Geomancer (CNJ Job) concept

[thenewzero]

Just for fun, I put together an idea for a Job I would like to see added to the Conjurer Class.

I think Geomancer would be very appropriate as a Job for Conjurer because they are often associated with the land, nature, and weather, which all seem like things Conjurer would be very much in tune with. I also feel like Earth, Wind, and Water seem like appropriate elements for a Geomancer to use.

Geomancer (GEO)
Main Class: Conjurer (30) - Sub Class: Thaumaturge (15)
Cross Class: Thaumaturge and Arcanist
Role: Damage

Basic class changes:

Enhanced Mind traits changed to Enhanced Magic: Increases Mind and Intelligence.

Stone II: Added Additional Effect: 50% chance to grant Elemental Harmony. (Max: 5) Duration: 30s

Aero II: Only available when under the effect of Elemental Harmony. Increase direct damage potency to 70.

Cleric Stance: Remove 10% damage boost so Geomancers don't favor MND only gear when available (mostly at endgame).

Aero: Added Additional Effect: 10% chance that damage over time will grant Elemental Harmony.

Optional: Swap the levels you gain Shroud of Saints and Cleric Stance, to help with early MP management. Also, Cleric Stance in my concept wouldnot be needed at low levels, as it only swaps INT/MND (no damage boost), which are generally equal at lower levels before gear begins to split into Caster and Healer at endgame.

Job Abilities:

Stone III:
Cast: 2.5s Recast: 2.5s
Deals Earth damage with a potency of 250.
Only available when under the effect of Elemental Harmony.

Quake:
Cast: 2.5s Recast: 40s
Creates a field of seismic shockwaves, dealing damage with a potency of 60 to any enemies who enter. Cannot be used with Flood or Tornado. Duration: 30s
Additional Effect: Grants Earth Attunement Duration: 30s
Earth Attunement bonus: Increases damage dealt Stone III by 25%.
Additonal Effect: Grants Elemental Harmony Duration: 30s

Water:
Cast: Instant Recast: 2.5s
Deals Water damage with a potency of 180.
Additional Effect: Restores 10% of max MP
Additional Effect: Reduces Target's Earth, Wind, and Water resistances by 10%. Duration: 20s
Only available when under the effect of Elemental Harmony.

Flood:
Cast: 2.5s Recast: 40s
Creates a field of surging waves, dealing damage with a potency of 60 to any enemies who enter. Cannot be used with Quake or Tornado. Duration: 30s
Additional Effect: Grants Water Attunement Duration: 30s
Water Attunement Bonus: Increases damage dealt by Water by 50% and MP restored to 20%.
Additional Effect: Grants Elemental Harmony Duration: 30s

Tornado:
Cast: 2.5s Recast: 40s
Creates a field of turbulent winds, dealing damage with a potency of 60 to any enemies who enter. Cannot be used with Quake or Flood. Duration: 40s
Additional Effect: Grants Wind Attunement Duration: 40s
Wind Attunement Bonus: Increases damage dealt by Aero II by 30%.
Additional Effect: Grants Elemental Harmony Duration: 30s

Basic Rotation:

Geomancer would focus on placing ground targeted AoEs (similar to Shadow Flare, but larger) that also granted buffs that altered their rotation. Each has a 30s duration, but a 40s recast, meaning that you would have to change which field you are using at key times. Changing fields would also grant a stack of Elemental Harmony, which would also be useful for beginning battles as well to put up the Water debuff early on.

3 Phases:

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Quake Phase - Maintain Aero DoT -> Maintain Water debuff -> cast Stone II ->
cast Stone III when Nature's Harmony available

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Focus is on hard hitting Stone III casts with Elemental Harmony. Deals the most damage, but uses up Elemental Harmony stacks faster.

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Flood Phase - Maintain Aero DoT -> Maintain Water debuff -> cast Stone II ->
cast Water when Nature's Harmony available

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Focus is on restoring MP with higher damage Water casts. Also has slightly higher mobility with high damage instant cast Water. More important when MP is low or mobility is a priority.

