Something needs to be done about elements

[Raestloz]

Hmmm... I can see the problem with super effective elemental attacks in primal fights <.<

But that makes the elemental properties invalid. I actually wish they remove elemental properties. It's just a bad shape right now and means precisely jack

[Little_Ifrit]

If I remember correctly in an earlier Final Fantasy the black Mage could cast an elemental spell on somebody's sword for an attack on the enemy. Maybe the BLM could do sonething like this and have it last a minute or something. Maybe this way all the other classes wouldn't be gimped.

[Kitru]

Maybe this way all the other classes wouldn't be gimped.

It wouldn't actually be the other classes that get gimped. It would almost always be BLM, because no one else is particularly focused upon a single element. SMN gets the closest and, even then, Ifrit and Garuda are close enough in damage that, unless something is resistant to *both* Fire and Wind, they're not going to be problem. BLM, however, does a *vast* majority of its damage through Fire. Against Ifrit, even if he was hugely vulnerable to Ice damage, BLM would have terrible damage because they don't do enough damage with Ice spells and Umbral Ice.

The problem with the elements isn't in targets being weak to certain elements but rather in targets being resistant because players don't really have explicit control over what elements they're using constantly. If they *did* want to make the elements matter more, they'd have to do some really weird stuff: BLM would have to be given other elemental spells that provide Umbral Ice/Astral Fire (which means changing the name, but that's not really a problem) so that they don't get screwed over; SMN would have to be given more summons that cover a larger number; since your providing bonus damage to any caster that knows elemental weaknesses, the devs would have to provide a buff to non-elemental damage to compensate (so that you don't just stack 4 BLM/SMNs for primal fights).

All in all, it's just not worth the effort. It works in single player games where the player is controlling an entire party so that the individual characters don't need to be as complex as is required for an MMO (which is why BLMs get a bunch of options that are identical and only differentiated by the given element), but, in an MMO, it's too much effort to make it balanced. It's easier to just ignore NPC resistances and simply allow players to stack elemental resistances, either "required" or just optional, for specific fights.

Also, the BLM casting onto the ally's sword was FFXI, where Steiner could use Magic Sword when in party with Vivi (Vivi cast the spell on Steiner's sword but it consumed Steiner's MP rather than Vivi's; the selection was also determined by Vivi's spell list).

[Orophin]

Just have Blizzard do 6 times more damage against Ifrit. Would be legit.

And if they did this you'd see in Rev Troll "LF 4 DPS for HM/Ex Ifrit, BLM only."

They had to normalize the damage of the elemental spells to keep things fair.

[SirGazuntai]

The end result would either be BLM OP or BLM useless, and both of them are bad for the game. There always has to be a balance and you can't limit 1 class from playing half the content because half of the fights have element resistance and you'd rather take Melee instead. You also don't want a repeat of 1.0 that would result in people only wanting BLM because of element weakness abuse. Every class has to be able to play every bit of content.

As for BLM casting elements on Melee/Bard/Tanks, I'd love that. Cast a 15 second element onto a players weapon and have them deal an extra 20% elemental damage with an amazing elemental/audio effect on their weapon while you receive a 20% spell speed reduction. Give them a resistance to the buff of 60 seconds and give the spell a 15 second cool-down, that way they have to cycle through DPS or even Tanks to help increase damage for enmity.

However, only reason I love it is because I'm a sucker for nostalgia and Vivi is my favorite FF character so... yeah. If they can implement something and keep balance, that's great, but it's much harder to keep balance than the average player thinks. Making everyone the same isn't the same as balance and making everyone unique can cause a lot of balance issues. Making everyone the same with gimmicks is also a tried-and-failed method, too. Single player is a much easier place to implement this as balance isn't really much of an issue, but in multi-player it's huge.

[Katchii]

They had to normalize the damage of the elemental spells to keep things fair.

This^

Yoshi-P also commented on the fact that because different classes have different spell toolkits, it wouldn't be fair for one class to be able to kill a mob with one spell cast and one class not be to kill without a fight for their life, if they're even able to harm it at all.

The elemental resistances were removed for game balance, which I can agree with. I hated encounters/ battles in FFXI where BLM was the only way to go because they were so superior to other DPS in every way.

[Tzain]

On the subject of elemental resistance for players, I think you'd be better off buffing up duration and potency of Resistance Ward Potions than playing with resistance gear. Ultimately, it's less problematic in the long term and more healthy for economics.

On exploiting enemy elemental vulnerabilities, it's a great mechanic....in Pokémon. Unless a game is designed to utilize such a mechanic it's just impossibly difficult to balance it out. FFXIV, for better or worse, just doesn't have vulnerabilities to such an extreme that one is useless/Mandatory against an enemy for the class balance reasons mentioned here.

[LordSaviour]

Kinda makes Elemental Resistance obsolete then too. What is the point of the Materia and items that add Ele. Resist when they are pretty useless?

As a PLD from XI and now in XIV, I don't really miss having a multitude of Elemental Gear Resist sets. But it did add in an extra element to the battle system which made the game more interesting and involved.

The reason elements don't do anything is cause in 1.0 people would take Tankx1 WHMx1 and then BLMx6 to basically everything cause they could exploit elemental weaknesses.

The BLM spell list is kind of ridiculous. BLM should have access to the Elemental Wheel of Magics. Not just 3. Or they could have made it make sense, Black Mage, use "Dark Magic" like in XI. Which would be, Blizzard, Water, Stone and Dark and then give WHM the other; Fire, Lightning, Aero and Light.


Devs restricting jobs due to Boss Fight imbalance seems like the easy way out. They could have done Diminishing returns if spells are spammed or DPS is needed during a certain point in the battle etc...
.

[Deusteele]

The elemental wheel was never remotely codified. Earth/Wind/Water have all bounced around between White mages and Black mages. The only constant has been the Fire/Ice/Lightning that the THM/BLM rotation is currently based around.

[LordSaviour]

The elemental wheel was never remotely codified. Earth/Wind/Water have all bounced around between White mages and Black mages. The only constant has been the Fire/Ice/Lightning that the THM/BLM rotation is currently based around.

Notice I said like in XI. Since this game uses the same Character Models and is loosely based off that game. It would make sense to stick with the same Lore.