Bubble Trouble: A Geomancer Guide

i had that issue too when i tried to precast in impatiens. dunno if was my GS but it messed it up

I don't precast my geo/handbell gear. And mine certainly get full potency. Hell, I don't precast Idris either. And that'd be pretty noticeable if it wasn't applying.

can u post ur GS?

But then, I don't precast in impatiens either. So that is a potential issue.

Some peoples Gearswap lua files are not updating via the launcher, a link was provided on the Gearswap Support thread to manually update this to see if this resolves the issue.

That was exactly the issue. Impatiens is in my sets.precast.FC so I had to make a .Geomancy precast without them or it would give a buff excluding handbell skill completely.

Gearswap is supposed to handle instant cast procs, perhaps something is broken.

Ah I just use ingame macro stuff. Neve rbeen a problem before but just recently did tree delve and was barly resisting the morta and same for multiple PW.

Hello, starting up on the job, I got some questions:

1. Do the enhancing effects from Blaze of Glory and Eclipctic Attrition stack with Bolster?

2. What's the currently known highest necessary combined skill required to cap basic potency on every spell? (talking about "Geomancy Skill", not "Geomancy +X"

3. Do pet: regen gear affect Luopan?

4. Does the Luopan DT-X% gear also affect the natural DoT degradation or just direct damage?

Thanks ;)

1) No. Bolster doesn't stack with other potency JAs
2) Someone else will have to answer this, I never bothered to look. Cap and merit both skills, +1 the body and legs, and you'll never have to worry about it.
3) Yes
4) Just direct damage.

I don't currently have merit space in the Magic Skill category, which is why I was asking what sort of number I need to be aiming at in my midcast sets ;)

Any other Pet Regen item that GEO can equip? Can't think of anything aside of Kumhau's belt.

ACP hat can be augmented with pet: regen+5 dt-10%, however it hardly fits in any of my sets given its non-ilvl nature.

Honestly Your priority is keeping your own *** alive, you can always recast granted loss of JA etc etc but really Pet Regen isn't the issue, AoE Spam is but getting the balance of defence and pet PDt etc makes this hat a probable asking to die item...

There's not a magic number for you to aim for skill wise. various geo spells have differing skill tiers. Some have huge skill tier increments(think refresh or malaise) some have very small ones(fury, barrier.)

And as for caps, we haven't actually found any yet that I know off. Part of that could just be cause we don't know the formulas, so we can't say, "Ahh, this should have gone up just now, but it didn't. Capped!"

We just keep getting more skill, and things keep going up. For example, fury gained a tier somewhere between 838 and 842. Which is pretty up there skill wise. And looking at my other numbers, If I had the skill+ ring, I'd probably hit another tier. Ahh, and there was a precision tier between 842 and 845.

Basically, it's not like the GEO/Bell merits wouldn't help. They would. But not having them isn't a game breaking loss. Each tier of potency isn't that big. Usually looking at +1 acc/eva or ~1% atk/def, etc. Although, 32 combined skill is often going to cost you 2 tiers.
I have a pet aug'd Selenian cap. The pet regen is only +1. +5... I wish.

Don't really use it anymore though. I cap pet DT easily enough with Idris, and I judged that regaining an Ilvl head or refresh+ was more valuable than pet regen+1.

This. +skill helps, but it's really not a make or break type of deal. I'm sure eventually we'll have access to enough +skill that we'll see decent sways in our spell strength compared to no +skill and full +skill, but for now, the differences are eclipsed by +Geomancy. It's really kinda spoiled the job.


Hopefully they ditch the idea of pet regen and go to +Luopan Max HP augments as a form of increasing the Luopons duration. Having to idle in Pet: Regen gear is terrible, and the amounts are so low that the difference isn't worth it IMO. Maybe someday we'll get a JP that lowers the HP decay by 1-2%.

Whats with the reading on the Bolster JP augment description? On one hand it gives the impression that -perpetuation might actually have an impact. On the other that's not how Luopans really seem to work.

Also, currently on final stage for Idris. I kinda want to punch myself in the face cause I made Epeolatry first.

Not certain what you mean. They have a perpetuation cost very similar to avatars, just that it ticks against their HP instead of your MP, Bolster JPs reduce it. If you notice with Smn -perpetuation gear, all of it AFAIK says "Avatar perpetuation cost -x" which wouldn't effect non-avatars. If they ever make a "Pet perpetuation cost -x" effect, I'd imagine it'd work for Geo as well. Would actually be kind of a cool way to make gear less Smn only-ish and more useful for Geo as well. Would love if Assiduity Pants +1 did such.

Thanks Martel and Malithar.
Another thing: I guess the buffs stats get calculated statically the second the spell gets activated, and not dynamically like in other games, correct?

Which kinda means I have to focus on Geomancy Skill+ and Geomancy+ gear in my midcast sets, correct?

Yeah, skill and GEO+ are applied on cast. So in midcast.

And thank god for that. Imagine having to idle in full skill+/GEO+. Then swapping out to cast anything would lower your buffs for a sec... -.-;;

Yeah, would be particularly inconvenient given how FFXI works.
Tbf I don't think there is any spell/JA in this game atm that calculates stats dynamically.

Well... I suppose there are specific enhancements to JAs that require you to keep that certain item on, but that's a slightly different thing I suppose.


In other games there are dynamically adjusted stats, especially for dots, buffs and stuff like that, but I can't think of anything working like that in FFXI.

As pointed out by others, I guess Avatar's Favor kinda falls in the category, with its potency-increase-over-time and the max reachable cap which depends on your current SMNskill value.
Not sure it's so dynamic but it's the closest thing I can think of to what I was talking about in other games.

