Geomancer and Chemist - A Better Idea

[Duelle]

You're talking in circles and ignoring my responses. I already explained that 14's AST is related to Astrologer from FF Tactics in name only. Stop acting like they magically conjured another dozen or so additives for it from thin air, when you know they just renamed Time Mage.

Who said anything about conjuring things to make XIV's AST? Aside from the card gimmick, the bulk of the skills and mechanics for AST were taken from XIV's WHM and SCH. What I'm saying is that SE went and built AST instead of letting themselves get stuck at Galaxy Stop/Celestial Stasis. By the same token, neither they nor we should get stuck on the Mix command when discussing Chemist.

The unique job resources are built resources that determine the flow of the rotation. MP is used as a spender and limiter for each job that uses it, so that they're not just reliant on CDs for their strongest heals. In the hands of a WHM it keeps them from just spamming Cure II/III, Medica II and Raise, and encourages them to use more efficient forms of healing like Cure and the Afflatus line. Also, jobs in other roles don't have their spender resource gain determined by an unavoidable gear stat -- partly because TP was removed.

Indeed. This, however, does not have anything to do with what I suggested. If you're looking for an analogue to how I picture Tool Energy (I really wish I could come up with a better name) would work, I'll point to Energy as used in WoW and Energy as used in SWTOR. Both are resources spent and recovered relatively quickly, with SWTOR having a penalty to energy regen to punish spamming of abilities that consume energy. While WoW does not use this for any healer, SWTOR does on for the Smuggler (Sawbones spec) and Imperial Agent (Medicine spec).

Then why would it even have a ranged weapon.

Aesthetics and an explanation for being able to launch things from a distance; I did mention things like darts/syringes, which would justify the job having a firearm as a main weapon or as a sidearm. Also, not all firearms have to work at the same speed as MCH's guns, and in the case of CHM I'd expect something that shoots a heavier payload and takes longer to reload, making firing the thing willy nilly very inefficient at best and a waste of ammo (in-world) at worst.

Look, here's the problem: You are still arguing aesthetics and cosmetics as a response to lack of mechanics.

When did we shift to a strict discussion on mechanics? I presented ideas and contested the claims that Chemist can't be implemented as a healer. I've provided rough examples for gameplay and mechanics (I haven't sat down and done a write up on it...yet), so I'm not sure what more you'd like. If you want a full ability write up with gameplay and traits, I ain't got one this time.

That said, I guess I can try to indulge you.

General gameplay for Chemist at the baseline would be similar to that of the other healers, in that it would have cast times to use heals. The cast times in-game would be preparation times for alchemical potions and solutions used to restore HP and perform other functions. As we know, chemical processes have byproducts that can't be used as part of whatever it is that you're making. The medical tool(s) CHM uses capture these byproducts and refine them into Primers.

This means that CHM has two resources to deal with. Tool Energy for the preparation of potions (again, a resource that is consumed quickly but also recharges quickly), and Primers (a resource generated over time by preparing potions). The UI for CHM would have the Tool Energy Bar and four bottle-shaped icons along the bottom to indicate any primers accumulated. Unlike the Lilies or Astral Fire/Umbral Ice, Primers are generated piecemeal over the course of a fight rather than by singular abilities. The way the game shows this is that preparing a potion will fill a percentage of a Primer bottle until it hits 100%, at which point the Primer can be spent on specific potions that require them or to empower an existing heal/attack. You could throw in a mechanic that causes potion preparation to sometimes contribute more to the accumulation of a primer or grant a whole primer to use. Like:

Abilities

02 Basic Potion - Restores target's HP. Cure potency: 400. Cast time: 2s. Tool Energy cost: 25. Additional effect: Increases Primer gauge by 15%.

Traits

26 Efficacy - Basic Potion and Advanced Potion have 30% chance to triple their increases to the Primer gauge.
40 Complete Efficacy - Basic Potion and Advanced Potion have a 10% chance to increase your current number of Primers by 1.

As mentioned, Primers can be used on abilities that require them (an AoE heal called Hyper Potion) or to empower existing abilities (Poisoned Syringe becoming Toxic Syringe when combined with a primer). I haven't decided if I want primers to be consumed automatically or add an oGCD ability that applies a primer to the target.

