Give GEO Clear Mind PLEASE

[Alhanelem]

GEO, unlike all other mages, does not have access to Clear Mind. While it does have Aspir and Aspir II, many enemies can't be aspir'd. Indi-Refresh is woefully inadequate when you frist obtain it and is only worthwhile to use when your skill is capped- even then, it's no better than other refresh sources but has a huge MP cost, particularly the Geo- version.

In short, GEO gets horrible MP recovery. In this day and age having to wait a few eternities for your MP to come back is... annoying, to say the least.

I like the job, but every useful effect costs a ton of MP and GEO's MP pool is not that high. Better MP recovery is essential.

[Merton9999]

I agree. I soloed several levels and found the lack of clear mind annoying as well. I know we have the trail cookies now, but that prevents the use of other food helpful for solo longevity and speed.

It seems SE took an overly cautious stance on GEO spell MP costs given the fact that they're all AOE. They may think a 63 MP cost for indi-refresh is small given its potency in later levels and compared to the 80 MP cost of SCH/RDM accessioned refresh. However, the problem is SCH/RDM can also use a single target version for solo and duo content, whereas GEO has only the AOE option and the proximity issue. If I'm soloing or duoing (the latter is what I spend most of my time on), GEO's AOE refresh is terribly expensive in comparison. Never mind the 126 MP cost of the geo- version. I can't believe the job was meant ONLY for 6-man+ content.

SCH was without sublimation in its first few months. I'm hoping for at least clear mind, if not a new MP recovery or conservation tool for GEO in the first major job update. I had been thinking about low recast JA similar to Pianissimo for GEO spells, at the very least the indi ones. It would drastically reduce the radius of the aura, but cut the MP cost. This would be nice for solo and duo situations, or times when you're running around with no need to encompass others in your indi aura.

[Economizer]

I'll start by saying that not having Clear Mind when the job's unlock quest involves resting is slightly funny.

In short, GEO gets horrible MP recovery. In this day and age having to wait a few eternities for your MP to come back is... annoying, to say the least.

Until they update healing I don't think Clear Mind is really going to be as big a help as you'd need.

Assuming you're talking about soloing like I think you are, I think one obvious thing is the difference between White Mage and Geomancer - both have identical Club and Staff skills if I recall correctly, but White Mage has some weapon skills Geomancer will never have.

Now this may or may not be a problem. As a Geomancer you might have no problem with being stuck with a Staff and using Spirit Taker all day, especially since you might be banking on a Chatoyant Staff to boost up your nukes to reasonable levels since FFXI still doesn't have any magic affinity shields. But maybe you want to use what's billed as your main weapon (despite having magic nukes that aren't as horribly crippled as the Banish line) and stick to a Club. You'll run into problems unless you plan on using a Dukkha and Starlight all day since you can't use White Mage's Mystic Boon, nor can you use a Gambateinn (which would probably be more useful for a Geomancer then it ever would be for a White Mage).

To further crap on Geomancers, you don't get any good amounts of Occult Acumen (and nor can you get it at the same time as Magic Attack Bonus from /BLM or /RDM), so every nuke you cast won't even give you the smallest ponze of TP short of wearing the right gear or going /DRK (which would be more useful if you used a Staff since Last Resort doesn't work with 1h even when single wielding, actually boosts the damage of your nukes, and can Spirit Taker).

Clubs and mages have been pretty poorly thought out outside of ignoring as much of the other roles you can do as you can and just smacking things into submission, so this shouldn't really be a surprise.

[Merton9999]

Those are some good points, Economizer. Clear mind should by no means be the only additional MP recovery tool for GEO. It just makes sense for a mage job and would help slightly in that department, particularly at the lower levels I already passed

For overall MP recovery, I'm hoping for something unique to the job like sublimation was. Simply adding a JA like I mentioned that reduces aura radius for lower MP cost would be a start for my low-man needs.

I had been thinking about the melee side, particularly Spirit Taker and the lack of the amazing Mystic Boon. My biggest problem with it at the moment is that I had been looking forward to employing my 8 magian damage staves on GEO not only for their nuking bonus but also for the -14% casting time reduction applied to geomancy. This would of course require swapping, and TP loss, unless I happen to be sticking to two matching element geomancy spells, which I doubt will be optimal. So not only would sticking to Chatoyant for Spirit Taker gimp nuking damage, I'd also lose the casting time reduction.

I guess there are always trade-offs. I do love my FC though, so I'm really hoping for an MP recovery tool that has nothing to do with Spirit Taker! I don't think we've seen clubs yet that use the models shown in the SoA teaser images. I wonder how those will play out with GEO club skill and effects, maybe even some FC love. I believe GEO will also be getting a mythic WS as well???

