Avatar Speculation and You

[Malacite]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

That's a cheap excuse though. In my opinion, SE really let themselves go when it came to designing summoner. Element and appearance should not be the key distinctions between avatars.

Let's not kid ourselves here, most of the avatars are just carbon copies of each other. SE could make them a lot more unique if they all had different roles based on their element and status (Celestial vs Terrestrial)

For example:

Irit - God of Fire - Highest STR and Melee Prowess
Shiva - Goddess of Ice - Highest INT and Offensive Magicc
Garuda - Goddess of Wind - Highest AGI and Attack Speed
Ramuh - God of Lightning - Highest DEX and Critical Hit + Accuracy Rates
Titan - God of Earth - Highest VIT and Defense
Leviathan - God of Water - Highest MND and Magic Defense

Alexander - God of Light - Highest CHR and HP?
(Stronger than carbunble but at a higher expense?)

Odin - God of Darkness - Highest ??? and MP? (Cheap Blood Pacts?)


Carbuncle - Bringer of Rainbows - High emphasis on defensive light abilities

Fenrir - Guardian of the Moon - Stronger physical abilites than carbuncle but weaker magic along with decent buffs and debuffs

Diabolos - Ruler of Dreams - Heavy focus on dark magic skills

Phoenix - Fiery Bird of Resurrection - Focus on Fire and Healing Magic

Bahamut - Conqueror of the Skies - Non-elemental attacks and over all high power (and even higher cost)


Now, a few things. Though there are multiple avatars of the same element, The Celestials will always maintain dominance in their particular element. That is, Ifrit will still have stronger fire attacks over all compared to Phoenix or Bahamut, since he is the god of fire.

Secondly, I vote SE un-**** Bahamut already and change his 3 flare attacks back to non-elemental. It's always been his hallmark ability since his inception. Massive, non-elemental no defense AoE blast. Yah, this would make the fight against him a lot tougher, but it should be tough.

More to the point, it makes him more unique and imposing. They've never screwed with it before, so why now? Change isn't always good.

My 2 cents.

[Wiseman40]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

Well I agree with most of that - but I have trouble seeing SE making dramatic changes to the class at this stage. It's much more likely that they'll keep the current avatars as they are and fit something in which adds to fun-factor and fits into the unfolding story of the game.

Also, Ifrit should never do as much damage as Bahamut. The idea is that we only summnon a wimpy representative of Ifrit, whereas when Bahamut is summoned it's the actual Bahamut himself.

Of course.. they kind of already fudged that up with Diabolos in a way...
They seem to have pulled it off without anyone complaining because Diabolos is wicked.

[Malacite]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

Also, Ifrit should never do as much damage as Bahamut. The idea is that we only summnon a wimpy representative of Ifrit, whereas when Bahamut is summoned it's the actual Bahamut himself.

It's the same with all of the avatars FYI.

[Ziero]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

Irit - God of Fire - Highest STR and Melee Prowess
Shiva - Goddess of Ice - Highest INT and Offensive Magicc
Garuda - Goddess of Wind - Highest AGI and Attack Speed
Ramuh - God of Lightning - Highest DEX and Critical Hit + Accuracy Rates
Titan - God of Earth - Highest VIT and Defense
Leviathan - God of Water - Highest MND and Magic Defense

iirc the 6 elemental avatars aren't actually the 'gods' of those elements, they're just the embodiment of their elements. And in fact they were all once said to be mortal beings who were raised to a divine plane after showing extreme bravery and kindness and loyalty and all those good things in the face of absolute evil. The backstories of the 6 elemental avatars, taken from some JP FFXI guide, is posted somewhere in the Smn's forum and tells the tale of how they came to be, and shows that they were all once living beings. As such, not so much gods, but 'heavenly' figures chosen by Altana herself.

As for whether or not certain avatars should be playable, I can whole heartidly say I would *not* want to see that. Odin, Bahamut and Alexander shouldn't be powers the average player should be able to control. And with tons of other 'second string' summons having been playable over the years, there's still a healthy list of options to choose from. Though I do think the current ones could use a boost or two, and that specialization idea would be great for that.

