Idea for an Elementalist Job?

[Transmigration]

Greetings my fellow Eorzeans. I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this, but I haven't seen it come up on the forums as I reside underneath a rock.

While playing my WHM I often wonder why CNJ didn't also branch in to a DPS caster class. You get water, wind, and earth spells, but they don't scale up as they do with BLM. Why not have 2 jobs branch from CNJ (as you did with Arcanist) and create a sort of nature mage that has Aero III, Stone III, Water II and III, Flood, Quake, and Tornado? As far as I know they're missing from the game as BLM only has control over fire, ice, and lightning.

It would really even things out in terms of the elements, give CNJ a DPS option when we don't feel like healing, and it makes sense. No?

Just a thought. Would be cool to get some feedback from SE on whether or not this has been or ever will be on the table.

Give us power!!

[jlewiss]

The way yoshi & co originally wanted this game to go cnj likely would of seen a dps branch off eventually. The direction they seem to want to go now doesn't suggest as much.

[Lemuria]

Honestly, given how amazingly underwhelming the current spells are I don't expect to see it any time soon. I personally would love for a new hybrid BLM/WHM class who can use all 6 elements personally. None of this Umbral/Astral rubbish, just clean nuke-firing joy with revamped Aero and Aero II spells which deal instant damage rather than lackluster DoT.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I think splitting the elements into two jobs was a mistake. I didn't like it when the change was first introduced in 1.0 and it still hasn't grown on me after all this time in ARR. Remember Dia, Dia II, Sacrifice and the like? Probably not, but I do. And I'll warrant so do many other Conjurers and Thaumaturges from the pre-calamity era. What of Quake, Flood, Tornado, Freeze and Burst? We have Flare, which now eats up all your MP but the others remain absent.

And what of elemental weakness and resistance? The spell you cast now has little meaning. I can literally STONE Titan and FIRE Ifrit with no impact to damage. The lord of the inferno taking damage from a fireball? It's a wonder he can even survive his own attacks, being so fragile. They pretty much had to do this when the 6 elements were separated from Conjurer (yes, CNJ... THM didn't even have access to a single fireball on release except by cross-classing), since it became almost impossible to match elemental weakness or avoid resistance.

Yet the statistic lingers, both in our attributes page and in some of the enemy skills which 'lower' resistance. It's also available as a materia option... which no one rightly picks since it has all the utility of a cardboard shield.

Ahem, getting off-track.

I'd love a job to have every element in the game, but given the creative direction the game is headed down it's highly unlikely we'll see it. Even if we did, the element you cast would have little or no bearing having them as straight nukes. Without giving each one some unique buff or debuff, there would be no reason to cast Aero over Fire or vice versa. Elemental weakness is a key mechanic which is sorely missing in FFXIV: ARR at the moment, and despite what the naysayers might think, it has always ADDED more than it has taken away.

[BreathlessTao]

CNJ was originally the elementalist dps in 1.0 - surprising as it might be. Was really disappointed when they changed it to healer, because it was not at all the thing I wanted with my original character, but oh well... Of course, back then we also had actual elemental stats that could be customised however we wanted to - something which was removed, to make ARR "easier" and "less complicated".

And yes, I too am feeling weird every time I'm throwing fireballs at Ifrit: people argue about glamours and whatnots breaking immersion - as far as I'm concerned, this is what breaks my immersion.

...yeah, nevermind me, just being magic-oriented in general, the way they butchered DoM classes/jobs is just still about the biggest thing I'm sour about...

[myahele]

If NINs can get access to all the elements, then why not BLM and WHM?

[Transmigration]

I actually do remember Dia and the like, Lemuria. I've been playing XIV since 1.0 alpha and played FFXI from PC release until WotG.

The class system feels weird and unfinished. My thought is just that they should continue to flesh out the jobs we have before they move on. Astro and Machinist look like interesting classes, but they shouldn't have been created before they accounted for half of the magic that's missing from this game. I know XIV isn't XI or any other previous FF, but there are certain things that shouldn't be overlooked and excluded.

They can't create a whole new class to have these elements without completely revamping the entire current class system (which they very well may do at some point?), so creating it as an offshoot of CNJ would fit the lore pretty well imo.

[Transmigration]

THM could have turned in to warlock(WLK?) and BLM.
ACN should have gone SCH and some other dps based on sacred geometry.
SMN should have been it's own class, not this odd version of spiritmaster we got.
ROG could have easily gone NIN and THF, but we got a weird excuse in the form of "thieves are bad so no one would want them in their cities, etc. etc." People say "dress your nin up like a thf!". Thieves do not use ninjutsu and do shoryukens.
MRD could have an option to set down their axes and pick up a pistol to become Musketeers at level 30.
ARC could have easily gone BRD or RNG at 30.
GLD could have gone PLD and Russel Crowe (jk) Dual Wielding berserker of some sort.
PUG could have an option to pick up a staff at 30 and choose to channel their Ki/Chi to heal people as opposed to punching people. Or even had a tanking "spec" instead of DPS.

[Transmigration]

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. It would add more variety, more healers, more tanks, more DPS options.

This game is shaping up to be totally awesome and I've enjoyed it quite a bit. I just think Yoshi and the team need to go back again and complete the weird fragmented class system we have currently in to something more cohesive and inclusive of all things missing. We get info on these new classes, but I never hear anything about the dev team revisiting what they threw together for ARR in terms of classes.

*sorry about the 3 posts, the character limit prevents us from finishing a thought.

[Delta041]

All signs point to SE dropping the class/job system altogether instead of expanding it. Kind of a shame too, I really liked the Arcanist split, even if it's a mess to balance for, and would have loved to see more job options for the other classes.