaced by divine spells. Not a huge issue. To the lore fanatics it may be, but on a true game mechanic level it wouldn't.

Only 1 - FF3. If you look at the list, it actually classifies them as "Black Magic" in the others, and if you were to go back to one of the earlier pages and see the list that someone kindly posted up, you would see that aero/stone as a minimum came up on the Black Magic classification.

I am not denying that WHM has had those elements a couple of times, and I am fine with that. What isn't truly working at the current point is the elemental chain, and that is the main issue here.

3. More importantly though, some of those 'iconic whm dd spells' will be reworked for Arcanist and Summoner...and other mage roles we have yet to see. So I know what you mean is White Mage should have spells like Dia or Banish, but these spells very well might be slated for Arcanist/Summoner. Just like these 'Black Magic Spells' Bio, Gravity, Poison all are 'on hold' at the moment for either unleased Mage roles or for post level 50 current classes/jobs. And don't forget, Arcanist/Summoner won't be capped at 50 forever as well.

Arcanist/Summoner could potentially fix the elemental chain, if it was done properly - as mentioned above, as the "3rd mage job" with access to those spells. Personally I doubt we would see Banish on SMN. Possibly but I think there is a slim chance. I actually see SMN as more of an elemental mage then anything - one that would use the power of the primals (which are all standard elements). It may be possible with Carby being a light based avatar though. Who knows. Speculation, meh.

As for the others, yeah I did actually think of the dark spells such as bio, demi, etc and they are even more iconic to BLM so that raises a good point. Once again, give us a 3rd mage job that balances the chain and I am happy /closethread

Actually, unless they changed the CNJ/WHM DD spell modifier, to healing or enhancing magic, CNJ/WHM DD output would be exactly the same as it is currently. Sure there'd be differences between Astral-weak mobs and non-astral weak mobs, but it would work about about the same as it does now. (I'm not factoring gear in for this as they would obviously invent astral DD wands/ringbands etc if our dd spells were changed)

That is what I have been saying since the beginning Would be to replace Aero/Stone/Water with equal strength divine spells - ie WHM's DD output would not change, along with CNJ's. What I have been meaning by my point is currently the spells tied up in WHM are unable to become a full 3-tier combo with AM simply due to balance.

Which makes me wonder:
What if SE did give THM all the elemental spells,and gave CNJ Astral nukes in it's place, but kept all the mobs still weak to the same mages damage type(ie pigs are now resistant to elemental damage but weak to astral)?
How would you feel about the difference in damage between the mage classes then? Because, it would be what we have now.

Basically mobs that are weak to stone, would be weak to Divine, mobs that are weak to thunder would be weak to Dark? Yep I would be fine with that. From here, I think this is when you could touch light on "Dark Knight" and potentially give them some Dark elemental nukes to finish off the chain of Astral/Umbral. BLM would still have their elemental chain, and potentially end-game non-elemental nukes (such as comet/meteor). This would still keep BLM the top actual "nuker" but their lack of "Dark" magic would keep their strengths/weaknesses a little more in line.

It is possible that SE could release bosses and endgame content weak to Astral Damage and resistant to Elemental? Would you be against these bosses?

Of course not, as that is purely the elemental chain in action.

It's not just the lore, but the entire game balance. I know you think 'really, just to move 4 spells?' But it really would because once THM/Black Mage is rewritten, then other classes/jobs need to be rebalanced to make sure everyone is equal in their own way. As I said above, they would have to either add 4 skills to every class or take 4 away from THM.

Yes I do know I make it sound like a simple drag & drop some code, and I did add a little bit of a disclaimer in my OP saying it probably won't happen, probably not clearly but this was because of the rebalancing and workload it would require.

- If they go the 'Subtract 4 skills from THM to add the 'missing' elements route': The skills most likely lost would be the 'survival' or MP restoring skills THM/BLM has (or both).

Yeah I said this, and it is a negative, as THM still needs some degree of survival. These are sort of the negative points I have been fishing for this whole time though, not "that is stupid, the lore, you just want your BLM to be OP" etc.. I am quite happy with negative points that are genuinely points, but I have been a bit snappy in response to some empty negativity in this thread. I will admit to that.

-If you take away more of THM/BLM's survival skills, there are literally battles they won't survive, no matter how good a WHM you have in the party. (White Mages can't mitigate you being 1-shotted even if you are fully buffed/healed etc.) Even soloing on THM would be problematic and SE would have to make sure your DD spells hit hard to compensate the lack of survival. So now you have an overpowered job that can't survive a sneeze.

