Geomancer's Thought Bubble

Introduction to Geomancer
First and foremost much of the information contained within this guide was HEAVILY borrowed from some great posters over on FFXIAH.com, BG Forums, Reddit, and some various smaller forums/sites. I say that as I don’t want to be given credit for most of this I simply want to get this information on a Wiki that can be edited and updated going forward rather than have outdated guides because original posters have stopped playing the game.
A Geomancer is a Mage that draws its powers from the elements and is able to enhance its allies while delivering debilitating effects upon its foes. If you are an old school player, I like to describe the job as a cross between what a RDM used to be combined with some mechanics of a BRD with a dash of BLM thrown in. If that sounds confusing don’t worry I will explain it all later. Geomancer is a highly sought after job much like the aforementioned RDM and BRD were back in the 75 days and believe it or not even more so.
===Role===
Geomancer is all about filling the support role for a group, you can do some decent nukes sometimes, and you can spot heal at times, but make no mistake your party role is all about support. You make other jobs so much better at what they do, some groups might prefer two of you.
Quick blurb on spell mechanics otherwise some of the following section won’t make since. Geomancers have three unique types of spells which are Indicolure (indi-), Geocolure(Geo-), and –ra . The –ra line are just AOE spells but are always centered on the Geomancer and not another target. They are mostly useless except for killing lots of trash mobs and as such I won’t discuss them too much (I’m sure someone uses them more but I don’t care). Now indicolure spells are cast on the geomancer and follow you wherever you go until of course the duration has run out. Anyone inside the radius of the spell “bubble” will receive its benefits or in the case of a debuff any mob within its radius will receive its effects after you have taken an action on it. You can only have one indi-spell cast on you at a time. All others cast on you will overwrite any existing one.
Geocolure spells are cast on a spot and cannot be moved. These spells actually create a “pet”, called a luopan, which you can see and have a radius of effect like the Indi- spells. Since they don’t move, you have to make sure to cast it in the proper location which is usually just targeting the mob/player and casting it on them although you can place it in other spots if needed. If you want to do this, select the spell from your spell menu, when the blue arrow subtarget appears, hold down the control button and then use the camera control arrows on the keyboard to move the target around to the place you desire. Its a little clunky and I'm not sure how to do this with a controller. 
It is important to note that Luopans have a short life span in that they have an always present DoT on them (-24/tic) which means eventually you will need to recast and since they are pets, and have their own HP pool, they can die from enemy attacks. In addition, they will despawn after 10 minutes regardless of how much health they have.
===How-to for Specific game play situations===
Leveling 1-98
So in today’s FFXI you will level almost exclusively solo with your group of Trusts. Read up on them if that sounds like Greek. These levels are not the best times for GEO since you are hampered by not being able to really use GEO-xxx spells since you roam around so much you basically are just using Indi-spells to enhance you and your trust army. I tell people leveling GEO to just stick with beating on things with a club, tossing out a few nukes, and more or less treating yourself like a semi gimp DD. Don’t worry though, your trusts are pretty beefy and with you giving them some additional buffs should be just fine. Think I stuck with giving out Indi-Fury and then eventually Indi-haste to my trusts while leveling and just plowed through the levels. I would try to recast an indi spell every other fight and toss out a t1 nuke every fight just to help with getting skill ups but no matter what you will more than likely be severely under skilled once you hit 99. Don’t worry we all have that happen just skill it up soon as you can at 99.
Everything at 99 (more or less)
Yay FINALLY you get to do what the job was meant for, support other players and making things better for everyone. A typical fight will follow a pattern that is usually cast an Indi-spell on yourself, cast a Geo-spell on a mob, use your abilities to make them stronger and put up an entursted indi spell if possible. You will almost always pair up spells to make the effect even more pronounced. For instance using Indi-Fury to boost players attack while using Geo-Frailty to lower a targets defense. Do this to a war with Resolution fighting something and see his damage skyrocket as an example. For mage parties you will be doing Geo-malaise and Indi-Acumen and then of course if there are accuracy issues mix in a languor/focus or precision/torpor. The malaise/Acumen combo is what make Apex parties ridiculously easy to Skill chain Burst and make things dead. My BLM, only 600ish JP and +50% MDB in gear, will gain over 30K in damage on a T5 nuke with this combo on Apex mobs. It’s a game changing damage boost. The one other combo that used to be extremely popular before a nerf is Geo-Vex with Indi-Attunement. This combination can greatly reduce magic damage taken and is still useful for some content even after the nerf. It is more common now to use this is if you have a second GEO while the primary GEO would work on increasing damage or to use an Indi-vex in conjunction with a GEO Malaise or Frailty with a single GEO so you can get a boost to both damage and survivability.
