Removing elemental nukes from WHM

[stanleyyoung]

i almost can't believe that there are so many ppl that cannot move on or adjust to changes even opposed to anything different. Like i said it only takes the slightest change to cause riots & uproar whether its a change in weapon or few skills/abilities or slight alteration in a said job role.

The fact that bard has a bow & shoots stuff to some ppl is plain unacceptable or how whm has three spells and its the worst thing in the whole world. I even seen talk about blue mage if it doesn't have scimitars then SE might as well not add it or dark knight for that matter. If SE were to copy & paste drk exactly from XI with one slight change that it can only use great swords not scythes that ppl will want SE heads on sticks. The list can go on and on with any job to be added in 14 and the ppl thinking/mindset "If it ain't the same from XI, Then we don't want it & will not accept it" gets old and is plain annoying.

Its nice to see that there are some ppl like me who want a game that's unique, fun, and will not only stand out in the rpg genre but the FF franchise itself seeing people open to change and looking for something new/different is cool and good. I personally like how SE not only keeps to tradition but always tries to do something new and be innovative its why i mainly only play FF rpg games. I always have the nostalgia when i play a FF game but seeing SE bringing new things in is great. I personally am at the point where i only play FF rpg's and other rpg's out always boil down to me saying: this game is ok,good, fun, etc etc but its just not Final Fantasy.

[Mychael]

That is actually wrong.
Quake was a BLM spell in the following FF's:
-FF1
-FF3
-FF4
-FF6
-FF11
(I didn't mention 7&8 due to their spell systems, however see the trend?)

FF1: Quake attempts to instantly kill an enemy by swallowing them into the ground.
It is not an earth elemental spell.

FF3: Quake is a Level 7 Black Magic spell that causes major Earth-elemental damage. Only the Jobs Black Mage, Magus, Sage, and Onion Knight can use this spell. It can be bought in Doga's Village and in the Invincible.
It is not exclusive to BLM, though it is black magic in FF3.

FF4: In this version it is a non-elemental spell that damages all non-flying enemies and ignores Reflect.
Non-elemental

FF6,FF7, FF8--Quake is an earth elemental spell, but is not really attributed to a "class."

FF11: The only game where Black Mage exclusively receives Quake as an earth elemental spell.

FF13: Is not a spell, but a technique (that does deal earth elemental damage) learned by pretty much every character, in different roles of the crystarium.

FF Tactics: Quake is Planar Magic.

Crystal Chronicles RoF: Quake = piling Fire, Thunder, Cure, and Clear. It inflicts stun on the enemy

Crystal Chronicles EoT: A pillar of rock erupts from beneath the enemy, sending it flying into the air and inflicting a stun effect after landing.

See the trend?

Googling and reading FF wiki might not be the best way to argue.

If 1 class had all the elements, the elemental affinity would be a more viable mechanic, along with some slight spell adjustments, without overhauling a functional job, to make a boring job more fun and exciting.

If one class had all elements, then either that class would be grossly overpowered (having an advantage against almost any mob) or the bonus from using the "correct" element would have to be so minimal that it barely existed (as you would ALWAYS be using the mob's weakness).

CNJ is always going to have the "healer" tag associated with it, despite its ability to deal damage.

This is an issue in and of itself. There will almost definitely be a DD job that comes out of conjurer at some point. The game isn't even launched yet. The job system is barely developed.

This basically means that the elements associated with this class are inevitably going to be gimped, as you can't have 2 equally powerful damage spellcasters, but 1 of which can also heal.. Thus it reduces the chance of elemental affinity being viable.

I don't follow. CNJ is a decent attacker and decent healer. WHM is a great healer and decent attacker. In both cases, DDing takes away from ability to cure, and vice-versa--you can't deal decent damage WHILE keeping a party alive in difficult content. THM is a great attacker. Both are unique, and neither is making the other useless.

Divine spells are iconic to WHM.

Divine spells are iconic to WHM, but one could argue the same for earth, air, and water spells

Once again, the CNJ and THM lore is already butchered because of the changes in early 1.0. I don't see "stripping CNJ of their elemental affinity" when there is little to no affinity in the version we know. Removing them from the skillset would help create one. Simplifying the elementals to one class would help improve the ability to take advantage of affinity and actually make it a game mechanic

The THM lore that we know from 1.0 is butchered; I wasn't in alpha, but I believe that will change for 2.0. I'll try to find the dev post I'm thinking of.

