Geomancer? Next caster job? 7.0? Maybe?

Hello,

So I have this theory I been thinking about lately. Since we all know that Astrologian is getting a complete rework in 7.0 could we finally see Geomancer making its debut in 7.0 as the new caster? Allot of people compared it to Astro and said we’d never see Geo because it’s to similar. Also to conjurer. Since white mage is now more light/holy aspect we have no job now that uses earth, wind and water base magic as it’s core. I mean summoner but just in phases. It’s not core to the job. Summoning is.

So I’m wondering what you guys think? I know Yoshi made a comment on bringing more new exclusive FFXIV original jobs but he didn’t say they would not give us anymore final fantasy old jobs either.

Geomancer has been hinting so many times throughout the past few expansions. With Yoshi saying summoner keeping resurrection by the skin of its teeth. I believe in 7.0 summoner will lose resurrection and become a pure caster like blm leaving rdm and the new caster hopefully (Geomancer) to be the more support oriented casters.

I guess we still have a while before we even know but just wanted to toss my theory out there and see what you guys think.

Stay safe everyone.

They should finish summoner before even thinking about making another job, let alone caster.

Geomancer would have to use bells as weapons which could be cool. I'd like to see a lot of placed aoes/bubbles to convey the terrain mechanics, but that feels more like limited job material than something that'd be usable in raids. I'm not really sure how they could accurately convey the job fantasy otherwise - stone/water/air casts wouldn't really cut it, particularly with conjurer existing.

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Geomancer would have to use bells as weapons which could be cool. I'd like to see a lot of placed aoes/bubbles to convey the terrain mechanics, but that feels more like limited job material than something that'd be usable in raids. I'm not really sure how they could accurately convey the job fantasy otherwise - stone/water/air casts wouldn't really cut it, particularly with conjurer existing.

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Implementing their classical Terrain ability as bubbles would probably be fine, in particular if they were Spells so they could be relocated at will. And with SMN now being about one-off big summons, the role of DoT mage is open for GEO to step in. I imagine, for example, a core similar to the following:

• An instant Terrain bubble Spell that is itself a DoT, and can be relocated at the cost of a GCD.
• A targeted DoT Spell that is only usable on enemies standing in the Terrain, or that is usable any time but only does worthwhile damage on enemies inside the Terrain.
• A single target direct damage Spell that does medium damage to enemies. If the target is inside the Terrain, the Terrain performs an extra attack on them.
• An AoE direct damage Spell that does minor damage to enemies. If any of the targets are inside the Terrain, the Terrain performs an extra attack on them.
• An Ability that consumes Terrain, and does instant damage to everything inside based on the remaining duration.

As for the elements, we haven't had any post-meteor jobs feature water magic. The lore explicitly excludes water magic from white mages so that this exclusion can be cited as the impetus for the Flood Calamity that ended the War of the Magi, so GEO wouldn't be stepping on anyone's toes by getting spells like Water, Drown, and Flood. And neither CNJ nor WHM got Quake and Tornado, so those spells are also up for grabs.

Terrain control tends to be extremely strong, I just can’t see a way where this is balanced and feels good without significant overlap.

Fluid aura and aquaveil are both water type, admittedly only the former formerly showed up on Conjurer. I think there’s a few others -regen? That are too, but I’d have to check. I’m also pretty sure the ninja spell hydroton is also water type as well, as are thaliak’s blessing and a host of blue magic.

Personally hoping they retcon something. I would love an earth, wind, and water caster. I thought it was really weird that the writers were essentially threw a job away by just having it be part of the AST storyline.

I do feel like they’re running out of traditional jobs.

Gunbreaker was their first job that they literally created based off of a certain character.

Scholar to an extent was a brand new job. Typically a job that can cast some black and white magic while also being able to scan for weakness and use items more efficiently.

I suppose they could retcon green mage and have it be more of a nature based caster. Earth wind and water spells.

I find it weird that water is a missing element from many games.

Aero and Quake/Stone are very common throughout the series, but water is only in a handful of games and sometimes only had 1 tier.

Regardless of whether on not we get a nature based caster, I do hope we do in fact hope we get a caster. Longest sub role that hasn’t gotten a new job.

3.0 we got a physical ranged DPS, a tank and a healer.

4.0 we got a caster DPS and a melee DPS

5.0 we got a tank and a physical ranged DPS

6.0 we got a healer and a melee DPS

We are very much due for a new caster and maybe a tank (or a new physical ranged).

We will see though. Some people consider blue mage to be part of the caster roster, despite being able to do a fraction of new content.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

Hello,

So I have this theory I been thinking about lately. Since we all know that Astrologian is getting a complete rework in 7.0 could we finally see Geomancer making its debut in 7.0 as the new caster? Allot of people compared it to Astro and said we’d never see Geo because it’s to similar. Also to conjurer. Since white mage is now more light/holy aspect we have no job now that uses earth, wind and water base magic as it’s core. I mean summoner but just in phases. It’s not core to the job. Summoning is.

