Bubble Trouble: A Geomancer Guide

A few additional tests and I think I've got the duration aug down pat.

It reduces the perpetuation cost by the listed %. I can't be sure if it floors the result or rounds, I don't have any gear to hit 21 pet regen to test. With +12% duration and +22 pet regen, my Luopan never dipped below full over the full 10 minutes. With +20 pet regen, it dipped 1% within 15~ seconds of being cast.

It appears to stack with Ecliptic. +28 pet regen kept it at full, so did +27. +25 saw a drop shortly after though.

Going off of this and assuming the results are floored, the different capped necks will provide base bubbles:

NQ: -4 HP perpetuation cost
+1: -5 HP perpetuation cost
+2: -6 HP perpetuation cost

If I ever stumble upon a +2 neck for relatively cheap, with the ease of augmenting, I wouldn't think twice about getting it for the extra 2% chance to absorb damage. Outside of that, I'm plenty content with my +1. Still wish the first aug slot had something more interesting than +MP.

Now to wait for someone to post Bhima augments. I haven't seen those posted yet and my server appears to be devoid of a shielded Clothcrafter. :(

Oh now that's neat. Kinda shitty for how it's explained on the item, but also more viable than the face value concept of increasing the luopan max duration from 10min to 12.5 minutes.

Head+2/+3 can be useful when paired w/ BoG. The Pet HP+ gets applied to it when cast, then reduced by BoG, so you end up w/ a BoG luopan starting at 90%/95% HP when mastered. There does appear to be a small delay in the HP shifting process, so you want to have it equipped from midcast til about 1sec after aftercast, so actually works best w/ vanilla macros rather than GS. Not all that hard to tack on /wait 1 ; /equip idlehead lines.

GEO can get a quite powerful Drain/Aspir set together, and I'd say it's worth it just for the +30/+35. As long as you have Aspir-able targets on-hand, you should never run out of MP as GEO.

It should also increase Concentric Pulse damage by 500/600 by default, but I never use that so can't confirm. :x

Start saving your gil now thats all I'll say. :)

I take it you know them then? Would be swell if you could share...

The only hints I have are from the data mine. "Indi. Eff. Dur." (the multiplicative term that is on the Incursion capes) and a "Luopan:" augment were added, but were not part of the neck. It's safe to say both of these will be on it. The former will be great for a swap in for Entrust. We could see upwards of a 70% uptime on Entrust if it provides just 25% duration. The "Luopan:" augment, I have no idea.

You're right, start saving for something else.

So a shielded clothcrafter seemingly appeared on Bahamut last night. I dunno if they transferred or just finished shield recently, never seen their name, and we still lack any Whm or Geo clubs on AH, cept for a transfer's Whm HQ2 club. They were JP so communication was a bit tricky, but managed to get an NQ club made. I'm filled with nothing but regret.



Even assuming HQ2, Rubicundity is damn near as good as a Aspir/Drain stick, though it'd have slightly more MAcc thanks to the magic acc skill. That leaves you with a MB weapon that lacks MAB. I didn't even bother augmenting the thing, I'd rather try and sell it. I'm not familiar with MB Accuracy, but I assume it's literally just MAcc applied to MB? I suppose it could be something cool like bypassing the -DT effect when multiple MBs go off, but I don't really care. If there are Blms MBing, then I'm likely not casting at all. And if there's not, I have better things to MB with.

That leaves you with the 2x melee paths as an option. I'm not even considering those since SE saw fit to neuter it a bit by giving the club 228 skill instead of 242. I suppose if you're really trying to push your Acc, HQ2 offhand with +255 skill plus the +50 accuracy would be nifty, but that's a stretch for the cost.

Thanks for posting info on that.Mages get so screwed over with weapons most the time... see aeonics and the decision to add a song to horn... and not add a spell to club. Still holding my breath on WHM club augments but it’s probably gonna be along these lines.

Bhima has a lot of acc and a lot of hp/mp which are non directly related to DPS but they're welcome.
Path A looks meh altough the STP is sexy.
Path B looks nice but I dunno, it's MH only after all.

In terms of pure DPS potential it doesn't seem that far away from Aug Idris (197 damage, 280 delay) or Tishtrya (192? damage, 280 delay).

