To the devs: Why won't you nerf Geomancer?

[OmnysValefor]

People act like this game hasn't depended on support jobs since Bard's inception.

The difference between having a bard, or eventually cor, and not having one or three was quite often the decision between win/loss and that was back when gear haste was a token stat and mp was as precious as gold.

[Domille]

People act like this game hasn't depended on support jobs since Bard's inception.

The difference between having a bard, or eventually for, and not having one or three was quite often the decision between win/loss and that was back when gear haste was a token stat and mp was as precious as gold.

No ones forgotten, but those days are over. The game has gone so casual. The same rules don't apply anymore.

Gimmicks are the only thing that stops everyone from doing everything in game.

[Jin_Uzuki]

No ones forgotten, but those days are over. The game has gone so casual. The same rules don't apply anymore.

Gimmicks are the only thing that stops everyone from doing everything in game.

This doesn't mean anything. The game changed, but a lot of things stayed the same.

Should we also complain about the fact that we need a WHM for every advanced boss? What about Tanks? Supports are integral to FFXI battle system for advanced content. Well, stats buffing support like BRD/COR/GEO are. Only BRD is lagging behind.

You don't need a GEO to do most "casual" content. You don't even need support to begin with!

[Domille]

This doesn't mean anything. The game changed, but a lot of things stayed the same.

Should we also complain about the fact that we need a WHM for every advanced boss? What about Tanks? Supports are integral to FFXI battle system for advanced content. Well, stats buffing support like BRD/COR/GEO are. Only BRD is lagging behind.

You don't need a GEO to do most "casual" content. You don't even need support to begin with!

Geo is a self full filling cycle.

You HAVE to take GEO because GEO exists. ALL mobs have extra def/att/macc/mab/hp BECAUSE GEO exists. Every mob is designed with certain numbers in mind, then they have to double those numbers for every single one, because if they don't they'll die in 5 seconds.

GEO completely ruined the balance. (not that it was great to begin with).

Even for low content if you don't take GEO you're only slowing yourself down.

[Shiyo]

People act like this game hasn't depended on support jobs since Bard's inception.

The difference between having a bard, or eventually cor, and not having one or three was quite often the decision between win/loss and that was back when gear haste was a token stat and mp was as precious as gold.

You didn't require a bard to land debuffs.
You didn't require a bard to not die to AOE/not get perpetually aoe statused.

A bard didn't auto-cap your pdif or remove 100% of the enemies magical defenses.

[Jin_Uzuki]

This doesn't make much sense to me. If they felt GEO was too powerful in term of endgame, they would have adjusted it by the time Reisejima and Escha came out. They wouldn't have designed 50+ end game mobs so you can only do it with GEO.

Even for low content if you don't take GEO you're only slowing yourself down.

You can replace GEO here with BRD and COR and it would be the same in this case. Supports jobs always make things faster. It's the whole point of them!

I feel like a lot of frustration here come from the fact people cannot find support jobs (especially on less populated servers).

[Shiyo]

I don't think anyone has a problem dual boxing a geo and presing 2-3 buttons every few minutes.

if you honestly think a bard or cor adds ANYWHERE near the damage or survivability that a geo does....

I don't know what to say.

[Jin_Uzuki]

I don't think anyone has a problem dual boxing a geo and presing 2-3 buttons every few minutes.

lol people have been dualing support jobs since the dawn of time. You may want to try another argument.

if you honestly think a bard or cor adds ANYWHERE near the damage or survivability that a geo does....

I don't know what to say.

Sounds like GEO is doing his job as a support job. Good job GEO! Hit me up when GEO starts to solo Escha and Reisejima mobs.

[Elexia]

You didn't require a bard to land debuffs

You needed a BRD and COR to do as much damage as fast as possible in most content though because you didn't have the benefit of temporary stat boots through items or passive effects like vorseals. I'm guessing you started playing post Abyssea.

You didn't require a bard to not die to AOE/not get perpetually aoe statused

Because the content designed between 2002-2009 wasn't exactly AoE heavy, however they did indeed enjoy their AoE/conal debuffs. Sure enemies had nasty AoE moves, but uh....Utsusemi was a thing for a reason for certain jobs if they were always going to be in melee range until SE started designing NMs to ignore/completely wipe shadows. It wasn't until abyssea and after did SE move towards "everything AoE wrecks your face" but don't pretend the game didn't rely on support jobs pre-Geomancer or you must have been in some terrible linkshells lol.

A bard didn't auto-cap your pdif or remove 100% of the enemies magical defenses.

And thus the content wasn't developed with that in mind...hence the extreme difference in design pre-ilvl and post ilvl content design. Let's put it this way - If we could do 10-99k damage just like that ontop of being far more self-reliant due to ilvl gear back in the days of sky/sea/einherjar/salvage do you honestly believe things wouldn't have been designed much, much differently?

if you honestly think a bard or cor adds ANYWHERE near the damage or survivability that a geo does....

