Spellcasters! 4 elements. They are the same all the time???

Spellcasters! 4 elements. They are the same all the time??? By Benjamin He keep an eye of the things going around the communities in the mmo games, and general games, also getting whatever info he can get into his hands, then for some reason, something new pops up out of his head. Maybe one day something amazing appears from this process, after all this goes on and on, for now...

Hey peeps, recently I opened up a discussion in the forums about which element is your favorite one when you play a spellcaster, mage, elementalist, or any other character who use this so called Classic Elements as their weapons of mass destruction… LOL! I know some people answer it, some others look at it with the face of a warrior. But after looking at the answers and the general info of some games DPS classes. I notice that the so called 4 elements or classic elements are always built up using some sort of standard ruleset, like a stereotype in all mmos.

Some people don't like this word that much, Stereotype, some others believe that all stereotypes are all wrong, other like myself think that stereotypes are there for a reason and have some usefulness, after all they didn't appeared from nowhere, that is what I am going to talk about here…

The Stereotypes of the elements in the so called Nukers, spellcaster, mage, elementalist, wizard an d many other names…

The First Element: Fire – Flames – Heat – Burning - Incendiary!!!!

Full Size

Full Size

That's right people, if you are a fire starter then you are going to be the first one here. This element by default is always the Nuker! The one that does a lot of damage in a short time span. No matter the game, you will always find some sort of magic related to fire, after all the fire is what drives pyromanics crazy, we don't know how many Pyros work on mmos as developers or something else, but one thing is for sure, the fire wakes up our most instinctual feelings of destruction, no wonder that developers have this concept of fire and portray it as the element of Nuking! Sometimes at the style of AoE, some other times as Spike damage or DOTing you.

If you love the fire element in any spellcaster class, then you really have a nice idea of what power is, keep going you are going to be a badass player one day.

The Second Element: Water – Ice- Frost – Cold – Cryogenic!!!!

Full Size

This element was not so straight forward like the fire until WoW came out in 2004, after that the role of this element is pretty much clear, slow down your opponents and beat the crap out of them, or if you can't beat them, then cover up their feet with ice and run!!!! This element, Water – Ice… Is cold and calm, no wonder they do less damage than fire, but at the same time it have something that fire doesn't have, and that is some sort of crowd control. This is proving to be very effective in PvP because it gives you a perfect equilibrium between damage and defense! Beat the crap out of another player and at the same time keep your distance… In case of emergencies, a bunch of frozen water.. I mean Ice! Can protect you for a while…

If Water is your thing in mmos, no matter its temperature, boiling or frozen, you really have a sense of Subtlety, or maybe you are trying to be safer at the expense of DPS.

The Third Element: Earth – Soil – Stone – Rock – Mud? – Terrain!!

Full Size

This element is a bit blurry on its role, each game portraits it a bit different, I know the difference is not a lot but it still something that I need to mention because this is clear evidence that this element is not all that obvious as it looks like. The first role of the Earth element is to protect you, normally all the skills and spells using Earth as an element will increase your armor, decrease the damage you take, shield you against X type of damage and so on. It looks like the general notion is that the terrain is solid and for that reason anything related to the earth will harden you up… Ow! I am so Hard now like no big time!

But this doesn't stop there in some other games the Earth element is related to 'Dots' or Damage Over Time. The logic behind this is probably because the Earth, the Soil below us have the ability of causing erosion, people take erosion like something bad, like a decay or disrepair. If you combine that thinking with a mmo mechanic, you can get a DoT spell easility.