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

[Mirage]

Hello community representatives and developers.

Would it be possible for you to look into the rate at which summoning magic skills up? Currently, there is a small chance of getting a skillup when casting the summoning spell, and when performing a blood pact. However, both of these actions are extremely far in-between compared to how fast you generally perform other actions that generate skill-ups for their respective skills.

Consider this: During regular gameplay, A summoner summons an avatar, perform the two blood pacts available, then wait 45 seconds until the next time they can do two actions that have a chance of skilling up their magic. During regular gameplay, this is two chances (not guaranteed) of getting a skill-up, which again is less than 1.0 skill points. In the same time, other mages have cast probably something like a dozen spells, all with a chance to get skillups for every cast. A melee attacker has had a chance to skill up their weapon even more often than the other mages again. Especially dualwielding attackers, they would be seeing perhaps 20-30 chances to acquire skillups with their weapons in the same time a summoner has had two chances.

Why does it have to be like this? Please explain to me why summoning magic must be so slow compared to other magic skills (and combat skills). Is there a reason for this? Would it disrupt balance if summoners could realistically cap their summoning skill during normal gameplay within a few weeks of normal summoner-play, instead of having to cease normal gaming for an extremely long time just to perform a summoning/release macro for days, maybe weeks? Do you seriously think the players think this is fun?

I think it is completely reasonable to let there be a slight chance of summoning magic increasing every time your avatar performs a melee attack, as well as a much bigger chance of skillups happening when you perform pet commands. Not just bloodpact rage/ward, but also assault and retreat.

Basically, every other magic skill has seen an increase of how fast you can skill it up, except summoning magic, which still remains extremely slow compared to almost every battle related skill in the game. All I ask for is for summoning magic skill rate to be lifted to the level of most other skills in the game.

If the developers disagree with this, I would very much like to know the reasoning behind why they disagree.

Thank you.

[Lilia]

smn magic skill up is not slow,
maybe when you only cast, cast and cast.....

Fight NMs or high mobs then you have a good chance for skillups.
besieged is a good place too

[Mirage]

It is slow for me regardless of if I cast and cast over again, or use BPs as often as possible on enemies around my own level.

[Sargent]

Best way to do skill up is to pull out Diabolos or Ramuh and spam magic based pacts targetting the mob, i.e. Thunderstorm/Shock Squall or Night Terror/Somnolance. These are guaranteed to hit the mob and will guarantee a skillup chance. As was said, the higher level the mob, the more chance of skilling up, I found Gustav Tunnel very effective for this after the level caps, just spam on the large worms/turtles in the basement.

[Karbuncle]

I've been doing as you said, For months now, My Summoning magic was capped at level 75, 80, 85, and got behind around 90~99, Now its sitting probably a good 40 From capped or so, and is CRAWLING. I regularly do VW on SMN, Which as you people may know, Means I'm generally fighting enemies level 100+.

I pull out diabolos and Spam Somnolonce > Night Terror the entire fight.. and I've gone up very very very little. Its like having to skill up Enhancing, But only being able to cast a spell once every ~23 Seconds on Average (45s BP Timer, 2 chances per).

I personally would just like, and be happy with, some Confirmation those Magic Skill up Rings, Earrings, and Food work on Bloodpacts as well as the initial summoning, or is some spaghetti code screwing us over on that.

But Regardless, I agree with the OP. As it is, Its not a terrible skill to cap, But its difficulty is compounded by the restrictions placed on our BP Timers.

[Arcon]

It is, by a very large margin, the absolutely worst skill to cap in the game. Only Guard and Parrying used to be worse, but now they got a make-over and this and Enhancing are left behind. Enhancing can at least be skilled quickly during certain events like Besieged, where you can Chainspell buff a General, and even if you're just spamming buffs on yourself you can at least choose Barspells, which are pretty fast to cast.

All skills go up faster if used on NPCs, which is why any kind of offensive magic (including Healing Magic) is very easy and quick to cap. The problem with Summoning Magic is, while it can be used offensively, it's limited by a 45/2 second recast time and by having mobs available to use it on every time the timer is up. That is a huge drawback compared to any other skill. Even skilling Enhancing on yourself is faster than spamming BPs because the rate of skill increase is strictly limited by their timers.

I skilled almost every skill to cap on three characters, and now doing it on a fourth, and Summoning Magic was the only skill I gave up on because it was just too terrible and I couldn't do that to myself again, no matter how much my blue-number-OCD will make me uncomfortable because of it. This definitely should be addressed, there's no reason for why one skill should be singled out over all others.

[Cabalabob]

It may be hard to skill up but it's also pretty useless, it doesn't effect BP acc, attack or anything to do with potency. All it does is increase buff duration which doesn't really matter cause you're skilling up and wanting to be using stuff more anyway, and elemental siphon, which if you have a decent summoning magic set and reasonable skill you should be getting enough out of it already.

Way I capped my summoning magic was, when in a party to summon an avatar use an offensive BP, release the avatar, summon a different avatar use a ward pact release the avatar summon a different avatar(by which time rage was back up) and repeat.

When solo I'd find a soloable NM e.g Bugul Noz or Sisyphus. And I'd use good old fashion kiting method. I found I was skillin up without even noticing it and was capped in no time.

[Arcon]

It may be hard to skill up but it's also pretty useless, it doesn't effect BP acc, attack or anything to do with potency.

It actually does affect both physical and magical accuracy, in fact it's the only thing that affects it aside from certain gear and merits.


All it does is increase buff duration which doesn't really matter cause you're skilling up and wanting to be using stuff more anyway, [..]

I don't understand this sentence. How does buff duration not matter? 6min20s AoE Haste is not important? Some buffs wear off after 1min (like Inferno Howl) which is nothing, it's so little it can't be used to buff before a fight starts, because by the time everyone uses their JAs and engages it's already half worn-off.


