My take on Elementalist

[Kael_Thor]

I'll be going through your points more or less one by one and replying to them.

I wrote some things down, that I hope do not sounds too harsh, as i do really like this idea. I can't at the moment but I'd love to retool it jut for fun.

Not sure what you mean by retool, but criticism is always welcome. It is why I posted this in the first place :P
I am glad you like the idea, and no, you weren't too harsh^^

The first thing I will state is that while having a Job that uses the Elements as a "base" design remember that FFXIV doesn't have a true element system so anything that deals with elemental resistance or damage is almost worthless, sorry to say; so skills like Element Cloak wouldn't do much but decrease incoming damage.

I'm not so sure. We have elemental resistances, and we can increase that through materia. Elemental Cloak would be a short term increase. Take for instance Ifrit. Put Elemental Cloak on someone and Ifrit's attacks does less damage to them, almost as if that person melded Fire materia to their gear.

The second thing is that while being able to change/alter your elemental affinity is good, you have to remember that you have to keep it balanced, since most players will find the best affinity to use and possibly harass those who prefer to play with any other affinity. GW2 has specializations that use each element they have which is why their system can work, FFXIV as of right now have no specializations.

I agree with this, and it is one of the things I struggle with, finding a way to make each of the elements balanced. I essentially wanted them Fire and Lighting to be high dps, Wind, Ice and Earth to be high utility and Water to be healing. The goal was for a player to be forced to switch elements relatively often, similar to how Thaumaturges have to switch between Ice and Fire. Side note: I didn't actually model my class after the GW2 Elementalist, at least not on purpose:P

Also while the idea of Element I/II/III changing depending on your affinity is good, you have the spells themselves too "diverse" the coding changes that would be required to change each skill design would make the job to confusing and a bit hard to play. That being said having each tier being similar but having a different effect for say the AoE is fine or should be anyway. Remember you want to keep things interesting but simple.

I see Element I/II/III to be similar in button design to a Ninja's Ninjutsu button, I.e it changes according to the situation. The different effects are perhaps a bit too different though, making remembering what each do difficult, I'll admit that.

You don't mention the attunement stacks until after every ability is listed, and they aren't really mentioned in the abilities either. We don't really get an idea of their purpose or what they are really for. Additionally, you have 6 attunements total, which might be a little much. 1 arching attunement or 2 attumements, one Umbral one Astral might be a bit better. As i stated before, people will look for the best abilities to use and right now your Fire skills are winning.

I use the word "attune" far too much, in hindsight. Attunement stacks are something you get from your spells, hence why I described them under each spell, similar to how Astral Fire and Umbral Ice is something you get from Fire and Ice spells as a thaumaturge. I am actually describing the effects of the attunement stacks more than Astral Fire and Umbral Ice is described for thaumaturges. I had no idea of the actual effects of those two until my research for my class lead me to a Thaumaturge guide.
The stacks represent a deepening connection to that element, making spells of that element better for a short time.

While the Water moves acting as healing spells is good, the potentiates are a bit off. Cure is 400 potency on any class/job that uses it but if the job has a poor mind stat the overall cure is rather low. So if this Elementalists Water/Cure spells mimic the other healers potencies the cures wont do much if their mind is too low.

Yes, I know about this, and it was by design. I didn't want to make a fully fledged healer, I wanted to give the class the option of healing some if required. That is why Embody Water switches Int and Mnd, it is essentially Cleric Stance but reversed. Elementalist wouldn't be as good as a real healer, but would be good enough to help in damage heavy phases, or if the healer died/DCed or is crowd controlled.

And lastly the Embody skills are a bit confusing. You indicate that they can be "reused", but any reusable skill has a short CD, these are 45 seconds long, the GW2 counter part only has a 10 sec CD. Also the buffs they give for using them appear to be too short and might not offer any real benefit to the fight.

The Embody abilities were originally called Stance, Fire Stance for example, but I decided, for reasons I can't remember, to rename them. They would function similarly to a tank's stances or Cleric Stance, in that you activate one, which gives you access to certain abilities. Press Embody Fire and your Element spells change to Fire spells, who each have a chance to apply a short duration burn, and your MP regen stops.

The wording is clunky, and I couldn't think of a better way to phrase it but essentially the Embody abilities enter you into a stance of that element, where your abilities become of that element. When you activate another Embody ability, you enter the new stance, your spells change to the new element and you loose the benefits and penalties of the 'old' stance. The cooldown is so long to stop the elementalist from essentially becoming a Thaumaturge, only going between Fire for pure dps and one of the utility elements for mana regen before switching back to Fire for more dps.
The buffs are short because they can be reapplied. Take Embody Earth for instance. Upon activating that ability, the Elementalist attunes to the Earth element, changing her elementally neutral spells into Earth spells. Each of these spells have a chance of applying Heavy Earth, which decreases the physical damage the debuffed target does for a short time. That duration is so short because each Earth spell could reapply the debuff, meaning you could theoretically keep the target debuffed indefinitely. Additionally the Embody Earth also greatly increases MP regen for 20 seconds after activation, as long as the stance isn't changed. That means that if you change out of Earth 'stance' 10 seconds after entering it, you won't get the full duration of the increased MP regen. This works similar to Thaumaturge's Astral Fire and Umbral Ice. In Umbral Ice, your MP regens much faster, but if you switch to Astral Fire you loose this increased MP regen.
The Embody abilities are essentially the core of the class, they allow the player to tailor themselves to each fight. "My target deals only magic damage, that means that Wind is a good idea to make my target do less damage, while Earth isn't as useful." Picking and choosing which element is best to use in a given situation should be part of the fun, and challenge, with the class, but I don't think I managed that quite right:P

I should perhaps find a different name for the Embody abilities and attunement stacks. Perhaps change Embody to Attunement, and call the stacks something like 'shards' or 'connection' or something similar.

I do like the idea however of a class/job that actually uses all the other classes.

I'm not sure my class does this though. My aim was for a class that uses all the elements, not all the other classes. Still you do have a valid point.