For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[ForsakenRoe]

damn, thought I had posted my post but it was left just before posting and Skel beat me to it, oh well

I'm going to have to check the cutscenes again, but I'd like the exact quotes, if you can provide them.

GEO "mirroring the constellations" is still channeling the power of the earth/this planet/Star. Unless the quote says they are not?


AST was never a Time Mage. It was a FFXIV original (sorta, you can debatably argue it was a guest character in FFTactics, but it was really nothing like him, either) with a few spells that modified durations of other spells and it had Gravity (debatably Demi, but not Comet or Meteor). Also didn't have a Haste, Slow, or Stop spell, the staples of a Time Mage (and no, Time Mages don't do it through Arcanum), Reflect, or Regen (also sometimes associated with Time Magic).

The fight against Gaia (the first one) in Eden is more a Time Mage than AST ever was.

All I know for GEO/AST is that GEO uses this star, AST uses 'the other stars'. Whether AST refers to 'star' as in planets, or stars in the sense we know them (light/heat emitting balls of gas), IDK. But the fact is, geomancy is stated to synergize very well with Nocturnal Astromancy (now retconned to 'aspected heal casts' cos they removed the sect). Back when I did the questline, I strengthened a Geomantic barrier by using my own barrier magic. Beyond the fact that this implies, very strongly, that GEO/AST magics are closely related (if the narrative followed gameplay mechanics, I'd have overwritten his barrier cos Nocturnal Field/Galvanize don't stack lmao), it also tells me that 'why would GEO be a DPS?' I can't see why a class, so focused on 'reform a barrier to protect a city' in the story we've seen for it so far, would be a DPS, either. If anything it sounds most like a healer, but the 'protect allies' aspect of it could be more a Tank too. It'd make sense for a healer (AST) to synergize well with a tank (GEO) too.

And for AST's time mage style moves, you had Haste (Arrow), Quicken (old Spear), literally a move called Gravity (which in PVP had a 'current HP % removal' effect iirc), Stella (movespeed slow), Disable (Old/stat reduction), Stop (Celestial Opposition extending allies and stunning enemies was functionally 'stop', and was learned from the quest where an NPC literally uses a time stop move), and Regen as an effect is on Aspected Helios/Benefic. If you wanna take the cards out because... whatever reason, you still have like 5 other 'time mage' themed things

[ty_taurus]

For a while, it was a popular theory that GEO would’ve been the first casting tank, casing barriers on themselves to reduce damage and having a way to nullify interruption.

I don’t think, given the lore we already have, that GEO “must” be a healer per say, because you can be creative with our existing lore or introduce a subset of Geomancers from Meracydia or something, but I also don’t feel it seems connected to the DPS role either.

[vetch]

For a while, it was a popular theory that GEO would’ve been the first casting tank, casing barriers on themselves to reduce damage and having a way to nullify interruption.

I don’t think, given the lore we already have, that GEO “must” be a healer per say, because you can be creative with our existing lore or introduce a subset of Geomancers from Meracydia or something, but I also don’t feel it seems connected to the DPS role either.

Inherently connected to the DPS role by virtue of DPS being the only role the developers know how to design for anymore.

[Renathras]

AST had Time Dilation. Something that has been repeatedly asked to come back since Shb's destruction of the class. A "SLOW" if you will on buffs (buff extender). A lot of its current skills (See A. Helios and Benefic along with Macrocosmos) also have time like effects. The point I'm making here is Gravity could have a slow applied to it. Haste is technically Light Speed.

When AST can cast Haste on other people, Slow on enemies, and Comet, then we'll be talking Time Mage. AST has never been - and likely never will be since most of those components (old Arrow) have been stripped away anyhow - a Time Mage, and no amount of saying so will change that.

As for "as a DPS"; again, people often want different roles for things, and that won't change. It's like the "4 Healers Argument" - "But what if the healer I like the aesthetics of doesn't have the more damage buttons and is the one left alone?!?"

The difference here being that Time Mage IS a traditional Final Fantasy Job (AST is not).

People also want axe wielding berserker DPSers and so on. Honestly, it's just DPS people wanting everything, truth be told. But I guess if you're the role spoiled for choice (and spoiled in general), it's easy to constantly want more?

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As for GEO as a DPS, it's the other half of the element wheel from BLM. Healers aren't DPS. Not to mention we don't have "GEO the healer" anyway in the aesthetic sense.

As for the quotes, I'm not going to repeat the lv60-70 questline to find them because...

Which is why I asked for the exact quotes. People often take things out of context or misremember/misread things, and not by intent. Human memory is like that at the best of times. And once a position forms, it's very difficult to break, like when I did the deep dive through the entire CNJ questline to point out to people that they were completely wrong about their view on the Sylphie story - a position many can't drop even now when faced with the evidence countering their position.

Often, quotes don't make the absolute statements that people remember them having made, or inferred from them, which is why the exact quotes are so important in actual lore discussions.

