Future of the Dark Rider and the Iron Colossus

[Sarirodord]

I also thought about Alexander having 2 special (1hr) abilities - his true special is Divine Judgement, clearly, but Perfect Defense is something that we all got used to. But I like a lot better the whole thing you proposed, makes a lot of sense. SE guys, please hear this man out!!!
Another thing that bugs me is that when you summon Alexander, he has the image of the piece of metal put together by the empire. Well, I believe it would be more appropriate for him to have the image of the real god, the one shown during mission 40: Unraveling Reason (see here).

[Brightshadow]

Now that we know how useless Cait Sith is, and the intentions of SE for Cait Sith by making her into some type of carbuncle V2.0 they should just remake Odin and Alexander and forget about Atomos. I mean why not finish what you started Alexander and Odin are already 75% done they have all the animations in the game plus the quest line is complete. I mean really how hard is it to make them into regular summons ~_~.

also please for the love of god don't say they are too big, because diabolos is around the same size as odin. This thread needs more votes to catch SE attention similar to how they changed their minds for the relic and empy ilevel raise.

[Alhanelem]

They were probably made that way for a few reasons-
1) to avoid having to develop full ability sets for them / rebalance the existing ones
2) from a lore perspective, I believe they wanted to maintain the reputation of these avatars as figures of extreme power and thus not give the player full control over them. (similar to why in FFXIV we don't get control over the actual primals, but rather a conjured entity whose capabilities are derived from an object associated with that primal)
3) alexander specifically, would need a lot of new animations to be a normal avatar, as it doens't move and doesn't have walk/run/attack animations.

if you want to condense it all into a word, it would be 'laziness'.

[Brightshadow]

They were probably made that way for a few reasons-
1) to avoid having to develop full ability sets for them / rebalance the existing ones
2) from a lore perspective, I believe they wanted to maintain the reputation of these avatars as figures of extreme power and thus not give the player full control over them. (similar to why in FFXIV we don't get control over the actual primals, but rather a conjured entity whose capabilities are derived from an object associated with that primal)
3) alexander specifically, would need a lot of new animations to be a normal avatar, as it doens't move and doesn't have walk/run/attack animations.

if you want to condense it all into a word, it would be 'laziness'.

1.) The balancing is actually not that hard since all they would have to do is adjust number valves.
2.) The other celestials avatars are just as powerful as odin and alexander the only thing about these two is that they are awaken, and remember we just manifest a portion of their power not the full fledged avatar.
3.) Alexander has all the animations he needs, he has a movement animation in his prime fight he hovers.

While its true that's it's laziness if there is popular demand for them to be changed SE might give them a second look, in reality the whole Astral flow avatar only deal is dumb especially due to work necessary to unlock them, and if they want to keep there powerful image why the hell even give summoners avatars just give us joke summons like minichocobo, mog, carbuncle, etc ~_~ we need powerful beings not cait sith which is even less useful than the celestial avatars that can be obtained with much more less effort.

[Alhanelem]

2.) The other celestials avatars are just as powerful as odin and alexander

I don't think you have sufficient data to make that determination.

3.) Alexander has all the animations he needs, he has a movement animation in his prime fight he hovers.

New to me, I don't remember ever seeing Alexander (or more accurately, the colossus) move.

[Lithera]

He can move in one of the fights post ToAU or at least it's what a walk through I read said. Never saw it my self though.

[Draylo]

He can move in the avatar fight, he hovers with jets on his back or something. Odin was typically a 1h only avatar through the series, but Alexander should be normal.

[Imakun]

All the summons were "1h only" before XI lol (except X of course)

I too agree with Brightshadow, all celestial Avatars are equally powerful. The first six ones are just not fully awoken, and we all know what would become of Vana'diel if that were to happen.
BUT.. at this point I really don't care about lore. I'm willing to put that aside if it helps gameplay because, honestly.. this game is 11 years old. Any change that can improve the gameplay of any job is more than welcome. Or at least throw us a bone, for god's sake.
I never ever used Alexander after my last endgame LS disbanded, it's just that useless. Odin.. I don't even know, and we all know how great Atomos is going to be. Yea.

Give us our robot lasers and big pony SE!

[Cabalabob]

I don't mind having them the way they are, but I'd like them to have a non-astral flow attack. For example

instead of using perfect defense alexander could use gospel of the lost to heal the party and remove debuffs. the amount healed and number of debuffs removed would be based on your summoning skill

instead of using zantetsuken Odin could use geirrothr 10000 damage + stun and bind. AoE but the damage is halved between targets, like 1000 needles. Duration of the stun + bind would be based on summoning magic skill.

Both skills would use half your mp. So although they would be stronger than other blood pacts they would also require a lot more mp than them.

[Brightshadow]

I don't think you have sufficient data to make that determination.

New to me, I don't remember ever seeing Alexander (or more accurately, the colossus) move.

I don't mean gameplay wise, of course Alexander and Odin are more powerful because they were created as endgame expansion bosses instead of job specialized pets; however, lore wise alexander and odin are mere gods just like shiva,ifrit,ramuh,leviathan,garuda,and titan. The only reason why we cannot summon and control them is because they probably did the same thing they did with Cait Sith tell us that the avatars are in development while they weren't and then rushed to release them, and probably someone in the SE development team gave them the genius idea to limit the work on these 2 avatars by making them astral flow attacks only. I call this pure laziness there is no reason we can't call these gods at will. Just like the other celestial beings. And we know what we can get from Odin and Alexander they would be great tools for summoners because Alexander would offer us great damage dealing pacts, and some great support moves, while Odin would probably be good for AOE since almost all of his moves are area of effect.

Also here is a video of Alexander moving....

2:30-2:35 you can see Alexander move in his fight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMPZA2HumhY