Geomancer and Chemist - A Better Idea

[Leidiriv]

Funnily enough, I just finished drafting a take on Chemist as a healer class right before I found this thread, and this Chemist doesn't even rely on the Mix mechanic.

[Archwizard]

I'll start by saying that something's gonna have to give. The FF roster of jobs is very short on potential healers, as most concepts aside from White Mage have focused on dealing damage. As such, a known job being retooled to fit the role of healer is not outside the realm of possibility (in fact, I dreaded the devs doing this to RDM for that very reason).

True, especially since many "healers" historically have just been variations on White Mage -- but on the other hand, it's not outside the realm of possibility for the devs to create an entirely original job (such as Gunbreaker, which in spite of its allusions to FF8 is still original).
Even in the event of them retooling a job, there's still boundless potential for them to create a unique toolkit. For instance, I've proposed creating a Necromancer healer before that focuses on draining and redistributing health, sacrificing minions, and temporarily afflicting allies with Undead statuses for benefits like life-leech and evasion.

The important thing to me is the creation of a unique job that's fun to play. A lot of the proposals for "Geomancer or Chemist healer" ignore, at the end of the day, that it's a game and what we have access to should be enjoyable to use, not just full of visual flair.

Geomancy could be treated as one of those cases where similar ideas came about in two different locations despite no connections between either. Man's relation to the land and the elements may have developed one way in Gridania and another in the Far East

My understanding is that, while they result in similar power sets, the CNJ and GEO's approaches to spirits are opposed. Conjurers work to pacify and appease the elementals of the Twelveswood, and contract them for power, aid, or resources; Geomancers repel and subjugate angry spirits around Hingashi and Othard, directing the energies within the land via spiritual mediums to do so.

the feng shui/fortune aspect (which, as far as I can tell, is a FFXI thing).

Not at all. Feng Shui has always been a part of the Geomancer job from its inception; its Japanese name is even "Feng Shui Soldier". This is why the job has used bells since FF3, a trend which continues in the instances it's seen here in 14 (granting, Kyokuho's looks more like a rattle, but it has jingle bells on it).

There is no "either/or" with regards to the Feng Shui and Land/Spirits aspect.

This approaches the level of nonsense I've seen with regard to BLU ("if it can't have stupidly overpowered spells (Lv5 Petrify, Lv5 Death, Tail Screw, Doom) we can't call it a blue mage").

I think that's an unfair comparison that involves putting a lot of words in mouths.

BLU's identity isn't tied to being "stupidly overpowered"; in fact, if anything most of its skills would be considered gimmicky in the hands of other jobs save for those Instant Death spells you mentioned. Two of its strongest attacks involve literally killing yourself.
BLU's identity is tied to utilizing enemy abilities as attacks -- a point which is what led the developers to introduce the Limited Job system in order to maintain that.

Likewise, Chemist's identity in every entry is tied to consumable items. If you removed that element, it wouldn't be related to the original job in gameplay at all, it would just be a generic healer with potions in its cast animations and particle effects.

Having played an unconventional healer before (Merc/Bodyguard Bounty Hunter in SWTOR), I have an appreciation for healers with gameplay that does not involve waving your hands to heal wounds. I'm sure there are others who wouldn't mind a healer that was away from what we've seen with WHM/SCH/AST.

And I concur, but again, the issue is that if all the devs have to go on is "throws potions", they could just as easily pull out Scholar and reskin its abilities to toss potions and change nothing else to satisfy that demand.

That's a call for the players to offer more of what they want to see, particularly to make something that truly is unique from other healers in terms of gameplay and party offerings.

That said, if you told me to make it work while keeping everything else as is, I'd bunch it with the ranged

Like I said.

Funnily enough, I just finished drafting a take on Chemist as a healer class right before I found this thread, and this Chemist doesn't even rely on the Mix mechanic.

I commend you on your originality then. Feel free to play the aforementioned drinking game whenever someone brings Mix up.