Actually, pretty HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE Tishtrya's damage is so low.
Anyway I dunno, they do get a small accuracy bonus as well from the augs. Not as good as Bhima*** but then again Bhima doesn't look overwhelming enough as a DD weapon to justify its cost.
Would've been hot if it worked offhand of course, but alas nope.



***
actually when you factor the different club skill, Idris and Tishtrya look even closer lol

Picked up a Bagua Charm+1 yesterday. Malothar I see you have done some testing with it already and posted the info. Thanks for that.
My question is, does the absorb% seem to proc often enough to lose some Loupon regen? I am missing some PDT now that I won’t be wearing Loricate+1 and wondering where I should be working on pickin the slack(not askin that specifically)

If the absorb effect is powerful enough then I can pretty much nix the resin augment on ambu cape (regen) for (PDT) and recap myself. But I won’t be able to augment the neck until this weekend. Probably won’t cap it until next week.

from what you posted at the top of the page it seems like it shouldn’t be much of an issue since the +1 has what seems to be regen(or -perp cost) built into it in different wording. That absorb effect just seems so dam good. 8% chance at a free life cycle...

Did a little more testing on the neck tonight. I fudged my numbers originally slightly. I dunno why I thought I couldn't do 21 Regen (15 cape, 2x 3 Telchine). I must have derped and forgotten about Isa Belt being on or something. Anyways, hitting 21 Regen with 12% duration provides no drop in health, while 22 Regen provides a slow increase, so it does floor the result.

My original testing was just to check on the effect. I wanted to know when I needed the piece on to optimize sets though. I originally thought it was like Smn Avatar Perpetuation Cost, dynamically changing if it was on or not.

That's not the case though, it needs to be on during your midcast of the Luopan. After that, it can freely be removed and you'll retain the altered HP perpetuation cost. Being able to hit the breaking point of 21 Regen with my 12% neck, I summoned a Luopan with the neck and unequipped Regen gear and the neck and allowed it to drop to 95%. I put back on 21 Regen gear and it stayed at 95% for the remainder of it's life. Casting a Luopan without the neck on and putting it on after the cast as well as the 21 Regen gear saw the Luopan continue to lose HP.

Mildly annoyed at that result since Incanter's Torque is convenient for hitting 900 skill plus the 1% chance of nullifying the Luopan MP cost. It doesn't really harm the set though, still piss easy to hit 900 while nearly capping out Conserve MP.


It's just like anything % based that you're unable to control. There will be times where you'll love it and swear by it (hits like that circle pic I originally posted, though the circles are largely weak). I'd have loved it during the Soulflayer Ambu last month I think, it wasn't uncommon at all for Luopans to die within 30~ seconds due to AoE spam. But there will also be times that it's a non-factor. For example, LS was farming Kirin last night. The Luopan absorbed a Stonega for like 97 HP shortly after it's pop. That provided little benefit, and while Kirin was dead long before the Luopan would have faded, times like that will be annoying.

I think it's a very good effect that's worthy of cutting 5 regen if you have to. I'd personally make another cape for those times that you require -DT while being in range, and keep the full Regen cape for times that you're out of range. Then again, I have a wishlist of like 9 capes right now, so...

I suggest cutting the 5 regen on cape regardless if you ask me.
I originally had Regen+5 my self because I was super biased for Regen but truth is I think many of us (/raises hand) are overestimating the utility of regen.

In the current game meta you either move around so fast or the Luopan receives so much AoE damage that situations where you can benefit from the 10 mins BoG/EA Luopan (that's the main purpose of Regen after all) happen pretty rarely, if ever.

I think the flexibility in the other slots you gain by using resins on cape for other purposes are just too juicy to give them up for "just" 5 pet regen in the current meta.

Honestly I've been thinking this same way myself I'm about to be done with Idris here once I get farming done and I feel at this point the aoe negates almost all the regen anyway. Most of the time you BoG is when the first needs to be pushed quick which JA should save it long enough.

There are situations were it is useful. I have 2 capes myself. 1 with the extra regen for situations where i am standing back. For example a mage party where i am using indi accumen or focus with the party and using geo malaise. If im not getting hit by anything then the regen 5 benefits me more than the others. My 2nd cape has PDT-10% for situations were i don't know for sure if i am going to get hit or not. Helps a lot when having to stand near the mob. I use the PDT cape a lot more but there are situations though the regen is useful. Not vital though you can make do without this cape.

