Geomancer (CNJ Job) concept

[Giantbane]

Which has been my point all along. Turning CNJ into a DPS basically requires rebuilding CNJ completely which is why it's not going to happen. For the same amount of effort, they could just design a new class entirely (and it would play better too).

Solo content as a healer or tank is kind of slow. It's nice to have the option to play as a DD subjob when leveling or running around solo (unless you're doing something job specific so you have to play the healer or tank). This is especially true for CNJ because their resource management sucks when trying to kill things. So of all the classes that could really use another job, even just for QoL purposes, it's CNJ. Hopefully one that would give them much better resource management in exchange for an increased ability to kill.

And CNJ doesn't need *that* much. Look at BLM. You basically just spam a few abilities for the most part along with the waxing/waning of mana (frost/fire) and a couple procs you have to worry about. It's still a fun class (to me) even though it's pretty simple.

And I'm not suggesting that this would be the ONLY aspect that separates GEO from CNJ. It's simply a method of making the cure spells useful to the GEO class in a way that allows for some continuity between the base class and the Job. There would need to be more to GEOs elemental rotation to make it interesting. There are a lot of suggestions in this thread to that effect.

Yes, it is. Attacks/debuffs are a separate category of ability from heals/buffs as are summons. Just because there are superficial similarities between the two doesn't mean that they're pretty much the same thing.

Cure is not simply "cast on that target that heals target". It is "cast on an ally and heal that ally", just like Fire is "cast on that enemy and target that enemy". All abilities in ARR have specific targets

No, the reason dot -> primal is a pretty jarring transition is because it's so different on a lore level. Going from casting a disease to summoning some entirely unrelated primal to maybe or maybe not apply that effect (or do something else entirely) is a pretty big conceptual break.

Changing a heal spell to a corrupted version makes a whole lot of sense in concept and lore, which makes the transition from one to the other also make a whole lot more sense.

The rest of it I don't think is a big concern. If the idea were implemented as stated, I think it would still *feel* like you're playing a job based on CNJ. Which is the primary concern about making this sort of change, right?

You could also target your own allies with offensive spells and use abilities that targeted both your allies and your enemies. Furthermore, Cure spells were a separate "element" which is why they damaged undead creatures. They were basically an element that everyone had as "absorb" by default and that certain enemies didn't have any resistance to at all.

And BRD played a harp and didn't really have the ability to do much other than sing songs.

I'm merely establishing that heal spells already have a lot of precedent to do double duty as heals and damage in certain situations. And, as you've mentioned, there's some precedent for using the same spell to cast on your allies or enemies. This takes that concept and adapts it to ARR.

Nowhere was I suggesting that a CNJ DPS job be left as CNJ currently is. I was saying that the specific mechanic you're suggesting is basically pointless because you're just limiting half of your abilities such that they can only be used for short times during the use of a specific CD that you can predict the use of and will, effectively, turn into the only attacks you use for the duration since it *isn't* an interesting gameplay twist. It's an arbitrary separation of two completely different but still painfully simple attack strings. It would be somewhat interesting if said ability converted the attacks you already use into completely new abilities (e.g. turning Stone and Stone II into Water and Water II), but a short term buff that allows you to use other attacks at your disposal doesn't really add up to an interesting playstyle.

Interesting compared to most other classes temporary damage buffs? yes.

Raging Strikes/Berserk/Fight or Flight/etc:
--Hit button to do more damage for X seconds, then go back to doing your normal rotation. Maybe there's a detrimental effect you have to worry about (take more damage, pacification, etc).

vs.

Corrupted state
--Hit button to do more damage for X seconds, but you have to cast different spells to get the benefit.

It's not an AMAZING skill idea, it's just a small twist on the temporary damage buff concept.

If you're going to give a job the ability to completely convert useless attacks into useful ones, it should be a passive aspect of that class. The only reason to have temporary conversion of abilities into new ones is if you're doing it to existing useful attacks with the intent of changing their use.

Healing abilities are still useful to a DPS job even if they're relatively weak. I've been in instances where I was tanking a boss, the healer dies and the SMN or BLM is able to spam physick on me to keep me alive well enough for the rest of us to finish a boss.

This suggestion keeps the ability of the base spells to be used in a support role, but allows some of them to perform double duty so that the GEO is getting more out of the base CNJ class aside from stone and aero to support its primary function of DPS.

If it applied to Cure, Cure II, and Cure III, you'd basically be turning Cure into a redundant spell. You'd use Cure III for AoE and Cure II for ST. DPS are designed to be resource neutral by design (the resource management subgame is intended to not be a major aspect of their playstyle, which is why attacks are never really measured on their cost efficiency but rather their temporal efficiency; cost efficiency is only really a factor when the temporal efficiency of the abilities is so close that it can't be a deciding factor) so the fact that Cure costs less than Cure II basically means nothing.

Not necessarily. A SMN has to worry about their mana pool in long fights. They may need to limit their use of Ruin II or start using drain instead of fester in these cases. Depending on how GEO was set up to handle mana management, they could still find themselves in situations where they can also get into mana troubles if they're not careful about how they cast. Or they may need to conserve a little in particularly long fights. At which point they need to swap to Cure instead of Cure II for their corrupted state.

Provides enough justification to leave Cure in as is in my opinion.

They could also increase the mana costs of those spells under the Corruption effect to a point where Cure II prohibitively expensive to be spammed outside of freecure procs.

I say this also because you would never be able to turn CNJ into a DPS job without fixing their resource consumption. Shroud just wouldn't cut it.

A CNJ DPS job would obviously need a better way to manage their resource consumption. Some ideas have already been suggested in this thread.