Over the last 5 years or so I've attempted my best to explain that moon phase design is flawed and need to be abolished. It doesn't quite help that you add new abilities based on moon.Heavenward Howl:
I tried this at 21% moon. My assumption would be that the buff given would be a "hp/mp drain" buff, and that the chance of HP absorption would be higher closer to full moon, and the chance of MP absorption would be higher closer to new moon. I buffed myself with it and proceeded to thwack crabs in Qufim. The only type of drain I ever got was MP drain. When I put the buff on myself, I got a single buff, but couldn't tell what it did because of there being no flavor text for the buff. It seems like the buff that I got wasn't an "hp/mp drain" buff, but just an "mp drain" buff because of the low moon phase. I can't be certain, but if this is the case then I think it's better than having a "hp/mp drain" buff that randomly drains either one; this would allow me to better plan when to use it. On the other hand, the MP drain side of this ability is worthless. I was getting 8-10 mp back per hit at 497 skill. I can only think of one job that would benefit from mp drain, BLU. PLD has enlight, and you cant have 2 enspells active. DRK has endark, the same thing applies. These jobs would prefer to have their enbuff over enaspir. BLU is the only job with mp that melees that doesn't have an enspell. It's the only job that this would be useful for in endgame situations (I'll say this so no one throws melee mage jobs at me as a counterargument). I would suggest removing the MP drain part of this ability completely, it's not strong enough (you'd think at 497 skill you'd get a decent return seeing as how ifrit's enfire does about 44 damage with that skill level), and it's not useful in endgame situations.
Basing things on the moon is the most ridiculous design ever, and most fitting it is done to SMN, which is the worst designed MMO class in the history of gaming.
What it boils down to is that you'll hit /clock and see "67% moon" and then you'll know that it is exactly one and a half real life week left before the Ward is useful for the battle you are going to do in 5 minutes.
Do you ask your party to "wait, in 1.5 weeks we can do this fight since right now I'm a little weak"? No, instead you treat the Ward as it doesn't exist for the next 1.5 weeks.
Fenrir and Diabolos both need to be functioning based on things you can affect.
I understand you want to claim it is story based and Fenrir is closely related to the moon, but don't forget that Fenrir single handedly destroy the whole Yagudo army as well, so it should be dealing about 1000 damage per hit to fit the story. If you can avoid giving us overpowered 1000 damage Fenrirs due to balance of gameplay, you can avoid moon phases for unbalanced Ward pacts and make the avatar actually balanced and functioning.
As we all are aware, an aspir effect is usually not effective in this game. So I'll agree with the quoted person that it would probably be better to just always be HP drain and never fluctuate with Moon phases. Unless you can manage to tweak the system to give both at the same time, and making it a special new ability instead of a copy of DNC sambas.
A pact that can have no effect is a pact that does need to be added to the game. Nothing is worse than using your global pact timer and MP for nothing.Pavor Nocturnus:
Aka Death. My first thoughts on this are that it's awsome, and a long time coming, especially after how Odin's 2hr death is lackluster (e.g. blow a ton of mp only to have another mob walk in the way, screw with his accuracy and end up missing the mob you were targeting initially). The great part about this ability is that we now have useful offensive ward pact (sorry Somnolence, you just aren't cutting it), so when it's time to pick a ward pact to use, and nothing else seems useful, we can slam this down for a chance at a KO. I havent tested it on NMs yet, but I need to stress this: this needs to be able to kill lower level NMs. I'm not talking about abyssea pop NMs, or HNMs. I'm talking about the dime-a-dozen worthless fodder mobs that are considered NMs in salvage, einherjar, etc. Either that, or stop labeling fodder mobs as NMs. It's annoying when you can't use Odin against lower level NMs in tough situations, simply because they're labeled as "NM"s.
It is quite obvious this should work as the new Delfkutts Tower VW Eye. Death OR 400-500 damage. Making it a pact worth using ALWAYS instead of NEVER.
Please adjust this. It should be easy. Just make it deal damage when it "misses". Do that and Diabolos might actually be worth using. Currently I don't think I've used him outside of "for fun" the last year.