Blood Pact Overhaul

[Malacite]

A lot of ideas have been tossed around over the years on how to fix SMN. But for now, I want to focus on blood pacts.


First and foremost, let's scrap the current system. Enough of this shared timer BS. Let's give each pact it's own timer. The only delay between different pacts should be the time it takes for the avatar to charge and use them. Let's use Carbuncle and Garuda as examples.

Carbuncle:

Searing Light: 1 Minute + AF
Healing Ruby: 10 seconds
Poison Nails: 12 seconds
Shining Ruby: 20 seconds
Glittering Ruby: 30 seconds
Meteorite: 30~45 seconds
Healing Ruby II: 20~25 seconds

Garuda:

Aerial Blast: 1 Minute + AF
Claw: 10 seconds
Aero II: 21 seconds (same as BLM's Thunder II. Going for a reasonable number)
Aerial Armor: 20 seconds (normal recast for blink is 10)
Whispering Wind: 12 seconds
Hastega: 30~40 seconds
Aero IV: 38 seconds (roughly same as Thunder IV)
Predator Claws: 45~50 seconds (Maybe 1:00 for the lv70 BPs?)
Wind Blade: 45~50 seconds (should be the same as lv 70's)


Now this way, we're able to blow through our pacts at our own pace while still not negating the blood pact ability down gear. If this is too strong, one thing that could be done on top of this is to make them on a shared menu like DNC's dances. But that would screw up one of the big advantages to my suggestions here, which is to be able to do a physical pact to form a skillchain and follow it up with a Tier 2/4 nuke to MB.


In addition to giving them their own recasts, it'd be great if the level 70 pacts could be used to form level 2 (maybe 3?) skill chains. This would really help push SMN as a high cost high reward DD in addition to easing the reliance on the sub job.

A job's subjob should supplement it, not define it. The tier 2 and 4 nukes should also gain a substantial power boost, as well as increased MP cost to match.

[Silent Howler]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

IMO that feels like it would be a little too much, to be honest. I think it would be more practical to have a single recast timer for each individaul avatar (which could further be divided into Rage and Ward, but that might no longer be neccessary).

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

And the inane SMN bitching continues... even with a new toy and new subjob viability this week.

Its getting really, really old. Let it rest for while, man. Let's see how these changes impact things. These days, when we see one change happen with a job that's been neglected for a while, in the updates to follow, there are more changes more often than not. See: BST, PUP, DRG.

[Dranzia]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

A job's subjob should supplement it, not define it.

I like this statement...

In all seriousness though, it does sound VERY overpowered to do all of the OPs ideas, but I wouldn't be opposed to somehow (yet again?) reinforcing the use of avatars more....

Heck, what do I know? I'm only 43 SMN

[Malacite]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

Overpowered how? I was just using random numbers (well, not entirely random) that I pulled out of my ass (based on timers for other spells/abilities) to base these on.

Plus, there's still the fact that you'll end up blowing more MP than other mages would for these abilities. All this would do would allow SMN to perform it's support and healing abilities through the avatars as opposed to /WHM or /SCH. The timers themselves are obviously subject to change as SE has the final say.

I love how some people say "oh, this will break SMN. People will do SMN onry!" Hah, yeah right. No amount of refresh in the game will keep a SMN who's spamming pacts on top of maintaining an avatar going indefinitely. This just puts SMN on the level with the other jobs IMO, with the balancing factor being MP spent.

As for enmity, I'd say the SMN should pick up 50% of the enmity the avatar does? So that in the event the pet dies, the SMN isn't completely out of the woods yet. Shit, BLM's have their own safety nets (Sleep, Stun, and SJ spells) so I'm not getting what's so broken here.


I understand how annoyed you are @ all these threads BBQ, and I agree to an extent. However it's infuriating to me that after all this time, SE still hasn't done anything make keeping avatars out practical.

[Sabaron]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

What you have done just with those pacts alone makes SMN incredibly powerful--oustripping both WHM and BLM with it's ability to do pretty much everything they can do without being fettered by the chains of enmity or time, and with the benefit of the greatest mp pool and second highest overall refresh rate of any job (The highest being RDM/SMN, RDM/PLD and RDM/BRD sans party BRD).