So I’m wondering what you guys think? I know Yoshi made a comment on bringing more new exclusive FFXIV original jobs but he didn’t say they would not give us anymore final fantasy old jobs either.

Geomancer has been hinting so many times throughout the past few expansions. With Yoshi saying summoner keeping resurrection by the skin of its teeth. I believe in 7.0 summoner will lose resurrection and become a pure caster like blm leaving rdm and the new caster hopefully (Geomancer) to be the more support oriented casters.

I guess we still have a while before we even know but just wanted to toss my theory out there and see what you guys think.

Stay safe everyone.

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From a practical standpoint (other than lore concepts) I can't really see anything that makes currently AST overlap with GEO, even more after running Swallow's Compass that is basically a Geomancer themepark. In fact Astrologian's spells today might have more in common with Time Mages, at the same time that Geomancers with Conjurers, but since White Mages barely use aspected magicks anymore, I don't see an issue.

Geomancer, Mystic or Time Mage... I hope the next cast is a dot based job!

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Implementing their classical Terrain ability as bubbles would probably be fine, in particular if they were Spells so they could be relocated at will. And with SMN now being about one-off big summons, the role of DoT mage is open for GEO to step in. I imagine, for example, a core similar to the following:

• An instant Terrain bubble Spell that is itself a DoT, and can be relocated at the cost of a GCD.
• A targeted DoT Spell that is only usable on enemies standing in the Terrain, or that is usable any time but only does worthwhile damage on enemies inside the Terrain.
• A single target direct damage Spell that does medium damage to enemies. If the target is inside the Terrain, the Terrain performs an extra attack on them.
• An AoE direct damage Spell that does minor damage to enemies. If any of the targets are inside the Terrain, the Terrain performs an extra attack on them.
• An Ability that consumes Terrain, and does instant damage to everything inside based on the remaining duration.

As for the elements, we haven't had any post-meteor jobs feature water magic. The lore explicitly excludes water magic from white mages so that this exclusion can be cited as the impetus for the Flood Calamity that ended the War of the Magi, so GEO wouldn't be stepping on anyone's toes by getting spells like Water, Drown, and Flood. And neither CNJ nor WHM got Quake and Tornado, so those spells are also up for grabs.

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Some ideas for terrain:

1. A very large field (big enough to cover a boss arena) split into sections that you can rotate with an ogcd. Can place the center wherever you want without aggroing enemies. This ensures you can always have an active terrain, you can switch them without moving and causing problems with raid mechanics, and it retains the flavor of interacting with the ground. But it's weird and having to use a do-nothing ability before every combat would be annoying.

2. A group of circles placed around your feet similar to BLM leylines, take a few steps to swap between elements. Makes positioning an important factor for the job which might be neat for a caster but it could cause problems when you have to move.

3. Separate large ground-targeted aoes for each element that have some big effect and linger for a while. Would be a little too similar to SMN and bloat could be an issue.

4. One terrain ability that grants you a random elemental buff that changes your abilities. Random to reduce bloat and prevent the job from being too much like SMN or BRD. No ground effect in the terrain ability itself.

Terrain likely won’t be part of their kit in any meaningful way. This is an MMO. I can’t imagine they would make a job feel intentionally clunky for the sake of job flavor.

My guess they’ll just slap on the name Geomancer onto a job that uses Earth, Wind, and Water magic. Or maybe some of the names of abilities will be name based.

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Originally Posted by Sequora

-snippity bippity-

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They could go with Time Mage. If they kept at least 1 dot in, it could be themed toward something aging and damaging enemies. Since the WoL has been dealing with time oriented shenanigans. It could also either open a whole other door for opportunities, or it could unintentionally lead to some plot holes in one thing or another. Thoughts?

I was thinking... if it depended on me, I would think about Mystic this way:

- Far eastern themed. It could be named Onmyoji, but Mystic (MYS) can make the fantasy of the job with a broader umbrella: Mystics from Hingashi are Onmyoji, but perhaps the ones from another place might practice a similar thing but be called something else.

- Dot centric job. Manage, watch and react to dot ticks interacting with stuff of granting procs.

- Weapon is the "Idol" - inspired by Lulu from FFX - the caster channels their aether directly into the doll, that animated, amplifies its potency towards the enemy, sort like a voodoo doll would. Sheathed the caster carries the idol on their backs, unsheathed, the idol moves besides the caster. There are many distinct designs for the idols, a few of them are based on existing minions.

- Artifact Sets are Far eastern garbs themed with a contrast of light/dark elements (yin/yang?) and the signature piece is a yokai mask.

