Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

[TheGrandMom]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

It's one of the signs of the apocalypse.

[Malacite]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

Hey =/


I know we disagree on what should be done about SMN but let's face reality; it's SE's game and nothing's gonna change that. But that doesn't mean we can't speculate for fun

I'm done hoping each new update will be "the SMN fix" though. If/when it comes I'll jump for joy. In the mean time I'm more curious about those 2 new DRG breaths we found in the .dats a while ago and if/when those will come into play.

[Firewind]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

What does everyone think of BP: Rage abilities having separate timers instead of one being there for all timers? Too broken? Bear in mind that BLM and SCH are more than capable of doing comparable damage by spamming nukes and the hate spike would probably just result in the avatar dying after 1 or 2 BPs anyway.

Maybe changing it so magical and physical BP:Rage abilities have separate timers? So say you have Shive use Billzard IV you can't use another magic based BP:Rage for another minute?

Always have those echos, well, forgot them once and never forgot again but I digress.

Made this mistake once while helping a couple of LS members with Sandy 8-1. We would have wiped regardless since the sneak pull was messed up and it was done when pretty much nobody in the party was ready.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

What does everyone think of BP: Rage abilities having separate timers instead of one being there for all timers? Too broken? Bear in mind that BLM and SCH are more than capable of doing comparable damage by spamming nukes and the hate spike would probably just result in the avatar dying after 1 or 2 BPs anyway.

If anything, each of the Blood Pacts (not just the Rages) having their own individual timer wouldn't be broken, it would be common sense. Regarding Black Mages and even Scholars, it's actually more than possible for them to easily out-nuke the elemental avatars with their nukes of equal tiers, especially if geared right. Summoner, might I add, has no such available gear to enhance the potency of Blood Pact nukes, and so on.

Really, the entire problem stems from the fact that Blood Pacts were not put in to the game as magic to begin with. As I have ranted about this issue many times before, I shall leave you with the options of either extrapolating all the other issues from that one yourself, or just searching for my previous rants on the issue.

[Malacite]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

[Armando]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

Really, the entire problem stems from the fact that Blood Pacts were not put in to the game as magic to begin with. As I have ranted about this issue many times before, I shall leave you with the options of either extrapolating all the other issues from that one yourself, or just searching for my previous rants on the issue.

Not really. That's more of a side problem than anything else. The real problem is that avatars are so weak at meleeing that SMN gameplay revolves around summoning avatars, doing one or two actions, and unsummoning. Problems with things like Amnesia are unfortunate and should be fixed, but it's not really the main issue.

Even so, I don't mind that avatars have their tricks on large timers. That's not necessarily bad. It's similar in nature to THF's design. What I'd like to see is:
1) Give Avatars a potent elemental added effect like the Prime versions.
2) Haste Avatars according to the presence of day and weather.
3) Maybe split BP:Rage further into two categories: Skillchainable pacts and TP-consuming MB'able pacts. I don't know if this'd be overpowering at high levels since I don't know how well MB'able pacts scale in damage with TP.
But I could be way off base here though, since I've never played SMN.

[Malacite]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

Putting each BP on it's own timer isn't a bad idea for the most part;

The main objection to it however is the potential for abuse of the 70 pacts and Astral Flow. But yeah the biggest issue plaguing avatars is their lolmelee. They don't do nearly enough damage to justify the MP they soak up.

[Firewind]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

I wouldn't mind a 70+ BP spam in some cases. Anything that adds to the party's overall DPS saves me MP in the long run

It wouldn't be that broken either considering that the avatar will take all of the hate and die pretty quickly unless it's Carby.

[Raydeus]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

I still don't know why SMNs can't simply get a new command so they could skip the summon/release phase and just call the avatar to perform a BP and then dissapear Persona/VIII/etc. style.

Of course casting times would still apply but Avatars would be able to simply pop right next to the mob/player (or simply behind the SMN) and do their thing before dissapearing. Instead of having to do the annoying summon-slowlymovetowardsthetarget-BP-release sequence.

But then again I got so sick and tired (really fast) of playing SMN that I couldn't stomach leveling the job past lvl 20-something so I might be wrong about how it plays later on. Even though from what I saw it remains pretty much the same all the way to 75+.

[Malacite]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

I only got to the mid 30's myself on my taru (had carby mitts too @.@) and wondered how so many ppl I knew tolerated it in PT play up to 75.

[Omniblast]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

Hello, I'm Omni and I'm a career Summoner.

I have 5/5 Physical Accuracy Merits, 5/5 Physical Damage Merits, level 8 summoning magic merits, and various points here and there on group 2 merits. I earned most of my merits while playing as Summoner and took my time to do so.

At this point, I'd just like to point out that after playing Summoner for the past 3-4 years, the most fun I've had on a ordinary day is just summoning a Avatar and letting it beat something to death with huge amounts of damage.

Here are some of the things that have annoyed me for the past several years.

Avatar's health and paper thin defense. Granted they do take 50% damage off everything. Granted you can re-summon another one after they die, with the only restriction of 30 seconds before you can resummon another one. But otherwise they have no ability to stay alive for longer periods of time against more difficult mobs. (EP can still kick your butt.) By the time you are able to melee anything to death, you usually run out or very low on MP. This is why you need Blood Pacts and which lead us to our next complaint...