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Tornado Phase - Maintain Aero DoT -> Maintain Water debuff -> cast Stone II -> maintain Aero II DoT using Nature's Harmony

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Focus is on maintaining Aero II's relatively short but strong DoT when Elemental Harmony is available. Because Aero II is a DoT, you would use up less Elemental Harmony, so it would be good for stocking up on Nature's Harmony.

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Synopsis: Basically what I was going for was a way to incorporate ground targeted AoEs similar to Shadow Flare as a primary mechanic because it feels so of like a "terrain based" or "weather based" effect. Whenever the GEO sets up a field, they then alter their rotation to emphasize that element. Each element would provide a different benefit: Quake phase does the most damage but uses up resources faster, Flood phase restores MP, and Tornado phase lets you save up Elemental Harmony stacks.

Visually, I would say the fields should have a noticeable initial spell effect, but then just be a less obtrusive circle just showing the perimeter of the effect.

[Alistaire]

One thing:

Also, Cleric Stance in my concept would not be needed at low levels, as it only swaps INT/MND (no damage boost)

This is not true. Cleric Stance is the same at any level, on cnj/whm/sch. It is never enhanced by a trait.

Other than that slight nitpick I like the idea. As long as the fields don't look like what GEO put out in ffxi at first. Literally gave me a headache the first day I had to deal with it.

You would have to deal with the fact they'd still have cure/cureII/cureIII/esuna as a dps though, that seems a bit much, especially for a job with what you propose as mp restoration mechanics. If you could limit their MND stat somehow this would work; it'd require them to cleric stance to have high mnd, but then suffer the -20% cure potency.

Edit: Oh, re-reading I seem to have missed where you proposed removing the damage boost on cleric stance. I don't think that's a good idea; none of the arcanist abilities change between smn/sch. Any ability that does change over the course of a job is done by traits to enhance it. Having an ability @ cnj 1-30 then removing part of it when switching to this job doesn't work well.

Give elemental harmony an effect of lowering cure potency could do the trick. Then you'd have a job that flows from higher damage + lower cures seesawing to lower damage for higher cures.

As far as your endgame comment about cleric stance, that's already dealt with, considering the limited amount of i70's with both int and mnd and complete lack of i80+ with both. The only i70's this job could equip with mnd are rose gold circlet, and accessories, which are already available to smn and don't make them much of a healer. Then you're just back to somehow eliminating their use of cure 2/3.

Another thought, make this "elemental harmony" a stance which changes Cure II to quake, esuna to flood, and cure III to tornado, similar to how arcanist summons get modified, and then you'd free up 3 more abilities to come from 30/35/40/45/50 job quests. A similar precedent to that kind of idea is in crafting: Inner Quiet starts out as a buff and gains stacks, so it wouldn't be hard to make a buff that starts as a permanent stance and also gains stacks and loses stacks.

[Nahara]

You would have to deal with the fact they'd still have cure/cureII/cureIII/esuna as a dps though, that seems a bit much, especially for a job with what you propose as mp restoration mechanics. If you could limit their MND stat somehow this would work; it'd require them to cleric stance to have high mnd, but then suffer the -20% cure potency.

This is never going to be a problem for one reason that a lot of people seem to not realize: If GEO is a damage-dealing class, they're not going to be using any gear with MND on it; their gear selection is going to be limited to INT gear, as it should be, because INT gear has stats that favor dealing DPS. You don't see ACC on any gear with MND on it. So sure, they'll still have access to the Cure and Medica spells, but they don't heal for shit anymore (think Physick in the hands of a SMN or BLM) and casting them will cost the GEO important time and MP that could be used for dealing damage.