CNJ lore, however, never was truly butchered. Though I argued that it was at one point, the fact is we retained control of the three elements that really appeared in the Shroud (and if you're at all familiar with the lore, you'll understand why those would be the three that matter).

No, I am trying to improve the mechanic of a boring job, by slightly modifying another with a few name changes and animations . . At the moment, I only play BLM when I absolutely *have* to. I am sure a lot of people are in that boat, because it is currently (as we know) a fairly simplistic/boring job. I don't care if it is "my ideal and perfect BLM", I just care for playing a job that is both fun and engaging. Currently it is not.

Out of context, the bulk of this segment could describe ANY job. I think you vastly overestimate how "fun" it would be to have to stalk out the wiki page of EVERY mob you encounter to determine its weakness so you could optimize your damage.

Also, you sound tense. I think you need a massage.

No one else took you up on this offer, but... how much do you charge for a half hour? ;D

[Bowen]

This is an issue in and of itself. There will almost definitely be a DD job that comes out of conjurer at some point. The game isn't even launched yet. The job system is barely developed.

I don't follow. CNJ is a decent attacker and decent healer. WHM is a great healer and decent attacker. In both cases, DDing takes away from ability to cure, and vice-versa--you can't deal decent damage WHILE keeping a party alive in difficult content. THM is a great attacker. Both are unique, and neither is making the other useless.

Very much this. The job that could come from CNJ could be a Geomancer/Elementalist (Though, Elementalist would probably be confusing considering the localization of CNJ in other languages.) that would focus on using terrain magic.

The same could be said for THM. They could make another Job (Necromancer?) that gets all it's old Sacrifice and resurrection spells back.

CNJ lore, however, never was truly butchered. Though I argued that it was at one point, the fact is we retained control of the three elements that really appeared in the Shroud (and if you're at all familiar with the lore, you'll understand why those would be the three that matter).

I remember this faintly. There's an egg the CNJ's have, a Dragon Egg (I think.), that is associated with Wind. Their Patron Goddess, Nophica (I think.), is a goddess of Earth and plenty. So, naturally, it can be seen why those three elements were chosen. Earth for the soil, water to make the soil fertile, and wind to scatter the seeds.

[Kinseykinz]

Once again I will state that I never said it would totally "fix" the issue, it would just improve its current effectiveness. I never denied that the spells themselves need to be reworked / tweaked in order to allow the community to actually use elemental affinity, however splitting the spells on seperate classes means to truly take advantage of affinity you would have to pick between the "inconic" elemental caster vs. the elemental/healer hybrid. I don't deny that WHM can do some damage, but pigeon holing the job advertised as the "mage damage dealer" into only 50% of the elements isn't exactly favourable to elemental affinity.

2 things about this:
1. Even if SE did give the current level 50 version of Black Mage ALL the Elemental Spells, you would not be happy because in order to balance the gameplay, Black Mages nukes would have to be very weak, have no enfeebling effects and would probably result in a loss of the 'Ancient Magic' Tier spells for the moment as there would be too many spells for the amount of skills/spells/abilities we can currently have.
2. You said yourself: Black Mage= 'Mage Damage Dealer' So why do they HAVE to have the Elemental Magic? Damage spells are not limited to 'elemental'.

No, I am trying to improve the mechanic of a boring job, by slightly modifying another with a few name changes and animations . . At the moment, I only play BLM when I absolutely *have* to. I am sure a lot of people are in that boat, because it is currently (as we know) a fairly simplistic/boring job. I don't care if it is "my ideal and perfect BLM", I just care for playing a job that is both fun and engaging. Currently it is not.

The same logic could be applied to those of us asking you 'Why take these specific from CNJ/WHM to fix this 'boring' job' The reality is: 'Thunder' is just game-code. You are not shooting actual lightning bolts out your wrists killing real-life dragons. The devs could make the spell look like a pink pansy shooting out the black mages butt if they wanted to...so the 'Stone' spell or 'Aero' spell themselves will NOT fix a job you think is broken. That requires reworking the actual job and it's skillset. This can be effectively done WITHOUT stealing skills from other roles. There is no reason why BLM can't have 'Umbral Spike' etc.

Once again this thread isn't totally proposing this to be changed because realistically - it won't happen. The game is too far along to fix elemental affinity to something usable in the state that it is in. The thread was more of a discussion, to gather ideas or speculate what and how it [i]could[i] be improved.

If 1 class had all the elements, the elemental affinity would be a more viable mechanic, along with some slight spell adjustments, without overhauling a functional job, to make a boring job more fun and exciting.

