Elementalist => Red Mage/Geomancer Job idea

[MartaDemireux]

They'll have to change many of the CNJ's traits and find something to do with Cure/Cura/Curaga/Medica/Medicara :l

Only 2 - Freecure and Overcure and they could just get switched when Cleric Stance is up (assuming they'd alter CS when GEO is equipped) to Freestone and Overdraft using similar or same effects for Stone/Aero. MND traits can stay (SCH keeps INT traits). Others enhance supporting abilities.

Cure is a non-issue as SMN gets Physick.
Cure II & III, Medica & Medica II offer the team support in a tight situation. Instead of a BRD replenishing WHM MP the GEO could help heal a little bit as well.

[Mimilu]

I have a really hard time accepting GEO's wielding rapiers too. Outside of Final Fantasy Tactics they've always had a form of blunt weapon as their specialty. Bells, clubs, poles, maces etc.

I did actually have the Tactics version of Geomancers in mind when I designed the job... >w>()
They were more physical and hardy then other incarnations, who were all squishy mages (they even used swords and axes as weapons).
We already have two types of squishy mages, the burst-damaging Black Mages and DoT-single-targeting Summoners, so I figured why not have a Tanking mage to go along with my Red Mage.

[Exstal]

Only 2 - Freecure and Overcure and they could just get switched when Cleric Stance is up (assuming they'd alter CS when GEO is equipped) to Freestone and Overdraft using similar or same effects for Stone/Aero. MND traits can stay (SCH keeps INT traits). Others enhance supporting abilities.

Cure is a non-issue as SMN gets Physick.
Cure II & III, Medica & Medica II offer the team support in a tight situation. Instead of a BRD replenishing WHM MP the GEO could help heal a little bit as well.

As a DPS, there should be no need for Cleric stance. It should be INT based right at L30. Thus Cleric Stance is effectively worthless.

I don't think Geomancer should have access to AoE heals of any kind.

[MartaDemireux]

As a DPS, there should be no need for Cleric stance. It should be INT based right at L30. Thus Cleric Stance is effectively worthless.

I don't think Geomancer should have access to AoE heals of any kind.

That's why I said I assumed they would alter CS when GEO is equipped. CS could be used as a stance when GEO is equipped to foster a mechanic in a similar fashion that WAR uses Defiance. It's obvious GEO would be INT based as a DPS which again is why I said I assumed they would alter CS.

This wouldn't be the first time GEO would have heals. Mog in FFVI could recover status ailments and heal HP and MP to full. Aerith in FFVII had access to several AoE heals. GEO in FFXI has a very potent AoE Regen spell and can sacrifice it's Luopon to produce an AoE heal.

In the same fashion as SMN they would heal terribly on their own but could still use them as team support. SMN and SCH were designed from scratch to come from the same class and yet in just about any given fight both jobs won't use up to 5 of their abilities. Even if GEO was such a terrible healer that it wasn't even worth it to assist with a weakened Medica II and all the healing spells went unused that would still just be 5 abilities unused. The same as SCH and SMN.

In fact, many other jobs won't use up to 5 of their abilities as well. Some even up to 6. This is where giving each class a 2nd job comes in. Take the abilities they won't really use with their current job and then make a new job that will use them a lot. Look at ARC's Repelling Shot. BRD will almost never use it. If they were to add a trap-using RNG job to ARC then RNG could get a an ability that rushes up to the target to place a trap and then use Repelling Shot to get out of there in a combo.

So if CNJ were to get another job it would be best to give them one that would make liberal use of Stone, Stone II, Aero, Aero II, Cleric Stance and to a degree Stoneskin. When CNJ is soloing they can be an efficient DPS using these abilities but in group play they see little use (I'm aware that an exceptional WHM can find the time to CS>Aero>Aero II). So DPS comes to mind. Those elements make GEO come to mind. GEO could then be similar to a CNJ/WHM soloing but with its own flair and of course much more potent.

[Kitru]

Cure II & III, Medica & Medica II offer the team support in a tight situation. Instead of a BRD replenishing WHM MP the GEO could help heal a little bit as well.

