Elemental Wheel, What's the point?

[Ramsey]

They broke the potential of having elements make a lick of sense when they removed (wtf?) water from the game, gave wind and earth to white mage, and made black mage elemental spells functionally different between elements.

Unless they change the way elemental spells are setup in 2.0, they're inevitably going to make elemental weaknesses meaningless. Which, when compared to FFX, I feel like they already are.

[Tonkra]

Well doesnt it belong to Final Fantasy (offline titles as well) that every mob has its element weaknesses? which i think is an interesting factor and makes it special.


The PROBLEM is.. since they switched the skills and left one element completely out is.. that you have in each situation only one mage with the right element.


in FFXI the BLM has access to ALL Elements.. he can switch easily to any element depending on the enemy he attacks.. the same with the conjurer in FFXIV pre 1.20 where he had all elemental spells.
and the thm had light and darkness which are almost outside the elemental wheel.

that was really balanced. but now we have a really inbalance. conjurer has just 2 elements.. and the blm just 3. and one is totally missing..


splitting that many elements on two or three mage classes is not a good idea with these elemental weaknesses of the mobs. i think i would more shout for.. switching all elements over to blm and give whm the lightspells back.
sounds boring .. but it seems weird to me, to split the elements into two or three classes


and as a blm you spam thunder most of the time... (ice is mostly useless in damage)

[Riv]

If every mage that is gonna come out in this game they are gonna need to make every class have every element, tbh cause one day a blm can't do content cause everything is strong vs thunder,fire,/ice.

Because one class should be effective against everything in the game.

[Duelle]

If you're too stubborn to make your character more robust to play a game mechanic, then that's your fault.

Just because a preferred playstyle didn't matter in Final Fantasy XI does not mean it should also not matter here. If a guy wants to play BLM he should be allowed to do so with minimal penalties. I can understand something like a 2-5% difference, but outright excluding a job/class is really unacceptable by today's standards.

It'd be nice to see more MMORPGs adapt an elemental wheel themselves, really.

That's until your favorite job or class ends up getting locked out of content. I still remember how Arcane Mages and Moonkin couldn't do Karazhan runs because of the mobs in there that were resistant to arcane damage sources.

If everyone performs the same against all mobs there's no point in having different classes, in which case you could just remove all jobs from the game except one.

Ah, a modified version of the hybrid apocalypse nonsense. WoW's class balance says "hi". It is very possible to have jobs performing equally or near equally. The job system is not an excuse for not doing so.

[Ramsey]

switching all elements over to blm and give whm the lightspells back.
sounds boring .. but it seems weird to me, to split the elements into two or three classes

The devs attempting to reconcile class lore with their 1:1 class:job system and a 15 action limit is what happened.

The system doesn't make any sense... what the new class/jobs have turned into in no way resemble their original classes, where conjurer was focused on elements, and thaumaturge was focused on dark and light. The lore for the classes no longer matches the abilities, and it's strange and depressing.

I really hope they figure out a better way to reconcile CON, THM, WHM & BLM, a way that makes sense, and leads to a compelling and interesting elemental system.

WoW's class balance says "hi". It is very possible to have jobs performing equally or near equally. The job system is not an excuse for not doing so.

You're assuming that the situation Blizzard created in WoW is desired by everyone playing any MMO everywhere. Certainly, the people on the other side of this argument are no better at times, encouraging content that outright negates the use of certain jobs, leading me to believe they have a less than satisfactory understanding of the word balance.

However, I don't agree with your premise, based on the fact that balancing things the way you're talking about, where element means nothing, or at most a few % points, is an adequate solution. You say balanced, I hear boring.

I do agree with the premise that each class should be able to have a place in any content though. The way you accomplish this is by balancing the content overall against a varied group. In the course of an instance you should fight enemies resistant to certain types of damage, so that in some situations one type is more effective, and in others another type. And in the case of bosses, various phases or multi-enemy bosses that require coordination of damage types. Ensuring that all jobs can perform.

Balancing all the content so that every job performs evenly at every task on every enemy is not what I want, and probably what people are so counter to.

[Alhanelem]

Ah, a modified version of the hybrid apocalypse nonsense. WoW's class balance says "hi". It is very possible to have jobs performing equally or near equally.

WoW's class balancing isn't perfect or even close to it.

You accuse me of hybrid apocalypse nonsense, when what you are proposing is essentially that.

You say balanced, I hear boring.

Pretty much this. I'm not even disputing that what you suggested might improve balance. But you don't have to take out distingushing features to obtain that balance.

They broke the potential of having elements make a lick of sense when they removed (wtf?) water from the game, gave wind and earth to white mage, and made black mage elemental spells functionally different between elements.

1) I'm sure water will come back.

2) It's worth noting that other final fantasy games used a similar setup to what FFXIV is using. in FFTA and FFTA2, Aero and Water were learned by Bishop, which otherwise shares a lot of White Mage's functionality. It also learns Stone, though Stone in that game causes petrification, rather than damage. Black Mage traditionally has only had fire ice and thunder since the beginning of the series.

3) I can understand being bothered by the functional differences, but it honestly makes the job more interesting and allows it to work better with the combo system. I like how many of the spells can inflict relevant status effects, in particular. Black Mage would be a lot more dull if all the spells were identical except for their element (and would be even more dull if the OP's suggestion were implemented so that there was no elements or minimal difference between elements)

[Firon]

Well doesnt it belong to Final Fantasy (offline titles as well) that every mob has its element weaknesses? which i think is an interesting factor and makes it special.


The PROBLEM is.. since they switched the skills and left one element completely out is.. that you have in each situation only one mage with the right element.


in FFXI the BLM has access to ALL Elements.. he can switch easily to any element depending on the enemy he attacks.. the same with the conjurer in FFXIV pre 1.20 where he had all elemental spells.
and the thm had light and darkness which are almost outside the elemental wheel.

that was really balanced. but now we have a really inbalance. conjurer has just 2 elements.. and the blm just 3. and one is totally missing..


splitting that many elements on two or three mage classes is not a good idea with these elemental weaknesses of the mobs. i think i would more shout for.. switching all elements over to blm and give whm the lightspells back.
sounds boring .. but it seems weird to me, to split the elements into two or three classes


and as a blm you spam thunder most of the time... (ice is mostly useless in damage)

Not true not every mob in a Ff title has a weakness only a few which is what i suggested.

Because one class should be effective against everything in the game.

This will be one of the reason why this game wont be popular if ppl can't play the class they want. If they can't fix small problems like this it will continue to have 10k subs.

I'm still waiting for you how a mob being weak to a element makes it complex. Also you say if the remove it they all become the same. If anything most of the mage classes in XI was the same cause they all had the same water down spells so they could all do dmg equally cause they all needed fire,ice,wind,water,lighting,earth.

[DeadRiser]

My only problem with it is how focused blackmages are, single target if its resistant to lightning, don't bother, same with aoe and fire.

This... I think.

If it's resistant to lightening and there are too many strong mobs, you usually don't have a black mage in the party.

[Firon]

This... I think.

If it's resistant to lightening and there are too many strong mobs, you usually don't have a black mage in the party.

This is the problem I am speaking of. What if they want to make more classes that would use only water earth and wind spells. Then what you gonna lock ppl out of content cause of some silly ele wheel.

[Roj]

Surely the problem is not the elemental wheel but the fact that the single job that is supposed to be a magical attacker can't attack in every element. Maybe a non-elemental nuke is called for, ultima/shadowflare/comet/meteor etc have all been this type of spell in past FF games, why not do the same here?