Bubble Trouble: A Geomancer Guide

Did the matamata NM from delve. Quite easy to set up for 99,999 dmg.

Does indi spell duration + have a cap?

Not a reachable one at least. Mine are right around 5min1sec, and the current max should be 5m13s for Idris, or 5m31s for Solstice.

what other augments for +15 pet/regen ambuscade cape? hp? magic eva? mp?

I figure I'll just wear it while I'm standing in range of mobs as well as when away and only bubble up

I have the same augments on my cape, but I'm a bit skeptic on the regen+5 one.

If you can afford to make multiple capes, sure, but if you have to pick one to be idling in then either pet: DT or master DT might be better option.
Or even more Meva, or Status Resistance, I dunno, anything would be better than regen+5 when you're in a scenario where your Luopan gets destroyed because of incoming damage regardless of your regen amount.
Which I feel, honestly, it's a very common scenario in like 99% of situations?


I used to be very biased in favour of pet regen but these days I either find myself moving my Luopan with Full Circle or the Luopan gets destroyed by incoming damage.
That kinda destroys the main pro of pet regen builds, that is to keep Ecliptic Attrition/Blaze of Glory up fulltime.

I agree with your logic so far, but nobody says you have to idle with Idris.
As long as Idris is equipped midcast while casting Indi and Geo spells, you can idle with another weapon. Master PDT, Master Regen/Refresh, or a pet hybrid solution like Sucellus. Plenty of options.
The same applies to the Hands slot.
I'm not saying Pet: DT is the best choice for 5th augment in the cape slot.
I'm saying it's, together with other options, potentially a BETTER option than Pet Regen, one that opens up new options in other slots.
Keep in mind this comes from one, me, who still has Pet Regen+5 currently, because I was totally biased for pet regen builds on GEO, but I'm kinda starting to re-evaluate its realistic usefulness, which seems to be pretty far away from the theoretical one.

Premise: the main purpose of a Pet: Regen build is to make so the health of your Luopan stays high up enough that you can keep Ecliptic Attrition and Blaze of Glory up for the full cooldown of the JA (10 mins for BoG).
Now let me describe the majority of situations I've been using GEO lately:

1) Dynamis Divergence - unless you're fighting NMs (and even then, they go down fast) you're constantly moving, sometimes you don't even bother with Geo bubbles because you move so fast. If you do, you certainly aren't gonna make good use of Blaze of Glory / Ecliptic Attrition

2) Omen - BoG/EA are useful against many bosses (not so much in the normal floors I guess) but there's a lot of AoE damage. Even supposing those bosses would last close to 10 mins (hint: they do not) no way the Luopan is gonna survive that much even with capped pet: DT and all the pet regen you want.

3) Spamming Escha NMs - Each time you pop a new one, the Luopans get reset, invalidating the bonus from perma BoG/EA

4) Spamming UNMs - As above

5) Ambuscade - depends on the fight. Taking into example May's fight, even if you're very slow and the fight lasts more than 10 mins, you're gonna move your bubble between different targets, so once more invalidating the BoG/EA bonus. Most of the time Ambuscade fights last less than <6 mins from engage, and you can reset BoG/EA in between fights, sooo... yeah, kinda useless to go for Regen when fights are this fast.

So... aside from EXP/CP or similar situations, I really don't see Pet Regen that game changing as it could otherwise be, given nowaday's game meta.
This is what brought me to the conclusion that despite the fact I get *** from the idea of Perma BoG granted by Pet Regen builds, it's not realistical/practical.

Don't take my words as "absolute truth". It's just my point of view, I'm sure some other people would disagree with pretty valid reasons.

I personally welcome more input/opinions by players with different perspectives.

I'm only counting 48% PDT in your set? Isa belt is Pet: DT isn't it?

Nevermind, forgot AF+3 hands has PDT on it

Edit: Consider possibly swapping Lugalbanda earring for etiolation earring. It's got a good amount of magic evasion and you can afford to lose ~10 MDT with a whm shell V.

Maybe it's just me, but I find on GEO I sometimes need refresh, so might be useful to have the -DT cape so you can occasionally swap out those Hagondes pants for assiduity pants +1 or Aug'd refresh merlinic shalwar if you have them.

The Pet regen builds are really more practical during the CP phase of your GEO Career. Keeping up a Blazed plus Ecliptic for 10 minutes in these fights should be pretty much status quo. However, it don't take that much pet regen to get there. I think I rolled with something around 20ish maybe and it seemed to work fine especially when tossing in some Life Cycle and dematerialize. As you start out with CP you also dont have the JP spent on starting HP for your BoG bubble meaning it takes more regen when starting out and considerably less once you finish up the category.

Past that I agree that pet regen sets aren't really worth much as you move into endgame that's either much shorter than 10 minutes or so much AOE that the regen isn't buying you much time.