[..] and elemental siphon, which if you have a decent summoning magic set and reasonable skill you should be getting enough out of it already.

What is "enough"? 150 MP? Because with low Summoning Magic skill, that's all you'll get. With capped skill and good gear you'll easily get the 500 MP range. That's a massive difference right there. And unlike Blood Pacts, for which skill bonus caps at 500, the Elemental Siphon bonus from skill is uncapped.

[Mirage]

Yeah, you can never have too much MP. Maybe in abyssea, but the game is no longer just abyssea.

[Secondplanet]

I've never had a problem getting my summon magic to cap. Play the job, have fun with it and it will be capped in no time at all. Now only if SE would take the cap off damage output and we can all be happy summoners.... with out cait sith >.<

[Kysaiana]

I have Summoning skill capped but I'll agree it's really slow to skill up. I have the earring from Gustav tunnel so it was slightly more bearable to cap. Best bet is to use skill up food, do some GoV till you get a few levels of magic/melee skill up prowess and or skill up when martial master is around. Even with all of these things combined the rate is crap, but you'll most likely cap smn magic long before SE does anything, or says they can't because of X and Y.

I somehow capped smn skill and yet can't seem to cap enhancing skill, even on SCH which has D base... I've tried spamming spells on my lvl 95 fellow and still can't seem to cap. So yeah, magic skill ups suck.

[Mirage]

I've never had a problem getting my summon magic to cap. Play the job, have fun with it and it will be capped in no time at all. Now only if SE would take the cap off damage output and we can all be happy summoners.... with out cait sith >.<

I play the job, have fun with it, and then after "no time at all", I am still at 150.

[Babekeke]

I play the job, have fun with it, and then after "no time at all", I am still at 150.

That's what leeching exp does for you.

[Arcon]

That's what leeching exp does for you.

Leave this debate out of here please, don't need to ruin another thread with that garbage. This is entirely unrelated to EXP gain. Skilling up Summoning Magic is provably much slower than anything else, only Enhancing Magic is even in the same class as it. And soloing SMN to 99 is not an acceptable solution, even if it would cap your skill (which is false).

[Cabalabob]

I don't understand this sentence. How does buff duration not matter? 6min20s AoE Haste is not important? Some buffs wear off after 1min (like Inferno Howl) which is nothing, it's so little it can't be used to buff before a fight starts, because by the time everyone uses their JAs and engages it's already half worn-off.

What is "enough"? 150 MP? Because with low Summoning Magic skill, that's all you'll get. With capped skill and good gear you'll easily get the 500 MP range. That's a massive difference right there. And unlike Blood Pacts, for which skill bonus caps at 500, the Elemental Siphon bonus from skill is uncapped.

If you cycle your buffs right you can keep the ones up that matter easily and throw in stuff like inferno howl when you can, personally I never use that other than solo seeing as it cancels samba's.

If your getting 150mp that is certainly not a reasonable amount of skill and an even worse gear set, I have a friend with the skill of a lvl 37 who gets more mp than that thanks to gear. Enough mp is enough to cycle your BP's for 5mins. If you can't do that try /sch or /rdm for sublimation/convert refresh/aspir

[Mirage]

That's what leeching exp does for you.

I didn't leech for a second. If you don't know how fast exp is even outside of abyssea is nowadays, I guess it's more likely that you've done more leeching than I did.

[Arcon]

If you cycle your buffs right you can keep the ones up that matter easily and throw in stuff like inferno howl when you can, personally I never use that other than solo seeing as it cancels samba's.

Yes, if you waste all your time and MP on cycling buffs that would otherwise last up to four times as long you can keep everything up. Means you can't do anything else in that time, though. If that's acceptable for you, you're a sucky SMN.


If your getting 150mp that is certainly not a reasonable amount of skill and an even worse gear set, I have a friend with the skill of a lvl 37 who gets more mp than that thanks to gear. Enough mp is enough to cycle your BP's for 5mins. If you can't do that try /sch or /rdm for sublimation/convert refresh/aspir

You said skill isn't important, I showed you how much of a difference it can make. And you're lying with that statement anyway. Lv.37 caps at 114, even with 80 skill from gear (which is a significant amount) he'd only have ~200 skill and would get 150 MP native (before day/weather adjustment).

Your entire argument is that you can compensate for the shortcoming in skill by doing certain things, and while that's mostly true, that argument in itself acknowledges that there is a shortcoming with lacking skill. All the things you said you can do to make up for it means you can't put that time and MP into good use outside of keeping buffs up. And no, even with 500 MP Siphon you can run out of MP even if you only spam Blood Pact: Rage, which you'll find out if you ever do trials. Skill makes a significant difference for SMN, both in solo and especially in group situations (good luck landing Shock Squall on endgame content with anything less than 400 skill).

[Romulis]

Leave this debate out of here please, don't need to ruin another thread with that garbage. This is entirely unrelated to EXP gain. Skilling up Summoning Magic is provably much slower than anything else, only Enhancing Magic is even in the same class as it. And soloing SMN to 99 is not an acceptable solution, even if it would cap your skill (which is false).

oh no you cant leave that out... i partied to level my smn to 75 and still got the cap not long after i hit 75. i leeched from 75-95 because well.... i was lazy and guess what?? im not even close to being recapped. leeching has given people a new way to get capped faster which is good but also they forget with that speed comes consequences like .... capping abilities out. deal with it, yes its semi slow but as we all know the more ya play it the more the skill will go up.