In general your debuff spells should be done as the GEO version of the spell and not the Indi version. Why? Simply put the debuff is active for everyone taking an action on the target be it pets (who don’t receive buff benefits from geomancer spells) or alliance members not in your party, the Indi version is only active for party members, and you can make the GEO versions stronger through the use of abilities (discussed later). 
MOST IMPORTANT NOTE YOU WILL EVER READ ABOUT GEOMANCER
For a Geo-Spell to take effect on a target, you the GEO must take an action against the target. So in the case where you cast the Geo-spell on the target you’re fine, but the next target to be pulled is not. It is absolutely imperative that you cast something (Dia, Frazzle, etc.,) on all subsequent targets otherwise that awesome extra damage I talked about for my BLM goes away and you’re not really helping. For gaining hate on several targets, i.e. a group of mobs pulled in Divergence, the easiest way to get on the hate list for all of them is to simply cast a cure on the tank.
===Geomancer Abilities===
Ability 	Description 	Level Learned	Recast 	Duration
Bolster 	Doubles the potency of Geomancy Spells 	1 	1 Hour 	3 Minutes
Life Cycle 	Gives ¼ your current HP to your Luopan 	1 	10 Minutes	N/A
Full Circle 	Forces Luopan to despawn and returns a portion of MP 	5 	10 Seconds	N/A
Lasting Emanation 	Reduces the amount of HP your luopan consumes. Shares recast timer with Ecliptic Attrition. 	25 	5 Minutes 	N/A
Ecliptic Attrition	Luopan Potency +25%. Increases the rate at which your luopan consumes its HP. Shares a recast timer with Lasting Emanation.	25 	5 Minutes 	N/A
Collimated Fervor 	50% Bonus to Cardinal Chant 	40 	5 Minutes 	Next spell
Blaze of Glory 	50% Potency to your Next Geo-xxxx spell. Consumes ½ of the Luopan’s HP 	60 	10 Minutes	N/A
Dematerialize 	Prevents luopan from taking damage 	70 	10 Minutes	1 Minute
Entrust 	Allows you to cast an indi spell on party member 	75 	10 Minutes	1 Minute
Mending Halation 	Despawns your Luopan and restores HP to party members within range 	Merit 	5 Minutes 	N/A
Radial Arcana 	Despawns your Luopan and restores MP to party members within range 	Merit 	5 Minutes 	N/A
Theurgic Focus 	Grants +50 Magic attack bonus to next elemental spell but reduces range and area of effect 	80 	5 Minutes 	Next elemental spell
Concentric Pulse 	Despawns your luopan and causes damage to enemies within range. Damage based on luopans current health 	90 	5 Minutes 	N/A
Some jobs get crappy abilities, some get good abilities, and some get awesome abilities. As a Geo you get a bit of all those types. For the ones I would put in the crap basket, and I know other will disagree but mainly they just aren’t used a whole lot, those are Collimated Fervor, and Concentric Pulse. Sure they can have some ones offs here and there but I highly doubt they will make your must do rotations. Collimated Fervor might be nice if anyone ever took the time to line up cardinal chant (which you can go read about as I’m not going to bother with it) but getting everyone to set things up so you can be facing the target in the right direction is just almost never going to happen. And concentric pulse.. just don’t bother other than some super random one off reasons.
The good abilities are Theurgic Focus for a little extra nuke damage (though probably won’t use much), and Full Circle which allows you to dismiss your luopan and returns a portion of the MP used to cast it. The real reason for Full Circle use though is when you need to reposition a luopan, or change it out for a different Geo-spell. 
Now there are several awesome abilities that a GEO has and you should become very familiar with them. Entrust allows you to cast an indi spell on a party member meaning you can have 2 indi spells up along with a geo-spell. The entrusted spell will be cast with your skill level but other equipment impacting potency is not taken into account. Lasting Emanation reduces the native DoT on your luopan by -7 HP per tick. This can greatly increase the amount of time your luopan is out without having to recast. Ecliptic Attrition increases the potency of Geo-spells (not indi spells) by 25% but also increases the native DoT of the luopan by 6 HP per tic. Lasting Emanation and Ecliptic Attrition share a timer so normally you have to choose one or the other and normally that better be ecliptic! Blaze of Glory increases your potency of Geo-spells (not indi) by 50%, yes 50%, but consumes half of your luopans HP and must be used BEFORE you cast the Geo-spell. Use this every time you can as the benefits are too good to pass up plus there are ways to extend your luopans life some of which are the next few abilities. Also, Blaze of Glory and Ecliptic attrition stack for 75% boost to geo-spells.
