Quote Originally Posted by Kazzoey View Post
Currently it looks like the element system takes no real role in this game... A Final Fantasy game... (Unless I\\'m wrong)
I was thinking of how they could change it and wound up possibly fixing this crafted gear dilemma in the process.


First off, all/most enemies and bosses have elemental aspection. Some can be drastic like Shiva being all about Ice, and some like Alexander being more neutral overall. Elements effect their damage on certain skills and overall defense.
Elements have different effects depending on the player\\'s class role.
--Tanks get defensive bonuses/deficiencies from elemental attacks that they are aspected to.
--Healers get healing bonuses/deficiencies to players with elemental aspections, depending on the healer\\'s element.
--DPS get damage bonuses/deficiencies to enemies with elemental aspections.
They'd have to rework the entire battle system as it was designed to not take elemental resistance into consideration. Although we have elemental spells and abilities and resistances, you could basically lump all of that into "magical" and it wouldn't make a difference.

This is way past repair because, for example, Thaumaturge has exclusive access to Thunder, Fire and Ice magics while Conjurer has them for Wind, Water and Earth. Any fight designed with an advantage of a single element over the other is going to end up hurting one or more classes/jobs. This is part of the core of the current battle system and you can be certain they'll never go as deep as they'd need to go in order to rightfully address this.

This is not necessarily bad. Just like you've seen threads here about the cries of Paladins over the advantages of Dark Knight in Gordias, they same problem would pop up if we had elemental magic bonuses in fights. As with a lot of things in this game, it does make things a bit dull, but in the end, looking at the big picture, it's a necessary evil to keep the majority happy.