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

[Jin_Uzuki]

The buffs cor and bard bring are MINOR.

The buffs AND DEBUFFS geo bring, are MAJOR.

There is a difference.

GEO changes the game at a fundamental level. BRD and COR simply make it a little faster.

No, they are not. You don't seem to understand how powerful COR buffs are.

There is literally 0 wrong with having a support job for every major content. It's literally the point of these jobs and how FFXI battle system was designed. GEO is not "stealing" your sport in your party as much as WHM and Tank are. There are 6 spots in a party, support takes 1, tank takes another, healer takes one and rest are DD.

No one is going to take your WAR over a COR once they filled their DD spots.

[Nyarlko]

In theory, if GEO were gone, mobs would be set at the level of already having wilt langour vex and frailty on them.

Everything would be exactly the same, only without needing a geo to force the issue.

The theory is solid. The way square does things makes it impossible, so forget it.

I don't think you understand how level adjustment works. :/ The combat values needed for higher level content is due to the linear stat increases that mobs get just for being higher level than us. It has nothing to do with GEO existing or not. It only matters how many levels over our ilvl the mob is. For instance, other than fight specific mechanics, job traits, or species which provide some form of evasion modification, there is a very predictable linear increase in how much physical accuracy is required per level over ours.

Removing GEO would not automagically include any adjustments to the baseline combat system or every single mob's stats, so no, mobs would not have wilt/languor/vex/frailty baked into them. It would just become probably impossible to reach capped stat values on 145+ content.

IMO, those of us here who are calling for GEO nerfs should accept that even from a cynical/negative/WorstCaseScenario viewpoint, GEO is the crutch/bandaid being used at this point to allow clvl to continue to creep upwards without performing any of the actual adjustments to the other 21 jobs and/or core combat systems that would be required to handle 145+ content w/o GEO, and that nerfing buffs/debuffs would provide no actual benefits to how any of us play the game. Then join those of us in the anti-nerf faction and join in the call for buffs to BRD/RDM so we won't feel stupid for not using GEO.

Geo needs to be destroyed, it breaks the game in half. It makes enemies have no defense/mdef and greatly reduced magical evasion while giving mages GREATLY increased magical accuracy.

Nerfing geo is much easier than buffing 2 jobs, and RDM would literally need stymie to be passive or new traits that give OBSCENE magical accuracy to ever be worth bringing over a geo, which is far too much work.

Nerfing geo to the GROUND is the easiest way to fix support job balance issues.

It would not be "the easiest way" at all since it would require changes to core combat systems and/or adjustments to all 22 jobs in order to not make 145+ content most likely impossible to complete. That would likely be a larger workload for the devs than buffing 2 jobs. It's also a very bad idea/stance to take when it should be pretty obvious to any who look at them that BRD and RDM need serious work as it stands to be brought out of pre-SoA performance levels.

[Domille]

Look. I know you guys are new, and you don't understand how square works.

Geo's obscenely broken. Blu is obscenely broken. Immanence is broken. 100k bursts w/ zero enmity is broken.

Thinking they aren't doesn't make them ok. They are flat out broken. And as the updates roll in all we get is more breaks and zero fixes.

Now, you might enjoy that, still doesn't mean it's not broken.

Bard and Cor COMBINED are -never- going to be on GEOs level. It. will. not. happen.

and I don't play war. I just dont care enough to change the default.

[Nyarlko]

IMO, the only thing that could stand to be nerfed for GEO right now is possibly Cardinal Chant.
(You know, that positional buff system for nukes that no one bothers with usually since they don't nuke on GEO. <,<)

From some limited reports from others, and my own very limited testing, it seems as if CC might be classified as Magic Burst Damage II. Provided that that is the case, then the new AF119+3 hat would provide a maximum of MBDII+44% when the mob is true west of the player, which means that with maximum MBD gear, a GEO/blm would have +100% while a maximum MBD geared Job Master BLM would have +104% (+106% if you include the new AF119+3 hands). The /blm only adds +5%, so even a GEO/whm may potentially be able to match a BLM when it comes to nuking if CC does indeed give MBDII, which I find a bit worrisome. In that case, the game really could become a "PLD WHM GEO GEO GEO GEO" setup for basically everything that doesn't have extreme MDT-%. o_O;; That setup would have 10x bubbles at a time AND 4x nukers of BLM caliber.