You view the time restriction as the thing that makes you definable by your subjob. You're subjob is just what you do between pacts. Pacts are too powerful to be cast so frequently. All you'd do is speed up by great measure the rate at which SMN operates. They would be able to crank out all of their good buffs and cycle them indefinitely, and the amount of spike magic damage they'd be able to cause (even without Astral Flow) would surpass by great measure the abilities of any DD. Why wait for the timer? I'll just drop Garuda and bring up Shiva. Even if you put the pact timers on a per-avatar basis and leave them at 1:00 per avatar, you're still making SMN exponentially more powerful.

Summon Garuda
Predator Claws
Dispel Garuda
Summon Shiva
Double Slap
Dispel Shiva
Summon Garuda
Predator Claws
.
.
.
Continue ad nauseam until I'm out of MP.

SMN is already a powerhouse end-game job. Touch it too much and you'll significantly alter the balance of the game. If you change the recast timers so much, they you'll basically have to gimp the pacts down by a requisite amount. A pointless endeavor.

The only time SMN is defined by its subjob is during XP and even then you're stretching.

[Feba]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

A job's subjob should supplement it, not define it.

Tell that to DRG. Or NIN. Or SAM.


Oh, are those all ROTZ jobs that can use very different subjobs to act in very different ways in very different situations?

I suppose it would be a coincidence then that SMN came out at ROTZ release.

No way that's a coincidence.

[Malacite]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

DRG's something of an oddball in that SJ defines the wyvern but not the DRG itself. And I don't see how you make those arguments for SAM and NIN when both have the tools they need to do what they do already (>_> NIN technically wasn't meant to be a tank in the first place anyway)


Admittedly, the spamming of 70 BPs via summon & release hadn't occured to me @.@; (I had headache when I was posting this) so you're right on that account. That's why I said @ the end of my 1st post that some form of shared timer may be required, but the current system we have now is too restrictive. I'm trying to dig up a happy medium here.

Also, most of the spell delays I listed are around double what it would take to cast the regular spells (ala accession). Increasing the MP cost of pacts (while lowering perp a little) would be another good idea too IMO. I don't see why pacts shouldn't be powerful, given the nature of their source. Just freaking costly (at least for the more "broken" ones like the 70 BPs).

You're not seriously going to tell me it wouldn't be more fun to leave carbuncle/garuda/leviathan out and use one of them to do the healing as opposed to /WHM or /SCH?

That's the entire point of this thread; trying to figure out a balanced way to allow SMN to rely more on their main job's abilities and much less on their current crutch.


So, it looks like SE wasn't entirely wrong with the shared timer concept. The issue is in how to prevent spamming of particular abilities (not all of them) so that we don't end up with as you said, a SMN popping off multiple 70 BP's or AFs.

Certainly can't have that happen (No really, I agree ^^) but at the same time it'd be nice to say open a chain with Garuda, then switch out to Shiva (while melee does 2nd WS) and burst with Blizzard II/IV, or maybe continue the chain with another physical pact. But again that's gotta be balanced by both the MP spent and relative power too. Again like you said, spamming 70+ pacts/Astrals = bad.


I'm not the only one to have tossed out the notion of giving each avatar their own list, which is pretty much what this is btw. SE wasn't kidding when they said this was the hardest job to balance because it's too easy to push it over the edge. However I take offense @ the ppl knocking it down for the sake of doing so, and not offering anything constructive to the discussion.

Come up with your own ideas/suggestions or kindly don't post. I'm really hoping to find a consensus here that can be mailed in to SE on the off chance they might actually see it and go "Hey, why don't we test this?"

[Karinya]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

However I take offense @ the ppl knocking it down for the sake of doing so, and not offering anything constructive to the discussion.

You gotta be freakin kidding me. There is one person on these forums who always, ALWAYS says that SMN is gimp and broken and knocks it down: you, one who abandoned SMN at level 30-something (IIRC). If you really want your opinions of SMN to be taken more seriously, maybe you should find a few 60+ SMN who share them, first?

Suggestions on how to totally overpower SMN are not "constructive". Furthermore, if your opinion is that SMN is an interesting and useful job already, what "constructive" can you add to the discussion? If it doesn't need to be changed, then it doesn't need to have anything added to it.