[Hashmalum]

oh no you cant leave that out... i partied to level my smn to 75 and still got the cap not long after i hit 75. i leeched from 75-95 because well.... i was lazy and guess what?? im not even close to being recapped. leeching has given people a new way to get capped faster which is good but also they forget with that speed comes consequences like .... capping abilities out. deal with it, yes its semi slow but as we all know the more ya play it the more the skill will go up.In other words, you leveled to 75 in the old days when leveling was dog slow and you had plenty of time to skill up whether you liked it or not. You literally have absolutely no clue what you are talking about when you accuse other people of leeching just because they are underskilled. You should be quiet before you embarrass yourself further.

[Karbuncle]

oh no you cant leave that out... i partied to level my smn to 75 and still got the cap not long after i hit 75. i leeched from 75-95 because well.... i was lazy and guess what?? im not even close to being recapped. leeching has given people a new way to get capped faster which is good but also they forget with that speed comes consequences like .... capping abilities out. deal with it, yes its semi slow but as we all know the more ya play it the more the skill will go up.

No direct offense to you sir, as You don't seem to be the type I'm angry at, But The general ignorance I'm seeing coming from the topic of fast exp and abyssea, like this is like a disease of stupid anger spreading across the self entitled masses. I find the rationale of the people who foam at the mouth at the sight of anything Abyssea related and how it changed Experience entirely more frustrating than all of the Leechers combined screams of Perle and Aurore.

What am i rambling about one might ask? Only that I had capped Summoning Skill at 75, And Kept my skills as close to cap as possible with the increase in Level cap. It was, As i mentioned, Up to speed around level 85~90, And then feel behind due to the lack of Summoner Friendly content with High level Enemies, as well as overall Lack of chances to Skill up due to Blood Pact restraints.

The Skill is painful to upgrade, Regardless of how quickly or slowly you level, It is an annoying skill to cap. On par with Enhancing Magic. While i personally believe all Magic spells need their Skill up rate significantly adjusted, I believe Summoning and Enhancing above others need to be given a boost.

Voidwatch is generally the only thing, and unless your only job is Summoner, or your other jobs really suck, You generally don't have the luxury of Summoner, Which causes further slow downs. I mean, You could easily sit outside town for 8-10 Hours a day for a few months and cap your Summoning magic by Summon and releasing, But I ask the relevance of such a grind. I like the idea of Skilling up, but it should be relatively easy and come naturally as you do content within some timely manner.

I've capped pretty much all of my Skills, but Summoning remains uncapped due to the limitations, both system and in place by Players, make it quite the troubling skill. Perhaps not in need of an Immediate and vital addressing, But I understand where the OP Is coming from, and the mindset of "He must be an abyssea noob" or "Try harder" is simply irrational.

We can dismount the High horses and look at this subjectively, The Skill sucks to skill up, Just like Guard and Parry did, While its not as tedious as maybe Guard was, Its still significantly tedious, It would be nice if it could be helped a tad.

I know they've updated skilling up quite a many time, So its unlikely they will look into it again, But i simply am saying, I'm not without understanding for the OP, and we need to stop treating Skilling up like some glorious right of passage. In reality, its a terrible grind and nothing else.

[Arcon]

oh no you cant leave that out... i partied to level my smn to 75 and still got the cap not long after i hit 75.

Even in the old days I find this extremely hard to believe.


i leeched from 75-95 because well.... i was lazy and guess what?? im not even close to being recapped.

If you don't skill up your skills stay low? Very interesting. But so not the point.


deal with it, yes its semi slow but as we all know the more ya play it the more the skill will go up.

Naturally, and again, so not the point. If you only got 1 skill per 24h play time, "the more ya play it the more the skill will go up" would still apply. Would that be acceptable to you, though?

As was said (twice) before, firstly, this does not apply anymore, and secondly, even if it did, it would not be an acceptable solution. Every other skill goes up with a decent pacing, except for this and Enhancing Magic. There is no reason why other skills were adjusted that doesn't apply to this situation as well.

Based on people's reactions against this proposal, it seems to me that most people who don't want it to change simply think that it doesn't apply to them anymore, and if they made it somehow, other people shouldn't complain and just accept that it's something SMN must go through, for no particular reason. And based on that, I find this sums it up quite well:

[..] we need to stop treating Skilling up like some glorious right of passage. In reality, its a terrible grind and nothing else.

[Cabalabob]

Your entire argument is that you can compensate for the shortcoming in skill by doing certain things, and while that's mostly true, that argument in itself acknowledges that there is a shortcoming with lacking skill. All the things you said you can do to make up for it means you can't put that time and MP into good use outside of keeping buffs up. And no, even with 500 MP Siphon you can run out of MP even if you only spam Blood Pact: Rage, which you'll find out if you ever do trials. Skill makes a significant difference for SMN, both in solo and especially in group situations (good luck landing Shock Squall on endgame content with anything less than 400 skill).

My argument is that outside siphon and buff duration, which yes there is a shortcoming to having low skill with but can be compensated for with merits/gear/sub, summoning magic is pretty useless, smn has it easy compared to other jobs, a WAR with 100 GA skill would be ashamed to show his face until his highest weaponskill is no longer armour break, so would a blm who's highest T5 nuke does 1k dmg, or a rdm who's every enfeeble bounces off and phalanx is relying on the base damage reduction for any potency at all. None of these things are a problem for SMN you can still DD with practically the same efficiency as a capped SMN, you don't gain BP's based on skill and I've honestly never seen anyone say "if only our SMN had capped his skills!!!!" My point is SMN can still take part in things with low skill other jobs would be ashamed to go to. You might not be able to do legion due to acc issues but practically any other content is up for grabs for SMN. So you can do pretty much anything and get skill ups while you do it cause it doesn't contribute much outside buffs and siphon.

