Elemental Spell Reform

[Agoven]

Idea...mages may be attuned to X # of elements. Quest progression to unlock the number of elements you can attune to at any given time.

Example 1: 5 elements attuned. Caster sets 1 to each element, has level one spells for all elements, has a few mega spells related to rainbow elemental attuned setting.

Example 2: 5 elements attuned. Caster sets 5 to fire. Has all fire spells.

[Agoven]

Spell casting progression ala Chrono Trigger...use a spell 100x learn the next higher level spell.

The price of casting a strong spell. Death...status ailment ie confusion...tired and fall asleep. HP damage...makes status resistance gear useful.

[Kafeen]

Alright, this isn't to start a ruckus but it has to be asked...

If any of you arguing for spell reform ever played FF11, did you really ... honestly .. TRULY use anything OTHER than the Thunder or Blizzard line. Be truthful.

Yes, thought less often than those 2. The other did have their situations, such as when fighting elementals. But this was because the damage increased in the order you learnt the spells and Blizzard and Thunder were the last 2 to be learnt and covered both dark and light elements respectively.

If the base damage of all the spells was equal with the only effecting factors being resistances and THM/BLM's equipment, then you would make a lot more use of other elements depending on what you're fighting.

[MartaDemireux]

No waaaaay, keep BLM having the original BLM spells please. Maybe make more content that can utilize Fire aoe and make Blizzard ... useful haha. Other than that, no, I love the idea of traditional BLM.

[Alaltus]

My thoughts for blm would be this.

Make ice fire and lighting all high damage single target spell lines, then add two stances one that reduces damage and makes all spells aoe and one that reduces damage and enhances potency/acc of the debuff associated with each spell. Both stances would stack onto each other so for example.

Blizzard alone does 500 damage with very very low chance of heavy, with aoe stance up Blizzard does 300 damage on multiple targets with very very low chance of heavy on each of them. And then if you add the debuff stance on top blizzard does 100 damage on each target with high chance of inflicting heavy. Or you can choose to have only the debuff stance up for a 300 damage blizzard with high chance of inflicting heavy. Keeping the utility of spell debuffs and aoes while gaining the ability to deal damage equaly in each element to single and multiple targets.

[Shurrikhan]

My thoughts for blm would be this.

Make ice fire and lighting all high damage single target spell lines, then add two stances one that reduces damage and makes all spells aoe and one that reduces damage and enhances potency/acc of the debuff associated with each spell. Both stances would stack onto each other so for example.

Blizzard alone does 500 damage with very very low chance of heavy, with aoe stance up Blizzard does 300 damage on multiple targets with very very low chance of heavy on each of them. And then if you add the debuff stance on top blizzard does 100 damage on each target with high chance of inflicting heavy. Or you can choose to have only the debuff stance up for a 300 damage blizzard with high chance of inflicting heavy. Keeping the utility of spell debuffs and aoes while gaining the ability to deal damage equaly in each element to single and multiple targets.

Still makes me wish Fire and Lightning were more interesting, with more reason to not have just one element spammed varying only on situation (so, reasons for and entertainment in cross-element combinations), but this certainly fixes just about everything that's actually problematic.

[Shurrikhan]

So many good ideas/references for spells. Yet none being forwarded to the developers or
mention of a revamp. Very unsettling.

Might want to make a re-thread eventually to put up all the best ideas from here. Repeat or not, it'll be worth it to keep the quality of suggestions churning upwards and keep them with easier sight of the eyes of the devs, or at least whatever PR guy watches the forum and knows an effective idea when he sees one.

[Shurrikhan]

That's a direct result of scaling the dmg for each spell by level obtained instead of by it's Tier. If each tier/type of nuke had the same base dmg and it was only a matter of the added effects and/or mob weaknesses that wouldn't have been the case.

Now that I've actually played CNJ a bit and unlocked WHM ... I see where the whole CNJ gets ele spells from, and it actually stands to reason that CNJ would be your ele nuker while WHM would focus on Light Elemental magics, it was a light ele in that CS right?

So then THM which I've yet to get anywhere with is the one with spells it shouldn't have?

