Summoner Improvements

[astraycat]

Removal of the MP-slip would be a good idea IMO, and would greatly increase the value of Summoners in general, and I don't think this would bring about a huge imbalance as long as the initial summoning cost was tweaked a bit.

However, setting each Blood Pact on an individual timer would be rather imbalanced. What would stop a summoner from brining out Garuda, hitting it up with predator claws, then switching to say Titan and using his lvl 70 ability?

I think, instead, each Blood Pact should have a some sort of level, and as such you can only use one of each level once per minute. It could be like this:

All the blood pacts up to the II spells could be considered Level 1 blood pacts, and you could only use one of those every minute. But afterwards, you could switch to the next set of spells, such as Garuda Blink or Ice Spikes, which would be level 2, and excetra.

This way, a Summoner could use all the blood pacts on a particular avatar in succession, but could not then switch to another avatar and unload with another ungodly attack. Of course, it would need to be tweaked thouroughly, and how many levels there are and how to sort each into their respective levels would need to be determined, but overall I think that would be much better than having every single blood pact on the same timer.

[sudo]

I think that perhaps smn can be tweeked by giving them elemental skill. Healing and enhancing can be thrown in with smn skill.

This way, smn can nuke semi well with a blm or rdm sub. smn would lv the elemental skill by having the avatars use their lv II and IV spells.

Dividing up some of the skill sets would be a good idea. Perhaps all skills from lv 10 and below be under one set, and then the lv 10-20 avatar skills be under another set. Every 10 lv's worth of stuff will be under their own timer. This way, there would be more use. Throw on garuda and titan buffs then use leviathian tail whip. All of this at the current already wasteful mp system would work just fine.

As for balance, consider this:

brd buffs cost 8 seconds to cast and recast is like 1 min for most of the songs

a blm takes like 8-12 seconds for the powerful nukes. The recharge can be up to 40 seconds. regular nukes take like 6 seconds

a smn currently takes like 8 seconds to cast a summon. then have to wait another 2 seconds before the avatar is ready to go on them blood pacts. Which takes another 3-4 seconds to activate and then another second to unsummon before anything else is possible.

a blm can spam a lot more damage in a much shorter amount of time. The current system is incredibly restrictive. 1 min, and down to like 50 seconds with all the armor I can think of. (I have never seen the lv 50 asture HQ gear at all, and if there are any, I bet itd be like 5 mil)

so with different lv timers, you can do the following:

suppose you summoned titan at lv 70 and just wanted to blow all your MP to finish that elusive chain 6.

throw out an earthen ward, lv 40-50 skill
then bust out a stone IV, followed by a mountain crash
then a rock buster, and a stone II if there's any MP left. All timers would be used up at this point. There'd be nothing else the avatar can do at this moment till the 1 min timer is up for the first skill lv cap set.

casting avatar = 8 seconds + 3 seconds for earthen ward +4 seconds for stone IV, then 5 seconds for mountain, and then 4 seconds each for stone II and rock buster and megalift throw.

total time for smn = 28 seconds at around 700 MP for estimated damage to Incredibly tough for (I'm guessing what these all do, plz put in corrected values, I'm basing these on what I get hit for as a bst when simular things hit me.)

Stone IV against a weak to earth enemy (ya I know hardly anything is weak to earth, but just work with me for a sec)

+300 damage
+900 for mountain
+120 for mega lift throw.
+80 for rock buster
+40 for stone II

totaling 1440 damage.

That is like 1400 damage for 700 MPin 30 seconds

A rng at these lvs do like 1000+ damage easily in like 10 seconds, with barrage, sidewinder, etc etc

a thf can get 1000+ damage on Sa+Ta+ shark bite in what amounts to 8 seconds within this minute.

a blm, the smn's closest relative, can dish out in 700 MP (I'm really guessing these numbers, as I don't know intricate blm high lv details.) Plz help me out with some real numbers

water IV, 144 MP I think takes like 8 seconds to cast, not really sure. doing 500 damage
Aero IV, 150 MP, 8 seconds, 500 damage
Fire IV, 157 MP, 8 seconds, 500 damage
blizzard IV, 164 MP, 8 seconds, 500 damage

we're now at 615 mp, and 2000 damage in 32 seconds.

