Geomancer

[BasicBlake]

Penelo interesting is in fact a White Mage - Dancer hybrid her healing abilities come from her White Magick so not really Healer Dancer. Since none of the Dancer abilities heal iirc.

She's new Mog. Plus it's a game where you can make most of your characters do whatever you want. I could have gone Dancer/White Mage in XI but there is no way I was going to be a healer.

So once again, I get you're playing Devils Advocate Mirron, but Penelo being able to dance wasn't going to make dancer a healer in FFXIV.

[BasicBlake]

space

You're right, I have to read what you write multiple times usually before I can attempt to respond.

1. Okay the 1 or 2 in there cannot heal. But not only that, Knights of the Round is technically an ability. Can you go through every conjurer in the game otherwise in dungeon or not and tell me what others cannot heal. I KNOW you are only saying it because I said if something is a class, they act like the class in dungeons. You're playing devils advocate. And feel free to list out every dancer as well since you said you would. I have a hard time believing you will find them as anything other than support. This isn't about them using chakrams this is about them being a support character. But then you will use your trademark "You say that is this, but I don't personally see it as that".

2. The devs don't care how you see the classes as similar or not. The lore book calls them similar, the game calls them similar. Because Mirron on the forums doesn't see them as similar doesn't erase the printed words. And of course red mage uses the same elements, they are a red mage. They have access to both white and black magic. Your argument would be better if red mage was summoning something. Which they aren't.

[SeikishiYuuki]

Her healing abilities are literally Cure and Curaga, she is called dancer but the dance part of her is buffing. Dancer is not actually that variant of a job within the series and has a pretty constant theme of Debuff the enemies occasionally some party side buffs though mostly only when mixed with Bard and White Mage. Dancers largest variance comes from XI where the job had a number abilities that functioned similar to other roles including heals and a provoke for tanking but even as the outlier its still got a decent focus on debuffing enemies. That is to say its not without variance, like Mog's GeoDancer hybrid or Penelo who is a dancer with access to white magic.

[BasicBlake]

On a less annoyed note, no one here is saying that it's set in stone.

A majority here says with healers having such a small amount of spots for dps spells along with class fantasy, there are better options for the healer slot.

[MirronTulaxia]

Snip

1. I'm talking about the Minstrels Ballad version. Where you actually fight the knights. They don't do healing. And in terms of the only explicit Conjurers we have, Edda doesn't do healing either when you fight her. Feel free to point at explicitly Conjurers that do heal, but what I'm seeing there aren't any.

2. Devil's Advocate is arguing an opposing position even if you don't agree with it. You're misusing the term.

3. FFIV Dance casts random White Magic, so healer fits. FFV Dancers have Sword Dance (hit four times), Drain HP, Drain MP, Confuse, and Charm. Most of their moves are offensive in nature, and Sword Dance is at its most effective at an appropriate range, which in FFV is melee for them. FFVI Mog is mostly a Caster or Healer with his Dance skills, not a ranged DPS. FFX-2 Dancer doesn't do any sort of ranged DPS elements, focusing mostly on debuffs with a couple of buffs. XI Dancers have Waltzes for curing, and in terms of weapons again the only weapon they have of note is Daggers, so a melee job. FFXII Penelo has Dance of Rapture, which is a healing spell, not listed as just Curaga, so again a healing dance. Otherwise she has buffs and debuffs. FFT Dancer is a full on debuff the entire team thing, to me mostly reads as a Caster DPS. Again in terms of weapons they only have melee weapons. Dimensions Dancers having healing, debuffs, and straight damage, again being stuck at melee range.

I've gone through every instance of Dancer. Of them, FFIV, FFVI, FFXI, FFXII RW, FFD all have some degree of healing. None of the jobs have ranged physical capabilities (again, some of them have what can only be described as supernatural effects given how broad they are) though. I don't know why "Dancer could have been a healer, it wouldn't be out of the ordinary with past instances" is such a big deal. Oh, forgot TA2 Penelo. Who goes an entirely different route than her XII RW version (so ostensibly same job but completely different effects) with mostly caster-like dances and a strong melee hit/debuffs. Again, Dancers could very easily have been healers.