I don't think party play is where the problems would arise - but moreso solo'ing. I can't think of any specific fights that I have been in a constant situation of having to survive. Sure, long enough to drop hate, or what not - however BLM only really gets 2 native skills that aids in this does it not? Necronesis and Sanguine Rite? Correct me if I forgot one.

-If you take away their MP restoring skills, you are making them dead weight in any party content that lasts longer than their mana pool (which is now made smaller due to less MP restore).
If instead they go the 'add 4 more skills to every class route' Now SE needs to come up with 4x7 or 28 more skills (counting the THM spell additions). That's 28 skills they need to cross-balance not only against each class against each other, and each job role against each other, but game play as well. That's almost enough skills to create 2 entirely new classes/jobs up to current level cap.

MP management would be a big problem- yes. I could be wrong but from what I understand, advanced jobs are becoming available earlier in the game? Meaning a few more skills will probably be added by default? Correct me if I am wrong here.

When most of us were saying 'but the lore is this and therefore...' we were of course concerned with the in-game storyline. As it does take a team of writers and game developers to re-write and develop new content for a game change this big. But what the 'lore arguement' is really code for is:

The change you think would be simple is so tied to so many other things in the game at the moment, that it can break or force so much to be re-written that many don't see the worth...especially if the underlying complaint is that 'Black Mage is boring to play'. Because having more spells to spam in the exact same manner, won't make you feel less-bored overall. It will fill your action bar more, and make you have to remember not to cast Fire on Ifrit but that's basically it.

Well I can respect this, that yes rewritting the lore isn't just a night's worth of a schoolkid's homework, however the lore could be adjusted post-Bahamut saying that CNJ's turned to more divine power etc. I don't know, I am no story writer. in a fantasy game you can really adjust the storyline to fit with mechanics that work. I mean as other people have pointed out, THM's lore got messed up when the job patch came around.. It sort of needs a bit of a touch up as is.


[quote]When SE decided to add jobs in this manner, that was their big 'we're gonna rework the battle roles' moment. They aren't going to swap entire skill sets again, because it literally takes months of labor and patches and fixes to accomplish. I don't remember the exact timeline or patches, but I think it was patch 1.19 where SE removed THM's heals and we only got the actual jobs after a couple more patches 6 months later, and even then, things continued to be tweaked through even this summer.Basically, if SE wanted to give Black Mage all the elements, or fix the Elemental Alignments in this game to something more similar to FFXI's wheel, they would have done it already. [quote]

I think the biggest issue with adjusting skill sets isn't so much the scripting but the planning. If the plan has already been pretty much pre-determined then I daresay it could be knocked over quite quickly. Creating a small spell animation is child's play, and scripting it is probably pretty much copy & paste. I can't see a huge amount of workload in actually implementing it into the game, however it's the planning side that does take some manpower to nut out.

This said, I'm sure their will be smaller, but still significant changes made to all the classes/jobs and how they function for ARR. It is possible (and probable) that many of the battle mechanics have changed. So even though the spell/skill and ability lists might be the same, what those abilities actually do or the conditions you need to meet to use them at a given point in battle might be different. With the addition of Arcanist/Summoner the DOTs and effects of WHM/BLM spells might be changed...but the DD output for those spells might increase. Maybe if you are closer to a mob your magic works differently than further away. We won't know until we play.

Yes, however speculation is the devil in this kind of thing. We can only really comment on what we know. However I feel it was better to raise a concern on this sort of topic now, rather then in 3-4 post-release patches time, when it truly does become a major issue, or an extremely complex thing to fix down the line (if it was agreed on of course).

I know you think I'm just picking on you, and trying to disagree just disagree. I'm not. But for something that seems so simple, (re-assigning a couple of spells) it's actually a very detailed topic. You think we're always getting off-topic when we start talking about class vs job... other party roles...lore etc. But the fact is, those 4 spells don't happen in a vacuum. When you start moving things around in a MMO, balance etc matter, and people go on these 'off-topic' paths to try to sort it all out.

We are both guilty of it. Neither of us will see eye to eye and I can accept that. I am willing to open these eyes a bit wider and take a compromise. I mean if you can figure out a way to balance the elemental chain, without changing CNJ/WHM or THM/BLM, I am definitely all ears - which was why I made this thread in the first place.

It has simply been disagreement after another, no reasonable conclusion or solution, both sides I can accept have valid points (as you could see in the "likes" on the first page). The OP has a fairly similar like count to one a few posts down basically saying "WHM has had aero/stone/etc in the past".. While this is not a complete rendition of the whole community's opinion, it gives a general idea that both sides of the coin do have some fairly valid points.

How do we meet in the middle and create a happy medium though? I mean, I am willing to ignore my despise of playing BLM in its 1.0 state, as long as the elemental chain was balanced.