[Duelle]

True, especially since many "healers" historically have just been variations on White Mage -- but on the other hand, it's not outside the realm of possibility for the devs to create an entirely original job (such as Gunbreaker, which in spite of its allusions to FF8 is still original).

Considering how this game tends to lean towards references, I still posit the devs are more likely to rebuild a known job or idea into a healer than make up something new. Even Gunbreaker was basically the devs saying "we want a facsimile of Squall to be playable". It's a matter of who would be picked and how the devs would make it work. My go-to's for that reason are Chemist and Mystic.

The important thing to me is the creation of a unique job that's fun to play.

That's fine, though fun is a very subjective thing. "Unique" is a tricky word because depending on what you need and what's possible you might need to borrow things that work to build a new job. Not the ridiculous extent we saw with HW AST, but enough to get started and go from there.

Chemist's identity in every entry is tied to consumable items. If you removed that element, it wouldn't be related to the original job in gameplay at all, it would just be a generic healer with potions in its cast animations and particle effects.

You're gonna want to define "generic". I mean, it should be able to fulfill the things you expect out of a healer (restore HP, remove debuffs, maybe a party buff or two depending on where you want to take it). Writing off Chemist because it was tied on some level to inventory management and item hoarding doesn't make much sense to me, because otherwise we should be knocking on NIN's door and tell them they need to start using tools to cast ninjutsu and throwing consumables like shuriken and knives.

And I concur, but again, the issue is that if all the devs have to go on is "throws potions", they could just as easily pull out Scholar and reskin its abilities to toss potions and change nothing else to satisfy that demand.

The devs had only Celestial Stasis/Galaxy Stop to go with for AST, yet they were able to build a healer out of it (at the expense of Time Mage, but something's gotta give). I think they're more than capable of doing something for Chemist as well.

Here's some barebones ideas for a CHM design (we really should be doing this in the healer forums, but meh):

Chemists carry several mixing tools that help them perform their job as field medics. At the risk of using a concept that sounds borrowed from MCH, these tools have limited energy that recharges over time naturally. So gameplay would involve using heals and other abilities efficiently while ensuring your Tool Energy (for lack of better terminology) doesn't bottom out, because if it does energy recovery gets a penalty until your energy hits around 25-30%. Needless to say, you'd get some abilities to manipulate or help with energy recovery.

One possible core mechanic would be certain abilities/heals reacting to each other, not unlike combos. You could have something like a healing powder that provides a HoT effect. If for some reason you need burst healing beyond your standard Cure equivalent, you'd have a cooldown that triggers/consumes the healing powder's effect to turn it into a heal for the full value of the HoT. In addition, you'd have stuff like the ability to buff one ally with Pluto (the herb used by that guy in the Lv30 PGL Quest) to enhance a party member's defense/damage resistance for a short time. Since we have to have gauges for everything, residue from alchemical preparation can be accumulated and used as a sort of primer; you'd be able to accumulate up to 4 primers before capping. These can be spent on certain potions that require primers or attacks that require same (or simply use primers to boost existing attacks).

Offensively, CHM would deal damage with a modified firearm (this part is tricky because creating a distinction from MCH would be a problem) that shoots cast iron bullets but can be loaded with poison syringes and such. Unlike MCH, their shots would have cast times.

[Archwizard]

My go-to's for that reason are Chemist and Mystic.

And if you could tell me how either one would work instead of just giving names, I might concede you have a point.

For instance, what I'm reading on Tactics' Mystic is purely a status effect-oriented job based around sapping. While my Necromancer concept used the same concept of draining enemies, it followed up with the ability to transfer that life elsewhere; basically everything else about Mystic is either CCs unusable in a raid environment, or damage-oriented.

You're gonna want to define "generic". I mean, it should be able to fulfill the things you expect out of a healer (restore HP, remove debuffs, maybe a party buff or two depending on where you want to take it).

