Quote Originally Posted by Enfarious View Post
The mobs we fight still have access to all of them, it wouldn't be hard, but we have a player base where the majority seem to enjoy this super easy thunder thunder thunder, cyclone cyclone cyclone method of play.
You failed to read between the lines when I mentioned benefits of not being fully committed to an element or school of magic. Having too many spells around makes the system feel disjointed. Even with options people still gravitate towards what gets them more bang for their buck, which is why every Black Mage in FFXI merited Thunder Pontency and went 5/5 Burst II. Likewise why every Red Mage that was not me went full 5/5 Ice Accuracy (whereas I went 3/5 Fire and 2/5 Ice, as I like Fire).
Solo Combos are about as anti team as you can get w/o saying do away with parties all together.
Not really. It encourages a DPS rotation. In the case of PLD it creates part of the priority system for tanking. Still far from what I would call complete, though.
I think he was referring more to the casting sequence strategy, where more control = more effectiveness, which would be *easier* by a lot in a single player game -- not the positions, where it would honestly be harder to control AI for than players.
Yes, this is what I was referring to.

As an aside, I think you went to lengths to explain things as if they were to actually happen. This is fine up to a point, but again, I don't think it has a place in an MMORPG. If it were part of the magic system for The Last Story 2, then I could see it being interesting and having some depth.

At the same time, the base of your idea can work, but much like the initial part of your proposal would involve some pretty drastic changes. The interaction and additional effects of elemental spells should be noted and useful.

At the same time, the hard part is that you don't have a real "theme" behind casters to build on. At least, not in the way you could open with Scorch if moving or Fireball if standing still, using Pyroblast when Hot Streak procs and if you end up with multiple DoT effects on the mob can use Combustion to add an additional DoT effect that does the combined damage of ALL the other DoTs on the mob. Or opening with Frostbolt and hope it afflicts the mob with a freeze effect, cast Ice Lance if so followed by a down-ranked Frostbolt followed by an Ice Lance to create a shatter combo. The importance in both models being that abilities build on each other. Despite the disdain some show to the combo system for spells, it has taken a step in that direction. The problem is that the system is missing extra things like procs, situational spells that can be weaved in if the conditions are met and so on.