2011-04-11, 06:35 AM
A few things I'd love to see done but won't:
1. Remove Magic Guard entirely, give us the HP growth of archers. I've no idea if that'd be enough, but other than teleport mastery archmages are usually far away enough from the action. Maybe give us more defense to compensate.
2. Revamp the summons completely. No more silly disembodied golems with three frames of animation, give me something cool to look at, then make them invaluable assets to have around, instead of being things you sometimes bother to keep summoned they need to do good damage, to be quick on the uptake, and not be so stupid. Another cool thing to do would be if they had one or two secondary, maybe passive effects that really made you want to max them right away I don't know, something like leeching HP back to you from the damage they do, a matk bonus, something. Archmages need to have more skills that are actually worth maxing.
3. Make an elemental strafe skill out of the composition arrows and make that the bossing skill, with some form of upgrade to be had from maxing a fourth job skill to reach its max potential. That obviously comes with an overhaul of the skill graphics.
4. Get rid of Fire and Ice Demon. They're done, they're history, they're part of a combo attack that never really worked, or saw much use, and their graphics are also hopelessly simple and unappealing to boot. As long as they play the same role in combat as Paralyze/Chain Lightning one will just outclass the other once it gets stronger, and that's just ugly design.
5. Some form of DoT reform, perhaps. I haven't played my F/P much since, but it was kind of annoying to have to use so many skills at a boss to keep DoT up for basically a marginal amount of damage compared to what Paralyze alone could do, and maybe that could change in some way. One thing that'd be neat to see would be to get rid of Buff Mastery and instead give us some form of Poison Mastery skill that potentialized DoT damage and drove home the point that F/Ps have poison in their names for a reason.
1. Remove Magic Guard entirely, give us the HP growth of archers. I've no idea if that'd be enough, but other than teleport mastery archmages are usually far away enough from the action. Maybe give us more defense to compensate.
2. Revamp the summons completely. No more silly disembodied golems with three frames of animation, give me something cool to look at, then make them invaluable assets to have around, instead of being things you sometimes bother to keep summoned they need to do good damage, to be quick on the uptake, and not be so stupid. Another cool thing to do would be if they had one or two secondary, maybe passive effects that really made you want to max them right away I don't know, something like leeching HP back to you from the damage they do, a matk bonus, something. Archmages need to have more skills that are actually worth maxing.
3. Make an elemental strafe skill out of the composition arrows and make that the bossing skill, with some form of upgrade to be had from maxing a fourth job skill to reach its max potential. That obviously comes with an overhaul of the skill graphics.
4. Get rid of Fire and Ice Demon. They're done, they're history, they're part of a combo attack that never really worked, or saw much use, and their graphics are also hopelessly simple and unappealing to boot. As long as they play the same role in combat as Paralyze/Chain Lightning one will just outclass the other once it gets stronger, and that's just ugly design.
5. Some form of DoT reform, perhaps. I haven't played my F/P much since, but it was kind of annoying to have to use so many skills at a boss to keep DoT up for basically a marginal amount of damage compared to what Paralyze alone could do, and maybe that could change in some way. One thing that'd be neat to see would be to get rid of Buff Mastery and instead give us some form of Poison Mastery skill that potentialized DoT damage and drove home the point that F/Ps have poison in their names for a reason.