The point I was trying to make is that they could make any healer -- literally, any -- change its cast animations to a bottle throw and slap the name "Chemist" on it, because without the connection to consumables, it's just a name and aesthetic. There are no mechanics unique to Chemist besides Mix.

You illustrated exactly this yourself when you used Astrologian as an example:

The devs had only Celestial Stasis/Galaxy Stop to go with for AST, yet they were able to build a healer out of it (at the expense of Time Mage, but something's gotta give). I think they're more than capable of doing something for Chemist as well.

And you'll note that Celestial Stasis is nothing like the iteration from Tactics, being a revival skill instead of a time stop. Meanwhile, the rest of the "Astrologer" moveset is entirely physical, save for an Esuna reskin.
Somehow I doubt "Salve" was considered enough reason to justify introducing it here as a healer. Particularly when AST's own Esuna clone was called "Exalted Detriment", and Astrologer's physical moves greatly outnumbered it.

FFXIV's Astrologian has more derivation from Time Mage, Gambler, and even Chemist in its abilities than from "Astrologer", to the point I would call it a completely separate job from what's presented in Tactics and closer to a renamed Time Mage.
To introduce Time Mage at this point as a separate job from AST just because nobody has Haste yet for very good balance-related reasons... would be like introducing Chemist as a separate healer now just because nobody has Mix for balance-related reasons.

Chemists carry several mixing tools that help them perform their job as field medics. At the risk of using a concept that sounds borrowed from MCH, these tools have limited energy that recharges over time naturally. So gameplay would involve using heals and other abilities efficiently while ensuring your Tool Energy (for lack of better terminology) doesn't bottom out, because if it does energy recovery gets a penalty until your energy hits around 25-30%. Needless to say, you'd get some abilities to manipulate or help with energy recovery.

And while you could theoretically build an alternate resource just to not have to use MP, then you run into the question of whether or not said resource would be affected by Piety -- if no, that becomes a dead stat for the job, and if yes, you've put the devs through the work of reskinning MP just to say it doesn't use MP.

Offensively, CHM would deal damage with a modified firearm (this part is tricky because creating a distinction from MCH would be a problem) that shoots cast iron bullets but can be loaded with poison syringes and such. Unlike MCH, their shots would have cast times.

Side-note, and said at the risk of getting side-tracked by having someone erroneously accuse me of using this as some weak justification for my stance, in spite of literally everything else I've said to back my position otherwise:

You ever notice how the only jobs that have ranged weapons are Ranged DPS? Casters don't, and even while RDM uses a rapier, one would think having Scathe be an auto-attack for BLM would be obvious. Healers don't; even Astrologian has to slash people with their cards from close-up, instead of throwing them like Urianger is fond of.
I suspect this has something to do with not wanting to add auto-attack damage to the roles' repertoire in order to increase the value of GCD damage, particularly since healers are expected to switch targets frequently to do their job and casters are expected to... well, cast.

But also, as Shurrikhan has pointed out many times before, simple guns don't exactly have a lot of payload. And as you yourself pointed out, distinction from MCH would be problematic, especially with their guns getting larger and larger, GNB already stepping to them, and ShB making a point of expanding some weapontypes (ie giving WAR a hammer and BLM a unique scythe).
Unless we end up with someone who has dual pistols like Merlwyb (which, I would add before you start, would mean no free hands for mixing or tossing chemicals), it would be difficult to push another gun-toter at this point in the game.

[Duelle]

And if you could tell me how either one would work instead of just giving names, I might concede you have a point.

Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't aware I had to draft a design document for this discussion.

The write up I made for Mystic a long time ago took an approach similar to AST where a concept was built upon from near scratch. In the case of Mystic, it was the theme of duality (after all, JP guides call it Ying-Yang Mage) by tying the job to XIV's own avatars of duality, Nald'thal. If I recall, the gameplay took elements from Thaumaturge gameplay but applied them to swapping between "death" (AKA dealing damage) and "life" (healing), much like how the traders represent both aspects when put together. This was during a time when Cleric Stance was still a thing and all healers were expected to use it, so I'd have to go back and rebuild it with the current design philosophies in mind.

