The role of SMN

[azjazo]

First of all thanks for quoting my ideas as good ideas

Im going to enter the flame war fry and make very bold statemens but basically as we say in my country Im goin to speak "sin pelos en la lengua"

Lets see what roles do SMN usually take and we love...

Healers? - that was a joke, haha, fat chance, but really think about it, nowdays the healing capacity of Wispering wind, Healing ruby, and Spring water is not very good and its just like casting a Cure3 AoE, needs to be fixed? hardly, SMN hates being a healer, but an increase in healing power of Healing ruby, more status removed on Srping water, and an evasion bonus on Wispering wind or maybe I dunno, a single shadow effect would be cool, but SMN as it is right now us no longer a good healer regardless of the massive MP pool that got us oldie SMNs to the healer seat for years...

Buffers? - we enjoyed the praise and applause at kazam for our aerial armor and later for stoneskin-ga but nowdays BLU and SCH out-support us in stoneskin capacity and everyone and their moms use /NIN for shadows making AA useless, so what other support BP do we have? ice spikes, enfire, enthunder, and that new one on Titan that its good just in theory as it doesnt last long to be usefull and the damage mitigated is questionable...

ENffeblers? - HAHA, no... sure its cool to be able to sleepga mobs with shiva when your BLM is not present or is a newb but its unreliable, and the dispel effect of Fenrir is cool but really noone will invite you to a NM hunt cuz of that. I didnt saw much change in the damage reduction on the new BPs, and we can go on an on...

Damage Dealers? -Admit it, after 70 levels of being the uggly duckling second class healer and having to solo most of the time (talking about pre abyssea-exp-comes-in-cereal-boxes) you loved to see the damage output go beyond 1000 like those fancy DRG and their penta trustes... and you keep loving the 3k+ damage in abyssea but you notice something... you just using garuda, and even when you have more avatars that complete the elemental wheel, it doesnt matter wich one is out as the physical bloodpact doesnt have elemental properties (correct me if Im wrong), and you can only efectively merit 2 of the magical ones that do have elemental properties... you love to deal damage but gets boring when you are using just one avatar, when whas the last time you used ifrit?

Tanks? we wish, and with very specificl atmas, gear and positive thinking, ... the DD will steal your hate and you will have no way to get it back till the next bloodpact...

SO well, its easy to complain and we can go on and on, but what I was going to is to ask yourselves, what role do SMN really WANT to play...

Sure, a good, experienced SMN knows all their tools and can pull something very cool that nobody expects once in a while using a very obscure bloodpact that nobody knew we had... but thats hardly something to say that SMN doesnt need a boost in some of its abilities and roles in a party.


So, my two cents in increasing the effectiviness of each role? well if you ask..

SuperWards
Increase power and grant bonus on healing bloodlacts analog as how WHM add an stoneskin bonnus to their cures.

* Increase Healing Ruby I and II power, maybe add a mini regen effect with duration based on SMN skill (like how WHM grants
* Increase Spring water power, remove more ailments and grant a resist % to the ailments removed this way
* Increase Wispering Wind power, add an evasion bonus and resistance to knockback effects
* Increase Stoneskin power, add a Def/Vit bonus and resistance to bind/stun effects
* Really, I could go on and on on every bloodpact, you get the idea, basically add more "nice to have" utility bonuses to existing Bloodpact wards that buff/heal you

The bonus will be like a buff icon "avatar buff bonus" that last a proportional amount of time based on SMN skill, and only one can be active at anytime, a new buff wil overwrite the previous one, or maybe 2 max after certain SMN level like rolls or songs.

About damage, timmers and spirits, Ill just copy my other suggestions here

Mana Pact (stance)
Duration 2~3 min (depending on SMN skill)
Recast 5 min

Increases avatar Perp cost by 20%, bloodpact Cost by 20%
Reduces bloodpact recast timmer by 50%

The recast timmer reduction would stack on the -bp recast timmer gear so it can skip the 45 seconds cap, if you have gear that reduces normally to 45 seconds, then its 50% of those 45 seconds rounded down, 22 seconds bp recast time, with a penalitation of bp costing more, of course, you could cast bp while in the effect and have a bp cost 20% more then remove the stance by the time you are able to recast bp, so you can ditch 2 bp in less than 30 seconds spending 20% more MP on one pb and perp cost.

Not overpowered, has its downsise and adds strategy... if leving out avatar during all the stance, you could ditch in 4 bloodpacts in 2 minutes aprox. Doubliing the damage output but spending your mp pool like crazy, thus making gear that augment the activation rate of that trait forgot its name that reduces bp cost more desirable.

