Geomancer and Chemist - A Better Idea

[Shurrikhan]

Quake-> Deals bonus damage from the rear.

Well, here comes the WoW trade chat's trend of prefixing any and all rear-related skills.

On a more serious note, where does this positioning-based caster concept even come from? As far as I've ever seen, heard, or known, any combination of the two would be paradoxical. A caster, after all, is a less mobile ranged job, which would be the worst possible base onto which to attach position-dependent skills.

[Archwizard]

I'd like to shift the discussion back to Geomancer briefly. Personally I've liked the concept of Geomancer being a caster that emphasizes positioning. Since Geomancer's shtick seems to be about where they're standing at the time of using their Terrain abilities, and even FFXI emulated this feel with the way their Indi and Geo Spells worked and their Cardinal Chant mechanic (which augmented their black magic spells based on what compass position they where relative to their enemies.

The question would be, however. How to make that work? Would they have to be incredibly mobile to allow them to appropriately position themselves on the flank and rear before casting different spells? Perhaps a combo system like...

Quake-> Deals bonus damage from the rear -> Tornado -> Is instant cast if cast after Quake and applies a DoT if cast from the flank-> Flood -> Deals bonus damage if cast from the rear and the target is afflicted by the Tornado dot.

Wouldnt that just make it akin to red mage but with positionals? I'd like to hear more thoughts about a theoretical Geo design.

I don't necessarily think that design would make "Red Mage with positionals", though it would essentially utilize melee mechanics and require a ton of mobility to execute.

Still, I suppose that is accurate to the Feng Shui theme. The alternative idea I've had pitched to me was rather the opposite, a job that emphasizes being rooted while creating buff fields for allies.
My concern would be more how to avoid repeating Black Mage in that regard, but Ley Lines has a comparatively small impact on the BLM kit (being largely a damage CD and minor mobility tool) while the argument was about making this a core mechanic for GEO, which is a case I can let slide.

That said, the idea I've been working off has used a sort of similar combo system, in that the elements would sort of work in phases and increase the target's vulnerability to spells of another element, and each phase having side benefits to the caster like DR, recovery or mobility. A lot of broad ideas that are still in the early stages of coming together.

Well, here comes the WoW trade chat's trend of prefixing any and all rear-related skills.

I would argue Flood would be worse, but let's just be glad the skill is named neither "Fissure" nor "Eruption".

[Brandedblade]

Would a combination of positionals and appropriately cycling through the elements to build up to something bigger be appropriate as well? I personally only used Earth, Water, and Wind because with white mage going pure holy (and the implication from the AST storyline that Geomancy is a variation of conjury) but theres little reason other elements can be added as well. Perhaps properly cycling through the elements allows you to generate a geo-field effect based on the elements, something like.

Fire- 1% Damage
Earth- 2% Crit
Wind- 3% Skill/Spell Speed
Water-3% Dhit

I know that I just blatantly copied brd songs with one addition. But make the numbers to high and you risk making the support way too powerful.

[Archwizard]

Would a combination of positionals and appropriately cycling through the elements to build up to something bigger be appropriate as well? I personally only used Earth, Water, and Wind because with white mage going pure holy (and the implication from the AST storyline that Geomancy is a variation of conjury) but theres little reason other elements can be added as well. Perhaps properly cycling through the elements allows you to generate a geo-field effect based on the elements, something like.

Fire- 1% Damage
Earth- 2% Crit
Wind- 3% Skill/Spell Speed
Water-3% Dhit

I know that I just blatantly copied brd songs with one addition. But make the numbers to high and you risk making the support way too powerful.

My current thinking is that it would probably be more conducive to limit the player to 2-3 "Geo Field Effects" -- Wind and Water play heavily into the lore, and Earth being of course its namesake. One could also perhaps add a cooldown to supe-up the effects of whatever field is active on nearby allies, or even just to share the effects if it's initially limited to the user. And this is all assuming the fields themselves are damage-oriented, since you could easily make the Water field do a slight HoT and the Earth field give some small mitigation, for instance.
I've also thought about some type of teleportation skill where the Geomancer sets up just a Water field and an Earth field, then uses a Wind spell to teleport between them.
Lots of options.