Geomancer and Chemist - A Better Idea

[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."