I would think Geomancer could be a strong contender, but I feel that Mystic with hexes and curses can feel a bit fresher, since we've already seen elemental magic in buckets by pre-ShB WHM and other jobs.

As much as I wanted to see Geomancer as a playable job, it seemingly has less of a chance of becoming the next caster job (or a job at all) than Bluemage simply getting made into a real job and its Limited status and spells delegated to side content. And it's not because of "buh-buh-but, Conjurer!" or "ahktually, ith basikuhlee Doman Athhtrologian," but more because I don't think the devs are going to step out of their comfort zone with job gimmicks or design in the way a Geomancer would be expected to function. That and the existence of the Swallow's Compass leads me to believe that it has been delegated to cameo/NPC-only status, not unlike Necromancer, Thief and Berserker.

With how they've slowly but steadily been dumbing-down jobs and gradually removing identity and gimmicks in the name of "balance," (see Scholar, Astrologian, Summoner, etc. not touching Samurai), and the latest DPS job being as deep as a puddle, any theory-crafted new job gimmicks or job gauge ideas seem too "complex" for them to handle. I really think they've hit a plateau and should stop adding jobs just because to the detriment of everything else.

I don't want to derail a thread about Geomancer with Bluemage, but honestly, since it's already in the game, has an icon, shares caster gear with the other 3 and already has animations and battle effects (and merchandise!)- they could/should come-up with a "balanced" ability pool and weapon stats, give it a job gauge that synergizes with its spell usage, and call it the 4th caster with a side-ability of switching to it's "OP" version and losing 10 levels and access to DF, and just stop ham-fisting new jobs to dilute the already-thinning job identities.

I’m not sure what job complexity has to do with Geomancer specifically. They can add whatever gimmick they want as long as it matches the aesthetic.

The thing is that they’re running out of “Final fantasy” jobs. We have all the well known jobs and they’re starting to stretch a little. We have things like gunbreaker and reimagining with a job like Sage.

Caster should be next, but they could go with range DPS as it’s the least popular sub DPS role in the game.

I for one hope it is a new caster. I want Geomancer specifically to even out the elements a little more. We don’t have a job that uses water magic offensively. White mage for aquaveil, but there are plenty of enemies that use water magic. Red mage technically has earth and wind magic, but we don’t have a caster that uses the other half of the elemental wield (black mage obviously uses fire, ice and lightning).

As far as unused jobs we have sorcerer, oracle, time mage, seer, mystic, elementalist, and geomancer.

Time mage could have been really cool, but I think unfortunately astrologian is the closest we’ll get to that.

Most of the other jobs are all really generic within the final fantasy universe.

Geomancer could be our wind, earth, water caster.

I hope our next caster is heavier on the DPS and lower on the utility scale.

They could do something interesting with DoTs, but preferably not poisons, as I find that really boring from an aesthetic point.

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Originally Posted by Sequora

The thing is that they’re running out of “Final fantasy” jobs. We have all the well known jobs and they’re starting to stretch a little. We have things like gunbreaker and reimagining with a job like Sage.

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The only thing that Sage that is reminiscent of other FF Sages is merely the name, because other than that, the job feels like a completely new XIV exclusive one. To the point that I even think the name "Sage" was kind of a bad choice, when they could go with something more akin to the aesthetics, like "Artificer" (heck, I'd love the acronym ART). The name Sage, to me, will always evoke the old seasoned wizard archetype, like Tellah, and not the magic-techno gundam laser aesthetics they have.

But another thing, if we actually scrutinize the jobs throughly, it's funny because the only job that is very faithful to its roots is the Blue Mage. The others always seem to be a reference only superficially; for example, I don't remember the classic FF Red Mage haing Ver-spells or having stuff like magic blades or even fully engaging in specialized melee. I don't remember the classic FF Bard being half-archers.

Of course, it's kinda obvious that in a MMO settings, adaptations must be made. I can't think how boring a DRG would be if they only had Jump and nothing else - that being said, I think there are still a ton of jobs to be added, because they simply can adjust the gimmick to fit in the norm.

I think that the changes to SMN this expansion were introduced to create design space for a DoT based caster next expansion. Given the story focus, I wouldn’t be surprised if they brought in those Void Mages we’ve heard so much about. What I’d like to see is something along the lines of the old Bane and Fester to reward DoT stacking, as well as some space-time magic along the lines of what you see in E2S and E12S with Spell-in-Waiting to set up burst where all your spells activate at once.

I might be wrong, but aren't Black Mages essentially Void Mages in the terms of lore? Seems like it would be too similar to what we already have.

Why not just go full on Time Mage then? It's always been a time and space magic after all, and as mentioned we've seen from boss mechanics how you would go about implementing time elements in a MMO. Time magic is already closely related to the void in the game's lore, whatever ideas you have for void magic could easily be rolled into the additional FF14 Time Mage flavor. All of the jobs have some of that after all.