A "casting" stance
Super Magical Avatar Stance of Happyness (name subject to change everyone names their suggested abilities to sound cool)
- Fuses the avatar with the elemental spirit of their corresponent element, giving the avatar the capacity to cast and behave like the elemental spirits while retaining the ability to command them and normal bloodpacts.
- Perp cost increases and the effect gets stronger as time passes till a cap like favor stance.
- As the effect gets stronger the avatar gets bonus in damage, reduces recast time on the elemental magic, AI and gives the avatar a "elemental seal" like bonus in accuracy of their bloodpacts.
- It will be required to posses the corresponding elemental spirit magic to activate said ability


a "melee" stance
Super Martial Avatar Stance of Joy
- Fuses the avatar with the player (not literally tho it would be cool)
- Perp cost increases and the effect gets stronger as time passes till a cap like favor stance.
- As the effect gets stronger the avatar gets bonus in their stats while draining the SMN stats, like attack, defense, str, acc, dex etc, diferent avatars would "drain" certain stats more than others
- It will give the avatar a special bonus like double attack, reduce delay, increase damage etc. depending on avatar.

just a couple of ideas, tunning would be the key.


This one goes to spirits (lets put some love on Spirits)

Elemental Aura
While spirit is out, grants the party:
- Mayor elemental resistance on element of the spirit
- Mayor elemental - on contrary element

Elemental Armor
While spirit is out, grants the party:
- Grants "spikes" of the corresponding element

Elemental Weapon
While spirit is out, grants the party:
- Grants En-spell of the corresponding element

All these could stack each one costing little MP to cast but adding 1 more to perp cost each.

All bonus are modified by day of the week, weather and SMN skill

[Malamasala]

SO well, its easy to complain and we can go on and on, but what I was going to is to ask yourselves, what role do SMN really WANT to play...

Support.

I like helping my party by tossing up bonuses, and I like pets. Sadly the only mix available is Summoner, and the buffs are really lackluster. I'd rather play COR... if I had a parrot. I'd rather play PUP... if it had some buffs. Summoner is the only job that has all I want... but not the way I want it.

[Zindel]

I really would love playing this new version of SMN.

[Wenceslao]

i like the DD and support role... Healing? no thank you, i have my WHM to heal...

[Secondplanet]

I like the fuse with player idea for summoner, I suggested that through multiple boards for over half a year now, always with discontent of players who said the idea was nothing more then a over glorified favor. But summoner does need to get caps removed from our abilities, SE says they are there for balance but that was back when 75 was cap and now that 90 is cap with 99 coming in the future we need to get them removed so we can recalim our spot in parties.

[Leonlionheart]

Avatars Favor after level 90...

Cut the crap where it reduces the avatar's power
Give garuda's favor half delay reduction half haste
Give fenrir's favor accuracy+evasion
Give ifrit's favor tp bonus
Give ramuhs favor crit damage+
Give diabolos' favor regain
Give titan's favor phalanx
Give shiva's favor magic crit rate+
Give leviathan's favor mdef
and give carbuncle's favor Max HP bonus or all stats+

Make astral flow 10min. Come on who are you kiding, predator claws does more damage than aerial blast now.

finally remove the freaking -15s blood pact recast crap and increase healing potency and you might have something with SMN. Oh, and let spells proc stuff.

[Malamasala]

finally remove the freaking -15s blood pact recast crap and increase healing potency and you might have something with SMN. Oh, and let spells proc stuff.

This or capping ALL haste combined at 20%. No reason a melee should be able to do 8 times normal damage, when we as summoners have to pay MP and wear -BP gear to do 1.2 times normal damage. I hate that imbalance so much.

Of course BLU is secretely overpowered as well, but I allow all underdogs to be overpowered without complaining. (Hello 5.3k AOE shocking whiskers thingie move in Abyssea)

[Shadowsofdeath]

If SE wants to increase the versatility and desirability of summoner in events all they need to do is let us control spirits like we do avatars. They don't even need to give us access to all of the spells- setting Tier III, Tier IV, -Aga III, and AM as Blood Pact: Rage options would be more than enough to bring some usefulness to Summoner inside Abyssea (for yellow proc) and certainly could stir up new strategies in older content as well. It would also make the spirits (which have been almost completely ignored since their introduction yet make up nearly half of our magic list) useful for something more than Elemental Siphon every 5 minutes. If the spirits were restructured for summoner control, they could also add an Avatar's Favor effect to them along the lines of what Azjazo was talking about fairly easily; whether that effect is spikes, increased elemental / status ailment resistance, magic defense bonus, enspells, or a totally new buff it'd certainly be better than the nothing we have at the moment.