Dematerialize prevents your luopan from receiving any damage and last for a minute. This is good to use in conjunction with Blaze of Glory so you can keep that 50/75% bubble up longer. Life cycle distributes a portion of your HP to your luopan and is the only way to really heal it other than some pet regen equipment. Use this again with your 50/75% bubble to have them last longer. Bolster is your 1 hour ability and boosts all your Geo AND Indi spells up 100%. Like blaze, bolster must be used before a Geo spell is cast but it will immediately increase any active Indi spell you have on yourself.
As you can see, most of your awesome abilities impact the potency of your Geo-spells and is why generally speaking your Geo-spells will be a debuff on the target and Indi-spells a buff to the party. Now would probably be a good time to discuss the actual potency of all your spells and how to acquire them.
===Spell acquisition and Potency===
Most spells in the game are learned through Scrolls which can be bought from vendors or the AH. This is true for indicolure spells but for the geocolure version this is different. To learn any geo-xxxx spell you must first have learned the indi version of the spell. Next, Geocolure spells are learned by finding various Geomantic Reservoirs located around Vana'diel. I think you also have to be around 5 levels higher than level of the indi version before you are able to learn the geo version. Geocolure spells can only be cast by a Geomancer main job as it requires the use of a handbell which are only equipable by Geomancers. 
Spell 	Description 	900 Skill Potency	900 skill + Dunna	900 Skill + Bagua Charm +1	900 Skill + Bagua Charm +2	900 Skill + Idris
Any +Stat spell	Increases your stats, Duh. 	+ 25 Stat 	+35 Stat 	+37 Stat 	+39 Stat 	+45 stat
Acumen 	Magic Attack Bonus 	15 	30 	33 	37 	45
Attunement 	Magic Evasion 	65 	95 	101 	107 	125
Barrier 	Defense 	+39.8% 	+62.8% 	+67.4% 	+72.0% 	+85.8%
Fend 	Magic Defense + 	+19.9% 	39.9% 	43.9% 	47.9% 	59.9%
Focus 	Magic Accuracy 	+50 	+75 	+80 	+85 	+100
Fury 	Attack + 	+34.7% 	+48.2% 	+50.9% 	+53.6% 	+61.7%
Haste 	Haste 	29.9% 	35.4% 	36.5% 	37.6% 	40.90%
Precision 	Accuracy (Melee and Range) 	+50 	+75 	+80 	+85 	+100
Refresh 	MP recovered per tic 	+6 	+11 	+12 	+13 	+16
Regen 	HP recovered per tic 	+30 	+40 	+42 	+44 	+50
Voidance 	Evasion + 	+65 	+95 	+101 	+107 	+125
Fade 	Magic Attack Down 	-20 	-40 	-44 	-48 	-60
Frailty 	Defense Down 	-14.8% 	-28.3% 	-31.0% 	-33.7% 	-41.8%
Gravity 	Reduce movement speed 	-19.9% 	-25.4% 	-26.5% 	-27.6% 	-30.9%
Languor 	Magic Evasion down 	-50 	-75 	-80 	-85 	-100
Malaise 	Magic Defense down 	-15 	-30 	-33 	-36 	-45
Paralyze 	Paralyze 	15% 	20% 	21% 	22% 	25%
Poison 	Delivers poison damage per tic	30 	45 	48 	51 	60
Slip 	Accuracy Down 	-65 	-95 	-101 	-107 	-125
Slow 	Slows attack speed 	-14.9% 	-17.4% 	-17.9% 	-18.4% 	-19.9%
Torpor 	Evasion Down 	-50 	-75 	-80 	-85 	-100
Vex 	Magic Accuracy Down 	-65 	-95 	-101 	-107 	-125
Wilt 	Attack Down 	-25% 	-48% 	-52.6% 	-57.2% 	-71%
There are three things that impact how potent your geomancer spells are. Combined handbell plus geomancy skill, active job abilities, and equipment that says “Geomancy +” of which Dunna and Idris was shown as well as the Bagua Charm +1/+2 in the chart above. Please note that only one "Geomancy +" item takes effect so highest value on a single item wins. Potency from a skill level perspective caps out once your combined hand bell skill and geomancy skill reaches 900. Anything over that is unneeded and adds nothing. This is verified from testing and SE has also stated this as fact. With that in mind, it’s time to get to gear suggestions.
