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.

[Duelle]

Thanks! Also, the Solutions do not have any passive effects and I've tuned the spenders to be about right at 3 stacks since that's about when AC Charge/Pulse hit the shield potencies of Adlo/Succ. If you spend extra time/resources, things will naturally be burstier, giving the class some good downtime tools. Of course, once the resource loop really gets going pretty much everything's going to be at 5 Solutions thanks to the Sprays. Perhaps I should slightly nerf my Solution spenders then?

The reason I mentioned medians was because my concern is that if you designed something around applying stacks on allies, it stands to reason that gameplay should involve either always building stacks to consume or make it very easy to apply stacks without having to go out of your way to do so. Otherwise you risk the job underperforming during emergencies; at least from what I've gleaned the tank would be most likely to sit at 5 stacks at any given time, whereas the rest of the group would have less than that, unless there's lots of AoE damage that can be healed with M-Potion without needing to blow a cooldown/spender.

On that note, do the Solution stacks have a duration? Your post didn't specify that.

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.

...frankly speaking, the directional thing in XI I saw more as a gimmick resulting from the devs running out of things to put in. At least to me, it felt very arbitrary and just sorta there because we needed a gimmick.

I would point to two starting concepts and build GEO from there: one would be the elemental passage from Chrono Trigger (Water summons Wind, Wind makes Fire dance"). Two would be elemental field effects as seen in Chrono Cross.

Sure, you could tell me a passage of text that is a clue to a hidden door isn't much to go by, but the implications of the text carry a good amount of weight. The idea of elements leading into each other as opposed to elements acting against each other would play nicely into a GEO concept. Now if we combine this with a system inspired by CC's elemental field effects and could get something like using attacks corresponding to elements that harmonize with each other, then triggering (heh heh) a bigger spell/effect/buff/debuff. If that sounds too much like mudras, you could instead allow the GEO to stack field effects as a buff aura around them. Like say using a fire attack grants them +1% Determination, and if they choose to spam that fire attack, can cap at +3% Determination, but get temporarily locked out of ice elemental attacks because their "field effect" is completely leaning towards fire. As the trade-off for this, you could have something like a big attack that requires full alingment to fire that upon use resets your elemental field.

Mind that this is a rough concept and would have to go through iterations and peer review, but I consider it a decent starting point.

[Archwizard]

Who said anything about conjuring things to make XIV's AST? Aside from the card gimmick, the bulk of the skills and mechanics for AST were taken from XIV's WHM and SCH.

That applies insofar as the basic tools available to the job -- Raise, three ranks of single-target heal, two ranks of AoE heal. At this point having those types of skills is just requisite of the healing role (to balance encounters around the expectation you'll have at least one), before you even get to skills that would become Role Actions.
Beyond those staples, each job is fundamentally unique. AST's role as a buffer, adaptive support, and delayed-blast healer comes not from WHM, SCH or the Astrologer, it draws inspirations from jobs like Gambler and Time Mage.

Which brings me back to the original discussion of this thread: If people want to push Chemist as a healer, it needs a distinctive gameplay identity to encourage it, not just the aesthetic of "throw potions". The fourth healer needs to be able to shake up the healer paradigm in a fundamentally unique way, and offer more than just reskins on staple skills and pedantry on the technical aspects of healing gameplay; otherwise, again, you would be better served pushing a support-oriented DPS or limited job. And in Chemist's specific case, as I mentioned, the devs tried and ended up with AST instead.

From the beginning of this thread I have been asking, "What can these jobs do differently within the healer role, that no existing healer can?" and the conclusion I reached in the OP is "not much." To their credit, Kabooa and Leidiriv went to the efforts of designing full concepts to expand on the Chemist kit, but even they admit the concepts were more "inspired" while still fundamentally unique from their base.
While you've attempted to argue that Chemist could be implemented, you've yet to argue why the devs should bother aside from popular demand. Well, the devs have already proven that popular demand is enough to literally drop a meteor on the game, so you're... technically not wrong? But you're sidestepping the actual problem at hand here.
Which that cycles back into the OP: If the demand is popular but nobody has an idea how specifically to implement it, they could slap the brand on anything, ship it, say they fulfilled the demand and dust their hands of it. If that doesn't satisfy, give more detail on what you hope to see -- not just "potions", not just "heals". Why does chemistry matter enough to be the basis of a full job? Why should I bother unlocking, leveling, and playing it over what I have?