4. The devs don't care if I see them as similar or not, certainly. But the devs have yet to say anything on the matter. Lore book saying they're similar to Conjurers (not White Mages) is kind of irrelevant because the bulk of the game you play a White Mage, not a Conjurer, and they've changed how the jobs work, along with the fact that lore carries zero weight on anything.

5. You're shifting to something entirely aside from the point. The point was about job fantasy, something that the developers have said zero times. Job fantasy is not dictated by elements to me. That's why I cited White Mages who use Fire, Water, and Earth, while Black Mages use Wind, Earth, and Water. To hear you talk about it these represent entirely different job fantasies.

[Archwizard]

We write it off because it makes zero design sense to have two similar Jobs in the same role. And SE supports our theory just by their history of Job additions. Look at the list of what we have now and most would agree none of them have any thematic overlap.

Arguably there's some thematic overlap for specific jobs (like, say, Gunbreaker and Machinist's use of technology, Dark Knight and Warrior's use of their inner rage, or Dancer and Bard's support through entertainment), but significant enough difference in their mechanics and/or role that they each carve their niche.

By contrast though, Geomancer simply drawing energy from the land would be exactly the same as a Conjurer within the healing role and would have difficulty manifesting in ways we haven't seen among existing healers -- but would be unique in a role like caster DPS.

Dark Knight? Samurai? Gunbreaker? I mean, you can throw a dart at the board of jobs and chances are a noticeable amount of people called the job as something other than what we got.

... And I would argue most of whom were pegged as one of two roles, and were often denied others that fell outside their niche.
To use your example, jobs like Dark Knight, Samurai and Gunblade (before Gunbreaker was established) were always going to be argued as either melee DPS or tank -- because any new job introduced is always going to lean towards either damage or support. The only jobs that are iconically a single fixed role within the holy trinity are White Mage, Black Mage, and Paladin, who were quite obviously the first ones put on the plate.

But I would also point out that even by dint of your own argument, if Geomancer were to be added, we're as likely to see it be literally any other role including one that doesn't exist yet as we are to see it be a healer -- essentially throwing up your hands and saying "well screw it, why not make it anything then" -- which makes the discussion point non-constructive within the topic, if not even self-defeating as an actual point.

[MirronTulaxia]

Snip.

1. Sure? I didn't say that every job could be any role. My point, this entire time, has been that Geomancer could fit Healer as a role and it wouldn't be strange. Most jobs can be multiple roles.

2. Funnily because of Agrias and Beatrix I could see Paladin outside of Tank. It wouldn't be likely, but Melee DPS wouldn't shock me.

3. Outside of the ones you listed Red Mage and Dancer both had a lot of flexibility beyond just two.

4. I'm not sure what you get about my argument that equals "Geomancer would be Ranged DPS". Even Melee DPS and Tank are rather tricky to justify (I could make a case for Melee DPS, but Tank, regardless of any other things, isn't plausible as Geo is a DoM thing). But really what rules out Geomancer for any other role, at least within the context of what I'm talking about which is next expansions jobs, is that the only roles that are at 3 are Ranged, Caster, and Healer. So Tank and Melee aren't even on the table, and Ranged I can't see any real justification for it based off of past jobs.

5. Not sure I've said a new role is possible either. Based off of how they do things I don't see it being realistic at all. If they wanted to do that there have been pretty ample chances with past jobs to mess around with that and they didn't.

Edit: Since it seems like you don't understand the points I'm making I'll reiterate them.

1. Lore in this game has zero bearing on what they'll do with a job. The lore team has said that they build lore around what the developer team does. This isn't even getting into how valid the lore interpretation of "they're only casters" is, but at the end of the day it's pointless to treat lore as terribly important.

2. "Job fantasy" is inherently subjective, and where people see a job as being too similar others do not. Trying to predict how the development team specifically sees the issue is especially difficult to really grasp, and there isn't enough to go off of because the job that it's most similar to according to people on this board is Conjurer, which White Mage has changed from in this expansion. There isn't really any sort of counter examples to draw on to really say how those changes impact how "similar" Geomancer is.

