Geomancer (CNJ Job) concept

[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.

[Giantbane]

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).

They would need to solve the MP issues before that because of low level dungeons and level caps. A GEO can walk into a level 10 guildhest or a level 15 Sastasha and will be expected to fulfill its DPS role as well as any other class.

To this end I'd imagine they need to tie the MP fix to a low level action, preferably below level 10. You could tie it to CLeric Stance such that Cleric Stance would function differently with the GEO Stone equipped, perhaps by increasing mana regen, reducing costs of damage spells and nerfing cure effects heavily while active. Functionally it's different, but conceptually it's still the same, it's still your damage stance. I think that's an acceptable change that even the lowest common denominator of players can be expected to understand.

Another idea is to have GEO function such that they create effects around them based on the spells they cast. For instance Stone I could consecrate the ground they stand upon up. If they cast within the zone, they get the benefit of that zone's buff (damage increase and something to deal with mana issues in this instance) and build up stacks of that zone's potency. If they move and cast outside of the zone, they'll create a new zone (perhaps removing the old one). The trick is to make these big enough so there's some room to move around and function in movement fights without gimping dps *too* much.

A final thought (not related to the MP issue), is what to do with the cure spells. It might be interesting to have a long-ish cooldown called "Corruption" that turns cure spells into damage spells. The effect is to harness the power of corrupted elementals as were seen in the CNJ story line. Gives all those cure spells a purpose, but on a long enough cooldown to balance it out (since cure spell potency is very high).

[Giarc]

I like the idea of GEO and I think it fits perfectly with the CNJ class, but I don't see any way of turning the base class into a DPS. I'd make it a healer with some different flavor.

Ground based effects: instant cast and you could have two out at a time.
The cost would either be TP/tick (opposite of Bard) or MP/tick but you'd risk running out quickly

Earthen Ward - Increases Defense of party members standing within the effect
Increases potency of Earth based spells when cast within the effect (Stone, Stone II, Stoneskin)
Zephyr Ward - Regen ground effect
Increases potency and duration of Air based spells when cast within effect (Aero, Aero II)
Aquan Ward - Haven't decided if it should be Refresh/TP regain (could be OP) or healing potency up
Increases potency and duration of Water based spells when cast within the effect (Fluid Aura, Flood, Spring Water)
Flood - Water based aoe dmg
Spring Water - Restores both HP and MP to target

[Kitru]

I'd make it a healer with some different flavor.

Doubling up on roles within the same job doesn't really work since it's still going to play in almost the exact same way: your GEO would still be using Cure for maintenance healing, Cure II for burst healing, Medica/Medica II/Cure III for the relevant AoE scenarios. About the only thing you're changing is getting rid of regen/benediction and replacing it with some ground effects, which isn't actually going to change much since you're still providing the GEO with a regen (except this time it's AoE). You're also beefing up their damage and healing/support capability (via the ground buffs) so that there would be next to no reason to actually bring a WHM since their healing is basically identical but the GEO brings more of everything else.

Jobs only allow for 5 new abilities to be added and minor changes to the existing abilities, which is why you're not going to see 2 jobs of the same role off of the same class or, as I'm pretty sure you've already discovered, new jobs off of GLA, WHM, or BRD. A job has to play in an noticeably different way for any others in that class, which won't happen without changing role, and it has to have enough abilities relevant to its role to make it interesting to play, which isn't going to happen with WHM because it's got too many healing abilities and too few of anything else.

[Giarc]

which is why you're not going to see 2 jobs of the same role off of the same class

That's basically my point. CNJ can't turn into a DPS or Tank without massive reworks to the base class skills. So if there was going to be a second job from CNJ it would almost have to be a healer. It'd end up being more of a token Job just to make things "even" if all other classes get a second job. I think SE backed themselves into a corner with the way the armoury system functions and it sucks that some interesting Jobs may never be introduced because of it.

[Kitru]

So if there was going to be a second job from CNJ it would almost have to be a healer. It'd end up being more of a token Job just to make things "even" if all other classes get a second job.

Which is why it's almost guaranteed that CNJ isn't going to get a second job. Keep in mind, that it's pretty doubtful that even a majority of classes will get multiple jobs. GLA has too many tank CDs and too few attacks to become a viable DPS that isn't just a single combo spammer, ARC only has ranged attacks and DPS viable CDs so it's not going to get a tank or healer job, THM has Astral Fire and Umbral Ice as a fundamental mechanic that would need to be completely and utterly reworked to such an extent that whatever healer they turned in to would be completely unlike the base class, and CNJ has way too much devoted to healing to ever be anything else.

I honestly believe that multi-job classes are going to be in the minority as opposed to the majority, so I doubt there will ever be a need to give a class an extra job arbitrarily. MRD could feasibly be given a DPS job, and PGL/LNC could be turned into tanks without a massive amount of modifications (mostly converting +dam mechanics like Greased Lightning and Heavy Thrust into mitigation mechanisms, putting high enmity modifiers on attacks, and removing positional requirements to attacks), but, even then, there's some question as to whether they would ever get it (with the 2.1 changes, MRD definitely has more tank CDs than a DPS should have which likely precludes it from ever getting another job).

Even so, if classes with multiple jobs become the majority, I don't really see the devs investing the effort to give another job to a class that's just going to have it do the exact same thing as before. Yoshi has already said that they're only going to include classes that fulfill a vacant niche, and adding another healing job to CNJ doesn't really do anything of the kind.