[Babekeke]

Leave this debate out of here please, don't need to ruin another thread with that garbage. This is entirely unrelated to EXP gain. Skilling up Summoning Magic is provably much slower than anything else, only Enhancing Magic is even in the same class as it. And soloing SMN to 99 is not an acceptable solution, even if it would cap your skill (which is false).

No, it won't leave you capped, but it will leave you a hell of a lot higher than 150/417. Particularly if some of your time is spent un-synced on books where you have skill-up prowesses. A thing I usually did if I WAS synced, is at the end of each party, go kill some stuff around my level to get the skill ups while I had the prowess.

I don't disagree that summoning magic is difficult to skill up, but it's a lot better than it used to be. I was capped at 75 (before the skillups were added from rage/ward usage, and before smn skill did anything apart from interrupt rate) and I'm STILL uncapped at 99 despite not leeching a single exp point. This is primarily due to lots of WoE before they added skillups in there.

[Nawesemo]

It ain't guard... but yeah it sucks too.

[Arcon]

[..]

What you said is basically that it matters aside from content that doesn't matter. Which is accurate, but doesn't really help to make your point.


No, it won't leave you capped, but it will leave you a hell of a lot higher than 150/417.

Higher, possibly (not convinced), "hell of a lot higher" not really (unless by that you mean 200). And again, it's not an acceptable solution having to waste weeks on trivial grinding content to not be excluded from endgame events because you can't land any debuffs, your buffs don't last for more than a minute and you can't manage your MP pool.

[Nakts]

I duo'd/trio'd SMN to 99 and my skill isn't over 300, something does need to be changed, putting aside the pointless arguments about leeching and the effectiveness of skill.

[Lukikii]

I agree, SMN skill is slow to skill up. I managed to cap mine doing a few SMN staff trials and doing Walk of Echoes (once skill ups came back) every chance I got.

[Mirage]

It ain't guard... but yeah it sucks too.
But that doesn't make any sense. Guard is easy to skill up now, and you get a significant amount of guard skillups doing regular content. I've played smn more than I have played mnk, yet my guard skill is way higher than my summoning skill.

Guard and parry is a perfect example of SE boosting skillup rates of some skills by a huge amount, while at the same time not caring at all about some of the other skillup rates (summoning and enhancing).

[Abbylu]

After smn fighting 6 Bukhis, and getting all of 1.2 skill ups, even with the elusive magic gain earring, I call bs on the smn gain rate. I think I will be forever stuck @ 306.

[Mirage]

Hey, that means you just need 600 solo bukhis kills on smn to cap. It must be working as intended!

[Kriegsgott]

nice joke!
SMN magic skill up works very fine just wonder if people demand the [need to get all skill instantly capped BUTTON] ....

[Mirage]

Please show me the post where people are requesting the "get all skills capped instantly button". If not, please stop pretending people are saying things they aren't.

[Teraniku]

Hmm, While leveling Summoning Magic sucks in general, I usually get about 3-6 levels every 2 hours when partying in Abyssea. (* Hint go with a small group where you can use the both your Rage and Ward abilities and Spam them when your timer is up* Use Minkin Monstrosity Atma, Spirit Taker, and either sub RDM, or take a RDM friend along to help with MP issues, if you have them) It's plenty doable, It just takes time.

[Mirage]

No one is arguing that it is undoable. I don't think anyone in this thread has issues with mp while skilling up inside abyssea either.

What we (at least I) are arguing, is that skill up rates for summoning magic is incredibly slow compared to every other skill in the game, except enhancing (which I also think could use a boost), and that this difference in skill up rates is unfair. Why should summoners take so much longer to skill up than other jobs? Are summoners to be punished for being a summoner rather than a monk or a warrior? If so, why?

[Cabalabob]

If so, why?

I believe that SE's reasoning why is that enhancing and summoning magic have the potential to be skilled up with 0 danger, while weapons and magic require you to put yourself at risk, e.g weapons and magic need to hit mobs, healing skills up faster when used on undead, etc. summoning and enhancing it is possible to skill up by spam casting on the spot without fighting a mob.

[Mirage]

Several magic skills that do not put yourself at risk are easier to skill than summoning. You can spam non-damaging debuffs on goldfish in sea 24/7 without getting aggro, for example. Flash, paralyze, silence, repose all work. I bet a myriad of blue magic spells would work too, such as sheep song, temporal shift, and probably many others.

Even if youtechnically have to put yourself at risk, the actual risk involved is laughable. You can afk skillup any combat skill in abyssea with ducal guard and two regen atmas. Therefore, I do not think this is a good reason for making summoning magic much slower to level.

If the risk factor actually is the reason, then enemy targeted blood pacts should have an extremely much better chance of skilling up party targeted BPs do. I don't know if this is the case, but considering a poster in this thread killed 6 bukhises (bukhii? what is the plural of bukhis anyway?) solo on smn and got an insulting 1.2 skill out of it, I have my doubts.

If we're going by risk as the deciding factor, then it would still be entirely reasonable to let summoning magic skill up when avatars attack decent challenge enemies with melee attacks.

[Secondplanet]

you could have solo'd as summoner to get to the top. I enjoy'd playing summoner and never had a problem getting my skill ups. Since yours is incredibly low find out where your skill level is for zone and go to 2 zones up and fight mobs higher then your skill level and start there then move up zone for zone and take the time to get it.

Just cause your decided to leach your summoner to the top and expect to easily get your skills up isn't a problem with the game, its a problem with how you played it. I used abyssea to leach 1 job to the top, monk and i have been leveling up my guard skills for some time now, i'm not complaining its the price i pay for being lazy.

what you should have done was leeched 10 levels then skilled up with easy prey mobs until you weren't seeing skill ups then leech another 10 etc etc.