===Gear===
Rather than list out sets that could be outdated I will instead talk about the type of sets you should have, the reason for these sets, and which order of priority these sets should be for you. In this way as new gear becomes available or if you lack the HQ version/option of something you will still know what types of gear to be striving for. And I will probably show some examples that will get you started.
First priority sets, and these are equally important, are your skill set and your idle set. You need to reach that 900 skill plateau as we mentioned this is a direct influence on spell potency. Some easy options at 99 include Geomancy Mitaines (AF Hands), Bagua Tunic (Relic Body), Azimuth Hood (Empy Head), Dunna (Oboro JSE), and Lifestream Cape (JSE Cape from Rieves). These items I would consider the bare minimum needed before you join any content. All of these are easy to get and so you don’t have much excuse not to have them. If for some reason you can’t get a Dunna yet, use a Nepote Bell but it had better be as a very short term stop gap. There are several other items that will offer skill increases which I won’t begin to list out but your goal is to get to 900 ASAP. Once you have 900 Skill fill out your mid-casting gear with conserve MP and Indicolure duration when applicable. 
For your idle set its important that you focus on keeping your luopan alive. Your idle set IS NOT a refresh and self regen set as you may see on other sites. That is in-fact an outdated method of play for a GEO. As seen earlier, Geomancer job abilities greatly impact potency of luopan effects and you want those in place as long as possible by keeping your luopan up . To this end you need gear that has lupon OR pet – Damage taken (DT) or regen. Yes Pet gear works. Pet DT caps at -87.5% and the luopan has a native -50% meaning you just need 37.5% more to cap. There are several ways to get there but a few suggestions are Dunna, Geomancy Mitaines, Handler's Earring, Handler's Earring +1, Thurandaut Ring, and Psycloth Lappas. For pet regen some options would include any of the Taeon set Augmented with pet regen, Nantosuelta's Cape, Azimuth Hood (+1), Bagua Sandals (+1), and Sucellus to name a few. Any other slot you have available should go towards –DT for the Geo and then finally refresh.
Now that you have your top priority sets, you should begin to collect a good Nuking set, healing set, Enhancing set, and enfeebling set. The last two won’t get a ton of use but any good GEO will want to have those tools at the ready. GEO can do some respectable damage nuking once properly geared. For how to gear for damage I’d read up on the BLM guides but the basics are Magic burst bonus damage and Magic attack bonus are what you are searching for. On any hard or resistant content, I would refrain from nuking when BLM’s are present to avoid gimping their damage because of the multiple nuke penalty. On regular content and Apex Parties though you should feel free to magic burst when possible. Properly geared GEO’s can get 50k-60k+ damage on bursts in apex parties. 
Reserved space for actual examples of gear sets.
		
The last set shown for skill gear will be overkill and is meant as a reference not as a goal set to have. Remember once you get enough job points you will need very little gear to hit the magic 900 combined number. IF you don't have the first set listed with capped skills and capped out the merits for geomancy skill and handbell skill, you are not yet ready to join stuff. If you do, then its ok to start doing easy stuff like capacity points, Ambuscade, and lower tier escha without worry.
			
The beginner set doesn’t require much effort at all but it also has severe limitations. It gives -30 % damage taken for your luopan, +5 regen for luopan, and 11% physical damage reduction for yourself. The luopan regen is fairly low and it doesn’t provide much protection for the GEO when in range of dangerous moves. Moving to something resembling the moderate set is what you really should be focusing on. This will give you capped luopan damage taken, roughly 22 in luopan/pet regen, and gives the GEO 29 Physical DT and 18 Magical DT. Telchine should be augmented with Pet DT and Pet Regen and Nantosuelta’s with +10 Pet regen. If you get an Idris, capping pet damage taken is very easy and you can switch to focusing heavily on a pet regen set. For this, the Telchine stuff, which is easy enough to get from Alluvion Skirmish, is incredibly useful. Augmenting can be a pain though so just a heads up on that. The Idris will also allow you to better take care of the GEO’s defenses making standing in range much easier if you want to swap some of the pet regen for GEO defense stats on hard hitting AOE fights where the regen may not be helping as much.