Blood Pacts take too much mp to use. I mean 170~ for Predator Claws, is high, but not only that but you would have to take into account the whole Perpetuation thing, losing 7pm per 3 seconds doesn't mean I can keep my Avatar out forever. I have 3-4 minutes to kill something and perhaps every 1:30 I need to resummon again because my Avatar has already died. Sometimes my Blood Pact misses which leads us to...

Missing Blood Pacts because enemy is too far away. This speaks for itself and should be addressed somehow by next update. Losing out on 200+ mp and 46 seconds of doing nothing = crap. This also happens with Wards in which the enemy dies before your Avatar uses said ward, and you lose out on the MP as well as the ward. It just doesn't get cast. To avoid this, most summoners retreat their Avatars before using wards. If their not attacking it doesn't affect this type of MP loss.

Things that I like about Summoner:

Elemental Siphon, that did help us a tiny bit, but it's not like we can continue fighting without rest. It seems like most other jobs, with no regard to resting can continue fighting without regrets. (Save for the mages since we all get shafted by needing to rest for our mp).

Damage with very little regard to hate. Big damage (sometimes) very little hate afterwards. Well sometimes.

Things to ask for:

Increasing the amount of mp gained back from Elemental Siphon should be increased. 600+ mp would only be half of my mp.

Decrease the amount of mp consumed by each blood pact.

Scalability of our Blood Pacts & Astral Flow. Our Blood Pacts do not scale with increased levels or increased summoning skill.

Rest with our avatars out to cancel out perpetuation costs. We can't abuse our mp's and are forced to be stationary while our Avatars are attacking or being attacked. If we need to use blood pacts, we would need to stand up and then execute them. This doesn't address the folly of Points 1 and 2.

A Taru can dream can't he? *sigh*

[Karinya]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

If avatar melee is the problem, why suggest changes to everything *but* avatar melee? (Edit: I wrote this before I saw Omniblast's post, so it was aimed at the rest of the thread above. But his suggestions are mostly aimed at blood pacts, too.) Blood pacts are fine, it's the time in between them that is a problem. Too much timer separation would lead to even more summon-BP-dismiss, and isn't that what we want to avoid? Constant or per-swing improvements would improve the cost/benefit of keeping the avatar out more of the time.

Also, I don't think they need more day/weather dependent bonuses on top of the perp cost changes we already have.

Probably nothing will fix a 5 melee + SMN party relying on the SMN for cures, though. That's just a matter of refusing to invite a SMN and a healer, or not having them available. (Hopefully some of the reforms will make the SMN + healer option more attractive by improving the SMN's ability to contribute things other than healing.)


My suggestions for SMN:
* Reduce perp costs (again). Unglamorous, but at some point even the present mediocre melee is going to be worth the cost.
* Improve avatar acc/atk (again). Boring but useful.
* I like the free matching enspell idea, since you actually have to keep the avatar out to get the benefit.
* (Maybe) Give avatars a buff aura effect related to the avatar that affects any friendly party member in range:
** Ifrit: STR, Attack, Ranged Atk
** Shiva: INT, Magic Attack Bonus
** Garuda: AGI, Ranged Acc, Evasion
** Titan: VIT, Defense and/or -%Physical Damage
** Ramuh: DEX, Accuracy, Crit%
** Leviathan: MND, Magic Defense Bonus and/or -%Magical Damage
** Carbuncle: CHR, Regen
** Fenrir: All basic stats (smaller amount than the others)
** Diabolos: Refresh (but in an amount less than his perp cost, and probably no more than 3/tick at 75; note that if you send him far away from you, you wouldn't get the bonus yourself)
** Elementals: Increase magic acc and atk of spells that match the elemental's element (for itself and any party members casting spells of the same element). For light spirit, cure potency too.
These would get stronger with level or summoning magic skill (exception: stats that already work as a percentage, such as MAB, should be fixed and not increase with level), and affect all party members/party members' pets within a certain distance of the avatar. The simplest mechanic would probably be to apply the effect to everyone in range every tick, and have it wear off the next tick if it isn't reapplied (or the summon has been killed/dismissed/etc.)

Carby and Fenrir's effects are deliberately not as impressive because they are used the most now (outside BP) for their relatively good melee performance/perp ratios. Giving them weaker auras would introduce more of a tradeoff. Maintaining Diabolos's aura would drain your MP to restore party members' - useful, but not gamebreaking with three other refresh jobs around already.


Obviously that last one would be a huge improvement - maybe too huge. (I envision the Titan and Leviathan auras being strong enough that if you know a big physical/magical attack is coming, you want that avatar out to help you/your party survive it, for example - which necessarily implies that their effect has to be pretty noticeable. Titan's aura would also often be combined with Earthen Ward.)

But it would certainly make the SMN contribute something useful that depends on having an avatar summoned, without being either game-breaking DD or cure spamming.

[Kailea]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

*steps in*

Just making sure I do my part, as I do most of the time ^.^

*normal Kailea bitching*

*normal Kailea comments*

*normal Kailea "this is pointless" comments*

see you all later ^.^

*steps out*

[Balfree]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

*steps in*

*threatens with ban*

*uses a graphical emoticon*

*steps out*

[ruffrydasean]

Re: Forthcoming Job Adjustments (i.e. vague developer details from JP button)

* (Maybe) Give avatars a buff aura effect related to the avatar that affects any friendly party member in range:

This seems good, as well as upping their melee dmg.