As for Chemist, you already have some rough ideas of how I think it could work.

The point I was trying to make is that they could make any healer change its cast animations to a bottle throw and slap the name "Chemist" on it, because without the connection to consumables, it's just a name and aesthetic.

That's not much of an argument, especially considering Cure, Physic and Benefic at the baseline are the same thing with different particle effects. Same goes for standard rez, standard AoE heal and standard debuff remover. And as I said, consumables mean nothing in context of class design here, because if we suddenly care about consumables we'd have to put that burden on several current jobs for the sake of consistency. I'm sure MCHs would love to have bag space occupied by bullet pouches (or perhaps oils/batteries for their rooks and queens), BRDs with arrow quivers, NIN with ninjutsu tools and so on. Consumables are one of those all-or-nothing things; either everyone in the roster has to use consumables where applicable (with all the problems that invites), or we move on from consumables in search of ways to make the job work.

There are no mechanics unique to Chemist besides Mix.

Which at most is a hurdle to overcome and means you're gonna have to expand of what makes the job tick. As I mentioned before, AST in FF Tactics was limited to just Galaxy Stop because Olan Durai was a guest character in one mission, but that didn't stop the FFXIV devs from adding things to it and adjusting how the concept worked to make a healer out of it. Thus my point that the same could be done with Chemist stands.

And while you could theoretically build an alternate resource just to not have to use MP, then you run into the question of whether or not said resource would be affected by Piety -- if no, that becomes a dead stat for the job, and if yes, you've put the devs through the work of reskinning MP just to say it doesn't use MP.

You mean like all those other resources the devs made up for every job in the game, regardless of whether they were needed (see: PLD)? Somehow giving one to a potential healer becomes too much work for the devs? Really?

As I said in my prior post, stat-wise I'd just put it on Aiming gear and call it a day. Putting a non-magical healer on magical healer gear makes little sense and would indeed lead to wasted/dead stats. I'm sure there'd be loot drama, but the only alternative I can come up with is giving healer gear the ARR MNK gear treatment where it had two main stats (STR and DEX in the case of MNK gear) to accommodate the newcomer NIN. An alternative alternative would be having Piety work differently for this new job. Off the top of my head, have it modify ability recast timers (with diminishing returns) or reduce how much Tool Energy is consumed by abilities. This leaves us with weird nomenclature, but my first choice would be just putting CHM on Aiming gear.

You ever notice how the only jobs that have ranged weapons are Ranged DPS? Casters don't, and even while RDM uses a rapier, one would think having Scathe be an auto-attack for BLM would be obvious. Healers don't; even Astrologian has to slash people with their cards from close-up, instead of throwing them like Urianger is fond of.

I suspect this has something to do with not wanting to add auto-attack damage to the roles' repertoire in order to increase the value of GCD damage, particularly since healers are expected to switch targets frequently to do their job and casters are expected to... well, cast.

I was thinking about mentioning this when I made up that suggestion for Chemist, but one of the things about their weapon would be the inability to deal auto attacks. Assuming we left everything else alone, the weapon would simply be unable to do AAs and instead damage would entirely come from abilities. As for concerns of firearm size and payload, you could also change the weapon to something that cannot be quickly reloaded but shoots a bigger payload, further justifying why CHM wouldn't be able to auto-attack from range.

An alternative would be the job having a mallet as its main weapon (or perhaps a small crowbar-like weapon that is a sort of main key/lever to operate the medic tools CHM uses), and use something akin to the syringer from Fallout 4 for poison/tranq darts and launching catalysts. Yet another alternative would be going with a different ranged weapon; non-mechanical crossbows are still available, as are combat slingshots (bonus being that then the job could lob tar bombs that can be ignited with a catalyst, healing "grenades" that create a mist that restores HP, vials that release Pluto vapors to fortify allies and so on).

