[Darkhound]

How reliable, in your opinion is Runious Omen?

[Kenichii]

It looks like this topic was dusted off today... But I'll post. Astral Flow does not need to be any stronger than it already is. A very slight boost for some of them might be possible, but any more than that and our 2 hr. abilities would be overpowered. All Blood Pacts and attacks, and I believe someone mentioned this before, give the avatar hate, and not the player, other than the small amount of hate the player receives from using the pet abilities. This hate is then consumed by the Blood Pact damage anyway. In my opinion, Square Enix intended for Astral Flow's use to change as the player's level increased. In low levels, the damage from the Astral Flow Abilities is absolutely amazing, and I know that when I was a new player, it would always shock me when a Summoner used it. However, after you receive the high level damage blood pacts for each avatar, the use for the Astral Flow abilities decreases, and the Summoner begins to focus more on the fact that with Astral Flow, avatar perp. is 0 MP. The fact that the MP cost for each avatar raises with level makes this trait even more valuable.

Originally Posted by Darkhound

Re taking this subject, I still insist that there should be a slight change in the way astral flow works. The point of debate is wether this would make summoner ower powered, but It still hurts to see that our 2 hour is really not that powerfull. I see black mages do much more with their regular spells, shame shame!!

This isn't a debate. This is a bunch of people telling you that Astral Flow isn't trash, or "shame shame".
I'm not saying I wouldn't love for us to become even stronger. It's just not possible. The end.

Oh, and meet my friend. (He's new.)

[Darkhound]

So, you think that having per say... judgement bot dealing 1k damage to kirin would be too much?

[Kametame]

There is this other thing about Astral Flow cutting off another 5 seconds away from a spirit's casting time. However spirits are so random, it's kind of hard to tell if this is true or not.

[Gobo]

To answer you're previous question, I've gotten pretty reliable Ruinious Omens (800+ easy on mobs that arent immune to it). But thats just me.

And yes asking for 1k judgment bolts on Kirin is too much. A) Kirin is a freaking Earth mob lol. It has a natural resistance to thunder. (lets just assume it was a bad example) B) Kirin has magic defenese out the wazzo. He resists BLM spells, even Aero spells often. Nether Blast is pretty much the only thing he doesn't resist. Astral Flow BPs are magic, they follow the same rules for resistances as white magic, black magic, bard songs, ninjitsu and blue magic. The only difference is that all those can be strenghend with equipment/merits, were as Astral Flow can't even touched by those things. Its going to be resisted a lot by IT.

[tazirai]

I absoluteley love to Astral Flow especially durin gBC or hard missions, th eability to save MP for 3 whole minutes is nice.
When I started SMN we didnt have auto refresh and if you werent drinking juice your avatar poofed after the astral. Also at that time summoner astrals were sucky and given a significant boost. Another thing we didnt have was Clear mind.

In a BC situation If there was more than one smn. Id Astral At start >SP>unsummon>rest>SP>unsummon>Rest>Sp that woul dtake nearly half the monsters HP. then the second summoner would do same at 50%.

Astrals can make the difference in level capped fights where your 70 BP's arent available.
Also even once you have your 70 BP> Astral flow is great to conserve MP.

During fenrir merc runs you summon Use a 70 BP or eclipse bite then Astral when timer cooled down.
The mp saved is great.

[Shirai]

I still love to use astral flow,
for most arguements that it lowers perp cost to 0 for our avatars absolutely true.
That has saved my tail on several occasions.

But I have also used the Astral flow Blood pact on several occasions in uncapped battles.
Tenzen {Judgment Bolt} {You can have this!}
It still can do a ton of damage on several mobtypes and it can also MB very nicely.
(1.7K on the example above)

So in my humble opinion, astral flow is far from useless, even the BP itself is.