Shadowbringers RDM Wishlist

[Shurrikhan]

Isn't that kinda what the Enchanted Melee Combo is supposed to do? My main concern with Enspelling, even for oneself, is in determining what the value would be in swapping elements, or even justifying adding as many as 6 different elemental Enspell buttons (not necessarily all in one expansion of course, but just in general).

... Although I did just get a delicious idea that instead of getting Verblizzard or Verwater, we could get Enblizzard (with a small ice damage addition and bonus MP regeneration to all attacks, netting a positive in melee) and Enwater (with partial splash water damage on all attacks for cleave/AoE, turning each target of Scatter/Moulinet into a bomb) as a sort of stance system... though admittedly the ideas I have in mind for this would either be rather passive, or exacerbate our current mana-generation issues.

If so, that's like tossing a pebble 20 meters out into the Atlantic and saying "well, it was supposed to hit the other side." Our 4-step melee action does not interweave elements, nor does it work like spellfencing in any way.

I don't mean wholly manual Enspelling as if from a palette or bank of Enspell options, to be clear -- ideally it wouldn't take up more than a single button -- and absolutely nothing that comes down to the painfully silly "elemental wheel" or pure damage. If all it were to accomplish are shades of damage based on arbitrary enemy types, that's not gameplay -- that's bloat.

But, think of it like six different systems, by adjacencies, of resource-reward. Wind taps into something that's not quite what the rest tap into. It gives some reward, which would likely be 'similar' to Fire and Ice, with which it synergizes (in that using Wind does a good job of depositing the sources for one or the other), but the different source makes each far from interchangeable at that point in time. Heck, the reward can technically be mostly the same thing ("acceleration"), but the main thing is moving between them so that you can keep playing off the prior momentum through forking options and thereby potential loops of variable length and complexity. Let's say Fire applies... Heat, which will change Ice to Water, create 'Steam' from water, push Wind (including Steam) magic away from the target, and -- if high enough -- source Lightning directly. Thus a damn good Fire phase almost always makes for a short-lived but incredibly good Lightning phase thereafter (dashing everywhere, skewering everything), while an imperfect Fire phase would probably better be twisted towards Wind AoE from around a focus target or two or three. Technically, Earth can do a fair trick of a follow-up, by maintaining the heat longer for a delayed burst phase while offering a Tempered blade. Water can be off-handedly tossed in to end Fire early and skip to Lightning regardless or open up your Wind options. From Fire you'd want to follow, usually, with Wind or Lightning, but you could also delay the momentum for later. And from Wind, say, you may want to juggle Fire and Ice to maximize Turbulance, ultimately returning to Fire or going to Ice. From Ice you'd want to stay well away from Fire while tapping a bit into Earth for Rigor (though then you'd have to stay clear of needing Lighning utility) and Water for cheaper sourcing, especially at first. So on and so forth. And finally, you can tap into your Acceleration resource to reverse time or elemental effects around you up to some cap (consequent to your resource available at the time) to completely flip things on their head. Basically, it'd be an overarching system of limitations that can be creatively dealt with so that the arsenal, even at any one point in time, feels larger and grander than it otherwise would, all while keeping manageable what would otherwise be OP.

Then we could get an additional, BLM inspired utility spell, another burst multiplier perhaps, Spellspeed inspired by Leylines (Verley?), or more magic damage inspired by Enochian (Vernochian?), that costs a similar about of Black mana.

It feels like the majority of our job identity (and many a parity) issues already come back to copy-pasta. Do we really need more, just dressed in vermillion?