Time for some personal thoughts. My pet regen used to not be up to par, sitting at only 16 or so, but with capped pet DT and dematerialize my blazed plus ecliptic bubbles would last the full 10 minute duration plus I could mix in Life Cycle when needed. I say that only to tell you once you cap pet DT and if you find yourself throwing millions of gil and hours of time on those Telchine augments.. maybe you can get by without a few points. I also say that to bring up another point and its with the Bagua Charm +2. While technically it is the best idle piece as it heals your bubble, in reality there are maybe 3 fights in the entire game that this is useful since as I already mentioned keeping the bubble up for its 10 minute duration isn't hard. That said I still tend to favor the Loricate Torque +1 in most all of my idle sets
			
These last few sets should get you well rounded out. The nuke sets place a decent priority on Magic accuracy and our Relic +3 stuff really adds a lot here which is why i went with it over any augmented Reisenjima gear or Ea gear in the standard nuke set. With the added accuracy of magic bursting though the MB set can afford to go more all out.
===Merits and Job Points===
{| class="" border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="2" valign="top"
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! style="background:#fdc7a9; border-collapse: collapse; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; border-color: #fc8b4d;" colspan="5" height="25"|Merits
|-
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Group 1 	Group 1
Name 	Description
Full Circle Effect 	Restores up to 5% additional MP per merit.
Ecliptic Attrition Recast	Recast is reduced by 10 seconds per merit.
Also reduces the recast time of Lasting Emanation.
Life Cycle Recast 	Recast is reduced by 20 seconds per merit.
Blaze of Glory Recast 	Recast is reduced by 20 seconds per merit.
Dematerialize Recast 	Recast is reduced by 20 seconds per merit.
|-
|
Group 2 	Group 2
Name 	Description
Curative Recantation	Adds an HP recovery effect to Full Circle. Additional merits restore up to 5% additional HP.
Primordial Zeal 	Enhances Collimated Fervor with an elemental magic casting time reduction effect. Additional merits reduce casting time by 10%.
Mending Halation 	The Luopan will vanish and restore HP to party members within the area of effect. Recast Time: 5 minutes. Additional merits increase HP recovery by 5% per merit.
Radial Arcana 	The Luopan will vanish and restore MP to party members within the area of effect. Recast Time: 5 minutes. Additional merits increase MP recovery by 3% per merit.
For group one recommendations I used to see a lot of people say go 5/5 Full Circle but to be honest I never used the ability that much to get a real benefit from it. Instead I would go 5/5 Blaze of glory and then maybe start with 5/5 dematerialize until you get a better pet DT/Regen set at which point it may be better to switch over to 5/5 Ecliptic Attrition. I am a strong believer in keeping abilities up for as long as possible so whichever helps you in that regard, be it ability timer or damage taken, that's the path I would recommend.
For Group two merits, which in my opinion are a bit blah for GEO, 5/5 Radial Arcana is a decent option for oh shit moments you need to give MP to your mages and then I guess 5/5 Curative Recantation which some GEO's seem to love during solo play. Primordial Zeal is a waste of time since Fast Cast can be capped in so many ways through gear options. Mending Halation is similar to Curative Recantation but I don't think you need yet another option to blow up your little ball of light plus Curative happens every time you do full circle.
So first off while I am a bit underwhelmed by GEO's merit abilities they get some excellent job point categories and gifts. In the end you should just become a master GEO so you will have everything but if you absolutely want to know which to go after first here is what I would focus on. First and foremost, just like with merits, go after that Blaze of Glory boost to starting HP. Then it's a toss up between Life Cycle and Dematerialize with me giving a slight edge to Dematerilize especially if you find yourself already into some endgame content that has a high chance of killing your bubbles frequently.
After that I tend to focus on Magic damage and Accuracy as these will help with job point parties and things you do solo. Then just finish out wherever probably starting with Bolster.
And since every newcomer to job gifts always asks, yes the benefits are cumulative meaning that once you have all your gifts you will have +36 Handbell skill and +36 Geomancy skill. At some point you will be able to easily hit your 900 Combined skill so you will need to take another look at your sets and probably switch to more azimuth gear for the free MP while casting.
===Skill Caps===
Combat Skills	Combat Skills	Combat Skills	Combat Skills	Combat Skills
{| style="background:#fed4dd; text-align: center;" class="wikitable" cellpadding="2" width="100%"	 	 	 	
Skill 	Rank 	49 	99 	
Club 	B+ 	144 	404 	
Staff 	C+ 	139 	378 	
Dagger 	C- 	139 	368 	
Category:Job Guides