After all your rhetoric on RDM not matching your vision for the job, I would think you of all people would at least have some regard for a position of "put more thought into your concepts."

When did we shift to a strict discussion on mechanics?

Some time between me writing a thread about the lackluster mechanics of concepts being pushed under the names of healer jobs, and you entering said thread about lackluster mechanics. I could put the question to you about when you believe I began any discussion on aesthetics, after my repeated mentions that the job needs more than that.

That said, I guess I can try to indulge you.

... You say that Primers are "unlike Lilies" but then describe them generating over time exactly like Lilies (with quantitative differences), and Tool Energy could be completely substituted by MP.

To be clear, I'm not actually asking for you to make an exact job description with the exact rotation transcription, every ability potency calculated, every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed. I just want to know what the job would actually bring to the table to excite players enough to actually use it, beyond the aesthetic.
WHM has heavy damage, SCH has its fairy and shields, AST has its buffs, CHM has...?

[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.

[Leidiriv]

On that note, do the Solution stacks have a duration? Your post didn't specify that.

Ah, yeah. I should've specified that Solutions are permanent. Anyway, between the Sprays, Holy Water, Experimental Reagent, and Balm of Garlemald it's pretty easy to cap stacks on people when needed. That aside, I'm contemplating bringing the Elixirs back up to 3/2 for Solution application. Any thoughts? Would that make it *too* easy to cap stacks immediately?

[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.

[Brandedblade]

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.

I tend to play it safe when I think of utility and support in this game, since its niche if it isnt some variation of plus +damage. But you could combine them as well. Like Water could be a 50 potency hot+ 3% Dhit, Earth could be 2% Physical Damage Reduction+ 2% Damage, and Wind could be 2% Magic Damage Reduction and +2% crit. The sky's are endless.

[Leidiriv]

I never fully fleshed my idea for GEO out but the basic idea I had way back in Stormblood (the structure of this is very very loosely based on SB BRD) is that their 2 main spells are Magma and Drown (Drown being a DoT). If Magma crits, it makes Magma II (big nuke with something like a 6s cast time) insta-cast, and if a Drown tick crits it lets you cast Gale (kinda like an instant Magma but it makes your next spell auto-crit). From there, there's the Gaia spell which has something like a 20s cooldown and has different effects based on what spell you used immediately before it (or you can use a cooldown to store a spell effect on top of the effect you'd normally have), and GEO could build a resource that increases the damage of Gaia through some method or another, not exactly sure what specifically would cause this "Wrath Gauge" to build. Aside from that basic concept, I have no clue what should be added to the kit unfortunately.

[MOZZYSTAR]

This isn't personal against OP, this is just... about every Chemist reference/request that's popped up in the past:
Can we just not do Chemist? That fad needs to blow over already. That job already exists as Alchemist. Alchemist makes healing potions, buff potions, everything chemist does and then some. Sure, it's a great idea on paper--if it didn't already exist as a crafting class. Why SE made it a crafting class instead of a healing class? Who knows. Maybe they just thought it be useful as one even though potions are kind of useless or underused in this game. I would not be mad if Alchemist was reworked to be a healing class and potions removed from the game outside of Chemist specific potions, but crafters would be mad and it's a lot more work than it's worth. XD



Geo sounded a lot like CNJ from what we learn about them in AST quests, so I'm personally not interested in it unless they found a way to differentiate it.



I think, chemist aside, a physical healer would be an AMAZING and fresh concept. Even if it had chemist elements, like using items to heal (throwing bombs as their DPS skill, throwing curative tonic magitek sphere technology things as their healing skill, etc.), but it couldn't be called Chemist because Chemist already exists.