Except that they would still be getting Graniteskin, Proshell, Esuna, and combat rez as well. If you think SMN has amazing utility, a CNJ DPS would completely and totally blow them away. They would be bringing absolutely everything that a WHM brings only with lower heals. Hell, a DPS with 18% Stoneskin basically renders the lack of practical heals completely pointless; when you can throw a shield on someone that soaks as much damage as a healer throws with one of *their* heals, it doesn't matter that your heals are terrible.

CNJ has too much stuff that would have to be removed in order for it to not completely and totally render other DPS irrelevant (or require such a large reduction in DPS to balance it out that it's only marginally stronger than tank DPS), and, when you're talking about a job requiring half of the abilities of a class be changed and/or rendered irrelevant, you're basically saying "yeah, this isn't going to be made".

[MartaDemireux]

That could be remedied with support spells having high MP costs with a stance up (it would need about a minute or two cooldown to prevent liberal switching). Stoneskin is already about 400mp, right? Stance bumps it up to say 600. Instead of a direct penalty for using it (like Ballad has) you're now out a good chunk of MP which in turn lowers your DPS (about 4 casts of a Stone/Stone II for one Stoneskin). If you want to save MP you'd have to take off the stance. That's well and good but now your DPS is lowered significantly due to whatever mechanic the stance gives being nullified. You also still have terrible MND and are INT based meaning your heals still perform poorly. Now you're a poor DPS and healer in exchange for a Stoneskin/Esuna bot. Still a form of support but then you face DPS checks or resources becoming strained. Support would have to be strategic to make sure you're still able to perform your primary role as DPS and your secondary role as support.

As for seeing a large number of abilities getting changes the same issue would be present with any of the other classes getting another job. MRD/GLA would need all their enmity taken off and PGL/LNC/ARC would need their mechanics and combos altered, THM is pretty specialized, CNJ has all the support. We already know that Yoshi has said that given a situation where they were to add a DPS job to GLA they could and would make significant changes to their existing abilities to remove all the enmity. I know you are/were of the opinion that no current class will get a 2nd job but I'm of the opposite opinion.

[Mimilu]

My thread was hijacked. ; w ;

[Mimilu]

Update:

Red Mage:
-Enchant no longer cost an Arcane Cycle to cast but cost double the amount of the Elemental Spell used to cast it.
-Doublecast uses one Arcane Cycle from a selected foe.

Geomancer:
-Terrain cost double the amount of the Elemental Spell used to cast it.
-The "Sandstorm" terrain does extra damage to any foe that steps into its AoE.

[Shurrikhan]

Neat concepts, even if not my first choice for the class-stem or style of Geomancer. Just on basic concepts and mere preferences alone, I'd rather the base class be an actual fencer, with abilities that hint at elemental affinities, while the elemental wheel is introduced in RDM and debuffs are made in combination between one's current step in the wheel and the abilities used. That said, such would likely leave a lot to fine-print tooltips (ability does A in Z, B in Y, C in X, nothing extra in other three elements; this ability gains buff A in Z, B in Y, C in X)...

In terms of actual critique:

- The Tactical Wheel buffs seem unable to be procced predictably in time for any particular event and the parry buff seems almost useless compared to the magic damage increase (which seems to make up the slight majority of RDM and definite majority of Geomancer). The Wheel also feels like it could be a more useful and interesting concept in itself (even if it is in some ways limiting or hindering; or more noticeably throttles and bottlenecks the class) that could add more dynamics to the Elementalist by carrying a native buff inside of each element instead.
- The minor percentages of abilities like Main Gauche also feel too weak.
- Point-in-line seems quite weak as a native ability. As a non-strength class, you're unlikely to be parrying for even 18% or so of the attack strength. Gaining 10% of that chance does not warrant a 10% loss in dps, even with the damage of Riposte (which, due to the long DoT, does not currently benefit quick successive counters, by the way). I would rework this into either a mechanic or a sort of free, dynamic buff that can only be used on one enemy at a time and would have reason to be deployed at certain times (not using it early nor late)--something that fits the theme and won't go unused but is not necessitated either.