Solutions to prevent this from occurring are simple at least. ^^;; Nerf the hat, change the MBDII granted by Cardinal Chant to MBDI, or nerf the MBDII values granted by 40%-50%.
Not joining the "Nerf GEO" faction here, but it might be wise to address this issue before it becomes an actual issue if CC really does grant MBDII. None of it applies if CC currently grants MBDI and I screwed up my testing methods. XD

[Shiyo]

The buffs cor and bard bring are MINOR.

The buffs AND DEBUFFS geo bring, are MAJOR.

There is a difference.

GEO changes the game at a fundamental level. BRD and COR simply make it a little faster.

Well, I think COR buffs are pretty huge but I agree that cor/brd buffs simply make things faster while geo completely changes the game and breaks it in half.

Chaos + store tp(or double attack) is huuuuuuuuuge TP gain and increases your damage a lot, but it doesn't increase it at anywhere near the level of a geo will, ever. Removing 50%+ of an enemies defense while giving everyone a ton of attack is insane, the mob goes from huge defense to capping your pdif by simply bringing a geo, which adds more damage than a cor ever will by itself.

As stated above, Frailty removes over 50% of an enemies defenses and works for the ENTIRE ALLIANCE including PETS. No other jobs can bring something this strong.

Vex + attunement can't be replaced by anything any other job brings, and allows you to almost completely ignore enemies entire damaging mechanics and just TP burn it with melee. Without vex + attunement your melee would need to use a lot of -DT gear fulltime and eat status effects 24/7, game breaking buffs only geo can bring.

Malaise removes 100% of nearly every enemies magic defense which is an obscene magic damage boost that NO OTHER JOB IN THE GAME can give your entire ALLIANCE.

Languor + Focus gives you an obscene amount of magical accuracy on a level that no other job in the game can bring. Frazzle gives a good amount of -magical evasion to enemies but it ACTUALLY CANNOT LAND ON ANYTHING YOU NEED IT ON IT BECAUSE IT CAN BE RESISTED UNLIKE GEO DEBUFFS. while also NOT EVEN AS STRONG AS AN IDRA LANGOUR. Makes a lot of sense.

So yeah, anyone saying cor/brd are comparable are pretty much not thinking straight. What a geo brings cannot be replaced by any other job, geo fills up 1/6 party slots automatically because you cannot replace it's powerful buffs with any other single job and it is the most efficient and best way to debuff enemies and buff yourself. It also enables strategies you could never do without a geo so it breaks the game in half and enables things no other support job enables.

Geo needs to be nerfed to the ground.

[Elexia]

In theory, if GEO were gone, mobs would be set at the level of already having wilt langour vex and frailty on them.

Everything would be exactly the same, only without needing a geo to force the issue.

The theory is solid. The way square does things makes it impossible, so forget it.

See the problem with this "theory" is they need to remove ilvl and job gifts/Points in order to redesign the monsters. The current in-game method to kill your "theory"? Look at any pre-ilvl content designed prior to Seekers. Look at the content design, the monster design, the mechanics and the NMs.

You play on Asura which I personally know has quite a few Geos to go around, so I'm not sure why the hate. I can understand on servers with abysmal player population that people would hate what they can't have.

Look. I know you guys are new.

The only person here new is you, as you have no idea how not only does game design work but how SE works with FFXI. I've played XI since the initial Japanese beta, so "new" is one thing I'm not to their MMOs. However, the only thing that would change if they did "nerf geo into the ground" is force them to introduce MORE TEMPORARY ITEMS AND EFFECTS, because straight buffing COR and BRD will not only affect NMs and monsters who happen to have those jobs (especially in older content) but it would just lead to the same people crying to NERF COR/BRD INTO THE GROUND! because there won't be any available to them.