[Mirage]

As stated earlier: I did not leech my job even for one second. I leeched ranger a bit, and also blue mage, but not summoner.

[Secondplanet]

As stated earlier: I did not leech my job even for one second. I leeched ranger a bit, and also blue mage, but not summoner.

How is that even possible? you said your skill was 150, how you can be so low and not have leached at all? My wife got summoner done outside of abyssea to lvl 65 before she decided to go in and she went in with the higher end of 200's easily and she is lvl 99 summoner now and her skill is 340 and still rising steadily.

[Mirage]

Because non-leech exp is still 70k an hour. Things die very fast, so often times, your BP timer won't allow you to even use a PB rage on more than one in every 3 mobs.

Maybe your wife was lucky (lol) enough to be in slow and inefficient parties.

In that case, what you're really saying is: All jobs should be allowed to benefit from the greatly increased exp rate outside abyssea, except summoner who should level as slowly as possible so that the slow skill gain can keep up. If that was SE's intention, they should just have made it impossible for summoner to use grounds tomes in the first place!

Square Enix recently changed parry and guard skillups in a way that effectively increased the skill up rate by at least 20 times, and I am not even exaggerating now. Additionally, we have the martial master kupower which increases combat skill gain even further, while not affecting magic skillup at all. Despite all of these buffs and changes to skill up gain, you somehow think it is perfectly fine that summoning magic is not given a similar treatment? I have absolutely no idea why you are so adamantly opposed to equality between jobs for something as basic as combat/magic skills.

[Secondplanet]

Maybe your wife was lucky (lol) enough to be in slow and inefficient parties.


If inefficient you mean gets to know the job and skill up properly then yes, I've take jobs through ground tombs and was in parties in them burning through exp like no ones business and my skills showed for it by being subpar later on. People are trying to make the outside abyssea like abyssea by getting as much exp as possible and then complaining about the side effects. Don't rush a job you want to play, when the new jobs come out are you gonna burn those to the top and complain that its a crap job cause nothing works good?

[Mirage]

So, you actually are of the opinion that certain jobs should be punished for leveling up faster, while other jobs should not. Do you seriously not see a problem with this?

Either punish all jobs for leveling up rapidly, or punish none of them. If the status quo is to be kept, then you might as well just impose a heavy exp penalty on summoner. As crazy as that sounds, I have a feeling you might be ok with this too.

Either punish all jobs for leveling up rapidly, or punish none. It is as simple as that. No jobs should be discriminated against when it comes to skilling up their main skills.

Square Enix recently changed guard and parry skillups in a way that effectively increased the skill up rate by over 20 times, and I'm not even exaggerating now. I've gained more parry skillups in the last week than I would get in half a year before the change. In addition to that, there is martial mastery which further increases combat skill gain, but not magic skill gain. Despite these very significant changes, you still think it's fine to not change summoning skill ups at all. I have no idea why you are so adamantly opposed to equality in skill gain between different jobs.

[Secondplanet]

So, you actually are of the opinion that certain jobs should be punished for leveling up faster, while other jobs should not. Do you seriously not see a problem with this?

Either punish all jobs for leveling up rapidly, or punish none of them. If the status quo is to be kept, then you might as well just impose a heavy exp penalty on summoner. As crazy as that sounds, I have a feeling you might be ok with this too.

Either punish all jobs for leveling up rapidly, or punish none. It is as simple as that. No jobs should be discriminated against when it comes to skilling up their main skills.

Care to show where i said i agree to punishment to summoner? As summoner you can still get skill ups in abyssea using the magic bloodpact, If you were using physical attacks with that skill you can't hit anything, Should SE give a bonus to melee cause they can't hit anything that is over 200skill points higher then their skill? If i was to burn war up to 99 should my attacks all hit so i can skill up once i get to the lvl, i would have to step back and level from the zones meant for my skills.

Summoners and other mage jobs get it easy by being able to get skill up cause magic almost always connects if not in one form then another. Thats our bonus for skill up.

I'm not saying in anyway jobs need to be punished for anything except sheer laziness in learning/leveling a job.

[Mirage]

Yes, I can show you where.

You are saying summoner should not be leveled rapidly, because you shouldn't outlevel your skill level. Other jobs, however, can do this without any problems, because catching up on underleveled skills is extremely much faster for other jobs than it is for summoner. If one job requires weeks to catch up on skill after rapid leveling, while another job requires one day, one of these jobs is punished for leveling up rapidly. I am sure you can guess which.

By the way, it took me 8 hours to level archery from 20 to 300 after I had burned rng to 99 (I used marksmanship cause i already had that leveled). Playing summoner for 8 hours gets me maybe a 2-4 skill points. Archery is one of the slowest weapon skills to level up, yet it is still nearly 100 times faster than summoning.

Why are you bringing "learning" into this discussion? No one is talking about what the player knows about the job. You don't know anything about how well I play summoner. For all you know, I could have had summoner with capped skill on a different character that got hacked/stolen/banned.

And no, there is no need for SE to make it possible for melees to skill from 200 below cap inside abyssea, because this is easily doable already. Just equip cloak & dagger, razed ruin, and a regen atma, put on all the acc and skill gear you can find, then find the lowest level mobs in there, and you'll have no problems hitting stuff. If you do it on mnk or war, you can use focus or aggressor as well for even more accuracy. If you sub dancer, you even get the accuracy bonus trait.

[Secondplanet]

Playing summoner for 8 hours gets me maybe a 2-4 skill points.

What are you trying to skill up on, rabbits outside of sandy? I can be fighting decent prey mobs and i can easily get .3-.5's like rain when i was doing staff trials and general help. Only getting 2-4 levels is a laugh, i can get about 20levels in 8 hours without even trying. In one day after i got my 99 cap i got 40 levels of summoning magic in about 3 hours again without trying cause the difference in levels was there to skill on and i was even getting robbed of attacks cause the mob would die before the attack was used by overpowered melee.