The completion of cycles and the cycles system itself could use clarification and exemplification.
- Is the elemental order necessary? Does the position in the Arcane cycle belong to the player or only enemies ("uses one Arcane Cycle from a target")? Does it change when the player casts a spell, or only according to enemy attunement (which would delay its effects by 18 seconds since the attunement debuff only applies after the DoT has finished)? If there's a specific order to your abilities, why have the full range of abilities at your disposal at all times? (You would just be casting Burn, Drown, Shock, Rasp, Choke, Frost...) Even if the order was unimportant, at 18 seconds duration it would take 7 GCDs to be able to effectively recast any of these DoTs, basically forcing you to use all 6. It seems like it would take a minimum of 15 seconds to build a single Arcane Cycle stack on an enemy, though that may be about right, maybe not--I don't know without a better understanding of how this class would fight.

The Red Mage abilities seem rather lackluster except for Double-cast, which is not well explained, and Enchant, which seems a bit too powerful at present. Enchantment, especially, needs a cooldown listed.

Geomancer seems like it ought to be able to more support with its terrain than it does, even if not by much (i.e. applying the debuffs in lesser version to any enemies in the area, or any enemies who attack any allies in that area).

[Mimilu]

Snip

Thank you for the critique.

Do address your points:
- Tactical Wheel: I had originally though about giving each element a Tactical Wheel buff but was worried that it might be unfair to give them one trait that could possibly gives them one of six different buffs but you are right that it would probably make it more interesting/useful. As for the parrying buff, I made that with GEO in mind. I designed GEO to focus more on parrying as there main defense, to go more with the fencing theme the classes have and their DEX-based physical moves. What if I boost the chance of the Tactical Wheel buff happening to 50% and the Terrain chance to 75%? I'll also add buffs for the individual elements too.
- Percents: When I did all the percents, I was worried that if I made them happen too often the class/jobs would be broken. I'll go boost some of them... >w>()
- Point-In-Line: What if Point-In-Line was an instant cast-ability that automatically parried the enemy's attack? You have to use it at the right time for it to work and get the Double-Touch trait buff.

Arcane Cycle
- Casting the spells in the correct order is necessary BUT you can start anywhere on the cycle you want, I just started it with Fire because it's the first spell you get.
- The Arcane Cycle stack is placed on the enemy. For abilities that use Arcane Cycles, you have to have a foe with stacks selected to use them.
- The Arcane Cycle is based on the Attunement debuff and using the opposite elemental spell to it. Example: You use Burn and wait for the DoT to end and the Fire-Attunement debuff to pop up, you need to use Drown, then Shock when the Water-Attunement debuff is up, and so on until you finish of with casting Burn on an Ice-Attuned foe.
-You don't have to cast the spells on the same enemy. You just need to cast it on an enemy that has the correct attunement debuff on them. This is where RDM's Elemental Burst and Doublecast comes in. I'll remove the Arcane Cycle cost on Elemental Burst to make it easier.
- As for the 18 seconds, the last trait ELM gets at 48, Cycle Through, reduces DoT's time to 9. I had designed the DoTs to force players to use magic and melee combat to maximize damage versus specializing in one or the other like the other DPSs.
-You can have multiple Arcane Cycle stacks on multiple foes.

Red Mage
-Red Mage was designed to be a single-target-supporting DPS versus Bard, which is a group-supporting DPS (at least in my eyes it is. :B ).
- I had designed their abilities to be a bit lackluster just for that reason, Enchant and Doublecast. I also did it to give them things that Bard, the only other support job, didn't have, like a debuff-remover (to help healers) and something to give spike damage to tanks.
- Doublecast was designed to help spread Enchantments and Elemental Spell DoTs. It allows you to cast two of the same spell on up to two targets. With Enchant up, the two spells become Enchantments.
- Elemental Burst is RDM's equivalent to ACN/SMN/SCH's Bane but instead of using it after placing a DoT on an enemy, you us it before to make it an AoE.
- I'll also be boosting Spike's damage output. >w>

Geomancer
- I like both of your ideas. I think I will change them a little to "applying the debuff to enemies in the area, when the Geomancer casts the Terrain spell" and changing the Terrains to effect your allies as well, so long as the Geomancer who cast it is in the AoE.