Summoning magic skill-ups and the rate of which we are getting them.

[Calatilla]

I call BS. If I spend 2 hours killing 3 mobs with nothing BUT bp's and get 1.2 skill ups, even with using skill food, and that earring I spent months and months farming for, then that skill up rate is far from "set high".

I was told the skill up food didn't work for summoning skill. Was I miss informed? I haven't personally noticed a difference in skill up rate with or without it so I dunno.

[Okipuit]

Hello,

We noticed some of you mentioning that you have been attempting to skill up summoning magic in Legion or have been spending a lot of time using offensive blood pacts on the same monsters for a long period of time.

The rate in which your skills increase depends a lot on your skill level related to the enemy's level. Since the monsters in Legion are extremely high level and there is also a chance that the monsters you are fighting for long periods of time are also quite high in level, you may want to consider trying other monsters if your progress appears slow.

[Nawesemo]

Hello,

We noticed some of you mentioning that you have been attempting to skill up summoning magic in Legion or have been spending a lot of time using offensive blood pacts on the same monsters for a long period of time.

The rate in which your skills increase depends a lot on your skill level related to the enemy's level. Since the monsters in Legion are extremely high level and there is also a chance that the monsters you are fighting for long periods of time are also quite high in level, you may want to consider trying other monsters if your progress appears slow.

I like the dhamal NM in altepa.

[Vold]

The rate in which your skills increase depends a lot on your skill level related to the enemy's level.

Well this isn't news for I assume most everyone here due to our trial and error with melee weapons long ago, but when you're level 99 and looking at the content out there it leaves little room for SMN BP skill ups. Any end game content is uberly high level and even if you look to Abyssea, 1)best of luck getting anywhere with skill ups in exp groups and 2)have you ever tried to solo skill up SMN summoning magic? Yeah it can be done but gosh.

I'm of the opinion that if certain skills cannot auto skill themselves during our everyday activities then there's something wrong. Pretty much everything auto skills itself if it's the priority weapon of choice for the job, except SMN magic. PLD and sword, no problem. THF and dagger, no problem. Healing magic, well okay it's slow but not a problem. Enfeebling magic not a problem for rdm. BLU magic not a problem for BLU. SMN magic, a problem. Because you have to take a time out from serious business to skill it up if you ever want it skilled up. If it were a side priority like staff for WAR or enfeebling for WHM, I might understand not touching it. But it's not.

So I guess my argument is, because SMN uses smn magic as it's main "weapon" to do battle, and because BP timers are as long as they are, and assuming that you're on board with me when I say priority job skills should auto skill themselves due to frequent use in everyday activities, you, whoever "you" may be, must agree with me when I say summoning magic needs some help. The rule of thumb needs to be different for it. Just like parry. Doesn't matter if I can go out to Abyssea, solo dolls, and apparently cap it in due time. The point and issue is, you shouldn't ever have to do that except for side projects, like staff skill ups for WAR or enfeebling for WHM.

[Karbuncle]

I see what he's saying, But honestly, I've been trying to skill up mine on mobs like... Botulus Rex... Ig-Alima... Provenance Fights... Its still so slow i consider stabbing my balls a pleasant alternative.

I thank you for the advice.

[Kysaiana]

If you could only get skill when using a weapon skill, and could only use weapon skills every 45 seconds regarless of TP, then it would take a long time to cap weapons too. The issue with Summoning magic isn't that the skill up rate is terrible, it's that the best source of skill ups is set to a 45 second timer at best. The skill up rate for just summoning an avatar/spirit is pretty bad. I never spammed summons to try to skill up.

As far as skill up foods go, it seemed pretty noticeable when I used food and when I didn't while attempting skill ups on SMN. You have to make sure you're using the right food for your level range though. Check the chart on this page http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Skill_Up_Food it's fairly accurate for the ranges. The only food I can really vouch for is B.W.E pitaru because my skill was already around 350 or so when I decided to really attempt to cap it. I also have the magic skill up earring so your mileage my vary.