I think just keeping most things the same, a smn can be a nice damage dealer without changing too many things. A smn would still be limited since nothing else can be done for 30 seconds. Smn would still be doing good damage in comparison to other jobs at the same lvs for approximately the same MP in the same amount of time, give or take a bit.

Thanks for reading through this rather long post


I hope this idea would sit well with others. But I would welcome any critiques on this idea.

[Deedlit]

Dont you think those numbers are a bit fake? Yes a BLM can do that - and he will be a dead BLM. You forget that SMNs at level 70 can do nice HATELESS dmg.

[sudo]

yes I know those numbers are not correct because I don't have any real numbers to plug in. If there are any high lv blm's and smn that can plug in more correct numbers, then plz throw them in for me. I've mentioned many times that I don't have the real numbers, these are very rough estimates.

As to the hate free damage, yes, that is one of the smn's biggest advantages and I think it is fitting that stays the same. I would perfer to fix this via the fact that a blm can certainly stay alive for 40 seconds even with agro.

This comparison is under the impression that the blm, rng, smn what have you, got the order to "Kill it NOW" and are nuking at extreme speed and without care to MP or hate since it is to finish off a chain 6 or something.

A blm can certainly survive for 40 seconds with aquaveil, stoneskin, blink on. A pld would easily be able to hold hate through the first 2 spells. Only by #3 would the blm be really getting the hate so we're looking at a survivability window of more or less 20-30 seconds.

The hateless balance with a smn doing the "kill it now" method anytime he wants would be balanced by a lower total damage output and slightly higher total MP cost.

Perhaps a blm chuck out 2000 damage in 40 seconds, at 700 MP.
A smn doing 2000 damage would take 1 min, at say 850 MP.
Thus this would allow smn to fulfill a damage dealing role as what most ppl seem to be complaing about while maintaining game balance.

a rng can easily do 2000 damage in 1 min, a pld can hold hate through that though with some difficulity. There would be no significant change for smn and blm hate balance for most pt situations in this configuration.

the total damage output would be consistant while the tank would be able to hold agro easier. Thus smn would be quite an effective dd in a nin tank pt where most blm says that they need to "hold back" a bit. A smn would fit in very well in that role as a blm replacement with much less hate.

considering that ppl seem to feel that the difficulty in raising a smn vs a blm should be compensated by making smn be a good damage dealer if not the best as in FF tradition, I believe that more damage would be a good thing for smn. And also have a purpose for leaving an avatar out.

[Oceanfish]

Well, first..yeah, a BLM nuking all out isn't efficient. On the other hand every Summoner attack ability (pre-65) blows, hard.

So what if the damage is hateless? No, really.
Melees at that level (and 10 levels below) can use trick attack to completely avoid taking aggro from a 1500+ damage ws. They don't cost mp, either, and contribute to making a skillchain--which can be burst on for even more damage. Yes, it does require a bit of effort (half a brain and the ability to stand behind someone), but so does positioning and timing a blood pact.

And at 65-70+ when you do get these abilities, if your tank is 1/2 proficient (and or thf main,sub) a blm doesn't have to pray every time they magic burst that they won't get beat down anyhow. And magic from a semi up to date mage is resisted far less often than the good avatar moves (Flaming Crush, Predator Claws) land all their hits. Oh, did I forget to mention..it's also magic damage which far more monsters are vulnerable to than physical, which the avatar moves are.

Anyhow, it comes down to the point that I think summoner needs more frequency in ability use (agree) but not necessarily in the form of completely outclassing BLM (disagree).

[Takkun]

I think the mp slip is good the way it is. Instead, make melee damage a little stronger, but not too powerful.. just enough to make it worth the mp if you decide to sit back and watch your avatar melee for some reason.

Another way to fix mp slip issue would be to just give autorefresh II and III at say, lvls 50 and 70^^

If mp slip mp:dmg ratio isn't fixed, they should at least make lower lvl blood pacts a little stronger, or even high lvl ones. This would make summoners seem more like they were in older FF games, as far as calling the avatar to do a powerful attack and then dismissing... instead of only doing that once every 2 hours. If hateless damage is a problem for that, remove avatar hate or give them the same emnity as the summoner, so when the avatar is released the same hate would be on the smn. ; ; Then the avatar could have some kind of random 'cover' ability lol. Or the smn could take the same damage as the avatar ... >< idk. It wouldn't be hard to find some way to fix that hateless dmg thing though.

