Bubble Trouble: A Geomancer Guide

So recently someone tested Geomancy Galero and we found out that the Magic Burst Bonus from Cardinal Chant goes beyond the 40% MB cap.

What I don't remember though: is it just the additional bonus from Galero that goes beyond the cap, or is it Cardinal Chant bonus in general that goes beyond it?

Cardinal Chant bonus in general. Makes sense since CC is a job trait and the Galero just enhances that trait.

It got patched in April of 2016, before then all CC was counted as gear MB.

So if we can manage to setup for the distance the +3 head is clearly BiS for MB's? Interesting...

Mmm, depends how much extra MB it actually gives since the +3 head still has 0 MAB on it.

According to the chart on bgwiki, the trait itself was tested to be MBD+22 at tier 4. So with the +4 helm (likely) offering +100% of that, we'd be getting +22 MBD with a boatload of INT/Magacc/ele skill. So the loss of MAB would be there for sure, but it's peerless magacc and I'm pretty sure the MBD would outweight the loss of 40ish MAB (on a good augmented merlinic hood). The issue is then going to be if CC is MBDII if it caps that, and if we can net MBD in our other slots to compensate for losing some from the hood, which as far as I can tell may be an issue since I get my MBD+30 from Merlinic head/legs/feet/body (10 from neck) and having to split 30 from 4 to 3 means you need to basically max each piece, Locus would be coming back in that scenario, so...ehhhh.

I'm tempted to say I really doubt it's 100% boost since things which enhance traits just don't normally work that way, they tend to just increase the tier. Assuming the increase from tier continues on the same trend it would be +4 per rank so +16.

It's still probably stronger than the merlin hood in that case, but I dunno if it's enough to really be worth all the trouble, lol. Especially considering how rare it is to actually be beneficial to MB on GEO.

I don't think it'd be MBDII since that's a gear thing, it's more likely to be job trait bonus.

BGWiki has Cardinal Chant+2 at a 50% increase from the base trait, assuming that was from a test and not wild speculation they tossed up there it would follow that Cardinal Chant+4 would be a 100% increase.

I don't actually see any testing on that so I'm highly doubtful of it. I just can't think of a single other +job trait equipment that works that way.

There also isn't a single other job trait that works like Cardinal Chant.

Depends what you're talking about, it goes through tiers of effectiveness like most other job traits and that's what we're discussing right now.

If you can find testing to prove it or feel like doing it yourself that's fine, but until then I think it's good to take any unproven thing on a wiki with a grain of salt.

"distance"? It's not a distance factor, but a positioning one, unless I misunderstood what you meant.

Galero can't provide MAB at the same time as MB Bonus, but you could go for MBBonus and Macc together, at the expense of some MBBonus itself.


I don't think it's very practical to use with a large group in real situations, but for stuff like getting the 30k MB damage in Omen Objective, it can be a bliss.

Yeah, direction, meant that.

And it's probably not very practical, but there are a few fights where I do depend on my GEO nuking, this is quite frustrating to want to get to work, though. Pure East would make this the best Free nuke for high macc situations and Pure West offers most max damage. Also the Galero makes an absurd enfeebling piece, too. Guess it'll be my 4th piece...

Bis Nuking?

Griovolr+ Enki
idris(ag)+ Ammurapi shield?

So......................

I got the shield finally the other day and went to test this out. As I was nuking mobs in Reisenjima it was going up and down a bit but Grio+Enki was winning, so I was a little sad, but Idris/Ammu will have a lot more MACC so there's that.

Then I went to do some more nukes out in Gustaberg and I'm nuking and the numbers are teetering a bit, but Idris/Ammu is winning. Confused I asked LS about it and they say...maybe Cardinal Chant is screwing with things?

Oh yeah that exists.

So I stood in one spot and had 4 mobs directly to my west and got:

12634 = Grio/Enki
12700 = Idris/Ammu
12838 = Idris/Ammu
12516 = Grio/Enki

To note my nuking Grio augments are:

INT+20, MACC+16, MAB+25, MDMG+2. So not perfect but...pretty close?

I'm just going to nuke in Idris/Ammu because it should be a solid 30-35 macc increase and the actual damage values are close and situational.

There's no simple answer. It depends on...

- The augs on your Grio,
- The rest of your nuking set,
- What you're fighting,
- What spells you are casting.

On higher-end targets, the INT tradeoff between Idris and a good Grio (~15INT, ~25MAB/MACC) is probably gonna be pretty significant, since dINT acts as a base damage multiplier AND effects your magic hit rate.

There is no simple answer to that. Depends on your buffs, the target, etc.
And of course by the rest of your gear and ultimately your grio augs. Think for instance a setup built around a certain mb bonus on grio, hard to beat that...


Anyway if we were to do an extreme simplification it would probably be:
AG Idris (AM2) >>> Grio >>> AG Idris

I don't really see a huge "like night and day!!1!one!" difference between them though.

Any other reason to AG the idris?

More acc when you melee, obv.

I did it for nuking. It's aight.

Anyway, today I got Gada for Enhancing Magic duration, but while augmenting it I hit Indi effect duration +9. This resulted in longer Indi spells (5:31) than Solstice (5:26). I'm also using a 20% augmented Lifestream cape, Bagua +1 pants, and Azimuth +1 feet.

I don't know if it can go higher. I hit enhancing magic duration +5 and stopped.

Didn't even know there was an indi duration aug on Gada.
Wish they would normalize augs for Indi duration. Most are static additions, while a couple are %

I have six on mine, which is in line with BGWiki's max.

Excellent. I'll go back and get 6 then. If I hit 10 Indi duration on the way, it's going to be hard to say no to it. I need try and lowman some Old Shuck pops.

Edit: Upgraded it to +6. I didn't see any "Indi. eff. dur." >7, so I wasn't tempted.

Is there a floor on magic attack bonus? Been thinking about using Geo-Fade instead of Vex/Attunement but not really sure on caps and such.

Yes 0. And yes old testing with Idris bolster fade before they added a ton of gear did produce zero dmg nukes

i see alot of people running Geomancy Mitaines +3 on their GEO what am I missing that makes this piece so good? if pet dt is capped shouldnt be running the telchine for pet regen while bubles is out?

doesnt really matter how you do it

4/5 telchine, geo mitaines(any), sucellus, amb cape, dunna

5/5 telchine, idris, amb cape, staunch

both give capped dt, 25 pet regen, and very close to the same player stats, but obviously not everyone has idris.. if mitts aren't +2/+3 you lose a pretty significant amount of m.eva which may or may not be better than the status resistance on staunch depending on if mob does more debuffs or more damage

edit: forgot staunch was a thing after relying on dunna for so long

Vast majority of the time the bulk damage that kills a bubble makes the pet regen more-less pointless.

that is what I've noticed.

The m.eva. from +3 is far more important to me.

My Telchine gloves with pet DT/regen has 1 meva less than Geomancer Mitaines +3.

Did I mention they are super ugly? And a waste of space?

EDIT: Probably sounds snarky, but I super hate Telchine. I hate the look, I hate the upgrading, I hate that they still exist.

EDIT2: My contempt extends to all sets where you need 2-10 of the same armor so that you can get all the augments...

They aren't any more waste of space than mitaines. Both only used for one thing, you can get 900 while using 5/5 emp so you shouldn't really be casting in geo mitaines unless you enfeeb.

If you have idris, you should use 5/5 telchine for max regen. With m.eva+25 augment, telchine actually have 5 more m.eva than mitaines. If you don't have idris you need to use the mitaines to cap pet DT anyway.