[Alhanelem]

I'll start by saying that not having Clear Mind when the job's unlock quest involves resting is slightly funny.



Until they update healing I don't think Clear Mind is really going to be as big a help as you'd need.

Assuming you're talking about soloing like I think you are, I think one obvious thing is the difference between White Mage and Geomancer - both have identical Club and Staff skills if I recall correctly, but White Mage has some weapon skills Geomancer will never have.

Now this may or may not be a problem. As a Geomancer you might have no problem with being stuck with a Staff and using Spirit Taker all day, especially since you might be banking on a Chatoyant Staff to boost up your nukes to reasonable levels since FFXI still doesn't have any magic affinity shields. But maybe you want to use what's billed as your main weapon (despite having magic nukes that aren't as horribly crippled as the Banish line) and stick to a Club. You'll run into problems unless you plan on using a Dukkha and Starlight all day since you can't use White Mage's Mystic Boon, nor can you use a Gambateinn (which would probably be more useful for a Geomancer then it ever would be for a White Mage).

To further crap on Geomancers, you don't get any good amounts of Occult Acumen (and nor can you get it at the same time as Magic Attack Bonus from /BLM or /RDM), so every nuke you cast won't even give you the smallest ponze of TP short of wearing the right gear or going /DRK (which would be more useful if you used a Staff since Last Resort doesn't work with 1h even when single wielding, actually boosts the damage of your nukes, and can Spirit Taker).

Clubs and mages have been pretty poorly thought out outside of ignoring as much of the other roles you can do as you can and just smacking things into submission, so this shouldn't really be a surprise.

You can melee in a rieve, but when you're in some kind of endgame situation (lol) you're only going to have spirit taker (sigh, no empyrean means no Myrkr either...) if you have a TP wing- GEO doesn't get occult accumen either so again, it doesn't get TP from magic damage unlike SCH, BLM and even DRK.

I'm not suggesting mp recovery begin and end with clear mind, but this has been known as a basic mage characteristic for as long as mages have existed, and yet you can only obtain it at subjob level.

[Economizer]

GEO seems to get Conserve Magic trait before BLM, so that's somewhat a start. Additionally Indi-Refresh gives something like 5MP/tic at cap from what I've heard.

Since Geomancy functions a lot like Bard songs I kinda wonder why they didn't make at least Indi-spells free with the Geo-spells having perpetration costs (which also kinda make sense since the job doesn't get Clear Mind!). The way they did it is probably fine or will be fine long term but it is always interesting to know the logic behind game development.

(sigh, no empyrean means no Myrkr either...)

Well, GEO is kinda supposed to be a Club job not a Staff job (although nuking and Staff go hand in hand), as evidenced by a bunch of things including being on all the hammers that have previously been White Mage exclusive (GEO being on the Molva Maul actually makes some sense too, unlike SCH which should have never been on the thing in the first place, and should be removed regardless, it isn't like they can't use a Dhyana Rod or Dukkha anyways).

It would be nice to see the magic cast time adjustments for single target nukes implemented with the next patch though, and maybe eventually some affinity shields (hopefully on par with a Chatoyant Staff to make up for the loss of DW), and hopefully if SE really cares they could reexamine the possibility of putting GEO on the Empyrean club and maybe RUN on the Empyrean Great Sword (relics can stay the way they are as it is less cut and dry).

[Alhanelem]

Well, GEO is kinda supposed to be a Club job not a Staff job (although nuking and Staff go hand in hand),

That's great, except that there are not many clubs which enhance nuking capability. There are more that are healing related but GEO has no healing capability.

Also it's unclear if anything other than skill has any effect on geo spells whatsoever- their effects don't get resisted, so INT and MND are probably meaningless.

With the Peacekeeper's body having 2 Refresh, using geo-refresh along with that is okay, but I shouldn't be forced to always use geo refresh- its supposed to be a party buff anyway, its stupid to be using it for just myself.

[SpankWustler]

I agree that it's pretty nuts for a pure mage to get exactly 0 tiers of Clear Mind. Not sure what the thought process was, there.

On the bright side for Geomancer's MP recovery, the job can put together a very solid high-Refresh idle set:

Owleyes
Spurrina Coif
Any +2 Refresh Body
Nares Trews
Serpentes Set

On the dark side, chilling out with Darth Vader and taking hits from his weird respirator mask thingy, is the fact the Geomancer will probably need to idle in a low-Refresh set instead. Unless Geomancer gets very odd JSE, that's the only way to work in the -Damage Taken% needed order to stand vaguely near a monster and be an aura-emitter.

[Quetzacoatl]

Refresh gear (like Spank explained above), /rdm refresh, indi/geo-Refresh, Convert, Problem solved (for the most part anyway)

I agree it wouldn't be too much to ask for to get Clear Mind at least, but until then, the former is your best best for now.