Even keeping Cleric Stance as is wouldn't do anything, because even if your boat-load of INT is swapped with your MND stat, you're still receiving a 20% healing potency penalty. And, honestly, I doubt you'd ever have Cleric Stance as a GEO. My guess is it would get reworked into some kind of buff that helped with MP recovery, because Cleric Stance is only for healers, as it's the tool that allows a healer (who is decked out in MND gear) to convert that healing power into offensive power so they can do solo stuff. And the reason Cleric Stance should be converted into some MP recovery tool is because every job should be able to perform it's role even before that job is available. What I mean by this is, every job should be able to adequately perform it's role in content that's available prior to Lv30 (level capped and such). A SCH can still be a healer prior to getting any SCH abilities because of it's healing fairies and the fact that it gets Physick at Lv4. A GEO can still be a magic DD class because it has access to Stone and Aero very early, but it has no way to manage MP and I don't think swapping Shroud of Saints with Cleric Stance is the best idea because Cleric Stance is still useless to a GEO.

[Kitru]

Geomancer (GEO)
Main Class: Conjurer (30) - Sub Class: Thaumaturge (15)
Cross Class: Thaumaturge and Arcanist
Role: Damage

THM/ACN is what WHM already gets and ACN doesn't actually add anything that contributes to DPS. Virus has the Antibody "de/buff" now, so having more than just your healers with it is pretty redundant, Physick is pointless when you've got the entire WHM healing repertoire already, and Ruin is worthless. The only useful thing it would bring to bear is EfE, which is a straight up healer utility.

SMN and BLM both use ARC as one of their CCs because, even if it's weird, it's still got useful CC abilities (Quelling Strikes and Raging Strikes).

Basic class changes:

I'm going to assume that you intend these to be instituted once you've turned into a Geomancer because the modifications to WHM would seriously impact their solo capability.

Enhanced Mind traits changed to Enhanced Magic: Increases Mind and Intelligence.

Not needed at all. When you turn into a SCH from ACN, the traits don't change; they're just baked into the stat bonus you get for activating the class.

Stone II: Added Additional Effect: 50% chance to grant Elemental Harmony. (Max: 5) Duration: 30s

This is the first place you bring it up so I'm going to address it here. I'm *assuming* that you intend for Elemental Harmony to be consumed by certain attacks, which you say nowhere, because you say that it stacks up but don't say anything about what it does. Even if you're just planning on it being a resource mechanic, you should seriously consider having it provide some kind of buff: Wrath provides 2% crit per stacks and even Aetherflow provides a benefit (mp upon regain).

Aero II: Only available when under the effect of Elemental Harmony. Increase direct damage potency to 70.

Weakens the class considerably, since you have to wait until you get other procs to use it and, even then, it prevents the use of other abilities. 20 additional potency is laughable, too, especially if you're trying to use it as a justification for preventing ease of use.

Cleric Stance: Remove 10% damage boost so Geomancers don't favor MND only gear when available (mostly at endgame).

As Alistaire mentioned already, this is a terrible idea. All that you'd have to do is have the baseline MND of the job be low enough that, even if you stack MND gear and use Cleric Stance, it's still inferior to just using INT. (For Miqo'te Seeker of the Sun) SMN and BLM have only 190 MND, which is what you'd expect for this to get as well. Even if you think it would be an endgame consideration, endgame gear is all classlocked instead of DoW/DoM: SCH can't use SMN/ACN gear and GEO wouldn't be able to use CNJ/WHM gear.

Cleric Stance is rendered irrelevant by the job change itself.

Optional: Swap the levels you gain Shroud of Saints and Cleric Stance, to help with early MP management. Also, Cleric Stance in my concept wouldnot be needed at low levels, as it only swaps INT/MND (no damage boost), which are generally equal at lower levels before gear begins to split into Caster and Healer at endgame.

Shroud of Saints would have negligible benefit for early MP management. The devs have also shown no predilection or willingness to change the level that classes provide abilities based upon job and, if you were to apply this to the class instead of having it be a change enacted upon switching to the job, you'd be screwing over both WHM and SCH (since SCH would have to level to 38 to get its "solo stance").