Otherwise... I think it would fix a lot of smn's problems if they could just have cure4 lol.

As for bloodpact timers, maybe 2 seperate timers, each at 1 minute: 1 timer for attacking or debuffing bloodpacts, and 1 for buffs. (2 different types of bloodpact menus, each with different abilities...) *edit: sort of like what astrayCat already said, sorry ><;

Those are just some of my random thoughts I'll keep dreaming.

[sudo]

I don't think it'd be a smn's position to outclass a blm really.

The hateless damage should be maintained. There is alot of code that goes into the management of hate in the game and it is way more complicated and sensative than you'd think.

The bst job and smn kiting manuvers are crucially dependent on the seperate pet hate thing. That should not be changed.


A smn has alot of pt buffs and in my mind, should probably mimic the rdm in versatility more than the pure damage blm.

A rdm is actually a fairly good nuker. 2nd to blm by a fair margin but way ahead of smn in both damage and healing power along with some almost critically important moves like refresh and dispell along with some very good solo power.

A smn is also a good solo'er via kiting but maybe behind rdm.
Smn has a few of the rdm stuff but at way more MP use, way more time consumption, and a lot less effective.

since smn have a lot more mp, I "guess" that is balanced but refresh is way better than auto refresh.

The time consumption would need a fix such as more blood pact timers use. smn can either do some pittiful damage or just 1 buff for the pt in a minute. A rdm can throw down like 6-8 spells in that time to cover debuffs, damage, enhancing, and curing all at once. That is way too unfair for the smn. Even with the so much taunted no hate. 2 provokes in that one minute would be more than enough to cover the rdm.

The effectiveness of avatar abilities needs to be up'ed also to make it at least on par with rdm or maybe whm debuff skills.

smn skill needs to be adjusted as well. rdm enfeebles lv up pretty dang fast. rdm enhancing rises a bit slower but refresh and the ability to spam enhancing spells right outside a mog house w/o resting time helps to speed up skill lving. Also enhancing skill did not play a large role. (but I guess smn skill is still of dubious necessity also)

I for one would like to have smn be almost as effective as a rdm in healing/damage/support abilities. That would be balanced enough for me.

[Takkun]

Originally posted by sudo
I for one would like to have smn be almost as effective as a rdm in healing/damage/support abilities. That would be balanced enough for me.

I agree, SE needs to give the class a decent role in exp parties, not just in alliances or soloing, wether that's support, healing, or damage.. they could easily 'add' some abilities to make this happen without completely changing what the class can already do, since they seem to prefer adding new abilities rather than changing them.

I would prefer support though, all a smn would need is some kind of refresh ability. After 70+ the only time i've pt with a smn is when a brd or rdm was not avail ; ;

[Kiyone]

I've been doing some level up with an all summoner party (66-68, now 69-70)recently, and the way it is already, pots in ru'avitau are left with like 10-25% life left after 6 Eclipse Bites. Any faster and this would be a crime for Pot genocide.

Most of us just got 70, which the abilities have proved to do 1.5 to 2 times the damage of Eclipse Bite. We can do 4-5k an hour, chain 5s with only 5 people now, 294 being the max exp we have ever gotten from any one pot.

I actually never use any subjob abilities save... stoneskin for defense (though it could be gotten through earthen ward anyways). I'd say that I play summoner more than a white mage with a MP bank.

The point of all this is that in my opinion, with a frequency increase, the potential outcome would further awkward the class by increasing the damage a summoner can do. It's true that summoners don't get worthwhile offensive attacks until 65 and 70, but consider a change to the class will affect all levels of that class... (unless they make it a passive job ability? which would be weird that your blood pact changes so suddenly).

In my opinion, they addressed Blood Pact frequency anyways, with the relic armor and perhaps Austere gear. A full set will change Blood Pact recast to 48 seconds, which makes a LOT of difference. Even the Relic Spats will increase the elemental Spirit's recast (which by the way is SO ridiculously useful for when you have LightSpirit buff you with Protect and Shell).