There is nothing wrong with summoning magic skill up except and only except we can only use our bloodpacts a min of 45 seconds, but you can still use 2 in the window so its not a big deal.

[Mirage]

While a melee can use 20 attacks in the same 45 seconds, and have skillup chances one every one of them.

You said "except and only except" that you can't use BP more than twice every 45 seconds. If you actually read my posts, you'd see that this is one of the main problems I think there is with it. Not getting skill from things that are way outside of your skill range is fine. Only having two chances to get skill every 45 seconds is not, because every other job has 10 times as many chances to get skill in 45 seconds (even great axes and scythe, because you can retaliation/counterstance and attack mnk mobs). This is also why I suggested that melee hits performed by avatars should also have a chance to skill up. It wouldn't even have to be at as high a rate as BPs gave skill, as long as the chance was actually there.

And no, usually it is things that check EP-DC for me. Same as I usually target when i skill up other things.

[Secondplanet]

there has been a fair number of people who tried to help you and others with this problem you all believe you have but you just keep falling back onto this boo ho melee skill up faster then me. Once you get to know the job you'll understand the more important problem we face, and to save you time trying to find out i'll tell you.

Summoners will always be held back in the name of balance, look at every response SE gives us, they can't raise avatars attack power cause it would break balance, our buffs can't be made more powerful because it would break balance (yes i know they are talking about raising the effects but we'll see) Perfect Defense is getting nerfed cause it breaks balance. You see where this is going, we're stuck at lvl 75 even though we're 99 and no new attacks, that's the real problem. Not skill ups.

[Mirage]

Now you are trying to shift the focus away from the topic, and instead attempt to ridicule me by implying that I do not know enough about the summoner job. There are several other posters in this thread who are undoubtly very good summoners, and with more summoning skill than I have, that still think summoning skillups should be faster, so me not being a {Veteran} summoner is of no significance.

Please stay on topic. If you don't have a logical argument for keeping summoning magic skillup a lot slower than other skills, perhaps you should just stop replying.

Let's try again: Guard and parry used to be the slowest skills in the game to level up. Recently, skillup speed was increased by a lot. What is your reasoning for not letting summoning magic get an increase in skillup speed, like the two aforementioned skills got?

[Annalise]

I leveled summoner after the bloodpact :rage/ward split and pacts giving skill. I also was close to cap the entire way. I capped it quickly and easily for the most part each time the level cap increased as well. Perhaps I have good luck, you have awful luck, or both.

I always felt puppetmaster was more of a pain to skill than summoner, though. I don't know that I'd say summoner is the worst. Though Percolator now helps a tremendous amount.

[Mirage]

I do not have any experience with puppetmaster, so I wouldn't know if it is worse or easier. If it is indeed worse, then my sympathies are with you.

[Karbuncle]

Automaton Skilling up is about as mind numbing as Summoning Magic, However it was made a little easier with the fix to Spell casting an AI for automatons... RNG is still a little bit of a pain though.

However, we do have a skill up attachment.

[Mirage]

I dunno. I found ranger to be relatively all right. It was slower than any melee weapon, naturally, and because I am a goodie-two-shoes I didn't use those naughty third party infinite macros to afk-skill it. Double shot does a lot for skillup rate, and there are cheap arrows and low delay bows to help out too. I was getting 0.3-0.5s on something like every 3rd shot from 200 and up, doing birds in abyssea latheine. Also, few things feel better than getting skillups on every arrow in an 8-hit barrage.

[Karbuncle]

Ranger Frame*

[Mirage]

Oh. Yeah, see, that's how much I know about pup :p.

[Arcon]

To everyone who thinks they wanna throw in their two cents, please read this:
"It worked fine for me!" is not an argument. I know several people whom it worked fine for, and that's only because their definition of fine was it taking days and weeks of casual EXPing. That is not an acceptable solution, period. If that's all you have to say, save yourselves the trouble and stay away.

The simple fact is skilling Summoning Magic is terribad compared to all other skills (I also had no idea about PUP, but as long as they're not limited by a 45 second timer, it's not as bad), that alone is reason enough to adjust it, and there's no arguments against that. It will not stop you from playing as slowly as you want, but it will give the people who don't wanna waste their time like that another option.

[Secondplanet]

Now you are trying to shift the focus away from the topic,

may i ask how, you seem to be running from the fact that others offer help and you complain in response. As Annalise said she had no problem getting her skills up there and after many people use a lot of the help offered by others on this board on my server they get their skills rolling.

And like i said before there are many things I'd rather them fix then this, its nothing compared to the real problems with summoner. We already lost cait sith until further notice and with the promise to reevaluate our current wards this problem isn't high priority in the case of most summoners i know on my server. (also they have their skills capped or close to)

Just take peoples advice, spend time with your avatars and have fun getting skill ups, if your not getting any try to find some around the lvl of your skills, you said your skill is the 140'ish mark so that puts your skill of a lvl 39-41 summoner so fight mobs lvl 45-47 to get your skill ups.

[Mirage]

It's 169 without gear, actually. Don't worry. I am well aware of skill ratings for various levels, and about targeting enemies suitable for my levels. Finding out what to skill up on was never the problem. Only having two skillup chances every 45 seconds is. I'm sorry that I don't feel like I'm having fun when I'm sending my avatar to fight things that are 40 levels below me for hours upon hours instead of doing actually challenging content.

