Curaga draw way too much hate!

[Bittereye]

I complete remake of all spells. The visuals of the current mage spells do not live up to the Final Fantasy casting classes we're so accustomed to seeing.

[Sinnerslazer]

how about Re-Raise I/II spell??

[Tibian]

I've been posting various tidbits for mage revisions in the past, but here is a list again with some updates due to new stats/patch changes.

Just as background info so you know I have valid points to make: I have run Darkhold several times, I have gotten Ifrit to 30%, and based on my classes below in my signature you can tell I have both healer and caster dps experience.

Healer Revisions

1. Cures still draw to much hate. Current popular opinion states cures are on a .75:1 ratio for hate vs dps/heals. Most healing level 3 spells are going to do upwards of 600-1k healing in one heal. Thats 750 enmity generated for one heal. Tanks really can't keep up with that at a significant pace unless they have accomplice (which is a pugilist skill!) Healing hate really needs to be thought out differently and not on a 1:1 or even .75:1 scale. I am not satisfied with healing enmity generation at all. A gladiator should be able to keep significant hate throughout the entire fight without leveling up MRD and PUG as well. Currently you need those three classes to be of any use as a tank.
2. Durations on buffs are too small. I understand you want to balance this with "longer = weaker, shorter = stronger." You still can, by providing different and more exciting skills to use. Protect and shell are going to be the staples of battle. Currently having to cast them multiple times in boss fights is really annoying because of the AOE radius/range issues. The buffs should at least be a half hour. Then you can start looking into more impressive skills such as bravery/faith/bubble/regen/renew/mighty guard/etc as more active White Mage skills. Furthermore, I'd like to see Protect and Shell be instant cast and party wide (regardless of positioning). Having to group up every five minutes is ridiculous, especially when the positioning prediction/server lag causes problems. Protect/Shell are standard spells/buffs.
3. Curaga definitely pulls way to much hate, and costs too much. The cost of the MP is close, but I'd like to see a 10-20% reduction in overall healing costs since spiritsong won't get much use in heavy moving fights. There should be a rotation of healers, but we need some wiggle room for when things go wrong.
4. Curing debuffs should be consolidated into one spell. Esuna or Panacea should cure Poison/Silence/Paralyze together. Having to equip Paralyna/Poisona/Silena is just kind of nonsense because of slot costs.
5. Stats for healing are still broken, unknown, and frustrating. I've been trying to put together my materia sets for gear. Unfortunately based on popular rumors, enhancing and enfeebling magic work based on tiers ans have a pathetic affect on casting. I'd like to put a disclaimer here and note that these stat evaluations may, and probably are wrong, but I still feel the weakness of stats vs materia are unjust and need to be evaluated further. 5 Vitality = 1 enhancing magic. Unfortunately, enhancing magic is tiered by 5's as well. Thus, it takes 20 vitality to see any effect on protect/shell. That effect, is 1 defense and 1 elemental Resistance coming from protect and shell respectively. Complete and utter nonsense. Please re-evaluate enhancing and enfeebling statistics so white mages actually don't spend millions on materia to have little to no affect on their spells.
6. Situational and Instant Cast abilities. If you want to make healing more engaging, other than cure, with sprinkles of stoneskin and protect/shell in between, you need to have more engaging moves with some moves being instant cast (ie: no cast bar!) It would be great to have some type of self buffs that increase healing potency for a short period of time (with an animation that lasts the full duration of the buff), as well as moves that add some flare and fun for healers.

Caster DPS Revisions

1. Damage over time spells. I like the fact that DoTs are difficult to land. I think it makes for some engaging mechanics. Ie: Ogre fight where during enrage dots are easier to land. Unfortunately, when mages can't land dots, our dps sucks (which I'll get into in another section.). Dots need to be significantly buffed if the resistances are going to be higher to landing dots. Secondly, dot durations need a little love too. Its annoying seeing your buff go up, and then 5 seconds later seeing it vanish. Did it even do any damage? Lastly, we don't know how dot damage is calculated nor do we know how much the dots even do. I think SE needs to release some information here, or at least in 1.2 letting us know how dots work.
2. Regular caster abilities are weak. (Scourge/Fire/Water/Banish/Etc)
   I will note that I feel Thaumaturge is stronger than Conjurer. Probably due to elemental resistances as well as having more INT. However as I mentioned above, on bosses casters fall greatly behind other dps. I am calling for an overall damage buff in regular caster moves that fall within the 3-10 recast timer area.
3. Absorb Atk/Def/Acc/Eva spells are sadly still worthless compared to the other available options. This goes right hand in hand with the fact that stats don't mean enough yet.
4. Sort of reiterating for a third time: stats for casters need to be redone again. This whole multi-tiered functional casting regarding stats and enhancing/enfeeble magic is a bit ridiculous and makes mages even more under powered than they already are.

