Quote Originally Posted by Laume View Post
If I may interject here. When I played whm/cnj in 1.21+, clerical stance was a GREAT equalizer. I can do decent damage (not as much as my thm with all the buffs unless I'm using an element that a mob is weak against.) but I couldn't heal myself to save my life... literally... So, given the down time of casting and recasting clerical stance, I had to pick and choose (sometimes, to my death) when I wanted to nuke and when I wanted to heal. My solo strategy with whm/cnj (cnj, mostly.I used some archer skills to keep me alive from time to time.) was to blow as much mp in damage as I can before my stoneskin wore off. Not exactly a good strategy for a nuking job.

And correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like the main concerns are that:
A) cnj/whm's shouldn't be able to replace thm/blm's for their role.
B) cnj/whm's shouldn't be the main DD.

So I'd like to suggest (because I did play thm/blm too) that maybe it's not that cnj/whm's are over powered, but that thm/blm's are underpowered. I mean, I think all people that played thm/blm can agree that burst and flare does a surprisingly small amount of damage for the mp that it costs. Would it satisfy both sides if they just made blm's more powerful? Or/and if they gave thm/blm's a good amount of debuffs?

And as for cnj's being main DD's, the truth is, unless the party is made up 4+ whm's, that's really not going to happen. We just don't have the mp pool to do that and heal. (Not to mention, it's a waste since we're more apt to healing than nuking anyways.)
In my opinion, what made WHM extremely strong solo was actually a mix between Stoneskin and Regen, along with their elemental nukes.

You could effectively full buff > pop cleric stance > throw on a regen > nuke until SS wore > throw on another regen and SS. I barely ever actually casted "Cure" when solo'ing.

I do like your opinion though.

As for the concerns -
- The game does not utilize the elemental chain/affinity/wheel/whatever, creating a fairly bland magic/spellcasting system.
- Half of this elemental chain is gimped, as it is on a main healer in whom would be overpowered if the Aero/Stone spells were to be buffed or expanded on.
- BLM is currently quite a boring job to play. This is totally just opinion, however fixing the elemental chain would slightly improve their mechanics.
- WHM (based on the original suggestion) would not truly be affected - aside from reduced elemental affinity. Their nuking and solo capacity would still stay the same, however it would not have to tie into the elemental chain and effectively opens it up to be expanded on.

I sort of disagree with the MP pool issue. The only end game content I have experienced where WHM's can run out of MP is IE and from time to time Princess in CC (usually with a PUG :P) just because the fights are long. The other content we have never personally had MP issues that I can think of. Most of our WHM's nuke half the time during boss fights. Garuda was a snooze fest until phase 3..

BLM is definitely not under powered. They are one of the most desired jobs for a good chunk of end game content. The issue is that they are boring to play most of the time (once again, opinion), they don't have very much flexibility in spells, targeting weaknesses and generally become a 123 spam (with slight variation of course.. Throw blizzard and fires in there from time to time).