A change to summoning magic is not some gigantic undertaking for the developers. Increasing it will not affect balance in the endgame, except that those who want to be a summoner in endgame doesn't have to stop being a summoner in endgame for a few weeks for instead to be a summoner in kuftal/gustav/whereeversuitstheirskill. Changing this is not something that would suck the dev team dry of resources, delaying other content for several weeks. It would probably take the dude who knows how to change it something like half an hour to change it, then players could test it for bugs on the test server.

[Babekeke]

Just realised as I try to set a base for skillups/time, that whereas my enhancing skillup macro was 1 spell per 4 seconds, SMN is 1 spell per 10 seconds due to waiting for release timer.

I propose release and assault to give skillups.

[Kysaiana]

increasing the rate SMN can use BPs would greatly increase the rate of skill ups. Of course that's a pipe dream, especially with the new "2hr" or w/e they will be called by the time it's released.

For anyone struggling with skill ups, I recommend using Skill up food (http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Skill_Up_Food) For the appropriate level range. It helps a ton. Also, try to skill up when there is martial master kupower on your server and be sure to have signet active. Spamming easy GoV pages in say Gustav tunnel for skill up prowess and then fighting worms also helps a lot. BPs skill up far faster than spamming summon/release even at 45s apart.

These are the things I did to cap my skill. I agree it's a pain in the butt and should be changed (along with my bane, enhancing magic...) But unfortunately you'll probably cap long before SE does anything about it, or says they won't do anything about, unless you don't try at all. Please note I'm not accusing anyone of not trying.

[Mirage]

I'm not sure martial master actually works for magic at all. However, prowess do, and that is a good idea.

[Secondplanet]

I play the job, have fun with it, and then after "no time at all", I am still at 150.


It's 169 without gear, actually.

so during the short time between posting on boards in half a day you managed to get 19 levels of summoning magic, See it wasn't that hard, if you put full focus into it you will be 300+ in not time.

and also notice Kysaiana got her summoning magic capped, you make it sound like some pandemic that needs to be taken care of but its been quite some time since level cap has reached 99 and the people who were playing summoner already got their skills capped and knew what they were facing.


It would probably take the dude who knows how to change it something like half an hour to change it, then players could test it for bugs on the test server.

Look at the most current update, even with it going to test servers something as simple as adding basic things and the new mebbles thing we were crashing when going into our inventory and that was already tested and it shut down LS events for several days for it. Even if they did change something it would easily take a year or more before it would go through proper reprogramming and then testing to ensure it works, by then your skills could have been capped.

[Mirage]

No. I didn't report my correct value earlier in the thread. I was taking a guess, and it turns out i was off by a few points.

Even if I got my skill capped before this was changed, it doesn't mean this thread is a waste. Unlike some other players, I don't care that new players have it easier than I had it. I am fine with new players capping their summoning skill in 2 days, even if I had to spend over 2 weeks when I did it.

I am one of those who some days spent 6 hours just skilling parry back at 75 cap. The amount of skill i got from that could be done in half an hour now, without even specifically trying to get parry skillups, but I am actually glad that people don't have to do what I did anymore. It makes the game more enjoyable.

I guess I'm just an empathic person. I wish more people were.

[Arcon]

[..] but its been quite some time since level cap has reached 99 and the people who were playing summoner already got their skills capped and knew what they were facing.

Yes, they were facing horror and despair, and they only had a five level cap ahead of them (if they were lucky). That doesn't apply to new players anymore. Also, not everyone from even back then has their skills capped (I know a few people myself, and so would you if you would have bothered to read this thread).


Look at the most current update, even with it going to test servers something as simple as adding basic things and the new mebbles thing we were crashing when going into our inventory and that was already tested and it shut down LS events for several days for it. Even if they did change something it would easily take a year or more before it would go through proper reprogramming and then testing to ensure it works, by then your skills could have been capped.

That's a lie because it obviously did not apply to the Parrying and Guard changes either, so that point is invalid. And even if it was true it would still be invalid, because irrational fear of something breaking is no reason not to implement it, otherwise we'd never see any new features ever again. It's only reason to take precautions and test thoroughly.

[Babekeke]

OK, here's some stats:

10 hours of solid skilling up, riding the 10 second release timer (6 casts per minute, 360 casts per hours 3600 casts total) starting at level 341 with no skill up prowess, martial master, earring or food.

15 * 0.1 = 1.5
06 * 0.2 = 1.2
10 * 0.3 = 3.0
06 * 0.4 = 2.4
09 * 0.5 = 4.5

Totalling 46 skillups from 3600 casts.
Or 1 in every 78 casts.
1 skillup every 13 minutes.

A total of 12.6 skill.
Average of 1.26 skill per hour

So it seems I'll cap my skill in 51 hours of solid casting at this rate. Assuming that the rate doesn't decrease the closer to cap I get (but I think it does?).

Interestingly though, the average skillup is 0.27, which is higher than I would have expected.

I'll try and re-test this with martial master tomorrow, as I think Phoenix has it right now, but I was in Empyreal Paradox for refresh atma, but I'm not certain I need it.

If it makes any difference to the rate of skillups, 341 (my starting skill) was 1 below cap for level 88, and 353 (my finishing skill) was 1 below cap for level 90 (I am level 99).

[SpankWustler]

My best friend has been working on some of her magic skills after recently coming back to the game, and this divide is definitely noticeable. Turning every skill blue wasn't a problem for her, but making "It was fine for me!" into an argument is a logical fallacy.

After skillfully training her very talented dog to mash Summon and Release macros with his nose, it took almost a week's worth of nights and classes for my best friend's Summoning Magic to climb from the level 80 cap to the level 99 cap.

By comparison, her Elemental Magic on Scholar made a similar climb in about four hours of actual game-play. She was actively murdering worms somewhere or something.