[Brandedblade]

Considering the fact RDM wears alot of long flowy mage robes by virtue of being a caster, chemist wearing healer robes is the last thing on my mind concerning coming up with design ideas. As far as the auto attack thing they could either just program chemist guns to scale off mind. Or give them a level 1 trait (Chemical Rounds is the name that comes to mind) that clearly states their auto attacks deal incredibly low potency unaspected damage and has the appropriate range.

[Archwizard]

Oh, I'm sorry. I wasn't aware I had to draft a design document for this discussion.

I'm not asking for an entire design document, I'm asking for literally any specifics about what the job actually does or how it plays.

That's not much of an argument, especially considering Cure, Physic and Benefic at the baseline are the same thing with different particle effects. Same goes for standard rez, standard AoE heal and standard debuff remover.

There's a certain degree of "same-y" expected when it comes to healers, insofar as all require a certain number of archetypal skills in order to keep up with encounter mechanics. Sharing gear, role actions (regardless of animations), and general limitations is something that can generally be accepted for basically any other role with regards to balance, because to go through the hoops of avoiding them would be purely for the sake of avoiding them.

My concern with Chemist is that creating a separate job that utilizes the same mechanics as another existing job -- particularly in examples that mention AST cards or seals, where the example is even within the same role -- makes that job redundant and offers nothing to the playstyle.

Which at most is a hurdle to overcome and means you're gonna have to expand of what makes the job tick. As I mentioned before, AST in FF Tactics was limited to just Galaxy Stop because Olan Durai was a guest character in one mission, but that didn't stop the FFXIV devs from adding things to it and adjusting how the concept worked to make a healer out of it.

You're talking in circles and ignoring my responses. I already explained that 14's AST is related to Astrologer from FF Tactics in name only. Stop acting like they magically conjured another dozen or so additives for it from thin air, when you know they just renamed Time Mage.

You mean like all those other resources the devs made up for every job in the game, regardless of whether they were needed (see: PLD)? Somehow giving one to a potential healer becomes too much work for the devs? Really?

The unique job resources are built resources that determine the flow of the rotation. MP is used as a spender and limiter for each job that uses it, so that they're not just reliant on CDs for their strongest heals. In the hands of a WHM it keeps them from just spamming Cure II/III, Medica II and Raise, and encourages them to use more efficient forms of healing like Cure and the Afflatus line. Also, jobs in other roles don't have their spender resource gain determined by an unavoidable gear stat -- partly because TP was removed.

As I said in my prior post, stat-wise I'd just put it on Aiming gear and call it a day. Putting a non-magical healer on magical healer gear makes little sense and would indeed lead to wasted/dead stats.

Considering the fact RDM wears alot of long flowy mage robes by virtue of being a caster, chemist wearing healer robes is the last thing on my mind concerning coming up with design ideas. As far as the auto attack thing they could either just program chemist guns to scale off mind. Or give them a level 1 trait (Chemical Rounds is the name that comes to mind) that clearly states their auto attacks deal incredibly low potency unaspected damage and has the appropriate range.

Somehow two mutually exclusive, conflicting arguments that are treated as supporting one another. But for another point, that is one of the weakest parts of the opening argument to get hung up on, since I already covered both.

I was thinking about mentioning this when I made up that suggestion for Chemist, but one of the things about their weapon would be the inability to deal auto attacks.

Then why would it even have a ranged weapon.

Look, here's the problem: You are still arguing aesthetics and cosmetics as a response to lack of mechanics.

An alternative would be the job having a mallet as its main weapon (or perhaps a small crowbar-like weapon that is a sort of main key/lever to operate the medic tools CHM uses)

Surprised it took this long to get around to just saying "give them a hammer since MCH doesn't use one."