Where will GEO end up?

[Hawklaser]

Been working on leveling GEO, and with looking at its gear and spells on top of the playing experience, I have to wonder where it is going to end up.

Its buffs, debuffs and nuke-ra spells push it to the front lines to get the most from them, but with being limited to mage gear staying up close will be problematic at best against enemies with aoe or hate reset attacks. GEO does get the WHM hammers and a B? club rating which would of made melee more of an option, if it had the gear to support it.

With the mage gear and elemental spells would think could stand back and nuke, but with only getting up to tier 4 nukes, and no native Magic Attack Bonus traits, the nuking option does not look promising. I remember seeing something detailing out the different effects of Cardinal Chant, but been unable to re-find it, and recall one direction being MAB. From having leveled SCH, I know how important those MAB traits are to nuking, so unless Cardinal Chant provides plenty of MAB when facing the right way, nuking may go by the wayside unless the nuke-ra spells are fairly potent as well, but that places back up front as a squishy mage.

So then it gets into the realm of playing like Bard. Which due to the radius of its buffs and the limit of one indi and one geo spell leads to problems as well. Have to choose between mob debuffs, front line buffs, or back line buffs and with only two being able to be up means have to choose carefully. Have no problem with that until look at Bard, and the good ones keep up two debuffs on the mob, two front line buffs, and two backline buffs, and does not need to stay close to the mob for its debuffs and front line buffs.

GEO's abilities push it to the front lines, but its gear and squishy-ness push it to the back lines. Does it have the tools naturally to be able to be an effective nuker? If it doesn't have the tools to effectively nuke, will it get gear options to make melee range more feasible? As currently its place is going to be decided more by Cardinal Chant's effects and potencey, and how useful the nuke-ra spells will be. Otherwise its going to be likely relegated to subbing WHM or RDM to help heal and haste groups.

So where will GEO end up? There is lots of promise to the job, but it seems to be pushed in a few directions while not appearing to have the tools needed to go in those directions.

[SpankWustler]

Looking at the job on paper: Geomancer has no buff to affect attack rate nor any kind of buff at all that provides any benefit in situations where attack and accuracy are capped. Geomancer can not switch parties to buff a whole alliance. Geomancer has to keep both itself and its Luopan alive to maintain two frontline buffs.

Unless something very unexpected makes the job useful, or efficiency isn't a concern, Geomancer's current place will probably be in the moghouse changing jobs.

[Karah]

Looking at the job on paper: Geomancer has no buff to affect attack rate nor any kind of buff at all that provides any benefit in situations where attack and accuracy are capped. Geomancer can not switch parties to buff a whole alliance. Geomancer has to keep both itself and its Luopan alive to maintain two frontline buffs.

Unless something very unexpected makes the job useful, or efficiency isn't a concern, Geomancer's current place will probably be in the moghouse changing jobs.

And a 100k deathwarp job @ level 1 since the other 21 jobs are 99! (100k being the price stupid people paid for petrified logs the day the expansion dropped).

[Luvbunny]

LOL yup not to mention it will cost you a nice 8 million gils when you buy all the scrolls from the NPC. I mean really if the goal is to make a job that is boosting the party, then they should give geomancer a minimum of 4 spells that it can cast to the party, even if it has to be split front and back end jobs. Right now it is so underwhelmingly bad. Regen aura is not as good as Scholar Regen V AOE + Perpetuance. Nuking is not so great compared to Blm. Magic defense does not hold a candle to WHM.... They do have some debuff spells to the enemy that could be useful - the same similar spells that Blue has. Those spells should have been given to RDM..... Geomancer - need a few updates to be actually useful. I would not even bother doing it, I am stopping mine at 41. Runefencer is where the money is at. They should just kill this job and give the spells to RDM, which is a job that should debuff and buff the party.

[leorez]

LOL yup not to mention it will cost you a nice 8 million gils when you buy all the scrolls from the NPC. I mean really if the goal is to make a job that is boosting the party, then they should give geomancer a minimum of 4 spells that it can cast to the party, even if it has to be split front and back end jobs. Right now it is so underwhelmingly bad. Regen aura is not as good as Scholar Regen V AOE + Perpetuance. Nuking is not so great compared to Blm. Magic defense does not hold a candle to WHM.... They do have some debuff spells to the enemy that could be useful - the same similar spells that Blue has. Those spells should have been given to RDM..... Geomancer - need a few updates to be actually useful. I would not even bother doing it, I am stopping mine at 41. Runefencer is where the money is at. They should just kill this job and give the spells to RDM, which is a job that should debuff and buff the party.