Basically, the division between Conjurers and Thaumaturges, lore-wise *and before the spell-reforms* is mostly as the name implies. If you want to find the root of it in FF, FF4 and FF7's references are probably a good place to start (i.e. native powers, the Sephirot). Conjurer's conjure (create) things into existence based on existent, worldly basics -- elements. Thaumaturgy, definable by its roots as miracle-making, is less obvious in its relationship with the world - instead focusing on the metaphysical - but simplifying that relationship through a simple spectrum - the light to the dark. It puts a less plain value in humans, balancing things like one's lifeblood or soul or inspiration rather than pure elements - hence Sacrifice and the like, blood shed for another.

If you wanted to put this into WoW's crappy classifications, a Thaumaturge would be closer to a priest, and a Conjurer is half of what makes up a mage - the rest falling in the domain of the Arcanist, with direct manipulation of magic itself, regardless of its source, along spectrums of density, strength, stability, etc.

As far as jobs go, a Black Mage stems mostly from Conjurer, lore-wise, but takes a sort of mindset based on the darker side of Thaumaturgy, the role of destruction. Spells like Blind and Sleep would traditionally be Thaumaturgy, unless caused through an element, as would most absolute debuffs (except when affecting the enemy's magic or less directly through the most basic of mechanics (time, movement) - in that case Arcanist). So, I guess in that sense a BLM is a hybrid.

A White Mage would be the opposite, simply put. Lighter half of the spell wheel. "Light"-type (Astral) magics.

Other jobs are equally complicated in division:
Summoners - Conj: primal-based summons or more natural (less divine) creatures. Caster acts a middle between source magics and resultant summon. Thaum: more metaphysical or divine summons. Long-held belief acts as the medium, and caster merely moderates the process. Arcanist(ish): makes Tidus (long, long process).

Time Mage / Calculator - purely Arcanist.
Scholar - can take from any source, the more the merrier, frankly
Red Mage - Conj and a little Thaum, balanced on damage vs (non-elemental) debilitation

Roy Mustang - Conjurer / Arcanist / and a badass ?

*Sorry for that last bit, but someone's signature keeps putting that in my head...

[Shurrikhan]

As I mentioned in the thread about magic revamps, the devs went all Suikoden on this game's magic system. Each element has a specific use and/or purpose. This wouldn't be bad in itself...were it not for the fact that as I've said before, BLM and WHM should both stem from CON. It stands to reason both in lore and basic design (which like it or not is still a throwback to how CON was at launch). You can't really have elements mix because the elemental wheel is split between two classes. That needs to change before anything else can really be done to fix things.

Would be nice then to see Conjurer itself be a viable raid-caster in combination with Black Mages in order to complete some of those cross-wheel combinations. If that were so, I wouldn't mind the spell wheel being cut in half for the two CONJ specialty classes (err... Conj and Thaum, grr). But either way, a system would need to be in place that makes whipping together something like Fire and Wind, Water and Ice, Water and Lightning... do something...

[Lewiz5]

Ok, I think I have an idea that should make everyone happy. The main issue everyone seems to has with the current magic system is how 1) Thunder is far more useful than Fire and especially poor Blizzard and thus THM/BLM is forced to spam the same spell chain over and over again and 2) BLM can't take advantage of all the elemental weaknesses present in the game due to not having access to all of the elemental spells.

The solution to this is to simply 1) Give CON Water and Watera. 2) Allow all classes to be able to use Stonera and Aerora as well as the new Water and Watera spells. 3) Allow BLM to be able to use CON spells. And of course 4) Balance Blizzard and Fire to be more useful.

Doing this will allow for BLM to be able to use all the elemental spells without having to fully rework the magic system present in game.

Also an easy and effective way to make it so BLM can have access to CON spells is to make it so all of the jobs can use three other classes abilities instead of just two. For example, Paladin could use CON, MRD, and let's say PUG abilities in addition to it's base GLD abilities. This would not only fix THM/BLM's problems, but would also give everyone more choices for Jobs making it a bit more interesting.

As for the 15 ability limit, you could either get rid of repose and make Sleep available for every class (since they do the same thing with a slight difference in MP cost) as well as ditching one of CON's class only abilities like Blissful Mind or Cleric Stance, or get rid of the 15 ability limit and give every class two extra abilities that they lost from 1.21.

Either way, I think this would be the best route since it would definitively be the easiest way of fixing everything and would leave Scourge and Banish available for a new Magic class.