Water:
Cast: Instant Recast: 2.5s
Deals Water damage with a potency of 180.
Additional Effect: Restores 10% of max MP
Additional Effect: Reduces Target's Earth, Wind, and Water resistances by 10%. Duration: 20s
Only available when under the effect of Elemental Harmony.

If you want to solve low level MP issues, this should be the level 30 ability, not Stone III. Of course, you'd still have to deal with the fact that GEO would be a basically worthless DPS for a *very* long period of time (Even with Quake at 30, it's going to be doing pitiful damage).

Geomancer would focus on placing ground targeted AoEs (similar to Shadow Flare, but larger) that also granted buffs that altered their rotation. Each has a 30s duration, but a 40s recast, meaning that you would have to change which field you are using at key times. Changing fields would also grant a stack of Elemental Harmony, which would also be useful for beginning battles as well to put up the Water debuff early on.

Because you're having the class be so heavily based upon constant high damage AoEs being applied/used as a fundamental part of the ST rotation, you're creating a class that's pretty underpowered in the AoE department (60 potency/GCD is a joke compared to what even a DRG or MNK can manage) while being completely worthless in any situation that doesn't explicitly allow for AoE (i.e. Garuda Ex) because your AoEs equate to 50 potency/GCD of the ~270 that a caster DPS should be managing (I did the math here; it's also my own proof of concept construct for GEO, but I doubt it would get implemented because of the number of non-role abilities). AoEs should never be a *forced* part of the ST rotation, which is what you've done, which makes it a bad design right off the bat. They also shouldn't be a substantial portion of your total DPS: Shadow Flare is only ~21 pot/GCD (25 * 2.5 / 3) and Flaming Arrow is only ~14.6 (50% uptime * 35 * 2.5 / 3).

Let's look at damage, ignoring the whole "you're screwed if you have to ignore a target" thing.

One of the things you've first got to realize is that the existing CNJ attack spells are laughably weak. Aero is only 200 potency per cast (50 + 6 * 25), and Aero II only amounts to 210 (50 + 4 * 40). Even with your marginal buff, it's only 230. The only reason that CNJ ever uses Aero or Aero II is because their next best attack is only 170 potency. As soon as you start adding attacks *without* laughable potencies, you start rendering their existing attacks redundant. There isn't even a strong reason to use Aero, either, since it has a lower chance of generating Elemental Harmony stacks than Stone II does, is more random, and isn't instant. You'd be better served just using Stone II and getting the stacks immediately and more reliably.

Now, to calculate damage, we've got to track 3 separate variables. The first is total animation time consumption (must be less than 100%), the second is resource equilibrium (must be >0), and, finally, potency/GCD. If animation time consumption gets too high or there isn't enough resource generation (which is basically Elemental Harmony stacks since Water is going to generate more than enough to counteract mp consumption) to counteract consumption, you are going to see a stark drop off in damage and have to revisit rotations.

EH equilibrium will be shown as the average consumption or generation per GCD as either a positive (generation) or a negative (consumption).

Going by your rotations, there is only 66.6% of your GCDs available (ground effect = 1 /12 GCDs; Water and Aero are both 1 / 8 GCDs; 1 - 1/12 - 1 / 8 - 1 / 8 = 66.6%) and are generating 1/24 EH stacks/GCD (+1/12 from ground effects; -1/8 from Water; +1/12 from Aero). In exchange you're getting an 11% increase to total damage and 97.5 potency/GCD (50/GCD from ground; 50 + 25 * 6 = 200 / 8 = 25/GCD from Aero; 180 / 8 = 22.5 from Water) increasing to 108.75 pot/GCD during Flood phase (97.5 + 180 * .5 / 8 from Flood phase damage bonus). In reference to a later point, if you assume that half of the Water uses are going to be in Flood phase and half out, you get 103.125 pot/GCD on average.