I did page 7 in Crawler's nest (King Cralwers/ Vespos) to about 400 I think. They're DC to 99 so you can technically cap on them but skill ups seemed to slow down towards 400ish. After that I did page 8 in Gustav Tunnel (Worms/Turtles) Turtles are a little harder to kill solo so you may want to opt out of doing them. I only did pages to try for skill up prowess. I usually did easier pages till I got at least 1-2 levels of skill up prowess, and then switched to the target mobs.

Unfortunately it's time consuming to do that so it's not really viable for people without a lot of play time unless you log out in the dungeon to keep your prowess. Which means you can't do anything else for as long as you want to try to skill up. So yeah, it sucks to skill up summoning magic. Sadly it seems SE is going to be stubborn about the skill up rate so I wish good luck on anyone that still needs to cap. Keep trying and you'll get there eventually, at least it's something that doesn't require 18 people to do.

[kingfury]

Hello,

We noticed some of you mentioning that you have been attempting to skill up summoning magic in Legion or have been spending a lot of time using offensive blood pacts on the same monsters for a long period of time.

The rate in which your skills increase depends a lot on your skill level related to the enemy's level. Since the monsters in Legion are extremely high level and there is also a chance that the monsters you are fighting for long periods of time are also quite high in level, you may want to consider trying other monsters if your progress appears slow.

------------------
Though my suggestion was before you came on board as a Community Rep. Okipuit, please jab Camate or one of the others to let them refresh you on a little concept called "Gyms of Vana'Diel"

But in all seriousness, one can only wonder at how useful those Gyms could have been through all of our level increases and skill up sessions throughout the months of development. Even a year later, Skill ups are still being brought up as an issue from the player base (even after the cool skill up food and rings and such). Technically, the Dev team never came forth and said a solid "No" to the concept, and I don't think there was an official update to weather they considered it possible... soooo.... *cough* /stares at Camate (^.^)

[Ophannus]

On the bright side, SMN skill is really the only thing SMN has to cap compared to jobs like WAR, RDM, BRD, DRK, MNK, SAM etc which skill up faster but have way more things to skill. Besides Summoning Magic Skill and Staff, there's really nothing else for SMN, so most jobs cap out pretty much around the same time.

[Byrth]

I found that I got the best skillups off monsters that were something like 25 levels over my current skill cap. 0.4 and 0.5s. After a while I couldn't skill up very well on Kaggen/Pil/Akvan/Qilin anymore, but I could still get good skillups on Morta.

Anyway, I doubt DC-EM monsters are the answer. Use Ramuh and spam Chaos Strike/Shock Squall on the highest level thing you can fight.

[Mirage]

Hello,

We noticed some of you mentioning that you have been attempting to skill up summoning magic in Legion or have been spending a lot of time using offensive blood pacts on the same monsters for a long period of time.

The rate in which your skills increase depends a lot on your skill level related to the enemy's level. Since the monsters in Legion are extremely high level and there is also a chance that the monsters you are fighting for long periods of time are also quite high in level, you may want to consider trying other monsters if your progress appears slow.

But why is it then so easily for weapons to skill up on enemies way above the current skill level equivalent? I was getting skillups on almost every shot when I skilled archery, even though I was at skill level 200 (~lv60 equivalent) fighting level 85 enemies. That's a 25 level difference, which isn't very different from Karbuncle's ~370 summoning skill (level 95-ish?) and the lv115-120 monsters in voidwatch and legion. So unless archery (and other weapons) are bugged and level too easily on high level monsters, Karbuncle's VW and Legion fights should be appropriate targets to skill up on.

So, am I understanding it correctly if the developers are in complete disagreement, then?

If so, is it because:
1. The developers feel that summoning skill levels just as fast as every other skill?
2. The developers feel that summoning skill should not level as fast as other skills?
3. Something completely different?

It would be great if you could ask the developers exactly what the reason is, because I still don't think it's entirely clear exactly why they don't want to consider it. With the above questions, we'd at least get an idea of exactly what it is we and the developers disagree on, because it is pretty obvious that there is a strong disagreement somewhere.