3. In terms of role possibility Geomancer has more than enough to justify Healer as an option. Hypothetically they could fit any job into any role regardless of past versions. Dancer certainly shows that, if nothing else. As you pointed out that's basically just killing the discussion though, so instead I opt for looking at past games and seeing what Geomancers have access to.

Note that none of this is saying "Geomancers will explicitly be a Healer based off of past games" or some such. My stance has always been, consistently, "Geomancers could be a Healer and it wouldn't be unusual". Nothing more than that. To even suggest it might not be a Caster though seems to be a radical thought though given this multipage discourse on the matter. But I don't think that stance is unreasonable myself.

[Archwizard]

-snip-

First off, I want to say that your bullet points are hard to follow because you assign them arbitrarily. I had two paragraphs, with four sentences total, and you put out five bullet points. No idea how you separate them.
(Edit: And then you added 3 more bullet points and restarted your numbering scheme. If you're arguing that I don't understand what you're saying, perhaps it's because your argument is hard to follow, and you should consider working on your legibility.)

3. I said "most", dear.

4. Then you missed the point of the first paragraph, that yes, any new job will always be argued as at least one of two roles (because of exactly the point you make in the first bullet), but most cases (including Geomancer) won't go too far beyond that. The second paragraph was pointing out that your essential argument, 'it wouldn't be the first time we'd seen a job added in a role it had never fit before,' could have been applied in such broad strokes as to make any discussion moot, especially when you use Dancer as an "example" (point 3) without really discussing why you even brought it up if you're just going to call it an exception anyway.

5. You used BLU as an example of a role (Limited Jobs) which was outside of the realm of ongoing discussion. I would also point out that HW created a new role (Physical Ranged DPS) to fit the Machinist, and one of the arguments you did point out was people trying to assign RDM as a melee DPS (often as a contrasting "Magical Melee DPS" role) before its release.

[MirronTulaxia]

1. It wasn't a contradiction so much as an addition.

2. You don't seem to understand the point I was making then, because what I've been arguing against is, at least how I've read it, that Geomancer specifically will not be any role other than Caster. With regards to "it wouldn't be the first time" it can be used that way. I acknowledge it head on and still stand by that. That doesn't mean discussion is moot though. It just means that one path is covered, not that all possible branches of discussion are covered.

3. I'd need you to actually cite where I brought up Blue Mage to get an idea of what my point there was. Bringing something up out of context means you're probably not getting the point.

As an aside, generally my bullet points are based in the order in which I arrive at a thought as I'm reading through your post. Usually this means one per paragraph but sometimes you make multiple points in one paragraph that I want to comment on.

[Archwizard]

I'd need you to actually cite where I brought up Blue Mage to get an idea of what my point there was. Bringing something up out of context means you're probably not getting the point.

It was literally.

In the post.

I quoted.

I mean if we are discussing evidence nothing says it's absolutely going to be a Caster, which was my point. People were calling Red Mage as a tank, as a healer, as a new role, none of that happened. Blue Mage being Limited was completely out of nowhere. Dancer was pegged as a healer, melee, or tank, we got ranged. Dark Knight? Samurai? Gunbreaker? I mean, you can throw a dart at the board of jobs and chances are a noticeable amount of people called the job as something other than what we got. None of this is to say it absolutely will be a healer, but that people are too quick to write it off for reasons that are ultimately tied to their own feelings on what is and isn't valid for it.

It wasn't "out of context", and that doesn't mean "I'm not getting it," it means you're not communicating your meaning effectively because you keep breaking it down into smaller arguments that often read as contradictory to each other without actually saying your singular thesis that they support, and seemingly forgetting where you were going with it. From what I can tell, you're here to be contrarian and nitpick arguments, not make a singular point toward the main discussion like "It should/shouldn't be a healer," and you don't need to tell us that "They're gonna do what they're gonna do" because all that point does is try to dismiss the discussion.

Your thought process isn't cohesive, or constructive. It's quite frustrating.