..except what you are wanting to do is exactly that overhauling a functional job, to make a boring job more fun and exciting And if that was your goal with your Original Post all along, an effective title would have been something like 'Ideas for Making BLM more exciting' or 'Can Blackmage be more than a one-trick pony in ARR?' or 'New spell options for BLM to encourage more engaged gameplay'. and not 'Hey lets take spells from that pretty mage overthere...that'll make everything better'.

Also, lets just say that SE DID change the Mages spell tree so that BLM did aquire Stone, Stonera, Aero and Aerora. What 4 Spells/abilities should Black Mage/THM give up to gain these spells? ( you'd need to give up 6 if you expect their 'Ancient' counterparts as well) Because every job/class needs to be balanced in how many abilities/spells/skills they have.

Again, we're only MIDGAME level... if you notice, yes, White Mage CAN cast 2 elemental magics...Stone and Aero. But they CANNOT cast the 'Ancient Magic' counterpart. More than likely, Black Mage will get Quake, Flood and Tornado as 'Ancient Magics' and WHM will unlock bigger heals and restorative spells once level caps are raised.

[Alaltus]

Lore aside, since that seems to be the biggest defense in removing CNJ/WHM's elemental spells, giving the elements back to BLM would create a better battle mechanic for BLM, introduce less thunder-only-spam, and potentially make BLM a much more fun job to play, while truly not affecting WHM's ability to deal damage.

Except the issue isn't that Black Mage doesn't have all the elements. Which players like to forget, it's that the three elements they do have aren't usable most of the time besides thunder. Fix their elements and voila problem solved.

This won't really happen, I am 99% sure of it, however it is slightly bothersome to me how BLM will indeed miss a large portion of iconic BLM spells (ancient magic) and WHM will miss their iconic divine nukes. Giving these spells to a completely different class will throw a lot of things out of wack I feel.

Black Mage might miss some nukes it has been able to cast like Quake, Tornado and Flood but i imagine White Mage will get Holy spells unlocked no matter what happens. Just let Black Mage weild the Dark Element/Non Elemental spells its not outside their lore to do so. Like why not have a Bio nuke again like in past games? i'm sure SE could make it work. Give them spells to make up for times when they cannot take advantage of a weakness they dont always need to be doing optimal damage.

So if everyone were to ignore the lore for just one moment, do you not agree that it would improve the battle mechanic of BLM to give them the 6 elements, and reintroduce elemental affinity that actually means something? Is giving WHM's equivalent spells to their current skillset, with different names and animations not enough?

This is a genuine question, and the reason I made the thread in the first place really. I mean something like this in the lore can easily be adjusted. Our whole continent practically blew up, what is to say that Conjurers didn't turn to higher powers (divine).

Yes and no... giving Black Mage all the elements isn't a magic wand, it won't magically fix the issues Black Mage currently has especially if those spells end up utility based like the rest. The issue is that Utility is getting in the way of making the decision to take advantage of a weakness. So long as they dont fix that you will find that Black Mage can't and wont make full use of the Elements they weild however many that may be.

[Gemma]

Lore aside, since that seems to be the biggest defense in removing CNJ/WHM's elemental spells, giving the elements back to BLM would create a better battle mechanic for BLM, introduce less thunder-only-spam, and potentially make BLM a much more fun job to play, while truly not affecting WHM's ability to deal damage.

I might have unleashed a bit of a monster in creating this topic as some WHM's would probably be a bit butthurt to see their beloved elemental spells go, but replacing them with an equal alternative wouldn't be enough?

As for the comments about RDM getting divine nukes - that blows a lot of FF lore out the window in my opinion as they have been fairly exclusive to WHM from the FF's that I have played at least. Not to mention I truly hope to see RDM develop into the true fighting mage that it was originally meant to be in XI (but became broken). That topic aside . . .

This won't really happen, I am 99% sure of it, however it is slightly bothersome to me how BLM will indeed miss a large portion of iconic BLM spells (ancient magic) and WHM will miss their iconic divine nukes. Giving these spells to a completely different class will throw a lot of things out of wack I feel.

In 1.0 there was very little elemental affinity. I mean it was there, but no one really used strengths / weaknesses because spells were split up among classes. BLM's mechanic was basically "if it's strong to thunder - cast fire, and if it's strong to fire - cast thunder, everything else - cast thunder".

Of course 2.0 comes with changes, however I don't think it's smart to speculate how / if the spells will have changed to a large degree. Currently BLM is pretty damn boring for a mage class. Sure you land some high numbers, but the 123 spam gets old, and adding elemental affinity in there I think would make it *slightly* more interesting.