While older content may not be relevant anymore, from a game design standpoint, you don't want to suddenly change something that will completely decimate a portion of the game hence: why it was 50/50 people either loved or despised Abyssea and later the ilvl introduction.

Bard and Cor COMBINED are -never- going to be on GEOs level. It. will. not. happen.

Because they're designed differently. Warrior, Monk and WHM combined talents will never have the tanking prowess of a PLD, ever.

100k bursts w/ zero enmity is broken.

Unless this outright kills every current ilvl progression monster in one cast, it's not "broken"

I understand hating Geomancer because your group doesn't have one or you can't recruit them easily because someone else gets to them first, but it's silly to want to nerf a good job into the ground and expect everything to be sunshine and rainbows. However if anyone truly believes the game suddenly changes because they introduced a new job, well...there's 100s of MMOs out there with more jobs that need to be played to understand the basics of game evolution and how it's not 100% tied to a new job, especially retroactively.

which means that with maximum MBD gear, a GEO/blm would have +100% while a maximum MBD geared Job Master BLM would have +104% (+106% if you include the new AF119+3 hands). The /blm only adds +5%, so even a GEO/whm may potentially be able to match a BLM when it comes to nuking if CC does indeed give MBDII, which I find a bit worrisome. In that case, the game really could become a "PLD WHM GEO GEO GEO GEO" setup for basically everything that doesn't have extreme MDT-%. o_O;; That setup would have 10x bubbles at a time AND 4x nukers of BLM caliber.

BLM would still pull ahead in terms of nuking. It's similar to the SCH vs BLM debate back in 2007-2009. The thing to keep in mind, a vanilla Geo will never outnuke or come anywhere near a BLM in terms of raw damage, ontop of having to deal with CC, that's the balance of the job which people usually overlook because it's very simple to ignore that you need to do a lot more for Geo. That's why you rarely see some deal with it because they know they're mainly there to be buff/debuff support, not nuking (though it speeds things up to actually nuke.)

Similar to the SCH vs WHM debate and how people were saying "you should have just given Light/Dark Arts to WHM and BLM" because people felt threatened by the good SCHs, but you simply can't replace jobs tailored to do one thing really well.

Well, I think COR buffs are pretty huge but I agree that cor/brd buffs simply make things faster while geo completely changes the game and breaks it in half..

Again using your logic, COR and BRD breaks the game in half too, because they introduce buffs and speeds the game up, similar to how mobs dying quicker.....speeds the game up.

SHOCKING!

Vex + attunement can't be replaced by anything

Because no other job is designed to do this. Geomancer is.

Malaise removes 100% of nearly every enemies magic defense which is an obscene magic damage boost that NO OTHER JOB IN THE GAME can give your entire ALLIANCE.

Because no other job is designed to do this. Geomancer is.

Serious question: Is Ilvl Seekers when you started playing FFXI..or...?

Languor + Focus gives you an obscene amount of magical accuracy

As does having good ilvl gear and mastery, or did you forget ilvl gear is a thing?

So yeah, anyone saying cor/brd are comparable are pretty much not thinking straight.

You and anyone who thinks Geomancer "breaks the game" aren't thinking straight because you can't "break" something that make insanely difficult content easier. If you toss 99k damage at pre seekers content, you'll steamroll it. Toss it at post ilvl seekers content that is designed with all of this in mind? Tell me you've actually done the content to realize nerfing Geomancer won't do anything but make things harder than it needs to be.

geo fills up 1/6 party slots automatically

PALADIN AND WHITE MAGE AUTOMATICALLY FILLS UP A PARTY SLOT.

I wonder why...since you don't seem to understand how things work, in MMORPGs Tank/Healer/Support slots are automatically filled and usually the most sought after.