Overall Mage Revisions and Current Impressions
Currently playing mage classes right now is sort of unfufilling. I enjoy being able to chainspell/profundity/blood rite/shadowsear x2, but that isn't enough for mages. Furthermore, the mages don't really have a clear distinction of class identity. To be honest, I'd rather heal and dps as a thaumaturge because I prefer the conal AOE better than the radial AOE. Unfortunately the lack of identity of being a healer, buffer, debuffer, or pure nuker is severely lacking. Yes there can and should be occasions where the roles overlap. A nuker/debuffer is something I am enjoying the most right now.

Stats should be reworked a bit. Vitality should not be tied to enhancing magic, and piety should be removed as a base statistic. I feel that adding enhancing magic to vitality shows you are trying to find additional statistics to place to validate keeping some. Removing piety can solve a lot of that problem. Since piety and MP are 1:1, split it up to where 1 MP = 2 Int and 1 MP = 2 Mind. Magic evasion can be placed on VIT and enfeebling magic should be tied to INT.

Furthermore, get rid of that awful tiered structure (if it actually exists) of enhancing/enfeebling magic. Or if keeping the tiered structure, make the gains much much much more prominent. Ie: Tier 1 Protect II = 81 Defense, Tier 2 Protect II = 91 defense, and so on.

[HiirNoivl]

Situational and Instant Cast abilities. If you want to make healing more engaging, other than cure, with sprinkles of stoneskin and protect/shell in between, you need to have more engaging moves with some moves being instant cast (ie: no cast bar!) It would be great to have some type of self buffs that increase healing potency for a short period of time (with an animation that lasts the full duration of the buff), as well as moves that add some flare and fun for healers.

Why does Stoneskin take so looooooooong to cast? And why is the recast time for Chainspell 3 whole minutes? Let's allow conjurers a system whereby they can chain spells through skill of game play and optimal gear, not just some ability on bar.

[Alkoun]

Area of effect for conjurers is an annoying excercise in visual guesstimating. How big is the circle? Why do I have to tell everyone in my party to stand together for prot/shell in the middle of a fight, ruining their positioning around the mob? I like thaumaturge's cone better, but only because it's easier for me to visualize a line between me and target than a circle of indeterminate diameter. If we could do away with both, and just settle on aoe buffs affecting party members, that'd be swell. As for aoe attack spells... I'm not sure how to fix that. I'd suggest having them affect ONLY linked mobs, but I also like the danger of grabbing adds with spells; makes people play smarter. Maybe someone has a better suggestion?

[Laughlyn]

My Feedback on current CNJ:

* Casting Delay
- Give me back my 1-2 seconds casting-speed on everything.
(The 1-2sec delay now messes things up now)

* Chainspell
- Might aswelll rename it to: Instant Cast.
(Even thou it's not instant because of the 2sec delay of the animation)

* Tranquility
- I would like to see a quicker activation & less animation for this skill.
And possible base the amount of MP gained from this on
how much Mind your gear has stacked up.

* Resonance
- A Blinking or Coloring change when at maximum range of Ability use.

* Ancient Magic Spells
- ........well they're crap & not cool looking. So ya you know what to do.

* Bind
- A proper bind spell that lasts longer no matter if target is moving or not.

New Spells / Abilities Suggestions: (Conjurer & Thaumaturge)

* Disorient / Confuse
- Makes the target confused & attacks anything in range.

* Final Prayer
- Sacrifice your HP (in this case HP since MP is currently so low) to Heal your part members.

* Poison - / Bio Spikes
- Attacking targets gets a few secons of poison defuff.

* Re-Raise
- It's getting harder now..so this would be nice.
(Even if it requires a Quest to get, wich would be cool)

* Fade
- An abilility to reduce hate based upon intelligence maybe.

* Chaos
- Light & Dark Spell much like Shadowseer.
(Wich still is my Favorite)

* Elemental Minion
- A lesser elemental Minion that can aid / buff in battle.
(Fire, Water, Wind, Eart, Lightning, Blizzard for Conjurers & Dark, Light for Thaumaturge)

* Sacrifice III (AoE)
- Bring back the AoE Sacrfice please.

* Clone / Shadows
- An ability for Thaumaturge to clone him/herself with 2 extra
shadows wich deal 50% of Your Spell damage to target.

- Just a few wierd suggestions, might be some overkill on these lol

- Noomy.

[Xaimera]

curaga draws so much hate its crazy i hated using it in darkhold >< was hard surviving those skeles during batraal on conj and i ran out of mp fast lol even with spiritbind.

[FluttershyPony]

More Effectiveness with Tier II (and eventually III, IV) Elemental Spells: With the current calculations for Elemental Spells (like Fire I vs. Fire II, etc.), it's oftentimes better to cast Tier *I* Spells over Tier II because they are faster to cast, have smaller cooldowns, and are cheaper (MP), and do similar damage (depending on the enemy) at times. During some farming situations / grind parties, I can land more Spell Damage on Tier I (including Critical damage), faster, than Tier II spells.

Did you even play the game post 1.19?

[Buttons]

Many nice suggestions so far so nothing much for me to add. I can only confirm that extended buff durations for shell and protect would be amazing. And maybe simplified status-removing spells, as there are not enough slots to equip them all.

[AresGodofwar]

curage takes as much hate as it did in 11... cast it n ur dead, simple as that, learn to cure