So if everyone were to ignore the lore for just one moment, do you not agree that it would improve the battle mechanic of BLM to give them the 6 elements, and reintroduce elemental affinity that actually means something? Is giving WHM's equivalent spells to their current skillset, with different names and animations not enough?

This is a genuine question, and the reason I made the thread in the first place really. I mean something like this in the lore can easily be adjusted. Our whole continent practically blew up, what is to say that Conjurers didn't turn to higher powers (divine).

Also on a side note, I thought it was amusing that one of the rewards for the THM guild in 1.0 was a wind brand.. Obviously the adjustments made in early 1.0 (can't remember which patch) ignored the THM lore..

If you want to have access to stone and aero spells whats the big deal playing thm? I do it. I actually prefer thm over blm so I CAN use those spells. With thm I have way more survivability, too squishy as blm lol. BLM doesnt have to have all the elemental spells, for the OP to say whm is "butthurt" (freakin hate that stupid term -_-) it sounds more like you are "butthurt" that BLM isnt all super badass.

You want a more valid reason other then lore reasons, but will it really make a difference to you? You're still going to think blm needs all the elemental spells and whm needs light spells. It's not going to change so I just don't really see the point in ppl fighting or name calling about it. WHM is an advanced version of CNJ. CNJ uses aero/stone. you take that away from whm then you take it away from cnj and you've just messed up a good chunk of how Eorzea is suppose to work.

I think lore is a pretty good reason on its own. I personally like the lore how its set up now.
Besides someone brought up the good point earlier that 50 isn't always going to be the cap.

[Altena]

If you want to have access to stone and aero spells whats the big deal playing thm? I do it. I actually prefer thm over blm so I CAN use those spells. With thm I have way more survivability, too squishy as blm lol. BLM doesnt have to have all the elemental spells, for the OP to say whm is "butthurt" (freakin hate that stupid term -_-) it sounds more like you are "butthurt" that BLM isnt all super badass.

I couldn't give a rats about mages all in all. I barely play them and only play them if I have to. At the moment BLM is boring, so I simply wished it was less-so. THM can't use Stardust Rod. People don't build the top tier stuff to sit in a locker.

You want a more valid reason other then lore reasons, but will it really make a difference to you? You're still going to think blm needs all the elemental spells and whm needs light spells. It's not going to change so I just don't really see the point in ppl fighting or name calling about it. WHM is an advanced version of CNJ. CNJ uses aero/stone. you take that away from whm then you take it away from cnj and you've just messed up a good chunk of how Eorzea is suppose to work.

I am not completely close minded, and if someone has suggestions on improving the currently boring battle mechanic that BLM has, I am yet to see that post. To be honest I think there are a lot more close minded CNJ lovers on here.. I would like things to change but I won't go raging at everyone that doesn't want it changed, like others seem to be.

I think lore is a pretty good reason on its own. I personally like the lore how its set up now.
Besides someone brought up the good point earlier that 50 isn't always going to be the cap.

As I mentioned, CNJ will always have the "healer" tag associated with it. You will be gimping the elements associated with CNJ by having this tag - simply because for balance reasons WHM cannot ever be as strong as BLM in regards to nuking. What would you pick? A job that can nuke, or a job that can nuke & heal with no handicap?

[Shougun]

THM: http://ffxiv.zam.com/en/abilitylist.html?class=22&page=1
CNJ: http://ffxiv.zam.com/en/abilitylist....ip=1&order_by=


how crap down memory lane lol (tbh I miss all the options and slotting)

[Altena]

THM: http://ffxiv.zam.com/en/abilitylist.html?class=22&page=1
CNJ: http://ffxiv.zam.com/en/abilitylist....ip=1&order_by=


how crap down memory lane lol (tbh I miss all the options and slotting)

I forgot how wack those skillsets were.

[Reika]

I forgot how wack those skillsets were.

The current skillsets are wack. THMs old skillset went with the lore behind it before they decided to make it the black mage of the game. The current skillset does not.

Just like cnj's old skill set went with it before they hazardously decided to make it the white mage of the game.

They had to change the lore of both in order to create a partial black mage. I was totally fine with the lore of cnj when there were no jobs, it being in tune with -The elements- which are more than just 3 elements, all of them, and thm being practitioners of the more darker arts and not trying to be elementalists, but like we are asking for here, having different types of attacks at its disposal that still worked quite well.

If WHM went to having just banish and holy, that would be quite enough because banish and scourge was enough for THM back in the day since it was the better healer at the time.