geomancer announced

[Merton9999]

wait they gave details on how GEO works? where can i see ;_;

There's a little bit of info up here:

http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/event/vanafest2012/

The live feed yesterday went into more detail.

- By creating extensive fields of beneficial energy around themselves for their allies to enter, they support the whole party.
The live feed mentioned positive effects like refresh, regen, regain and magic defense. Negative effects would be paralyze, slow and magic defense down.

- The ability to place luopans (temporary name) where their brethren stand helps impart various beneficial effects upon them.
Additional details were that these luopans would have "HP" so they could be destroyed over time, like from mob AOE attacks. They also mentioned that once placed on a party member, the luopon would not move with that person. It would be attached to the geography instead of the person, unlike the Geomancer's own field.

- Their job trait Polarity (temporary name) allows geomancers to receive different bonuses to their elemental magic spells depending on the direction they face when casting.
I forget what each direction corresponded with, but it was something like this: if the Geomancer is south of the monster, their magic receives a magic attack bonus. If north of the monster, magic accuracy. One of the others was fast cast, and I forget the last direction's effect.

- Geomancers employ a new style of elemental magic that affects areas surrounding their comrades and is greatly enhanced by Polarity.
This says a new kind of magic but the live feed mentioned up to tier IV elemental spells and also some dark magic. They said -ga elemental was not planned, but Geomancer would have access to -ra spells and would be designed to cast them best. So, Protectra/Shellra and the AOE bar spells? The latter would make sense to me for Geomancer. In fact, I hope that's the job that finally gets barlumina, barnocta and the dual-element bar spells that have been in the .dats forever. For offensive magic, I'd be glad if it were new spells and animations instead of just spreading the same elemental spells four jobs already have to Geomancer.

Additionally, it was stated Geomancer would use bells specific to the job. No mention was made of offensive equipment like clubs or daggers. Maybe the bells will be treated like BRD instruments.

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Personally I'm excited. If I would have made a future job wish list in 2004, it would have included only Blue Mage, Geomancer and Calculator. All three people have gone at length to insist would never work in XI and now two of them have been added. IMO there's always a way to fit a design from the past in XI. SE just has to be creative about it. I've been happy with the BLU and SCH implementation, hopefully I'll be happy with GEO.

My opinion so far is it sounds like RDM and SCH with BRD's position sensitivity. Sure these effects would have made sense for RDM but RDM-type abilities going to new jobs instead of RDM is nothing new. Given the choice I'd rather have a new job to play with than a bunch of things added to an existing job. Balance or fairness has never concerned me as much as variety. With a dozen DD jobs, I'll always welcome different concepts for filling the same roles of nuking, enhancing and enfeebling, especially when they sound as involved as this.