FFXI 2003 - 2009 BRDs couldn't go 10 seconds without getting a tell or blind party invite. CORs couldn't go 10 seconds without getting a tell or blind party invite. RDMs couldn't go more than 10 seconds without getting a tell or blind party invite, WHMs and PLDs couldn't go more than 10 seconds without getting a tell or blind party invite.

Want to know why? Because they were sought after jobs. But you didn't play FFXI prior to ilvl content, so you don't understand that what's happening now with Geomancer is nothing new to FFXI.

It also enables strategies you could never do without a geo so it breaks the game in half and enables things no other support job enables.

We can go into a whole new conversation about /DNC and SCHs changing set strategies prior to WoTG.

[Domille]

See the problem with this "theory" is they need to remove ilvl and job gifts/Points in order to redesign the monsters.

All of those are complete garbage, i would gladly get rid of Job Points GEO and Igarbage, so not really convincing me otherwise.

It's cute that you try insults not knowing that I've done more in this game than you ever will, and played longer (everyone claims to have played since release on this site). And realize that things are broken.

Things are very obviously broken. if you play this game for 5 minutes you can see that.

BRD COR and RDM didn't change the game, they merely speed it up. GEO changes the entirety of the game. It's a very simple concept.

GEO is a literal game changer. No other job is like that. That is a bad thing for an MMO.

RUN PLD PUP are all interchangable.

WHM RDM SCH are all basically interchangable.

NOTHING comes close to langour focus malaise vex attune frailty.

[Elexia]

It's cute that you try insults not knowing that I've done more in this game than you ever will, and played longer.

Unless you've helped develop this game in the late 90s, I highly doubt you could play longer and "do more" than myself, considering well, I played since the Japanese beta. You can continue to assume, though.

BRD COR and RDM didn't change the game

BRD didn't have access to particular, gaming changing buffs that Corsair did. If you played as long as you did, you would know that. However having decked out BRDs and CORs for alliance rotation were a thing for a reason. If you feel nothing changed in XI after COR's introduction, then you actually haven't played the game as long as you claim. Likewise when Refresh became a thing, well..I'm sure nothing changed in the game in terms of MP management, yeah?

they merely speed it up

Similar to how monsters dying quicker speeds the game up.

Then again, I've played XI long enough to know hating a job because my group didn't have access to them is silly. I'm guessing the whole "breaks the game" is being used subjectively, when anyone who's played XI knows the game has been "broken" long before Geomancer was even a passing thought.

[Jin_Uzuki]

So yeah, anyone saying cor/brd are comparable are pretty much not thinking straight. What a geo brings cannot be replaced by any other job, geo fills up 1/6 party slots automatically because you cannot replace it's powerful buffs with any other single job and it is the most efficient and best way to debuff enemies and buff yourself. It also enables strategies you could never do without a geo so it breaks the game in half and enables things no other support job enables.

You don't seem to understand what I am saying. It's not "GEO" that it's locked in the party slot, it's "support". I dosesn't matter if GEO is more powerful than COR, people will always, always, always, always take a support job. They will gladly take 2 supports over a DD.

Where you in 2006 when ppl TP burned Sky Gods with BRD?

Geo needs to be nerfed to the ground.

Ok, we nerfed GEO. Guess what? That party slot is still filled by a support still. Now it's COR. COR is not powerful as GEO? Who cares! It still a support job powering up ALL the DD in your party.

Also we need to buff GEO now because what are you going to do, have a useless job?

[Shiyo]

If you nerf geo then there's 3 viable jobs for support instead of one ;/(geo bard cor)
At 75 cap there was 2(cor bard)
Nerfing geo to the ground(it's this overpowered) balances the support jobs.

I don't care about a JOB ROLE being a mandatory slot, but geo isn't a role, it has it's own party slot that only it can fill. That's horrible.

Support role being filled by 3 jobs equally as strong/different niches would be perfect. That's called balance.

Basically:

Right now geo fills a mandatory role in a party that ONLY geo can do. It needs to be nerfed to the ground(its that overpowered) so that it's party slot becomes the "support slot" instead of "geo slot".