Hey! SE, Can SMN get Protectra and Shellra now too?

[Zeargi]

I'd like for the Light Spirit to Cast these two spells so I can quit wasting time trying to find the stupid things 'face' so it'll cast on someone. And for the love of all things Holy, will you PLEASE add SMN's BP: Wards to the Buff Allies RoE, we are a support class too.

[pretre]

and a +1 pet lvl to the relic staff so its worth getting

[Pawlie]

Summoner gets a lot of buffs through Ward, Carbuncle actually has "Shining Ruby" the BP that "gives the effect of Protect and Shell".

It's consider ONE buff, so it can actually stack with protect and shell which is even better!


I agree with the Records of Eminence part, it is considered a buff, so it should definitley count as one.


As for a relic staff, those days are long gone. Maybe sometime in the future.

[Rwolf]

It's not really giving Summoner a new buff to party members. Light Spirit already will Protect V and Shell V any alliance member in visible range. I'd rather they just fix the cap on spirit cast time with Light Spirit being out of combat and issues with targeting players in range. It should be able with current Summoning Magic gear and Relic Legs to cycle through single buffs really fast.

My concern about Protectra V/Shellra V is that we might lose the ability to give buffs to alliance members in the fix, but honestly whichever one seems less of a hassle to the devs, I'd accept. I do think it should change. I also wish they'd cast Haste as a priority over giving anyone Regen I at 100% HP >_>

[Zeargi]

It's not really giving Summoner a new buff to party members. Light Spirit already will Protect V and Shell V any alliance member in visible range. I'd rather they just fix the cap on spirit cast time with Light Spirit being out of combat and issues with targeting players in range. It should be able with current Summoning Magic gear and Relic Legs to cycle through single buffs really fast.

My concern about Protectra V/Shellra V is that we might lose the ability to give buffs to alliance members in the fix, but honestly whichever one seems less of a hassle to the devs, I'd accept. I do think it should change. I also wish they'd cast Haste as a priority over giving anyone Regen I at 100% HP >_>

If it could auto target people near it, then it's be awesome. I wouldn't care either/or. But there are times we don't have a mage that has anything higher than Protect III or Shell II and it would be nice if they'd just cast like crazy. I mean, I'd be happy if I could for the Light Spirit go under the wards and just select Protectra or Shellra, and it'll then cast the highest version it has and will continue to cast as it normally does. That way I can cast on my party and then still have it cast outside the party as well, if need be. I don't even care if the spell effect the spirit or not, and I'd be happy to pay the extra MP Cost to use it as a Ward.

[Rwolf]

I'll spare anyone my bad math and theorizing. I took my spirits out in Ceizak just to time via the timestamp log when they cast.

My Light Spirit casts roughly every 20 seconds at 529 Skill + Glyphic Spats. Lightsday. No weather. Not in combat and buffing mode supposedly -50% on gap between casting, which it's not right now. I have no idea if the formula or day/weather bonuses are different now when they changed the cost of spirit perpetuation to be -5mp per tick. I do know that it seems really long for the buffing stage. Taking all the gear off I'm current at 433 Skill. Which barely increases the gap between casts by about 1-2 seconds. My Dark Spirit with 529 Skill + Glyphic Spats. Thundersday. No weather in combat, casted consistently at a 21 second gap precisely. Too lazy to do extensive testing beyond a small sample I did.

Even with a shoddy test. In my opinion, capped skill and Summoner's/Glyphic Spats should have way more of an effect than they currently do and lower recast a lot more. Even though Summoner is not a White Mage or a Black Mage, they still have these spirits and they'd be a lot more generally useful beyond a MP battery and buffing when waiting on party members to gather if their AI was better and casting went down further. Puppetmaster is even less of a White Mage than Summoner is, and the spell selection, AI and recast time will still be leagues better than these suggested changes.

They should cast Protect V > Shell V > Haste > Regen in that priority order while idle and I agree that they need to see people around them better without having to move the spirit around into their "line of sight".

[AtrixWolfe]

Unfortunately Shining Ruby is a very weak version of protect and shell. (the shell part is only -4% mdt). While it's good it stacks and is a unique buff, we really could use a higher level version of it.

Most of summoner is just aoe/party versions of existing spells which is great... but on a long BP timer and lacking enough unique DD buffs is why we lost party slots to other supports. Summoner has a ton of strong abilities all over the place that due to the long BP timer we can't really make that great of use of. Avatars favor is a good direction for smn as a support.

I would like to see ALL spirits get the spells all the way up the line. the ones besides light spirit haven't even been touched and max spell is like level 86? They also have terrible magic accuracy. They're really only useful for elemental siphon. And in most cases now you can get protectra + shellra from a whm trust.

