Elemental Spell Reform

[Enfarious]

Spells maybe simple and only have have a hand full of them, but people still have no idea on how to use them.

First, if you are only spam thunder > thundra, with thundaga when your mana and crit buffs are up; you are not playing your BLM/THM to its fullest. That what I do when I'm low of mana and trying to get some back.

Most people don't even try to use the debuff effects of their spells. Aerora dispels enemy buffs, too many CNJs don't know it can. Blizzara binds enemies and is a fantastic crowd control to use; alternate it with sleep to keep enemies under control longer. Yet, I see BLM/THM die to stuff because they don't think to bind things and walk away... all the time. I see people flare monster then wonder why they can't sleep it. I could go on.

Spell lists maybe limited, but people still have little idea on how to use them. Honestly, I fail to see how having a huge spell list of spells, that I won't use,will improve my spell casting experience. It will be like other MMOs that had giant spell lists, I had the best on my bar, the rest collected dust.

To each their own though.

First your not wrong at all, and in that vein I'd say/did say 2 tiers of each of the 6 elements in the common FF wheel, they can still have or not have enfeebling effects, so you go from 8/9 spells to 12 but have every element. The dmg for each tier being equal so w/o any mods (weakness, resistance, elemental buffs, etc.) fire = water = blizzard = 15 dmg(base as a lvl 1), and they'd scale w/ level to make them never "useless" the second tier could introduce a second enfeebling effect, boosted damage, combo access, etc. to make them also useful.

I think(again I'm not really a mage in this so much yet, but I know a number of them) most thm/blm spam thunder>thundara>thundaga because in the end all we care about in EG seems to be DPS, and that chain is where DPS is @, nothing else really matters, at least that's what I've seen up to this point in my playing.

I think the other "failing?" point of the current spell system lies in making combos necessary, and in some cases they're detrimental. I cast thunder > need to thundara now for it's added effect against a group cause something went sideways(tank died/dc'd) but I have to wait til the combo timer is up to cast it, shit I'm dead already ...
Yes there's other ways to go outside of that, and it's just a loose example to illustrate a point, not an end all be all fact.

Magic Bursting off melee combos like someone else mentioned or later off of battle regimens like skillchain > MB worked, make the buttons light up just like for a combo, that way people don't whine about having to pay too much attention to what others are doing. I loved skillchaining, and on drk being the opener and MBing off chains I started