Avatar's Favor x.x and then SE would be like "it is Working as Intended and players must decide whether or not to wear skill gear while luopans are out for best results while buffing party members and debuffing enemies, similar to the effects of Avatars Favor"

Another example would be spikes spells. While the base dmg is calculated on cast, the MAB factor is determined on hit.

Hmm, Enspell II as well, iirc. Skill calculated on hit, Making them suck.

But we're kinda moving away from geo related topics now.

About the +Duration on Bagua Pants and Lifestream Cape... is it a fixed value in seconds? Or a %? Or something else?

Legs are straight +seconds. Cape aug is a % increase.

So Duration = (base+pants)*1.xx. With xx being the cape aug value.


If you're planning on making a timer triggered in aftercast, using gearswap/timers, add about 5 seconds. There's a slight delay after casting before indi-change triggers and the buff goes up. And another slight delay after the indi effect wears but before you actually lose the buff.

Personally, I like my timer to indicate when I'm actually going to lose the buff.

So, I have a +17 ind duration cape, and +1 legs. If you math it, I'd have a 228 duration. Which I do, from indi change to indi change.

But if I use 233(+5 seconds) then my time runs out right as the buff drops. So that's my duration from aftercast, to buffchange(loss).

Ok, this explains everything. I was wondering what the truth could be becuause I was getting numbers denying either the "fixed values" and the "% values" theories.
Turns out it was both :P

And yeah that's exactely what I need it for. I made a custom function that creates custom timers whenever I use an Indi Spell (I'm still wondering why Timers doesn't do that, honestly) and wanted to know the exact duration buffs.

Thanks for the other tips as well.
Do you actually filled the numbers (static value from pants, dynamic value from cape) manually in your LUA, or do you have it somehow read the gear you have in your midcast set? If so how? I just have a couple of variables on top of my LUA that I manually fill in, atm. Less elegant solution maybe, but much simpler to handle.




Also stupid question about -ra spells.
I get that even though you cast it on a target, the spell's effect is actually cast around the Geomancer himself.
Given this, why did they make it like this? Wouldn't it have been simpler to just have <me> as target? I don't get why they went this way.
I dunno, it feels a bit strange, doesn't it?

Pet: Regen gear is no different than Avatar Perpetuation or what Pet Perpetuation would be, in core function.

If your Luopan has a degen of 21/tick, aka a perpetuation cost of 21/tick, then +1 regen would reduce it to 20/tick. This is no different than avatar perpetuation, having 14/tick getting reduced to 13/tick. One is MP of the master, the other is HP of the luopan.

Pet perpetuation would just allow gear to be shared between the two jobs, which I guess is cool, but then it would likely come as a lower value akin to pet regen. Either way, for both summoners and geomancers, the gear must be idled in in order to maintain the effect (avatar perp/pet regen). Pet regen just generally comes as a lower value.

Technically, pet regen is even more similar to avatar perpetuation because it ultimately just means you have to resummon your luopan less often, which ultimately saves you MP. However, it can also further perpetuate your job abilities and the beefed snapshotted effects on the luopan (ecliptic, blaze), offering another benefit that ultimately leads to actual performance gain. It can be situational though, having less worth in some scenarios, an example being a mob spamming AoEs blowing up your luopan super fast offering little time for regen to give any potential worth.

I just use a set value. I haven't even bothered to assign it as a variable, it gets used twice nearly consecutively in the entire lua. Didn't really feel the need.

While I know how to equip gear based on augments, I've no idea how to actually retrieve augments in gearswap. With the exception of the export command. But that's not something you could code from.
That'd really be more something to ask a dev, but...

I would imagine that like every other offensive action in the game, it requires a valid target. It may be player centered, but you aren't nuking yourself. So you need a target, and one within range.

That being said, I don't see having to cast it on a mob as being a problem or even particularly strange. If anything I think only being to cast GEO-enfeebles on mobs is far stranger considering Indi-spell/entrust mechanics.

Same here.
Not even sure you *can* do it with gearswap, but I think it's at least possible in theory with Windower APIs since Timers can do it.

I guess... It's just that it comes natural to me to imagine how similar abilities work in other games (AoE damage centered around the casters, where tipically you target yourself to start the action/spell)
It still feels a bit strange to me having to target something else for something that will be cast around me, but maybe it's just a limit in the target validation process just like you said.


Yeah I found that out yesterday since my macros weren't working...
Very strange.
I mean, why shouldn't I be able to place a GEO debuff luopan at my feet or at a player's feet?
Yesterday during a Yorcia Skirmish run where I was helping a friend it got so annoying I ended up using the debuff in the Indi form, and using the buff in the GEO form.
They mentioned this in the official forums btw, well something similar, so it's possible in the future they will change something about this mechanic.

They should just make it act like Cure and be able to target both enemies and allies.

I could argue it was a technical limitation if there wasn't already a spell that could do it.

As for the ra's, I imagine it's just a design choice to prevent you from running around causing random explosions. It could also lead to other potential issues (afk farming just spamming a spell, etc).

I don't think the GEO thing is a technical limitation. More like an oversight on their side.
I can see them changing that eventually, given they even mentioned something on the OF some time ago.
I was thinking about -RA spells when I mentioned technical limitations, but given the "cure" example you mentioned I guess we can rule that out.


I thought about that... like to prevent skilling up or something else.
But if that's the reason it's pretty stupid.
Not like people can't afk-bot the same even without that, right?
I mean, in the end this is no big deal, not an issue at all (other way around for the GEO thing instead, it does matter there and I hope they'll change it).
It's just that, dunno, yesterday I was -RAing mobs in Yorcia and it felt really strange to me somehow, just that :D