Me too, but kinda depends how you play.
For a mule who's only there for the occasional indi/geo spells, nah.
But if you're playing the char yourself, supporting with heals, buffs, debuffs, nukes and/or if you're in a situation where you're moving a lot and spamming those Geo spells, then yes you totally gonna need refresh if you don't have a buffer providing you with it.
Especially true if for whatever reason u're /BLM or /WHM and cannot self refresh yourself.

Sechs: I'm curious what a non Idris set would look like that caps DT and pet DT?

This is what I've got so far

ItemSet 359347

This set is at:

PDT:	47
MDT:	29
Pet DT:	24
Magic Evasion:	166 (Needs Head/Legs/Feet additives)
MDB:	16 (Needs Head/Legs/Feet additives)
Pet Regen:	14 (Needs Head/Legs/Feet additives)

Where would you come up with the other 14 Pet DT? Can Merlinic get Pet: DT?

Edit: I don't have the set, just saying this is what I would be looking at for the set.

Not Sechs but Telchine gear can get pet DT and Handlers Earrings +1 are easy options to finish out that set to cap pet DT. This is how we used to do it.

Handler's is pet PDT only. Capping pet dt alone without Idris is challenging but doable. Solstice, dunna, tharandaut ring, psycloth lappas, af+3 hands, isa belt, rimeice ring and pet dt- on ambuscade cape cap it while freeing up the head and feet slots and avoiding telchine (I personally don't like skirmish gear). Personally use empy +1 head and relic feet at the moment for the regen since I rarely stand next to things with 2+ GEOs.

Need to accept compromises.
It's possible to get really close on capping one (pet or master) and cap the other, which is quite an acceptable compromise if you wanna go that way, and still have lots of DT and stuff.

For instance it's something like:

Sucellus (pet 3% DT)
Genmei shield (master 10% PDT)
Dunna (pet 5% DT)
Telchine head (pet 4% DT)
Loricate +1 (master 6% DT)
Genmei earring (master 2% PDT)
Mallquis+2 (master 8% DT)
Geomancy +3 (pet 13% DT, master 3% PDT)
Vocane / Gelatinous (master 7% xDT)
Defending (master 10% DT)
Cape (master 5% DT)
Telchine legs (pet 4% DT)
Isa belt (pet 3% DT)
Telchine feet (pet 4% DT)

Such a set would give you 36% pet DT and around 51% DT on master (split in PDT/DT according to the options you picked)
It also grants you at least 25 pet Regen.

Pet DT not capped, but close to that. If you put Meva in the Snow slot on Telchine, then your Meva wouldn't be that bad either.

Can swap the 5th slot on Cape to go from Master DT to pet DT, but then you would have to swap another slot (club?) to go for something else, like Titan's club (master 10% PDT).
That would cap master PDT without Genmei earring, but I think you would be slightly under cap on MDT (DT) unless you're using Vocane in place of Gelatinous, in which case you'd be perfectly capped on master and pet, but with slightly less Regen than in the build I posted though.


I don't personally have any of these builds btw, I'm lazy!

Question: Why is it that nobody uses the Seleian Cap for Pet DT-10%?

I've never seen anyone use it, or even mention it. Usually if a piece of gear is really bad or some sort of red herring, a guide will say that you should never use it... but I haven't even seen that.

Now yes, I understand that while you're in range of an enemy, lowering your item level can be detrimental to your survival. And I understand that the hat has no defensive stats for the player.

BUT for situations where you're not in range of the mob (buffing black mages for example) or you simply aren't taking much aoe damage (cp parties)... is there anything wrong with using this hat?

Sure, you lose out on pet regen (only 2 points since you can put 1 point of pet regen on the cap as well)... but from reading this thread the consensus is that capping -DT% is better than pet regen.

Even if you want more regen, you could use this cap in place of putting -PetDT% on a lifestream cape (instead putting +5 pet regen) and you're overall gaining 5% -PetDT AND 3 points of regen.

So I see this as a possibility for newer geos who still havent capped Pet -DT% yet, as well as a possbility for higher level geos who want to optimize a set for when they're out of range of mob AoE.

That said, I haven't been a geo very long and there could be a glaring flaw with this idea that I'm not seeing... if that's the case by all means let me know. Cheers.

Edit: Nevermind, I -am- seeing mention of it in this thread on some pages. To be fair I did use the built in FFXIAH search function to search the thread for mention of the Hat, or "ACP" ... It just returned no results... so I guess that's broken. I had to use google to actually find the results.

So that said it looks like people say its a decent early option but not something to use in the long term?

