I think you made some great points, Colvin.

What I dislike the most is the move to generic attack spells split between THM and CNJ now. I LIKED the unusual casting abilities of original THM, which are basically all gone now. CNJ does not make sense now. It was supposed to be an elementalist class... instead it is an earth user with some crippled wind abilities (Stonera level 22, Aerora level -42-. WHAT!?). But they had to weaken it offensively to force it into the White Mage niche.

The elemental weakness system is just abandoned now. Spells do whatever. Thunder? Standard attack. Fire? Area of effect! Why? It is -strange- to do this. And I am severely displeased to see Water element just... GONE. It is gone. We cannot use Water against enemies weak against it.

We have lost most of our DoT spells, our Drain spells, Light and Dark elements, the choice to allocate points into the elements of our choice, and altogether a large part of our previous class diversity.

My friend says this is a temporarily solution to hold out until 2.0. I hope so, because the sudden changes to the class system seem like a desperate move to give up on an original system and flee into more familiar territory.