Also, on a point of ability usage, thanks to Aero II being straight damage that is inferior to Stone III in every use case (230 v. 250 hardcast; DoT v. direct; 299 v. 312.5 with relevant attune) the only time you'd ever want to use Aero II is when you've got 5 stacks during a Tornado phase. Since Tornado phase doesn't actually have a greater EH stacks generation per GCD for any reason other than Aero II limitation, it's largely redundant: you could just use Quake phase and spam Stone II to generate stacks and spend them more efficiently than Tornado phase because Stone III hits harder and consumes EH stacks in the exact same way. The only phases that are relevant are Quake and Flood. Furthermore, Water generates 10% of max mp every 20 seconds, you'd have the class regenerating more mp/sec than SMN, which means that for Flood to be relevant, you'd also need to have substantially higher resource drain than SMN (especially since, if you go with a 30 secs Quake>10 sec Flood phase rotation, you can actually get 1 buffed Water every 40 seconds, which is 30% mp every 40 seconds, or 45% of max mp every minute).

In short, the breakdown really comes down to 30 secs of Quake phase for EH dumping and 10 secs of Flood phase for EH generation because EH generation/consumption is identical across all phases, the only EH consumers you ever want to use are Water and Stone III because Aero II is the worst possible use of EH stacks (Water is more efficient, in fact, because it's an 11% increase in damage dealt), and you want to spend as many as possible on Stone III.

As such, we've got 75% of total uptime devoted to Quake phase and 25% devoted to Water Phase. Since the amount that we can burn in a Quake phase is governed by our ability to generate in a Water phase, we'll look at Water phase first.

Flood phase, as the generation phase, is incredibly simple: it spends its 66.6% of available time spamming Stone II (Water is already factored into the 33.3%). Stone 2 is 170 pot/GCD with +1/2 EH/GCD. With the 103.125 baseline pot/GCD from standard rotation, we get an extra 113.22 pot/GCD (.666 * 170) and 1/3 EH generation (.666 * 1/2). Since Flood phase consumes 25% of total GCD, we end up with 54.09 pot/GCD (.25 * (103.125 + 113.22)) added to the net DPS from Water phase alone. It also provides +09.375 EH/GCD (.25 * (1/24 + 1/3)) or +9/96, to stick with the fractions.

Since Flood phase provides a +9/96 net gain, we can assume that 9/96 GCDs are going to be straight up Stone III casts. On top of this, because of the +1/24 (or +4/96) natural net gain from the standard rotation, we can assume that those will also be straight up Stone III casts. Since we lose 33% of our total GCDs to the standard rotation, we end up with only 51/96 GCDs (96 * 2/3 = 64; 64 - 13 = 51) remaining. Since everything else has been built built to achieve equilibrium, we can them assume that this remaining 51/96 is just going to follow the Stone II>II>III basic equilibrium rotation. Stone II>II>III manages 217.5 pot/GCD ((170 + 170+ 312.5) / 3). As such, the extra potency per GCD while in Quake phase would be 157.86 pot/GCD (13/96 * 312.5 + 51/96 * 217.5). At 75% of the total rotation, we end up with 195.74 pot/GCD (.75 * (103.125 + 157.86)).

Combine the Quake phase with the Flood phase and we get 249.83 pot/GCD (195.74 + 54.09). With the 11% increase from Water, we then end up with an end real potency per GCD of 277.59. The goal number is roughly 270, so it's *slightly* too strong, but remarkably close given that I'm going to guess you were just assigning end values based upon a general heuristic. Of course, the DPS becomes laughable for AoE and in any scenario where you *cannot* use AoE so it's still not a feasible construct.

Synopsis: Basically what I was going for was a way to incorporate ground targeted AoEs similar to Shadow Flare as a primary mechanic because it feels so of like a "terrain based" or "weather based" effect. Whenever the GEO sets up a field, they then alter their rotation to emphasize that element. Each element would provide a different benefit: Quake phase does the most damage but uses up resources faster, Flood phase restores MP, and Tornado phase lets you save up Elemental Harmony stacks.