That being said, there are some *individual* blood pacts that could use an overhaul. Frost and Lightning Armors, given the way fights actually work, their AoE nature isn't that useful and you shouldn't pay so much MP for so little duration. Whispering Wind costs way too much for what you get; ditto Crimson Howl. I haven't seen Rolling Thunder post-update so I don't know if it's been fixed or not. Glittering Ruby and Ultimate Terror are just too random - you don't know whether you're going to get any useful result or not. The first four could be helped just by making them cheaper (and for the enhancing ones, possibly longer lasting - the short duration of enhancing BPs really hampers trying to keep up several at once, so aside from really powerful ones like Hastega, 5+ minute timers should be the norm IMO). I honestly don't know what to do with GR and UT - even if they were cheap, it seems like players would probably prefer something they *knew* would help them.

But the overall structure of BPs in general is fine. It's just that the selection is a little lacking because of the presence of some individual weak BPs.

[Rain_Blade]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

And the inane SMN bitching continues... even with a new toy and new subjob viability this week.

Its getting really, really old. Let it rest for while, man. Let's see how these changes impact things. These days, when we see one change happen with a job that's been neglected for a while, in the updates to follow, there are more changes more often than not. See: BST, PUP, DRG.

You're Complaints/Rants

http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/ran...fed-again.html
http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/bea...there-yet.html
http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/cor...sair-rant.html
http://www.ffxionline.com/forums/rac...tments-eh.html

Hmm. Rng got some pretty nice updates before. Ooo Corsair is on a roll! OH! Oh! I see Rdm may expect some nice changes. Oh!!!!!!!!!!!!! Summoner is getting a new ability!!!! Omfg!!!! OOOOO!! *sees the results* Oh... Another update to help main healing. Great. I guess that's...Alright.

Seriously, it's not gonna stop. Veterans continue to think of something as well as Newcomers. The complaining, bitching, or rants show that they really want something to be done with the Summoner job so that everyone is equally satisfied. The last HUGE update that I can remember about Summoner was the split BP timer. Of course I wouldn't expect HUGE as in increase all damage drastically or anything. If they complain, they complain.

New ideas is pretty much most Summoners talk about these days anyway. There's rarely a thread made about avatar battles and such since I suppose people are learning common sense, searching for themselves, or finding their own way of how to do what they need to do. If there were no rants about Summoner, most likely this section would barely have a thread in it (except a few help threads). So far, people react to results from the update fast. When updates come, the results, opinions, complaints, or joy comes in quickly. From what I've seen, the Summoners don't feel that it made a big impact, BUT the update did help; though, not in a way that it's "fixed" or "made right" or "impressively changed" OR whatever you want to put it.

The bitching does get old, but so does every other discussion on these forums. Veterans can point out many topics that have been discussed over and over. Admins try to put the most talked about topics in stickies, since others are tired of seeing the same things as well. Obviously, sometimes it doesn't work, but other times it does.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

Look at those "rants" (the RNG one, from the start, was misinterpeted by people who, surprisingly, don't play RNG), and then look at the changes SE has made and has been planning for all of those jobs. SE seems to agree with me and has addressed my concerns.

My COR rant? Nothing to do with this topic. 75COR/WHM with Accuracy builds and level 22 bullets is ultimate fail and horribly common. That's a statement about players and thier flawed approach to the job, not what the job needs, making your "point" totally irrelevant. Too many people play COR unintelligently, which SE can't do anything about.

My statements about BST were made prior to SE's complete 180 on thier attitude toward updating BST at Fanfest. They said adjustments would come after initial ones. We got two before WotG instead. They clearly got some backlash from it and decided to prioritize BST for updates.

And, just to contrast, let's weigh all the SMN and RDM piss-pantsy bitchfests against my handful of "rants." I'd be crushed under the weight of them. SMN/RDM "job needs" posts are the most abundant on this forum and also the most tiresome.

By the way, way to try and turn my points against me, you totally succeeded

[Rain_Blade]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

Look at those "rants" (the RNG one, from the start, was misinterpeted by people who, surprisingly, don't play RNG), and then look at the changes SE has made and has been planning for all of those jobs. SE seems to agree with me and has addressed my concerns.