In the end, though the class overall has some faults (hate the out of range, wait another minute deal -.-), I still think that it's still a fun, worthwhile class to play as it is now. (Predator Claws to a Master Coerl in Behemoth's Dominion for 2400 damage was pretty sexy too =O )

EDIT:

Pics ^^



Fenrirs... =o



Sexy sexy Eclipse Bites.



Fast, sexy exp~

^^

[Oceanfish]

Yes, all smn parties work 65+, but the problem is that finding 6 summoners within your level range online and wanting exp at the same time is rare. If you read SE's survey results, Summoners are .01% of the game population. That doesn't make the availability very good, does it?

BLM can do the same (and better), anyhow. We're not the only job with this kind of ability.


To comment on summoner soloing:
SMN cannot solo monsters (which give worthwhile experience) at low levels (under 65-70). Even then when it is possible, the risk is fairly large (can't enfeeble with things like silence or gravity, bind) and there is significant downtime after each kill.
BLM, RDM both have this solo capability as well, so it cannot be considered a "job specific trait." Anyhow, I would rather this nerfed and overall usefulness better (Dynamis,HNM,PT) and more in line with the other mage jobs' usefulness, rather than bottom of the list.

[Kirara]

am i the only smn who don't have a /p line in their blood pact macro? ; ;

i always wanted to try all smn pt... or all blm pt, ;3 but making one is too much an ass to be bothered.

avatars has great physical defence, also the attack isnt' bad. however it's best if the attack is used on somethign has extremely weak physical defence, pot is a good example. however at 74-75 i think bones are a good choice (garuda).... or maybe the golems (titan) i'd rather go with 5 smn and a brd >< brd/nin to pull

[Kiyone]

Originally posted by Kirara
am i the only smn who don't have a /p line in their blood pact macro? ; ;

i always wanted to try all smn pt... or all blm pt, ;3 but making one is too much an ass to be bothered.

avatars has great physical defence, also the attack isnt' bad. however it's best if the attack is used on somethign has extremely weak physical defence, pot is a good example. however at 74-75 i think bones are a good choice (garuda).... or maybe the golems (titan) i'd rather go with 5 smn and a brd >< brd/nin to pull

Actually, I don't usually have a /p [text] in my Blood Pacts either. But when it's an all SMN PT, and one of the smn is pulling with Carbuncle, it's good to know when he can release (after a Fenrir does Eclipse Bite, for tanking purposes) and summon his own Fenrir. So we put in "/p [text]" markers for when we were performing Blood Pacts.

I'd like a brd too, but still have been too lazy to hunt for one. We have had, however a NIN/WAR once, who turned out to not bring much to the party, as we ended up pulling with Carbuncle anyways.


To Oceanfish:


Strictly speaking in the case where subjob is not a focus factor, if you had an all BLM party, inevitably, they would still rely on Blink and Stoneskin to save them from getting hit, and Cures to heal those hits. Potentially, any one BLM stands to create too much hate and die at any given time.

For a SMN party, I would say that is only an issue with -ga spells or area attacks, in which case, you just stand out of range. Not getting hit means little need for Blink and Stoneskin, and cures overall.

It's true we are not the only ones with this kind of ability, but I still think that we do it most efficiently and safely.

In solo, I would say that a RDM stand little chance on anything proving to be Even Match or higher, based on the fact that usually on Even Match and above, the accuracy of hits tends to lower to a dangerous rate, in that the battle is extended too long for a safe battle, save once every 10 minutes for a sleep II, phalanx, stoneskin, convert. Since RDM are not very skilled in elemental magic, in my opinion anyways, I would see that they focused a little more on enfeebling it to death while constantly beating on it with a weapon and an enchant-spell.

I don't really know about how BLM solo. The most I saw was a 75BLM sitting in sky farming Light clusters by blizzard 4 with a ice staff, sleep II with a dark staff, thunder IV with a thunder staff, sleepga II with a dark staff, repeat, with a blink and stoneskin as needed. He had to rest a long time after every one. In this respect, it would be the same as a smn, except that smn base their targets at level 70+ solo on the physically weak where blm base their targets on the magically weak. Both are going to have significant downtime after every battle.


My reference to a Job Trait was to your idea of blood pact frequency up, btw. some trait that is maybe obtained at a certain level.