Agreed I think I'm still gonna make the regen just wont be in any hurry to do so. It's kinda rare for me to be mage party geo as I'm on BLM for that. Doesn't hurt to spend the extra points to have it.

I'd argue the opposite if anything. Thanks to the Charm, we're now one random AoE away from a full Luopon. Every piece of Regen gear benefits keeping your Luopon alive until that procs, or not. It's less about gaining those extra seconds of BoG but rather taking that extra hit, rolling the dice again on your damage absorb proc.

This is from the mobile game Mobius, but pretty cool looking Geo art. Figured others on FFXIAH may not have seen it. I forgot just how skimpy female Geo AF is. Direct linking seems to provide a tiny pic for some reason. Full size picture here.

All I can think when I see that is 'why the hell aren't they using Idris?'

But once I finish nitpicking I notice that it's nice art.

Since coming back to the game 2~ months ago, I've been lax with updating my GS as I get new gear. Upgrades came hard and fast and I wasn't too keen on updating my sets just to update them again within a few days because of another new drop.

Now that I've largely caught up minus a few things (Omen card grinding can DIAF), I'm updating my sets. Along with that, I've found myself with questions that I'm having trouble finding the answer to. Some of this I know I used to know, but I'll be damned if I just can't find the answer or any references anymore (BGWiki, Rdm, Geo, and Dnc AH guides, etc). Some of them may be derpy. Hoping I can dump a few and get pointed in the right direction, or just straight answered. I'll try and list the specifics as to why I'm even questioning it.

Aspir and Dark Magic Skill:

Elemental Weapon Skills, Double Attacks, and WSD vs MAB:

/Dnc and Haste Samba:

Magic Accuracy Skill:

Magic dStat:

Combat Skills:

That's all that has come to mind over the past couple of days. Any assistance, links, or opinions are appreciated!

Good Luck reading my responses.

MAB and +WSD are both just multipliers. When there are two or more multipliers involved, adding onto the lower starting multiplier(s) will, point for point, provide the larger increase. In practice, this means that 1 WSD is basically always better than 1 MAB. The same is true for affinity versus MAB.

Magical WS do not have MA procs, though hybrid WS do. Club and Staff possess no hybrid WS.

@Malothar: For Drain/Aspir, Potency+ > Skill+ almost always, provided you have capped skill. Lv99 skill (373) + merits (16) gives a base of 389 (425 if mastered too,) so let's use 400 for a comparison.

Aspir1 is .6(skill) base, so 240/120 max/min baseline with 400 skill. So, with 400 skill, every +5 skill adds +3 to your max. There's nothing that I know of that gives massive chunks of dark magic skill, so let's be generous and say you have a piece of armor that has skill+25, which would give max+15mp. On the other hand, potency+1% would be +2.4 to your max, which is awfully close. It's also pretty common to find +10% or more per piece, which would be max+24mp.

Max+15 vs max+24... Should be pretty easy to understand that much. The comparison is similar for II/III as well, with potency always coming out on top. There just aren't any skill-only options that can compete against potency.

The only time you should prioritize skill over potency is when you have no options for potency.

As with all offensive abilities, sufficient accuracy is always priority number one. Skill is important if you're trying to aspir say, wave 3 volte and your 20-40 macc pieces aren't cutting it.

dont forget the dark affinity pieces for these spells?

Any info out on bagua charm to confirm geomancy + does not stack with idris?

It doesn't.

I'm looking for some help/input on mission rewards for a pocket-GEO mule.

Moonshade Earring - HP and Refresh? Acc and TP bonus for WS fun?

SoA Ring - This one I'm all over the place with:

Weatherspoon seems like a nice all around ring. This stuck me as the first pick.

Vocane Ring for ease of -DT? I've read others arguing to just farm Dark Rings or Gel. Ring +1 over this. I've never done that UNM or farmed Dark Rings, so I can't really speak to this.

The +GEO Skill Ring looks great on paper, but I don't see many people with it.

Thanks!

Yo, that looks awesome! :o

I think the Refresh earring is what I used for a support/heal only mule.

Weatherspoon if you have whm. Otherwise, I would simply use the DT ring.