Avatar's Favor still lackluster

[Frodnon]

While I agree with points A and C, I'd point out that B will probably not be addressed. The whole design purpose of Avatar's Favor is to give Summoners an incentive to keep avatars out, as opposed to summon, BP, unsummon, and then pretend we're WHMs, as was common back in the days of '06.

As far as auto-attack, that's just normal avatar design, and I can't see SE changing that.

The issue is that it penalizes you heavily for having your avatar in the action, where it needs to be in order to give favor. The two minute charge up for a full powered favor is an outright eternity on anything but the longest of fights, and anything that lasts that long generally has enough AOE potential to kill an avatar long before it ever caps favor. Having Avatar's favor in and of itself is more than enough to keep an avatar out (if it started at full strength and did not have chargeup)

Look at it this way, Avatar's Favor temporarily turns your summon (and by extension you) into a GEO, standing around doing nothing but providing a large buff to other party members.

Since GEO does exactly that, giving SMN a similar aura buff in addition to being able to use rage and ward BPs would be somewhat unfair to GEO.

Now don't get me wrong, I think Avatar's Favor could be more useful, but I think at best it should have no charge up time, but it would probably be set to a lower value then it's current maximum, at least for some avatars (Ifrit for example).

You are aware that Geo has elemental damage spells, right? They're made to compliment their buffs with straight up nuking. They also don't penalize the Geo at all for buff potency or duration outside of MP management.

[Zekander]

I've never actually seen a GEO cast any spells in combat, please let me know when it happens.

[Rakshaka]

Summoner's should have a "Stay" command, just like BST. While "staying" the avatar should be unable to attack anything out of it's range. i.e. you use stay on an avatar, you pull hate on something else, and the avatar would be unable to attack it if it's out of its autoattack range. This would allow summoners to position avatars at specific locations for favor buffs without having to perform assault on a monster just to keep the avatar close to, say, the melee fighters. You could also set up a sort of regen station by having carbuncle (with favor up) sitting on top of a regen luopan.

Simply adding Stay would make favor easier to use and position, and it would allow summoners to actively choose whether or not they want their avatars to automatically defend themselves (the summoner).

[Selindrile]

I've never actually seen a GEO cast any spells in combat, please let me know when it happens.

You must play with terrible Geos, I know few Geos but the ones I know all cast many things during content, whether it's buffing yourself or someone else, or curing yourself, or stunning, or nuking, or Dia2 if you don't have a Rdm doing Dia3 or whatever, your Geos should not simply be buffing and that's it, same goes for Bards.

[Zeargi]

Look at it this way, Avatar's Favor temporarily turns your summon (and by extension you) into a GEO, standing around doing nothing but providing a large buff to other party members.

Since GEO does exactly that, giving SMN a similar aura buff in addition to being able to use rage and ward BPs would be somewhat unfair to GEO.

Now don't get me wrong, I think Avatar's Favor could be more useful, but I think at best it should have no charge up time, but it would probably be set to a lower value then it's current maximum, at least for some avatars (Ifrit for example).

You realize that the GEO job concept, came from this JA, right? SMN had this Job Ability for 2 expansions, and it has taken them this long to look into adjusting it. GEO can still cast Offensive Black Magic Spells while having a loupan and an indi-spell up, with no sacrifice to their over all MATT abilities. Not adjusting would have been more unfair to SMN than anything else. While SMN does have a few abilities that are pretty nice, but they haven't scaled since 75. We're not really considered "DD"s even though most of our BPs are offensive, and we're not considered support because we only offer a few things that can't be done by another job.

[Sasaraixx]

Look at it this way, Avatar's Favor temporarily turns your summon (and by extension you) into a GEO, standing around doing nothing but providing a large buff to other party members.

If you are going to make that analogy you would have to say that AF turns your summon into the luopan. The GEO herself is not standing around doing nothing. Let's also not pretend that most of the favors are anywhere near as powerful as a GEO's spells and we cannot have 2 or 3 favors up at one time. The SMN himself adds very little to the party, unlike a GEO who has a ton of other spells at her disposal. To make up for this fact, the SMN needs to be able to use it's BP's at will in order to provide utility to the party. And whoever it was that said they've never seen a GEO use any other spells . . . I really don't know what to say to you.

I look at SMN as a light DD job that can also provide support. The problem is that both of those aspects, the damage and support, can be lackluster in today's content considering what other jobs can bring to a group.

[Zekander]

Sheesh, I didn't mean to stir up the hornet's nest, ultimately I am agreeing with you. Avatar's Favor is one of the many things that should be changed about Summoner.

As for GEOs, I haven't played the job so I don't have any first hand experience with it's capabilities, and the only two I've played with so far have done exactly what I described. Whether this is from lack of effort or lack of knowledge about the job I don't know.

But you also have to be reasonable, Avatar's Favor is not what SMN is built around, It should not be a buff that is competitive with BRD or GEO buffs. I don't believe that setting it permanently at it's current maximum value is reasonable (at least for some summons). Giving out instant +24% double attack or +6 refresh would be at least on par with BRD and GEO buffs. I think instead more attention should be paid to Bloodpacts, improving upon Summoner's original design rather then complaining about a secondary ability, and I know a lot of changes need to be made there to improve SMNs damage and utility.

[Zeargi]

But you also have to be reasonable, Avatar's Favor is not what SMN is built around, It should not be a buff that is competitive with BRD or GEO buffs. I don't believe that setting it permanently at it's current maximum value is reasonable (at least for some summons). Giving out instant +24% double attack or +6 refresh would be at least on par with BRD and GEO buffs. I think instead more attention should be paid to Bloodpacts, improving upon Summoner's original design rather then complaining about a secondary ability, and I know a lot of changes need to be made there to improve SMNs damage and utility.

Correct, but the problem is that we ARE competing against BRD, GEO, and COR. We'll never be as good as BRD, even with favor, because a BRD can have up to 4 song per party member. Mind you it's a pain in the *** to do that, but it's possible. Likewise, GEO and COR have the options of dividing there buffs. We get 1, and that's it. So until they fix our Bloodpact, give us new ones, or add more summons like Atomos. We need something nice a shiny for people to want us.

Also, as a random after thought, perhaps the devs could think of add the Avatar's Favor Buff value to the /checkparam for pet. :3 Just a thought

[Camiie]

Look at it this way, Avatar's Favor temporarily turns your summon (and by extension you) into a GEO, standing around doing nothing but providing a large buff to other party members.

Since GEO does exactly that, giving SMN a similar aura buff in addition to being able to use rage and ward BPs would be somewhat unfair to GEO.

It's more like GEO is unfair to SMN since SMN and Favor was there first.

[Imakun]

Difference being GEO has been conceived as a mostly support class with the capability of nuking, while SMN is a pure hybrid job in the sense they can support, nuke and attack physically at the same level (in SE's bizarro world).

The truth is that GEO can't sustain nuking and buffing because Geo spells cost an arm and a leg, and the Luopan has the survivability of wet paper no matter how many buffs and heals you throw at it. Buffing and nuking as a GEO is like summoning a 400+ MP Avatar everytime it dies (except Luopans die faster than Avatars) AND sustain the cost of BP'ing.. not gonna happen.