Since we're dealing with potions instead of magic, certain curatives used by Chemists leave residue on their recipients. These can be capitalized on through the use of the ability Catalyst. Mechanics-wise, Catalyst is an ability on a short cooldown (in concept, this is something the CHM would have prepared ahead of time) that can trigger effects on friend or foe depending on the target and what effects/residue might be active. An example would be that an enemy affected of Poisoned Syringe (a DoT effect) would take a burst of damage when Catalyst is used on them. Conversely if used on an ally affected by the single-target HoT Healing Ampoule, the HoT duration is refreshed and the cure potency of the HoT is increased. Other uses (though unlikely now because of what has been done to healers with Shadowbringers) include Catalyst setting the floor patch created by Tar Bomb on fire to deal damage over time (though I'm sure BRDs would complain about CHM getting Flaming Arrow).

That's all for now.

Surprised it took this long to get around to just saying "give them a hammer since MCH doesn't use one."

More like "I want to give it something that can double as a sort of tool but can also be used as a weapon". Personally, I'd lean to the wrench/lever/key. For reference, see the Whirligig Saw from Bloodborne, but with the non-mechanical part being attachable to a medical tool instead of a giant pizza cutter.

Considering the current design of the healers,whether or not we like it, are balanced around having a key set of abilities (namely the load out spread of their gcd spells) I would personally expect chemist to follow suit and just use non magical or magitek like aesthetics. So yeah, I would fully expect for a chemist healer to have a contradictory aesthetic like red mage does, would it be more interesting and fitting to throw them in aiming gear? Yes. Do I expect it considering how SE tries to balance its role? No.

I agree that it's unlikely that SE would venture outside of their current design if they don't have to. That said, my brain wouldn't melt from seeing a healer in Aiming gear or a hybrid like RDM on Striking/Maiming gear provided there's some logic behind it.

As things are right now, we're shackling healers to MP pools and magic, which not only limits our options but is also sort of (and I rarely use this word) boring.

The Medicus

To start, I commend you for solving the conceptual dissonance of the chemist-style healer with MP.

That said, I'm not too comfortable with your "Solution stacks" system. Are your heals tuned around a sort of median (by this I mean, are they tuned expecting your party members to have 3 or 4 stacks when you use the Solution spender instead of full stacks)? Also, do Solutions do anything to your party members while on them?

[Archwizard]

Who said anything about conjuring things to make XIV's AST? Aside from the card gimmick, the bulk of the skills and mechanics for AST were taken from XIV's WHM and SCH.

That applies insofar as the basic tools available to the job -- Raise, three ranks of single-target heal, two ranks of AoE heal. At this point having those types of skills is just requisite of the healing role (to balance encounters around the expectation you'll have at least one), before you even get to skills that would become Role Actions.
Beyond those staples, each job is fundamentally unique. AST's role as a buffer, adaptive support, and delayed-blast healer comes not from WHM, SCH or the Astrologer, it draws inspirations from jobs like Gambler and Time Mage.

Which brings me back to the original discussion of this thread: If people want to push Chemist as a healer, it needs a distinctive gameplay identity to encourage it, not just the aesthetic of "throw potions". The fourth healer needs to be able to shake up the healer paradigm in a fundamentally unique way, and offer more than just reskins on staple skills and pedantry on the technical aspects of healing gameplay; otherwise, again, you would be better served pushing a support-oriented DPS or limited job. And in Chemist's specific case, as I mentioned, the devs tried and ended up with AST instead.

From the beginning of this thread I have been asking, "What can these jobs do differently within the healer role, that no existing healer can?" and the conclusion I reached in the OP is "not much." To their credit, Kabooa and Leidiriv went to the efforts of designing full concepts to expand on the Chemist kit, but even they admit the concepts were more "inspired" while still fundamentally unique from their base.
While you've attempted to argue that Chemist could be implemented, you've yet to argue why the devs should bother aside from popular demand. Well, the devs have already proven that popular demand is enough to literally drop a meteor on the game, so you're... technically not wrong? But you're sidestepping the actual problem at hand here.
Which that cycles back into the OP: If the demand is popular but nobody has an idea how specifically to implement it, they could slap the brand on anything, ship it, say they fulfilled the demand and dust their hands of it. If that doesn't satisfy, give more detail on what you hope to see -- not just "potions", not just "heals". Why does chemistry matter enough to be the basis of a full job? Why should I bother unlocking, leveling, and playing it over what I have?

After all your rhetoric on RDM not matching your vision for the job, I would think you of all people would at least have some regard for a position of "put more thought into your concepts."

When did we shift to a strict discussion on mechanics?

Some time between me writing a thread about the lackluster mechanics of concepts being pushed under the names of healer jobs, and you entering said thread about lackluster mechanics. I could put the question to you about when you believe I began any discussion on aesthetics, after my repeated mentions that the job needs more than that.

