Geomancer

[Seraphor]

So, a thought to express exactly where I am on the whole “job fantasy” stance. Summoned and Scholar. Both use the same weapon. Both share the same base class. Both summon and use... I’m not sure what to call their offensive magic, I guess just non elemental.

Even if both of them were DPS or Healers I would not consider them the same “job fantasy”. Whereas to hear you all talk about them they would be the same job just about. Does that give an idea of how very different your opinion is from mine?

If Summoner and Scholar were both Healers, I'd consider them too similar so as to be redundant.

[BasicBlake]

If Summoner and Scholar were both Healers, I'd consider them too similar so as to be redundant.

This right here. They work in the game because one is a healer and one is a caster. You are so close to getting where we are coming from on this.

[MirronTulaxia]

If Summoner and Scholar were both Healers, I'd consider them too similar so as to be redundant.

And I wouldn’t. Ultimately this is just an opinion, yours is as well. The rest of this is really just an aside at this point with you all trying to treat this opinion as fact. It isn’t. There isn’t some rule written in the stars of what makes a job too similar to another. Which is really at the center of my stance.

[SeikishiYuuki]

All that aside, the point here was what reasons/evidence do people have for considering Geomancer for the healer role vs the DPS role.

Given the direction of the lore and the identity of the job within the series I find a healer Geo still very unlikely, of course if it happens it happens, such seems improbable based on past decisions from with the team and its development as a whole.

[MirronTulaxia]

All that aside, the point here was what reasons/evidence do people have for considering Geomancer for the healer role vs the DPS role.

Given the direction of the lore and the identity of the job within the series I find a healer Geo still very unlikely, of course if it happens it happens, such seems improbable based on past decisions from with the team and its development as a whole.

I mean if we are discussing evidence nothing says it's absolutely going to be a Caster, which was my point. People were calling Red Mage as a tank, as a healer, as a new role, none of that happened. Blue Mage being Limited was completely out of nowhere. Dancer was pegged as a healer, melee, or tank, we got ranged. Dark Knight? Samurai? Gunbreaker? I mean, you can throw a dart at the board of jobs and chances are a noticeable amount of people called the job as something other than what we got. None of this is to say it absolutely will be a healer, but that people are too quick to write it off for reasons that are ultimately tied to their own feelings on what is and isn't valid for it.

[BasicBlake]

I mean if we are discussing evidence nothing says it's absolutely going to be a Caster, which was my point. People were calling Red Mage as a tank, as a healer, as a new role, none of that happened. Blue Mage being Limited was completely out of nowhere. Dancer was pegged as a healer, melee, or tank, we got ranged. Dark Knight? Samurai? Gunbreaker? I mean, you can throw a dart at the board of jobs and chances are a noticeable amount of people called the job as something other than what we got. None of this is to say it absolutely will be a healer, but that people are too quick to write it off for reasons that are ultimately tied to their own feelings on what is and isn't valid for it.

In all fairness though, none of those classes had prior story before they were released or had no information about them. They came out a patch or so before the expansion, in a story quest, or just dropped with the actual expansion patch, no backstory. So you bring them up, and I get that but for all of them, all people could do was speculate based on other games. While we are on year three of Geomancers being in the FFXIV story being casters. So we have story pushing them as a caster, and people keep asking you where you are seeing them being healers in the world of FFXIV, but instead of saying "This quest" or "this page", "this dungeon" instead you just say "people thought this and were wrong".

[GucciSan]

I mean if we are discussing evidence nothing says it's absolutely going to be a Caster, which was my point. People were calling Red Mage as a tank, as a healer, as a new role, none of that happened. Blue Mage being Limited was completely out of nowhere. Dancer was pegged as a healer, melee, or tank, we got ranged. Dark Knight? Samurai? Gunbreaker? I mean, you can throw a dart at the board of jobs and chances are a noticeable amount of people called the job as something other than what we got. None of this is to say it absolutely will be a healer, but that people are too quick to write it off for reasons that are ultimately tied to their own feelings on what is and isn't valid for it.

We write it off because it makes zero design sense to have two similar Jobs in the same role. And SE supports our theory just by their history of Job additions. Look at the list of what we have now and most would agree none of them have any thematic overlap.

There’s not much to gain from adding GEO. It’s very similar to WHM, so Healers don’t really gain anything “new”. We already know a lot about it so we don’t learn any new interesting lore about it.