And no, AST isn't "already the Time Mage" at this point. You might as well say BLM is also Time Mage because leylines is like casting Haste.

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Originally Posted by Tamaerl

I might be wrong, but aren't Black Mages essentially Void Mages in the terms of lore? Seems like it would be too similar to what we already have.

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Not really, the job quests deal a lot with the Void, but black magic itself is about balancing the umbral and astral charges of ambient aether. Reaper is the only job I can think of that actually utilizes the Void.

Lovely thread, it would be intriguing to see Geomancers incarnation in FFXIV. Personally, I've been hoping for Songstress to make an appearance, and to be either DPS or Healer

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Why not just go full on Time Mage then?...

...And no, AST isn't "already the Time Mage" at this point. You might as well say BLM is also Time Mage because leylines is like casting Haste.

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Actually, both of those points are relevant to why Time mage is probably one of the least likely candidates. Simply put, Time mage has so much of it's identity scattered across basically everything (much like it did in FFXI, no Time mage there), that there's no point carving out a niche for it. Astrologian has Gravity (also known as Demi, a time magic), had a stun/"stop" with their original Celestial Opposition, and was able to "extend" buffs with an ability early on. I guess the devs didn't want either and nixed them. Black Mages also has Meteor as a Limit Break.

On top of that, the devs seem very reluctant to make Haste and Slow (Time Mage staples) regular status buffs and debuffs for several reasons like messing up GCDs (was an issue for AST Arrow buffs for some jobs), bosses/trials just immune to it as a whole, etc. And for what little abilities that do give speed boosts, they are limited and gimmicky at most. If the devs really wanted to make Time mage work, they'd have to change their battle content approach to do so, or it could turn out like Sage and only be a Time mage in-name only. Time mage is so historically ingrained as a support buffing/debuffing job that manipulates turn order for their turn-based games that I see no way for it to shine in XIV outside of "generic caster job with time-magic flair."

What is a generic caster job in a game that only has one proper caster?

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

What is a generic caster job in a game that only has one proper caster?

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It’s a job that does primarily magic damage and may have to wait around a couple of times per minute for their attack to go out. Or the eclectic selection of regular jobs they have, for one reason or another, grouped with blue mage.

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Originally Posted by ThorneDynasty

Why not just go full on Time Mage then? It's always been a time and space magic after all, and as mentioned we've seen from boss mechanics how you would go about implementing time elements in a MMO. Time magic is already closely related to the void in the game's lore, whatever ideas you have for void magic could easily be rolled into the additional FF14 Time Mage flavor. All of the jobs have some of that after all.

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I'd like to see a Time Mage myself. That being said, any time a new job references previous entries in the series, there's a player expectation that it be faithful to all the previous iterations. You see this in jobs like DRK where we still see complaints about the job not using HP as a resource even still, seven years out. I think this is why more of the newer jobs have been completely fresh, to allow them more room to design into.

You could very easily create a 'not-a-time-mage' job with an oddly familiar conical hat, that uses Void magic to manipulate space-time and apply DoTs, without having it be beholden to any previous expectations around Time Mages. A recurring boss in Eden uses some neat 'void magic' spells, so there's plenty of inspiration to draw from (if they don't end up in the BLU spellbook).

You could design Haste as a personal cooldown or even a trait. Perhaps 'Slow' could be used to delay a spell effect and make it pop up later under buffs, like a 'delayed' spell. Perhaps 'Float' could let you cast while moving. Warp could let you set up an interactable teleporter between two points and a set number of charges. What if X-zone worked in reverse, bringing in an eldritch horror from the void briefly to psychologically damage the target? There's a ton of creative approaches that they can take to time magic, the only limitation is going to be how players respond with their preconceptions on how a 'Time Mage' is 'supposed' to play. Which is why I think they're better off creating a job that pays homage to them without fully committing to being one.

I am not agaisnt the idea principally if lore themed is present with more diferences to the past similarities made to conjurer and ast during stormblood questline.
I don't think its impossible to do a caster like this principally if its very earth/wind themed since are more natural elements that come in abundance but honestly this is just a game they can bend their lore to fit something just by using aether.
on the thing about "more original jobs" so far they are still going about 1 classic vs 1 original job so i dont think its impossible.

What about Green Mage? The game as a whole lacks any class that cares about DoT's after Summoner's 6.0 rework (a good thing, by the way), and I think some of Summoner's old kit could be repurposed into a Green Mage job. I could see a rotation based around applying DoT's in a specific order, and casting spells that 'chain' off those DoT's to inflict additional damage, with DoT procs maybe allowing a gauge to build up to unleash some sort of ultimate attack (especially as Bard lost their DoT 'procs' with Endwalker).

Not to mention of course that with Green Magick historically also having access to Beneficial effects, you could also throw in defensive 'buffs' if needs be.