I used to use Selenian, but now with the age of augments on ilvl gear, it's just outdated. If you're not in range, then hitting 37.5 DT is very easy for pet, and you can just idle in the rest of your refresh gear. The main reason people don't mention it is because it's not ilvl, and inventory. Why use a piece that's only good from range when you can use one that covers both, and still meets the needed dt caps.

some BST probably still use their dt-10 hat (I still do on PUP, actually), because it's one huge chunk in one slot, and that's a lot of ground to cover.

Anyways, it should be noted that if you're hurting for MDT, swap Gelatinous ring for Dark Ring. Mine has 6pdt/5mdt, but you can get 6/6 if you're lucky and its easy to farm one. If you swap Genmei for Handler's +1, you can use Mafic, but I prefer my Sucellus. The jump from 45-50% DT isn't huge, and if you're in range of aoe, all GEO should be casting stoneskin almost constantly, which will help you minimize damage even further. With a good FC set, you can pop that up in a second and swap back to DT set without missing a beat.

Alternatively you can Genmei for Handler's earring +1 and use Hibernation Earring instead which would put you at exactly 50% master PDT and overcap your pet DT.

Grio/Enki or
Idris/Ammurapi shield

Rubicundity + Culminus is a combination you can get fairly easily. The former is from SR Teodor, the latter from HTBF "One to be feared". I used both before I got Grio and it's not a bad combo. It's basically your best (and only) nonstaff 119 nuking option for sub slot without getting into Omen/ergon stuff.

Alternatively, you could use Serenity, which also drops from Sinister reign, though it is more curative-focused, it does have a reasonable nuking spread and its relatively easy to attempt to get. I've thrown away more capped versions than I can count, and I use mine for healing anyways.

Right... which is why I specifically didn't mention idris holders. But not everyone has an Idris. In fact I'd wager a guess that a majority of GEOs don't have an Idris.

It always makes me chuckle that people on this forum will rant and laugh at others who shout for "REMA only" or new players who skimp on gear so they can save money for a REMA. Saying that "You dont need REMA for most of the content in the game" and "Its more important that you fill out your other slots before going for a REMA"

But then when it comes to gear conversations, if you suggest an alternative option, theres always at least 1 person who comes in yelling "WELL IF YOU HAVE A REMA IT DOESNT MATTER".

Really gotta wonder why newer players seem to think that they have to rush a REMA before anything else...


ItemSet 359502

So this is the item set I currently use. After augments I have -29% DT and -33% PDT.

Would it not be beneficial for me to use the Selenian cap while I finish out my other -better- items. By no means am I trying to argue that a level 75 piece of armor is top-tier. But as a stand in piece while someone gets better gear it seems serviceable.

Or as a macro piece in some situations if you're not capped on inventory (Personally I'm not)

You can. Or you can just replace rimiece with nq handlers and switch to solstice or sucellus. You gain pet regen from the latter option and 1dt is not better than 3PDT, if anything is close or equal since 1 magic damage is very much smaller in comparison. You really need the main slot for weapon so bole is not giving you the best results for that spot. 1regen refresh is minimal compared to pet survival. Also you drop a few regen points swapping out af head.

If you're going to replace the Head piece, why not just augment telchine? Selenium didn't give you the best in slot experience for what you're prioritizing in that set, which is pet master DT and pet regen. I'd recommend maxing one (pet dt) then moving onto master DT and then pet regen, in order of usefulness priority. Having a low mix of all 3 is fine but looks impractical tbh

You're lucky to get two earrings. When I did my standard 50 solo runs when this fight was out, I got a few Shields and took that long to get the earring once. Never did the fight again after that

If Selenian Cap had ilevel stats, but also had:
Physical damage taken +8%
Magic damage taken +5%
Chance of Resisting Magic -45%

Would you still think it was reasonable to use? Because that's basically what it is, granted the resist magic only applies if off floor and below ceiling.

The Jhakri body should be replaced as soon as possible as well, there are many 3/tick bodies with significantly better m.evasion.

Trust me, I have been going for either solstice or sucellus. Neither has dropped for me yet. I solo Naphula whenever I can. The damn AMAN npc has a pile of rotting Vijaya bows thanks to me.

And yes, my idle set is by no means amazing. Yes there are better pieces. That's beyond obvious. Never said my set was good. It's kind of a cobbled together mess of what I had lying around with a few pieces I chased down.

But GEO is also not my main job, far from it. It comes out maybe once or twice a week. So what gil I do have... GEO doesn't see much of it... my little bit of money mostly goes to BLU & PLD. But that said GEO is a useful job to have, and I do try to pickup pieces for it when I can. The selenian cap seems like a good way to temporarily bridge the gap until I can get the other major pieces im missing. You even said you used it your self at once point until you got better options.

I'm already aware that it's not going to be a piece that I would wear if I ever get an idris. I'm well aware that there are other pieces of gear that are better which make the selenian cap nothing more that a niche-set piece at best. I was more curious to find out if it had any non-obvious downsides... like the DT- didn't work on luopans for some reason.