Even the fact they were considering having GEO as a DPS offshoot of WHM back in 1.0 should at least make you question their potential for thinking about it. It’s because XIV’s WHM and GEO are very similar.

Why buy two different tools to serve the same purpose when one of them works just fine? It doesn’t matter if it was made in a different factory or had a different manufacturing process; it’s not enough to justify buying it. You might as well use it for something else.

[SeikishiYuuki]

I mean if we are discussing evidence nothing says it's absolutely going to be a Caster, which was my point. People were calling Red Mage as a tank, as a healer, as a new role, none of that happened. Blue Mage being Limited was completely out of nowhere. Dancer was pegged as a healer, melee, or tank, we got ranged. Dark Knight? Samurai? Gunbreaker? I mean, you can throw a dart at the board of jobs and chances are a noticeable amount of people called the job as something other than what we got. None of this is to say it absolutely will be a healer, but that people are too quick to write it off for reasons that are ultimately tied to their own feelings on what is and isn't valid for it.

Geomancer has been almost added twice now both times it was being designed as a caster dps, sure nothing is an absolute but there a lot of strong evidence for DPS and very little for healer.

[MirronTulaxia]

Snip.

1. Whether they had stories or not doesn't change that people had expectations about how those jobs would work.

2. Lore, as I keep saying, is ultimately pointless because the design team isn't beholden to lore at all.

3. To you we are on year three. All I see is they are mages. Of the one legitimate canon Geomancer ally they have all of three abilities, one of them being a healing spell. I wouldn't call it conclusive.

4. I see the same things you see. Same "evidence". But to you what you call "conclusive" I say is still lacking.

Snip.

1. You write it off because you are beholden to your opinions of what is and is not similar to a job without looking at it from a less biased standpoint.

2. I agree. None of them have thematic overlap. Geomancer has none with White Mage either though.

3. There isn't much to gain to you. You keep pushing your opinion of what is and isn't valid for Geomancer based off of your own feelings on the matter.

4. Using datamined info from 1.0 is really flawed. Are Conjurers still DPS specialists with six elements while Thaumaturges are light/dark healers? Do Arcanists use trap staves (or whatever they wound up being called)? Do we have Shephards? Musketeers? No. None of that is accurate. 1.0 was ages ago. The game has changed from then. Conjurers have changed from then. White Mages changed just this expansion.

5. Because neither White Mage or Geomancer serve the same purpose. If the only thing that saves Geomancer from being the same as White Mage is a different role then it shouldn't be added. Plain and simple. If Geomancer is that shallow, which is what you are ultimately saying, that it can't stand on its own legs, then it isn't fitting to be added. I have a higher opinion of Geomancer than you.

Snip.

1. Feel free to provide evidence. The only time I recall another Caster DPS being discussed was a Mystic/Onmyouji, not a Geomancer. If you can't cite where they said "we planned on adding Geomancer as a Caster" specifically then this isn't a valid point. Though even then they've discussed adding jobs in the past in different ways that didn't pan out, but I honestly haven't found specifically Geomancer being mentioned. I dug into this for another forum and what I found was Mystic.

[GucciSan]

Geomancer has none with White Mage either though.

It does though. It absolutely does. They both use nature magic because nature is part of their core theme. They would both use that nature magic to heal. Connection to the elements is important to both of them. They both tune to their respective elemental deities for their power to work and grow stronger.

You keep pushing your opinion of what is and isn't valid for Geomancer based off of your own feelings on the matter.

There’s nothing subjective about those similarities. Those are all objective statements I can make about both of them. Whether or not someone can justify its inclusion based on those similarities is opinion, yes, but no one can deny that they are very similar. My opinion is based on the factual evidence I can observe about both.

If the only thing that saves Geomancer from being the same as White Mage is a different role then it shouldn't be added. Plain and simple. If Geomancer is that shallow, which is what you are ultimately saying, that it can't stand on its own legs, then it isn't fitting to be added. I have a higher opinion of Geomancer than you.

It would work better as a DPS is my point. We already have the “Nature Healer”. We really don’t need two. The game could use a “Nature Caster” though; that’s a niche we haven’t hit yet. SMN and SCH are the same thing but they’re in different roles and it works better that way and that’s already a good precedent for GEO and WHM.

Reiteration of my earlier question: What would GEO bring to the table? What is the Class Fantasy that a player could achieve with GEO that no other Healer offers?