Quote Originally Posted by Andrien View Post
THM/BLM is getting this casting animation. I like what I'm seeing now, and of course more unique animations will be like adding ice cream with the cake.

This is a CGI screenshot so you can't take it verbatim as to what ARR will use for BLM casting animation or spell effects.

As for the original topic, I would much rather see more varied spell effects between the levels than a different casting animation for each type of spell. I actually like the idea of each mage class having one unique casting animation (maybe varying between each race as well) than three or four per class.

I wish we could go back to a tiered system for a few reasons, but this is neither here nor there so long as we get scaled spell effects as we level. I want to see noticeable differences between a level 5 thm and a level 25 thm. It is one of the main reasons I went from being an advocate for mage classes to loathing the blm class in 1.0, blandness in spell effects (plus the overall boring-ness of using the same two spells over and over.)

As far as trying to make a balance between melee and mages, I am tired of this idea. In both animations and play-style, these two divisions in gameplay have been getting blended together more and more over the past few years in MMOs. Maybe it was just noticeable in 1.0 because the lack of choice in class options and it'll change once we actually get more than one magic DD.