Quote Originally Posted by Giantbane View Post
The only way you could make a GEO not function like a CNJ is if they all of a sudden turned Stone I & II into melee abilities.
Which has been my point all along. Turning CNJ into a DPS basically requires rebuilding CNJ completely which is why it's not going to happen. For the same amount of effort, they could just design a new class entirely (and it would play better too).

These are absolutely not the same thing. Changing a DoT into a big primal summon is indeed a massive functional and graphical change. Cure is a direct healing spell, cast on that target and heals target. Modified as a DD spell, it's just cast on target and do damage to that target. It's really very similar in its usage, just that health goes down instead of up. Is it really *that* jarring?
Yes, it is. Attacks/debuffs are a separate category of ability from heals/buffs as are summons. Just because there are superficial similarities between the two doesn't mean that they're pretty much the same thing.

Cure is not simply "cast on that target that heals target". It is "cast on an ally and heal that ally", just like Fire is "cast on that enemy and target that enemy". All abilities in ARR have specific targets

Hell, "Cure" has been used extensively as a DD spell against undead throughout the FF series. So there's precedent for using Cure spells as DD already.
You could also target your own allies with offensive spells and use abilities that targeted both your allies and your enemies. Furthermore, Cure spells were a separate "element" which is why they damaged undead creatures. They were basically an element that everyone had as "absorb" by default and that certain enemies didn't have any resistance to at all.

Why not? CNJ as DD is extremely simple. A GEO job would need some twists to spice it up.
Nowhere was I suggesting that a CNJ DPS job be left as CNJ currently is. I was saying that the specific mechanic you're suggesting is basically pointless because you're just limiting half of your abilities such that they can only be used for short times during the use of a specific CD that you can predict the use of and will, effectively, turn into the only attacks you use for the duration since it *isn't* an interesting gameplay twist. It's an arbitrary separation of two completely different but still painfully simple attack strings. It would be somewhat interesting if said ability converted the attacks you already use into completely new abilities (e.g. turning Stone and Stone II into Water and Water II), but a short term buff that allows you to use other attacks at your disposal doesn't really add up to an interesting playstyle.

If you're going to give a job the ability to completely convert useless attacks into useful ones, it should be a passive aspect of that class. The only reason to have temporary conversion of abilities into new ones is if you're doing it to existing useful attacks with the intent of changing their use.

Personally I would just have it apply to the cure spells. Difference between I & II is just mana efficiency, which may or may not be a concern.
If it applied to Cure, Cure II, and Cure III, you'd basically be turning Cure into a redundant spell. You'd use Cure III for AoE and Cure II for ST. DPS are designed to be resource neutral by design (the resource management subgame is intended to not be a major aspect of their playstyle, which is why attacks are never really measured on their cost efficiency but rather their temporal efficiency; cost efficiency is only really a factor when the temporal efficiency of the abilities is so close that it can't be a deciding factor) so the fact that Cure costs less than Cure II basically means nothing.

I say this also because you would never be able to turn CNJ into a DPS job without fixing their resource consumption. Shroud just wouldn't cut it.