That said, I guess I can try to indulge you.

... You say that Primers are "unlike Lilies" but then describe them generating over time exactly like Lilies (with quantitative differences), and Tool Energy could be completely substituted by MP.

To be clear, I'm not actually asking for you to make an exact job description with the exact rotation transcription, every ability potency calculated, every "i" dotted and every "t" crossed. I just want to know what the job would actually bring to the table to excite players enough to actually use it, beyond the aesthetic.
WHM has heavy damage, SCH has its fairy and shields, AST has its buffs, CHM has...?

[Leidiriv]

Thanks! Also, the Solutions do not have any passive effects and I've tuned the spenders to be about right at 3 stacks since that's about when AC Charge/Pulse hit the shield potencies of Adlo/Succ. If you spend extra time/resources, things will naturally be burstier, giving the class some good downtime tools. Of course, once the resource loop really gets going pretty much everything's going to be at 5 Solutions thanks to the Sprays. Perhaps I should slightly nerf my Solution spenders then?

[Brandedblade]

I'd like to shift the discussion back to Geomancer briefly. Personally I've liked the concept of Geomancer being a caster that emphasizes positioning. Since Geomancer's shtick seems to be about where they're standing at the time of using their Terrain abilities, and even FFXI emulated this feel with the way their Indi and Geo Spells worked and their Cardinal Chant mechanic (which augmented their black magic spells based on what compass position they where relative to their enemies.

The question would be, however. How to make that work? Would they have to be incredibly mobile to allow them to appropriately position themselves on the flank and rear before casting different spells? Perhaps a combo system like...

Quake-> Deals bonus damage from the rear -> Tornado -> Is instant cast if cast after Quake and applies a DoT if cast from the flank-> Flood -> Deals bonus damage if cast from the rear and the target is afflicted by the Tornado dot.

Wouldnt that just make it akin to red mage but with positionals? I'd like to hear more thoughts about a theoretical Geo design.

[Shurrikhan]

Quake-> Deals bonus damage from the rear.

Well, here comes the WoW trade chat's trend of prefixing any and all rear-related skills.

On a more serious note, where does this positioning-based caster concept even come from? As far as I've ever seen, heard, or known, any combination of the two would be paradoxical. A caster, after all, is a less mobile ranged job, which would be the worst possible base onto which to attach position-dependent skills.

[Archwizard]

I'd like to shift the discussion back to Geomancer briefly. Personally I've liked the concept of Geomancer being a caster that emphasizes positioning. Since Geomancer's shtick seems to be about where they're standing at the time of using their Terrain abilities, and even FFXI emulated this feel with the way their Indi and Geo Spells worked and their Cardinal Chant mechanic (which augmented their black magic spells based on what compass position they where relative to their enemies.

The question would be, however. How to make that work? Would they have to be incredibly mobile to allow them to appropriately position themselves on the flank and rear before casting different spells? Perhaps a combo system like...

Quake-> Deals bonus damage from the rear -> Tornado -> Is instant cast if cast after Quake and applies a DoT if cast from the flank-> Flood -> Deals bonus damage if cast from the rear and the target is afflicted by the Tornado dot.

Wouldnt that just make it akin to red mage but with positionals? I'd like to hear more thoughts about a theoretical Geo design.

I don't necessarily think that design would make "Red Mage with positionals", though it would essentially utilize melee mechanics and require a ton of mobility to execute.

Still, I suppose that is accurate to the Feng Shui theme. The alternative idea I've had pitched to me was rather the opposite, a job that emphasizes being rooted while creating buff fields for allies.
My concern would be more how to avoid repeating Black Mage in that regard, but Ley Lines has a comparatively small impact on the BLM kit (being largely a damage CD and minor mobility tool) while the argument was about making this a core mechanic for GEO, which is a case I can let slide.

That said, the idea I've been working off has used a sort of similar combo system, in that the elements would sort of work in phases and increase the target's vulnerability to spells of another element, and each phase having side benefits to the caster like DR, recovery or mobility. A lot of broad ideas that are still in the early stages of coming together.

Well, here comes the WoW trade chat's trend of prefixing any and all rear-related skills.

I would argue Flood would be worse, but let's just be glad the skill is named neither "Fissure" nor "Eruption".

