Elemental Wheel, What's the point?

[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.

[Duelle]

You're assuming that the situation Blizzard created in WoW is desired by everyone playing any MMO everywhere.

Anti-WoW stance aside, it's been proven to work and is leaps and bounds ahead of pretty much anything SE attempted in Final Fantasy XI. The question is really "do you want everyone to have a shot at participating without compromising their favorite jobs/classes/playstyles?". If the answer is yes, then my pointing to something that actually works and doesn't feel like it's designed with ifs and buts for the sake of being different is obvious and proper.

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 never said anything about elements meaning nothing. The example I mentioned happens to be from something I saw first hand. I've been in raids that failed because we ended up having a member that happened to play a class and spec that some mobs in the raid instance were immune to. That would possibly be a non-factor here, provided the guys with the elemental spells have access to all elements to switch things up and requiring them to know how the elements work. It was more a word of caution because such scenarios are possible, and when they happen, you're boned no matter how you look at it. It's one thing to play on elemental weaknesses...provided you are also given the tools to exploit said weaknesses within your class/job. It's another when something is immune to your tools and you have nothing within your job/class' arsenal to actually make yourself useful.

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.

This is easier said than done, Ramsey. It's close to impossible to create unless you distribute types of damage evenly between classes/jobs, because the moment one has the upper hand in any way shape or form, they become the must and others are kicked to the curb. You and I have seen plenty of this happen in FFXI to know it.

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.

Considering it assures that your choices and playstyles are respected, you are still a viable choice for a group, and on top of that prevents the exclusion of others from content, I can't see why anyone would be so opposed to it. It becomes a matter of whether you are online when the group is being made, not what class you happen to be at the time invites start going out.

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.

Considering anyone can make a balanced raid provided you have the appropriate number of tanks, healers and DPS, with classes and specs being the least of your worries because what you're looking for is people to fill the roles, I beg to differ. That aside, I never called WoW's balancing perfect. I used it as an example to show that balancing jobs to perform close to one another is possible because jobs being interchangable for roles means that if you happen to like playing DRG and there's a DPS spot open in a party, you're not going to get asked to change to MNK or BLM when stuff starts getting "real". Or shall I say, the group's success would not hinge on it.

As for the hybrid apocalypse, you seem to not understand the notion of it, so I'll explain:

"If X can do Y as well or close to Z, then there is no point for Z to exist because X can also do T".

That is what we call the Hybrid Apocalypse, because it was presented back when paladins were arguing to get melee buffs so that they could be something other than healers in raids. The naysayers would come in and say asinine things like how no one would play any other class or spec, you'd have full-paladin raids and how paladins would consume the world (of Warcraft) like a swarm of locusts. None actually happened; people still played warriors, rogues, death knights, mages, hunters, druids, and shaman. Red Mages in XI argued for melee buffs and idiots of the same vein would troll our threads and tell us if RDM could melee no one would play any other job and RDMs would take over the world. You're basically presenting an altered version of the same argument, which has been debunked. Hence why I said, an altered version of the Hybrid Apocalypse.