I don't know what to say.

1. COR was never designed to "add survivability", it's core design was to enhance you "based on jobs" as it's unique feature over BRD, but having both was crucial in older content, especially if you had a good COR.

2. COR/BRD are different designs from geomancer. Though even back then, if BRD and COR did the exact same things, why would you take both and either/or? So yes, every support lags behind Geomancer when comparing them simply because Geomancer, as said, was developed in the "new" XI, so a lot of older designs simply need to be brought up to speed.

The same argument can be made during any time period of XI. You could do x without y job but you'll only be hindering yourself.

As for "every monster was redesigned because of Geomancer" every future monster and NM/boss will be designed based around ilvl and geomancer, sure, but they didn't retrofit every monster and nm in the game because of it. Me taking a friend through older content didn't suddenly turn into absolute hell because SE skyrocketed the defense and HP etc of older bosses. CoP was still the same cakewalk it's always been post lvl-cap being removed and even more so with the introduction of ilvl gear and JP.

It's silly that people want to hate on Geo for essentially being a support job..then again BRDs did hate on COR when they got introduced because they could support AND do damage, but brds were still the better puller.

[Nyarlko]

The importance of GEO has more to do with how they dealt with 100+ content than the job itself. Since there doesn't seem to be any evidence contrary to a linear level-based stat increase system for mobs, (EX: acc+34 required per mob level over yours,) the differences between older support role jobs like BRD/COR/RDM become painfully obvious in direct comparison in higher level content. SE has always had the bad design habit of addressing job mechanic issues with equipment rather than actual job adjustments, so the older jobs (who have primarily static value based buffs) just ended up lagging further and further behind as player/mob stats continuously climbed while their unchanged mechanics (with occasional small boosts from equipment) provided less and less overall benefit.

GEO's bubbles that have direct comparisons/overlap with other supports are percentage based rather than static, so they naturally scale along with player power increases. Once upon a time, Madrigal's/Minuet's static values provided a sizable increase to accuracy/attack when viewed as a percentage of what players were able to attain. Player stats have skyrocketed compared to pre-ilvl days though and the percentage increase that those unchanged static values provide now are much smaller percentages which pale in comparison to what a moderately geared GEO (Dunna) can provide. Toss Idris into the mix and there's no way possible to compete. This is not a flaw with GEO, it's a flaw with the other support jobs.

The modern game is not being designed around GEO. GEO is just designed for the modern game. The older jobs aren't and are suffering for that. This is not an issue of "GEO is Over Powered", its an issue of "Non-GEO support jobs are Under Powered." The solution is not to nerf GEO, it's to buff the other supports to competitive level. If nerfs are needed after that has happened, then we ask for nerfs at that point.

Nerfing GEO with the current state of the game though would be a textbook example of "cutting off your nose to spite your face." It would provide zero benefit to anyone and hinder most groups, so what is the purpose for even asking for nerfs right now?

Because the content designed between 2002-2009 wasn't exactly AoE heavy, however they did indeed enjoy their AoE/conal debuffs. Sure enemies had nasty AoE moves, but uh....Utsusemi was a thing for a reason for certain jobs if they were always going to be in melee range until SE started designing NMs to ignore/completely wipe shadows. It wasn't until abyssea and after did SE move towards "everything AoE wrecks your face" but don't pretend the game didn't rely on support jobs pre-Geomancer or you must have been in some terrible linkshells lol.

The old content also did not normally have to account for haste capped melees. ^^;; I have the distinct impression that most players (and possibly the devs) ignore the impact that the increase in TP fed to mobs by delay capped melees with sky-high multiattack rates has had on TP move usage. Even if an old mob had some sort of super nasty AOE, it would take FIVE DDs to match the baseline TP fed by only ONE modern melee w/ 80% delay reduction. That means that they are getting fed TP at 500% of the old rate. And that means that what would have been a 10sec delay between TP moves with 3x DDs pounding away is now a 2sec delay and basically firing off back-to-back (and likely to be less than 1sec once multiattack is taken into account.) Would the majority of current gen nasty AOEs be anywhere near as annoying/dangerous if there was actually time for a WHM to clear off at least 1-2 debuffs on everyone between moves?

That was a bit of a tangent, but still leads back to why GEO is dominating the support spot in groups... When we don't have access to any other effective means of defense (in part because the older supports simply can't provide enough to matter much in the upper clvl world,) the one support job that is capable of providing anything worthwhile will of become the default/go-to option over those who can't. Which leads back to "Don't nerf GEO, BUFF other supports to match." It's fine if there are differences in what each job brings to group content, but there is a problem when the choice is not a matter of tactics but basic functionality.