Magic

[darkstarpoet1]

Read my post again. The answer lies within.

Why the hell do you people settle for less? Change is definitely needed, but removing things instead of improving them is detrimental. The spells being useless is not a favorable argument.

especially not when the argument was wrong. you can't name more than 5 spells out of each of the mage classes that were not used unless you want to count each ancient magic as one. they needed major work so nobody used them.

people are willing to take downgrades and i am not sure exactly why people think the game gets better with getting less.

[Yves]

especially not when the argument was wrong. you can't name more than 5 spells out of each of the mage classes that were not used unless you want to count each ancient magic as one. they needed major work so nobody used them.

people are willing to take downgrades and i am not sure exactly why people think the game gets better with getting less.

Because there are multiple viewpoints when it comes to personal preference. It's a lot like pizza - one person like mushrooms and not olives, the other person is opposite. Regardless, pizza is still nice to eat. Peeps need to calm their sack about this kind of stuff. It's like every single person turns each idea into the holy crusades...

[darkstarpoet1]

Because there are multiple viewpoints when it comes to personal preference. It's a lot like pizza - one person like mushrooms and not olives, the other person is opposite. Regardless, pizza is still nice to eat. Peeps need to calm their sack about this kind of stuff. It's like every single person turns each idea into the holy crusades...

no i am responding to a person saying that most of the spells were worthless. i am just curious which ones were worthless?

saying you didn't like using them is comparable to the mushroom thing, but saying they are worthless is like saying you can't eat pizza and get full. pizza may not be your favorite choice of food if it has mushrooms, but it will still do what it is required to do. banish/scourge/bio/dia/shadowsear/siphon mp may not have been your favorite spells to use, but they did have their uses.

saying you didn't like them is an opinion, but saying they were worthless is a lie.

[Estellios]

Rather than buying spells individually (FFXI style), it would be nice if spells were gained via spellbooks that were given as rewards from the guilds at each of the level benchmark missions (20, 36, 40).

Also, it would be neat if guildmarks could buy some non-essential spells for each DoM class. (eg. Scan, Invisibility, Sneak, Oil, etc..)

Yeah I would love spells to be given as quests rather than buyable/bought with gil, especially if they are essential spells. Anyone remember the situation with Erase for the first few years of FF11?

Edit: @ Darkstar: It's not so much as many old spells were "useless" but more that a lot of spells were EXTREMELY specialized or not useful enough to see significant use. Would I have liked it if the old stuff was made to be more useful? Sure. But I significantly enjoy how things are now much more than that, and it feels more like the current ability sets have more utility and more "room to grow", so to speak. I mean look at the old unreleased ability lists, and it was just higher tiers of existing spells.

[darkstarpoet1]

Edit: @ Darkstar: It's not so much as many old spells were "useless" but more that a lot of spells were EXTREMELY specialized or not useful enough to see significant use. Would I have liked it if the old stuff was made to be more useful? Sure. But I significantly enjoy how things are now much more than that, and it feels more like the current ability sets have more utility and more "room to grow", so to speak. I mean look at the old unreleased ability lists, and it was just higher tiers of existing spells.

of course this system has more room to grow. any toddler has more room to grow than a fully grown person. i'm still not sure which spells are being talked about. sure there was a few spells that were very situational, but that is also the reason we were able to customize our bars to what was needed and very few if any were worthless. how many fire spells do you need on your bar out of the 15 abilities you have do you say ok that's a little much? just look between just fire and lightning you have 6 of your total 15 abilities.

[Rokien]

Stone, Thunder, Excruciate, Thundara, Dark Seal, Parsimony, Necrogenesis if needing, Thundaga. Blizzard, Cure, Thunder, Thundara, Thunder, Fire, wait just a lil bit for MP, Thunder, Thundara...oh ****, my HATE is high, gotta stop a while (...)

You are crazy, all I have to do is thunder and thundara mobs go down, no need for the other spells at all! Oh but on that one occasion do you need it ala IFRIT/MOOGLE. Soo you guys saying that ever other spell BEFORE were usless, well, bad argument is bad. The reason why they were useless, I'll say it again, mobs die WAY FAST, as in FFXI you had time to use those spells to help with the battle.

[Estellios]

I think the Thunder line is fine because you typically go Thunder > Thundara as your normal nuke sequence and the Combo from Thundaga is pretty much solely intended as a gigantic focused damage spike when all your abilities are up. Burst seems to be specifically tailored to be used right after you Convert, too. I would personally like to see Thundara stun more often, it doesn't seem to stun at all but I have only been using it in combos. If the stun works often enough like the debuffs from the Blizzard spells it could have some more utility in battle.

The Fire line could probably use something added to it for utility but I see it designed as a fast paced "burn your MP" Combo line as each step in the combo reduces the recast time so you can continuously be casting. If battles end up becoming more against multiple enemies I could see this spell line becoming your staple nuke when a PLD is in the group and has solid hate on a horde of enemies.

I think CNJ is better designed in the nuke department because you have reasons to use the -ra spells outside of Combos, but having some abilties exist solely for combo use isn't a bad idea. This stuff is also implemented with the long-term in mind so we might not get the reasoning behind certain abilities until new content arrives.

[Biggs]

Because it is a wasted effort of SE to put in spells we will never use or need.

That same attitude is shared by some of us that think the holiday events they are adding to the game right now are a waste of resources at a time when they should be focusing on fixing the damn game. Truth is, in a game thats major flaw was lack of content, I don't think adding more of anything would be a bad idea at this point. Certainly I would like to see more for mages given that now their physical attack in battle is garbage. If they want to make it so mages dont even have to pull their weapons out during battle, i would love to see them have more options spell wise.

[auritribe]

In FF4 you didn't have to buy spells. Palom, Porom, Rosa, Cecil, and Rydia just 'learned' them as they levelled.

Tellah 'remembered them'

I am okay with learning spells as part of a level up.

[Conradus]

Most Bar- spells, Aquaveil, most -na spells, etc etc.

It wasn't really that these spells werent usefull, it was that you could kill (Most) mobs w/o using them just fine.
(*Ofc NMs and Bosses would be a bit different but, I mean for grinding purposes*)

If you weren't casting Barwatera when fighting pugs in the Dunes, you were a very poor WHM. And that's only one example. Bar spells are very useful, and not just in the elemental avatar fights.