SMN as someone else put it is a little to much of everything right now. As a job we lack focus and as such it's hard to find a niche in end game parties, for a given role some other job will do it better. Even our hastega II as strong as it is, isn't preferred over rdms alot of the time because when it gets dispelled the dd's are without it up to 45 seconds while or bp ward timer goes away. We can do soem big dmg and are good in things like Rieves but... idk what direction SE wants to take summoner we're so all over the place it's like we're relegated to soloing (and in most cases, a thf with trusts will accomplish the same things quicker than a smn with trusts and a smn can't farm dynamis well solo and a thf can..).

[Zeargi]

Unfortunately Shining Ruby is a very weak version of protect and shell. (the shell part is only -4% mdt). While it's good it stacks and is a unique buff, we really could use a higher level version of it.

Most of summoner is just aoe/party versions of existing spells which is great... but on a long BP timer and lacking enough unique DD buffs is why we lost party slots to other supports. Summoner has a ton of strong abilities all over the place that due to the long BP timer we can't really make that great of use of. Avatars favor is a good direction for smn as a support.

I would like to see ALL spirits get the spells all the way up the line. the ones besides light spirit haven't even been touched and max spell is like level 86? They also have terrible magic accuracy. They're really only useful for elemental siphon. And in most cases now you can get protectra + shellra from a whm trust.

SMN as someone else put it is a little to much of everything right now. As a job we lack focus and as such it's hard to find a niche in end game parties, for a given role some other job will do it better. Even our hastega II as strong as it is, isn't preferred over rdms a lot of the time because when it gets dispelled the dd's are without it up to 45 seconds while or bp ward timer goes away. We can do some big dmg and are good in things like Rieves but... idk what direction SE wants to take summoner we're so all over the place it's like we're relegated to soloing (and in most cases, a thf with trusts will accomplish the same things quicker than a smn with trusts and a smn can't farm dynamis well solo and a thf can..).

True, on a LOT of these. The BP timer is a major hold back, but at least now we can get down to like 34 or 32 seconds, something like that. But in the case of our BPs, It's not just Shining Ruby. Noctroshield, Earthen Ward, and few others need to be bumped to the levels we are now. But Hastega II was a big thing, now if SMN can get some type of ACC+ BP that's consistent, we might get an invite here and there. Because BRD beats all because of Ballads, Marches, and Madrigals. We have a a pseudo-Refresh with Diabolos' Favor and the Boost to ATT SPD with Hastega II, but only Fenrir's BP gives ACC+ and that's only if the Moon phase is good otherwise it's just +1.

But there are a lot of routes SMN could go. If we get a few more decent Debuffs, like the EVA and ATT Down that's be nice. As it stands we get what: Stun, Burn, Poison, Sleep(ga) 1.5, Amnesia, Slow I, Paraylze, Bind, EVA Down, and ATT Down (Bio/Death, but no one really uses that BP XD) .

[Pawlie]

Yea unfortunately there are complications, but if you want to be very useful then get BP- and BP-II gear. Right now I have to wait 33 seconds after doing a bloodpact, and to me it goes down pretty fast because theres still the other rage or ward BPs and the occasional apogee... just gotta work with it until theres a change

[AtrixWolfe]

It seems SMN is mostly used for perfect defense and earthen armor in a few fights. And people don't really value the strong attack down of tidal roar etc much b/c whm's have unlimited mp and if you are preventing being one shot than earthen armor + Scherzo from a bard pretty much handle that. So the attack down thing is a nice but not need to have unless the trend for low manning things changes then SMN would be a welcome addition. Our uses just aren't normally priority and low man is the name of the game.

Additionally alot of our potentially useful spells just don't scale AT ALL and I don't get that one at all. Really. If our idea is to be huge cooldown powerful abilities, why does phalanx not scale? Why do our stat boosts not scale? Why do our accuracy and attack boosts not scale? Tidal roar is one of the few exceptions I can think of that scales as it's 25% rather than a flat amount. SE really needs to either decide to let us have access to lots of weaker abilities at a more frequent rate and lower BP timers even further, or fix the scaling on all the abilities we already have. Personally, I'd rather have the fixed scaling so we retain the identity as having these huge powerful spells that make a big difference with big mana costs and big timers. Because alot of bloodpacts just become useless in end game and even before that because they have flat values instead of scale, whether through percent or through summoner skill. Phalanx from noctoshield is a perfect example of this. Diamond Storm as well. It loses potency the more and more high level content gets. Titan's stone skin doesn't scale. Most the healing abilities scale but poorly because it's based off the level of the avatar and it just can't keep up as a healing source even if it is hateless. Ecliptic Growl doesn't scale. Ecliptic Howl doesn't scale. Lunar Cry doesn't scale. All these abilities that do not scale become more and more useless as content climbs. For abilities that were great at their level they are now not worth wasting the BP timer.

tl;dr SE needs to fix the scaling on BP Wards if they want SMN to be more useful in that role because a lot of our existing blood pacts that had potential are now lost on difficult content, they are no longer potent compared to what other jobs offer.