Its almost like the people who made the job dont actually play the game, which would really explain a lot of the poorly thought out designed elements to it.

[Luvbunny]

It took them a good one year or more to actually fix Scholar if I recall correctly. The same goes with campaign battle, and Walk of Echoes. ToAU is the one expansion with the least amount of problems. They had to tweak besieged mostly. If we want them to tweak the job, then we should compile a list of how it could have been better

[Delvish]

LOL yup not to mention it will cost you a nice 8 million gils when you buy all the scrolls from the NPC. I mean really if the goal is to make a job that is boosting the party, then they should give geomancer a minimum of 4 spells that it can cast to the party, even if it has to be split front and back end jobs. Right now it is so underwhelmingly bad. Regen aura is not as good as Scholar Regen V AOE + Perpetuance. Nuking is not so great compared to Blm. Magic defense does not hold a candle to WHM.... They do have some debuff spells to the enemy that could be useful - the same similar spells that Blue has. Those spells should have been given to RDM..... Geomancer - need a few updates to be actually useful. I would not even bother doing it, I am stopping mine at 41. Runefencer is where the money is at. They should just kill this job and give the spells to RDM, which is a job that should debuff and buff the party.

You likely haven't finished skilling GEO yet, so you don't know its full potential. I doubt anyone has gotten all of GEO's spells yet and skilled its spells to cap yet. Just be patient and see what it is capable of at its full potential.

[Hawklaser]

It took them a good one year or more to actually fix Scholar if I recall correctly. The same goes with campaign battle, and Walk of Echoes. ToAU is the one expansion with the least amount of problems. They had to tweak besieged mostly. If we want them to tweak the job, then we should compile a list of how it could have been better

Difference between SCH and GEO is that SCH actually had a better defined role starting out.

Biggest issue SCH had when it was released was until it started getting its helix spells in the 50's it had nothing to really set it apart from the existing mages. SCH was clearly a mage from the start, just did not have anything to really set it apart til later in levels.

GEO is all over the place currently. Gets non-aoe nukes at the same rate as RDM, so that doesn't lend to being a nuker much. Its buffs are auras with a rather small range, and when compare to other buffing jobs like Bard and COR it lags behind them in numbers and buff versatility. When look at the melee side, while it has some potential with clubs that gets lost due to current gear choices being pretty much pure mage and only being a B? rating for clubs.

Honestly, I think the best path might be to buff the melee side of GEO a bit by upping the Club skill to an A, and opening up some of the lighter armors for it. That would help keep it up near the mob where the majority of a normal party would be, while still leaving it the option to be useful on the backline for mobs you don't want a lot of people around. Otherwise /RDM and /WHM will be about the only options for subjobs for it just because of Cures and Haste.

[Imakun]

We really can't judge the new jobs after such a small amount of time since they were made available.
GEO doesn't have merits or artifact, relic and empyrean gear sets. Some of these things could have a huge impact on how the job plays.
We should also consider the possibility of an overhaul like the one SCH received after it's debut. I remember unlocking SCH and leveling it to 40 before the patch came. The difference was tremendous. One ability alone, Sublimation, changed the job completely.

I wouldn't dismiss GEO so quickly if I were you. Not until a respectable amount of time has passed.

[Luvbunny]

I wouldn't dismiss GEO so quickly if I were you. Not until a respectable amount of time has passed.

And when is a good amount of time? A year? two years? 5 years? PUP got their fixed in 2011, over 5 years after it was introduced in 2006. Sure we can say they are understaffed... but SE need to seriously use the cash we have been given them to reinvest in this game. Honestly we can just ignore this expansion at least till Sept or Dec, when it has a good amount of decent contents, and more adjustments are being made. Why are we still paying to be a beta tester? Oh and they need to make extra print of the Xbox editions.... or make it downloadable via Xbox Live service.