No matter what you take away from all of the math I just did, you *have* to abandon the notion that ground targeted AoEs should be a fundamental part of a DPS's damage/rotation. Since Tornado phase is defunct as you've written it, a comparatively simple solution would be to turn Quake and Flood into 60 potency ST DoTs and have Tornado act as an AoE Attunement (possible design idea: leave Tornado as a ground effect with a much lower damage; effect would be to double the MP cost of Stone, Aero, and Aero II and, if the target of one of your spells is in your Tornado ground effect, it cleaves to every enemy in the Tornado ground effect; Stone II is excluded because it can generate EH stacks immediately, Water for much the same reason, and Stone III because it hits too hard), but you could also look to buff Aero II to make Tornado phase viable, though you'd still have to do something about *requiring* ground AoEs for ST rotations, which would be problematic given the limited number of slots.

[Mimilu]

Great Text-Wall of Kitru

To summarize what Kitru said for those who TL;DR:
~Cross-skills should be THM and ARC for better cooldowns
~Enchanted Mind is fine the way it is
~Please talk more about your "Elemental Harmony" concept
~Aero II is fine the way it is
~Cleric Stance is fine the way it is
~Ain't no way in Hell devs gonna swap Shroud of Saints for Cleric Stance, they is stubborn
~Water should be Geomancer's first Action at level 30, seeing as it's they're MP refresher
~Math explaining why Conjurer's offensive spells are weenies, something about animation time, does some more math with your rotation phases, and AoE based damage isn't always feasible.
~Repeat of AoE based damage isn't always feasible, You should try only one of your Attunement actions being an AoE, Tornado being the best option, while Quake and Flood would be 60 potent DoTs, and how to make Tornado work.
I may have skipped some stuff, but I think I got the meat and potatoes of it. >A>()

[Kitru]

To summarize what Kitru said for those who TL;DR:

TL;DR is for pansies!

~Please talk more about your "Elemental Harmony" concept

It wasn't so much "talk more" as "be specific as to what you actually envision it as".

The rest of your summary is relatively spot on since most of what you glossed over was just math and logical breakdown of the abilities to develop an optimal as opposed to intended rotation. As written, the optimal rotations are nothing like what the OP envisioned and, in fact, one of the intended phases is completely defunct because of a fundamental logic error. Ignoring the issue with Tornado phase, total ST damage was reasonably good (slightly high; bring the ground effect DoT potency down to 50 from 60 and you're golden), but only when you can actually use the ground effects without screwing stuff up. AoE damage was another case of poor design since it's laughably low damage per GCD with no other sources; a WHM would be able to throw out more AoE damage while remaining cost neutral.

The big thing to take home is that the class *cannot* be built around the central conceit of the ground effect DoTs. Yes, it's thematically appropriate, but it would make for an absolutely terrible class. Imagine attempting to do Garuda Ex or any fight with CC, not to mention what would happen if your target had the audacity to *move*, especially since you've got all of the abilities on 40 sec CDs so you can't even just replace the patch like you can with Shadow Flare.

[Mcshiggs]

Just gonna put it out there, second job for conjurer will be something like geomancer, but will be a tanking job.

[Duelle]

I'm on board for the GEO crystal changing Cleric Stance to something else. It'd be tough to come up with a suitable replacement, but here's some suggestions:

If you want to use it for MP management, turn it into a toggle where using spells cost less and refund MP per use but causing you to deal a less damage.

Another option would be give spells certain effects depending on whether you're in not-cleric-stance or not. It would make stance-dancing a main mechanic of GEO but I figure someone out there might like it.

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Ground target AOE shouldn't be a main mechanic of GEO, but its lv50 ability should be something along those lines to stay within concept.

[LadyVaJedi]

how about using cnj/thm.

[Mimilu]

Why would it be a tank?
If it's not going to be a healer, it's not going to get much enmity without its healing spells.
That would mean that all of it's enmity gaining stuff and probably stuff to boost it's defensive capabilities would have to be it's Job Actions, so it wouldn't be able to do its job in level synchs under level 30, like the daily roulette or event FATES.
Not to mention, SE would have give GEO an unholy amount of stat growth just to compensate for CNJ's sub-par defensive stats.