You're pretty much repeating a little of what I said and making it into your own words. Those "rants" were addressed, as you said. The Summoner's "rants" were not.

My COR rant? Nothing to do with this topic. 75COR/WHM with Accuracy builds and level 22 bullets is ultimate fail and horribly common. That's a statement about players and thier flawed approach to the job, not what the job needs, making your "point" totally irrelevant. Too many people play COR unintelligently, which SE can't do anything about.

You're right. It has nothing to do with this topic. It has to do with your statement that I quoted before. Your COR rant is still a rant. If you're gonna point other people's rant because you're tired of them, then look back on your own.

My statements about BST were made prior to SE's complete 180 on thier attitude toward updating BST at Fanfest. They said adjustments would come after initial ones. We got two before WotG instead. They clearly got some backlash from it and decided to prioritize BST for updates.

Once again, you're tiptoeing around what I was addressing. Even though you made statements (as you call them), there were very help adjustments after those "statements." Summoners have been complaining since forever and they've obtained an ability that they aren't completely happy with because it barely changes Summoner the way they hoped it would. The only thing left is the avatars SE promised would come.

And, just to contrast, let's weigh all the SMN and RDM piss-pantsy bitchfests against my handful of "rants." I'd be crushed under the weight of them. SMN/RDM "job needs" posts are the most abundant on this forum and also the most tiresome.

By the way, way to try and turn my points against me, you totally succeeded

No one was contrasting. I addressed it. The weighing of SMN and RDM rants to one person is clearly obvious. The list of links I put in spoilers were to address the rants you've made and think about the changes that have been made now about those jobs. If those changes did not happen, most likely those jobs would still be making threads about new ideas or complaints such as other jobs being powerful than them.

[Feba]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

And I don't see how you make those arguments for SAM and NIN when both have the tools they need to do what they do already

SAM is very different depending on if it's /WAR or /THF. It's also pretty different as /RNG, but I'm not sure if anyone does that anymore. More than that, NIN is extremely different when it's /WAR and /BLM, or using any DD subjob that isn't WAR.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

The weighing of SMN and RDM rants to one person is clearly obvious. The list of links I put in spoilers were to address the rants you've made and think about the changes that have been made now about those jobs. If those changes did not happen, most likely those jobs would still be making threads about new ideas or complaints such as other jobs being powerful than them.

To put in real perspective, if I were to come here and look at the SMN and RDM threads here, I'd almost swear I was on the DRG forums on Alla half the time.

My point is that SMNs just got two huge boosts this week and without even trying them out, Malacite comes here and boo-hoos about the state of SMN. /SCH update is to mages what /SAM update was to two-handed melees and RNGs and SMN can now be really self-sufficient with Sublimation and Spirit Siphon in thier corner.

Think of it in terms of how BST was adjusted.

First, we get increased duration on various HQ jug pets and the improved +hHP adjustment to Stay. This was a major improvement in itself. Then we get something we didn't even anticipate just prior to WotG's release - Snarl. Total enmity transfer to our pets every 30 secons. Pretty damn huge. And now, they finally give us another layer of pet endurance by halving the recast timer on Reward.

So SMN is really at the start of its tweaks, more will likely come and then there's the two new avatars.

I didn't see a lot of BSTs turn around and start whining again after the Jug and Stay updates, and yet, that's exactly what Malacite is doing. Nothings ever gonna be good enough with SMN for him until its god of all jobs.

[Malacite]

Re: Blood Pact Overhaul

SCH update is to mages what /SAM update was to two-handed melees and RNGs and SMN can now be really self-sufficient with Sublimation and Spirit Siphon in thier corner.

That's nice, but it still doesn't change the fact that several blood pacts are weak, SMN still has a huge dependency on it's sub job and the DoT of avatars is totally not worth the MP spent or the TP given to the mob.


ZOMG so it just happened to be right after the update! I MUST BE TEH ANGRY N00BS!

Chill out much? I just had a passing thought and decided to make a thread on it. More to the point, why the fuck are you even posting here if it upsets you this much? No one's forcing you read all these threads, so stop aggravating yourself.