Frankly GEO would be an off shoot of AST (not CNJ) but since SE doesn't want to make dual classes like SCH/SMN your reasoning of linking it to CNJ is fine.

No, it wouldn't. Either would work, but CNJ makes the most sense if GEO is a Job (rather than a class), and AST isn't a class anyway, so it can't have an offshoot, as such. But regardless, SE doesn't want to do anything with classes anymore.

Once again, I agree lore isn't a good reason (lore didn't save AST after all) but what would GEO be bringing different that WHM cannot other than be a full DPS class?

I mean, literally that: A different Job in a different Role with a different combat style.

I'd rather have something else or a Druid like class where one can shapeshift or a whole nother class who doesn't have a similar feel to it.

Good for you?

Not every Job addition is based on what we individuals want. I think we all can agree on that point. Like I don't care about edgy Jobs at all, yet RPR and DRK (and kinda BLM and to a far lesser extent AST) exist. It's just the nature of the beast.

Edit: I should add that adding in things like GEO and TIM further limit what they can do with WHM and AST

Not really. Their self-imposed limits on Healers is what limits what they're going to do with the Jobs. BLM and RDM both exist, and SCH/SMN existed for years stepping all over each others' toes. SCH and SGE are all in each others' business, too.

Edit2: Also yes please add Vermedica to RDM and maybe one other heal. I will play that over any of the current healers, because at the very least, MP management is back and I have no excess healing that's not being used instead of giving me buffs, debuffs, simple class thematic extra dps buttons (1-2-3 unbroken by heals rotation or not) or a combination of all three.

I mean, this is BLU healing in a nutshell. WHM without any oGCD heals and without Lilies, and with elemental themed attacks.

damn, thought I had posted my post but it was left just before posting

Oh man, I hate it when that happens. I feel ya.

(if the narrative followed gameplay mechanics, I'd have overwritten his barrier cos Nocturnal Field/Galvanize don't stack lmao)

GENERALLY speaking, it plays pretty fast and loose with them. Not only that, you would have overwritten his barrier (at the time) if GEO was AST, since two nAST barriers didn't stack. We also have cases like Benison stacking with Galvanize. Does that mean WHM and SCH use the same magic, or different magics? I don't think you can really draw good conclusions from that.

As for being a DPS: Magicked Barrier. Arcane Crest. Troubatician Samba.

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I think the disconnect is the people that want to see red pointy hats and the "clock spells" from FF8 and similar games. AST doesn't really...do that. Part of the reason is simple: FFXIV's combat system doesn't work that way. A DPS TIM Job, I suspect, would work more like Gaia's fight and be more about juggling timers on DoTs and stuff. Like the ability to accelerate DoTs to do burst damage, extend durations of DoTs and likely some self-upkeep-buff, and maybe some token party utility like a party-wide Regen like Everlasting Flight. They could get some kind of "reverse time to before you died" Raise, but even that's questionable.

Haste just doesn't work in modern FFXIV. It's not like WoW where Timewarp/Bloodlust/Heroism is actually a useful stat for most/all Jobs. In FFXIV, haste throws OFF timers and causes buffs and burst to drift in unpredictable ways, which is why most Jobs don't really want it. And even for the few it might help - BLM and RDM come to mind since their rotations aren't STRICTLY on a timer - it's largely devalued, in RDM's case because every other spell is Dualcast in in BLM's case because of all their free movement tools (and haste + Ley Lines could get a bit ridiculous).

The combat system just doesn't support TIM, and won't unless they add a Support role and dump the 2 min meta/"every Job has a burst phase" mentality. The latter is more likely than the former, but neither is great.

So understand, I'm not advocating adding TIM as a DPS - to work best, it would be DoT based (which I hate; although I dislike DoTs far less when there's actual gameplay focused around their use, procs, and management rather than "refresh on duration") most likely, it would have token party buffs/utility, and I personally wouldn't likely enjoy playing it at all since FFXIV doesn't have a Support role, so it would lose much of its support-based gameplay.

But, I AM saying that AST is not a Time Mage, and never was. It was an FFT Astrologer/Orran's Job with a kitchen sink of mechanics. It's like SGE in FFXIV isn't a Sage in the normal FF sense. Except worse since Astrologian didn't exist as a Job before FFXIV exactly. "Astrologer" is technically a different thing in lore and concept as well as gameplay, whereas SGE least has the general idea of Sage as a wisened and learned scholar and community elder, more or less.

For a while, it was a popular theory that GEO would’ve been the first casting tank, casing barriers on themselves to reduce damage and having a way to nullify interruption.

I don’t think, given the lore we already have, that GEO “must” be a healer per say, because you can be creative with our existing lore or introduce a subset of Geomancers from Meracydia or something, but I also don’t feel it seems connected to the DPS role either.

I always felt this was more a "what some people thought could be/wanted to be" than a "what most people thought it was going to be" kind of a thing. GEO in FFs past was generally a damage dealer or, in more rare cases, off-healer.

...but then DRK. So yeah.