[Brandedblade]

Would a combination of positionals and appropriately cycling through the elements to build up to something bigger be appropriate as well? I personally only used Earth, Water, and Wind because with white mage going pure holy (and the implication from the AST storyline that Geomancy is a variation of conjury) but theres little reason other elements can be added as well. Perhaps properly cycling through the elements allows you to generate a geo-field effect based on the elements, something like.

Fire- 1% Damage
Earth- 2% Crit
Wind- 3% Skill/Spell Speed
Water-3% Dhit

I know that I just blatantly copied brd songs with one addition. But make the numbers to high and you risk making the support way too powerful.

[Duelle]

Thanks! Also, the Solutions do not have any passive effects and I've tuned the spenders to be about right at 3 stacks since that's about when AC Charge/Pulse hit the shield potencies of Adlo/Succ. If you spend extra time/resources, things will naturally be burstier, giving the class some good downtime tools. Of course, once the resource loop really gets going pretty much everything's going to be at 5 Solutions thanks to the Sprays. Perhaps I should slightly nerf my Solution spenders then?

The reason I mentioned medians was because my concern is that if you designed something around applying stacks on allies, it stands to reason that gameplay should involve either always building stacks to consume or make it very easy to apply stacks without having to go out of your way to do so. Otherwise you risk the job underperforming during emergencies; at least from what I've gleaned the tank would be most likely to sit at 5 stacks at any given time, whereas the rest of the group would have less than that, unless there's lots of AoE damage that can be healed with M-Potion without needing to blow a cooldown/spender.

On that note, do the Solution stacks have a duration? Your post didn't specify that.

I'd like to shift the discussion back to Geomancer briefly. Personally I've liked the concept of Geomancer being a caster that emphasizes positioning. Since Geomancer's shtick seems to be about where they're standing at the time of using their Terrain abilities, and even FFXI emulated this feel with the way their Indi and Geo Spells worked and their Cardinal Chant mechanic (which augmented their black magic spells based on what compass position they where relative to their enemies.

...frankly speaking, the directional thing in XI I saw more as a gimmick resulting from the devs running out of things to put in. At least to me, it felt very arbitrary and just sorta there because we needed a gimmick.

I would point to two starting concepts and build GEO from there: one would be the elemental passage from Chrono Trigger (Water summons Wind, Wind makes Fire dance"). Two would be elemental field effects as seen in Chrono Cross.

Sure, you could tell me a passage of text that is a clue to a hidden door isn't much to go by, but the implications of the text carry a good amount of weight. The idea of elements leading into each other as opposed to elements acting against each other would play nicely into a GEO concept. Now if we combine this with a system inspired by CC's elemental field effects and could get something like using attacks corresponding to elements that harmonize with each other, then triggering (heh heh) a bigger spell/effect/buff/debuff. If that sounds too much like mudras, you could instead allow the GEO to stack field effects as a buff aura around them. Like say using a fire attack grants them +1% Determination, and if they choose to spam that fire attack, can cap at +3% Determination, but get temporarily locked out of ice elemental attacks because their "field effect" is completely leaning towards fire. As the trade-off for this, you could have something like a big attack that requires full alingment to fire that upon use resets your elemental field.

Mind that this is a rough concept and would have to go through iterations and peer review, but I consider it a decent starting point.

[Leidiriv]

On that note, do the Solution stacks have a duration? Your post didn't specify that.

Ah, yeah. I should've specified that Solutions are permanent. Anyway, between the Sprays, Holy Water, Experimental Reagent, and Balm of Garlemald it's pretty easy to cap stacks on people when needed. That aside, I'm contemplating bringing the Elixirs back up to 3/2 for Solution application. Any thoughts? Would that make it *too* easy to cap stacks immediately?

[Brandedblade]

My current thinking is that it would probably be more conducive to limit the player to 2-3 "Geo Field Effects" -- Wind and Water play heavily into the lore, and Earth being of course its namesake. One could also perhaps add a cooldown to supe-up the effects of whatever field is active on nearby allies, or even just to share the effects if it's initially limited to the user. And this is all assuming the fields themselves are damage-oriented, since you could easily make the Water field do a slight HoT and the Earth field give some small mitigation, for instance.
I've also thought about some type of teleportation skill where the Geomancer sets up just a Water field and an Earth field, then uses a Wind spell to teleport between them.
Lots of options.

I tend to play it safe when I think of utility and support in this game, since its niche if it isnt some variation of plus +damage. But you could combine them as well. Like Water could be a 50 potency hot+ 3% Dhit, Earth could be 2% Physical Damage Reduction+ 2% Damage, and Wind could be 2% Magic Damage Reduction and +2% crit. The sky's are endless.