Am I doing something wrong?Follow

I first played Thaumaturge to 8 before deciding to rank up Conjurer a bit. I have no problem grinding out some mobs, and I can kill some Very Tough and Incredibly Tough mobs. I just feel like I'm not playing as a caster though, well not in an offensive way. Since MP is somewhat limited, I try and conserve spell casts for Shock Spikes and Cures. I might use a couple of extra spells on more difficult fights but that's pretty much it, and I just spam my cane's attack.

I feel like nukes are a waste of MP, I went a fairly heavy INT build and even then I feel like I'm better off spamming the default weapon's attack. Essentially I feel like a Red Mage from Final Fantasy XI. All I do is buff and debuff, and keep myself alive with Cures and damage mitigation while I slowly whittle down the mob I'm fighting with the equivalent of auto attacks. Both Conjurer and Thaumaturge actually just feel like a Red Mage with all his spells and abilities split into two, then given a couple of other things here and there. This isn't a terrible thing if that's the play style you want, but so far up to Rank 10 Conjurer I don't see myself being able to output a respectable amount of damage with spells. I even tried combining some things from Thaumaturge such as 'Blood Rite' to cause damage to myself but deal extra to the enemy. It's just not worth it.

I also don't care for how they hand you all of the elemental nukes at the same time, and they're more or less the same. You basically just equip the one that the enemy you're fighting is weak to and even then it isn't that much more effective than the rest.

So again, am I doing something wrong? Am I not understand the roles of the two DoM's? I was hoping an offensive mage was a possibility and early on it doesn't seem so. Is there a point later in the game where they magically begin to shine? FFXI did have a number of jobs that began as lack luster and really excelled later on. I'm hoping that is the case here as well.

Edited, Sep 12th 2010 6:59pm by Jeraziah

I'm very glad to hear that, thanks for the info. I got my Conjurer to 12 and Thaumaturge to 10, but I'm gonna ease up on the leveling since were so close to release anyway. I don't wanna burn out early on =p

Maintaining MP for nuking won't be a problem if you just keep leveling up. Thaumaturges have several abilities that give MP gain or regeneration: Exaltation, Stygian Spikes, Siphon MP, and Damnation all give MP back to the caster. Exaltation is an ability, and Damnation is a weapon skill, so you wouldn't even be using MP to recover MP.