Well, Y'shtola is basically our blind, overpowered earth bender, when you think about it.

But that's a great example of why the traditional version of the Terrain spell won't work in FFXIV, and why GEO was so heavily changed in FFXI.

Some terrains didn't even have damaging attacks and instead caused status changes in past games. "Oh, my terrain attack inflicts sleep on this platform...." Should it sleep the boss? Should it have dimishing returns?

Or should Terrain just be raw damage that -looks- different per environment?

It would be slightly game braking and an absolute nightmare to program into old content and to balance.


The stances was a suggestion once brought up in a thread about how GEO could work, and I liked the idea of it, being of a similar vein as the Astrologian stances. (As an aside, I'm actually expecting that to be Red Mage's schtick, with you changing your element on the fly in combat.)