In any case, I agree that SMN tend to be on the lower half of the mage list, especially when it comes to exp, and that is upsetting, but somehow, we still get to level 75 and cheer when we can one-shot things for excessive amounts of damage to amuse whatever people might be around at the time. ヽ(´―｀)ノ

[Oceanfish]

I've seen BLM farm a number of things. The biggest profit maybe was the wyverns in ifrit's. The Tu'lia elements are significantly harder I'd think (VT at 75 as opposed to EM/T wyverns), but despite that I'm sure its possible.

I really don't think a job's power should be measured by its farm capability, either.

In reference to the all blm parties I've seen, they all cast flare/freeze on one target, and it died pretty much as soon as they all finished casting. Aggro control wasn't a problem, since if it didn't die they would all just use fire/blizzard3 to finish it off.


SMN party actually can't do this as well as BLM in a respect that the best place to do cannon type parties is ranperres, and if you have an unlucky run against a skeleton it can get a lot of blood drains off..resulting in huge mp drain from the smn.

It's neat that smn have this option, but again..the chance to do it is so low.

I agree with Kirara in that avatar melee is pretty much ok. Seriously even if they made it more, would it be strong enough to justify leaving an mp draining avatar out instead of curing/resting on a normal basis? Highly unlikely. So the solution is to give us options to make our mp better spent (other than sj curing). But oh well, probably won't happen anyhow. heh

[sudo]

I like that smn have good all smn pt abilities at high lvs and with other smn.

As it is, bst kind of operate like that already.

however, I must point out some problems with that thing.

you need to be lv 65 minimum to do that stuff. To fight them pots at lv 65 would require fenrir.

to get fenrir, refer to other threads talking/complaining of this.

at 0.1% of the ffxi population, finding enough smn at these lv's to do something like what your pics depict all with fenrir would be pretty much impossible. It's already hard enough to find 4 to 5 bsts at my lv to pt together espically if there is a language barrier. Getting an even more rare job to pt together (espically if they have potential to get into a safe pt) would be even harder.

getting to lv 70 before game balance in a job is estabilished even a little bit is pretty much a bad game design. I agree that it is a cool thing what you and your fellow smn lving pt is doing, but frankly I still think that the job needs to be fixed such that there is something more to do.

Also, while it is *possible* to have 48 sec recast timer for your bp's. I for one have no possible way to get all the items to do this. Hell, I never even seen any penance gear for sale ever! Never mind that relic gear which would basically be pointless for lving up because there is no real point for exping anymore.

If all the gear for smn was a lot cheaper or easier to get, I might agree with you on smn effectiveness being fixed quite a bit. But as it is, having only a buttload of HQ equipment (I think to buy all the HQ stuff penance gear alone if they existed would be something to the tune of what? 20 million? too low?) to be as 1/4 as effective as a rdm? That's not fixing anything.

The job is still broken.


(um, as for rdm being sucky at soloing? Those taru rdm's have been soloing EM's for chains at lv 60+, check the rdm forums, rdm are seriously #2 or #3 in soloing. Behind bst and about on par with nin)

[Malamasala]

Having played summoner up to 44 now there are a few things that I've thought would make the playing experience more fun, without changing much at all.

1) Make all party buffs last 5 min. This opens up for using a lot of pacts because things like Shining ruby or ice spikes will last long enough for you to do them aswell as blinking. Blinking will still disappear near instantly because it's the spells nature, but atleast you get to buff your party members in other ways aswell without just simply wasting mp.

2) Make all avatars have the same mp-slip. When soloing/farming you are forced to use the cheapest one more or less. It would simply make the job more fun if you could pick any (or the right elemental avatar) on any mob. If that would mean raising or lowering mp-slip costs, I'm not sure.

3) Spirits are a joke. The mp they use each 3 sec is not worth it in any way for them to cast paralyze or something else. If they are going to keep these costs, atleast make the spirits never cast a spell lover than 10 levels lower than your smn level.
As a lvl 35 I played some for fun with my wind elemental vs an earth elemental in konstat highlands. The wind elemental barely got hurt, but it drained 400 mp to kill a too weak earth elemental. I'd rather see the spirits be 0 mp-slip, and then they drain mp according to their spells, because for me they've never cast a spell costing higher than 20 mp, and that is after 200 mp drained.
Well, that was 2 suggestions on the spirits.