Also, if Atomos gets called an avatar in the next expansion, that just means all bets are off.

[Malacite]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

But they are. It's even in the opening movie, as part of the crystal legend.

"The gods brought balance to the 8 elements and then fell into a deep slumber."
thus, the slumbering gods. Wiki refers to them as such as well.

That they ascended from once being a mortal means nothing, they are still the gods and embodiment of their respective elements.

[Akashimo]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

For support of the mortal beings, here's the links to the avatar's back story
Shiva
Ifrit
Ramuh
Garuda
Leviathan
Titan
From what I can recall of earlier or on another thread, the mortal element of these avatars are what gave these gods shape and sentience, before they were just elemental beings. At least that was I can remember.

[Malacite]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

They started as Mortal, then through various circumstances, Altana granted them god status. Funny though, how neither Altana nor Promathia have back stories.

What we do know of the Celestial Avatars now though, is while they may be gods, they still need an avatar (a physical vessel for their spirit) since they can only fully manifest on their own in Paradise (which was lost when the Mother Crystal split)

[Wiseman40]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

Angelo ftw?

[Gwynn]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

Funny though, how neither Altana nor Promathia have back stories.

Well... thats because they're actual Gods, isn't it? They never were mortal, they just were.

[Hilde]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

Soo many summons on that site.

[Wiseman40]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You



The above is Starlet, a summon from FFVI which would heal the party.



Phoenix, of course, would mostly revive fallen party members, but I believe in some versions would heal as well?

Basically, I am truly hoping that we get an avatar that not only heals, but heals effectively and does so on its own (not as a BP).

If an avatar did this instead of auto-attacking, and had a couple of offense sort of BPs to go along with it (which is the case with Phoenix, doing fire damage occasionally in addition to healing) it would free up our subjob!

[Malacite]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

or lord knows if our job traits got passed to our avatars... *cough* MAB *cough* Double Attack*...


Anything really, just some kind of boost ><

[Pteryx]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

or lord knows if our job traits got passed to our avatars... *cough* MAB *cough* Double Attack*...

...Now that could have interesting results. There are quite a few worthwhile job traits that a SMN could pass on to a meleeing avatar, in particular. And this could really make SMN/RDM work very well... -- Pteryx

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

Basically, I am truly hoping that we get an avatar that not only heals, but heals effectively and does so on its own (not as a BP).

If an avatar did this instead of auto-attacking, and had a couple of offense sort of BPs to go along with it (which is the case with Phoenix, doing fire damage occasionally in addition to healing) it would free up our subjob!

I don't see what freeing up your subjob would do save for letting you expend all your MP on Avatars. There isn't a more useful general-purpose subjob for SMN than WHM and there's really no denying it.

[Rain_Blade]

Re: Avatar Speculation and You

I don't see what freeing up your subjob would do save for letting you expend all your MP on Avatars. There isn't a more useful general-purpose subjob for SMN than WHM and there's really no denying it.

Agreed.

Pretty much I believe that Perpetuation is a big conflict with your decisions as a Summoner. People would like you to sub white mage (as I would think too), but on the other hand you want to do your job and you know that the Perpetuation will be a problem during healing. People also do not want your avatar to melee (which is agreeable) because they're not impressed with the melee damage plus it'll be too much downtime when you have to /heal; moreover, they'd prefer you to heal because of the stated reasons. So basically, I don't think the true hatred is in the healing. I think Summoners think that if they are gonna be using their subjob a lot, then they want to still use their main job as well without any downtime.

On that note, I think SE gave Summoners perpetuation so that it would prevent Summonrs to be a solo job. Summoners let their avatar tank, as many know. If perpetuation costs were wiped, then Summoners could easily solo since no perpetuation means no mp draining, 30 second avatar recast while Drg and Pup have to wait 2 hours, and avatars being capable to take much less damage than the Summoner. So, I think (I use "think" too much) they don't want Summoners soloing because Smns have Support abilities that can help parties and they want us to make use of them (even though some either suck or lose its importance the higher you level).