During the time she spent capping Elemental Magic, she would have been able to use less than 1000 Blood Pacts. So, I definitely can't recommend using Blood Pacts to gain skill compared to training a loyal pet in the arts of macro-mashing and leaving the house to do awesome things.

I don't think the Development Bros would be a big fan of the method I strongly recommend, being strange men who care not for uncooked mammals devoid of soy sauce.

Therefor, skill-ups obtained from actions during actively playing Summoner should be drastically increased since Blood Pacts have huge delays compared to any other skill-based action in FFXI. Assault could be changed to give skill-ups as well, maybe?

[Hashmalum]

It's sad, but I confess that although I have all the elemental spirits, and have quested every single avatar, and have acquired various useful rare/ex SMN gear such as Carby Mitts, Evoker's ring, YYR, etc. I can't stand to actually play SMN because of the insane burden of raising that summoning magic skill. How many other people does this keep out of the job, I wonder?

[Secondplanet]

but making "It was fine for me!" into an argument is a logical fallacy.


But isn't this forum about "It's not fine for me!" so then your statement is a paradox.

[Secondplanet]

I am one of those who some days spent 6 hours just skilling parry back at 75 cap.

So you were fine doing it back then and it taking forever to level but now cause they changed you feel robbed, so now summoner has to make up for some self entitled feeling you have? Back then i had skills capped on summoner at lvl 75 with only 1 bloodpact feature not 2 so its already a great deal easier to level it now then back then.


Yes, they were facing horror and despair, and they only had a five level cap ahead of them (if they were lucky). That doesn't apply to new players anymore. Also, not everyone from even back then has their skills capped (I know a few people myself, and so would you if you would have bothered to read this thread).

I've read the thread from start to finish, but it seems that a very small amount complain while all the summoners i've had the pleasure of bumping into don't mind skilling up and most have their skills capped. Once summoning magic reaches a certain point where all your pacts last the max time anyways the rest is just for syphon so people don't sweat it since most sub sch or rdm to make up for the missing mp. After that point you can get them from events like Voidwatch.

[Hashmalum]

I've read the thread from start to finish, but it seems that a very small amount complain while all the summoners i've had the pleasure of bumping into don't mind skilling up and most have their skills capped.There's obviously a selection bias in your observation; people who don't want to put up with the skill-up grind often don't become summoners to start with. But I doubt that most people think that it's sensible to exclude people from SMN because of some ridiculous chore that has nothing to do with how you normally play the job. Also please do keep in mind that the reason that a number of people "don't mind skilling up" is because they cheat and use third party tools to AFK skill-up. Obviously, their opinion doesn't count.

[Babekeke]

Currently the absolute max chance of skill ups, is to summon avatar, BP rage, release, summon avatar, BP ward, release, summon spirit, release, summon spirit, release, repeat.

6 chances to skill up in a 45 second cycle, and unless you are in besieged by a general, or using your NPC, to healing ruby them for greater chance at a skillup, only 1/6 are higher chance. 480 whole chances in an hour but only 80 (or 160 if with an NPC) of those are higher chance.

Almost wants to make you use windower and run a macro to constantly cast and release spirits while you sleep...

[Secondplanet]

Also please do keep in mind that the reason that a number of people "don't mind skilling up" is because they cheat and use third party tools to AFK skill-up. Obviously, their opinion doesn't count.

So am i to assume that when i see a white mage in Empyreal Paradox that they are doing it without 3rd party programs spamming buffs and cures and when i come back hours later they are still there doing it in the same order non stop perfect timing each time? Just because people don't mind certain aspects of their jobs and get it done doesn't mean they used 3rd party programs. I don't mind skilling my summoning to cap when i needed, it was fun, grab a friend and have a race to see who can get more and faster, my wife and i where always play fighting each other over who got a .3 or .4 and had to bow to the other when they get a .5

She isn't even trying to cap her summoning magic and she already only about 70levels from cap and still going strong. Don't worry about it they will come and you'll be done.

[Nawesemo]

This thread is tempting me to bust out the level 20 smn to see what all the hub bub was about. Details @7a.m. tomorrow.

[Hashmalum]

So am i to assume that when i see a white mage in Empyreal Paradox that they are doing it without 3rd party programs spamming buffs and cures and when i come back hours later they are still there doing it in the same order non stop perfect timing each time? Just because people don't mind certain aspects of their jobs and get it done doesn't mean they used 3rd party programs. I don't mind skilling my summoning to cap when i needed, it was fun, grab a friend and have a race to see who can get more and faster, my wife and i where always play fighting each other over who got a .3 or .4 and had to bow to the other when they get a .5

She isn't even trying to cap her summoning magic and she already only about 70levels from cap and still going strong. Don't worry about it they will come and you'll be done.I didn't say that everyone who doesn't complain was cheating, but quite a few of them are. And as for other jobs cheating their skill-ups, stop trying to change the subject. We're not talking about cheating in other jobs, we're talking about the problem with SMN. You can't win your argument on the merits so you're trying to make a side-issue. You didn't address my point about the flaw in your observations and you didn't explain why it makes sense for SMNs to be cheaters, gimps, or people who are happy to do drudge work.

[Arcon]

You didn't address my point about the flaw in your observations and you didn't explain why it makes sense for SMNs to be cheaters, gimps, or people who are happy to do drudge work.

And he won't, because he can't. The only argument he ever made was that it "worked for him", which is useless all by itself. It's like when people complain about being 0/tripledigits on Coruscanti and then someone comes in and goes "I went 1/12 so it's obviously not bad". Anecdotal evidence is no evidence at all.

And this is still disregarding the biggest flaw in his argument, which is why it worked fine for him. It wasn't just random chance, but because he considers something natural that other people hate, namely spending days and weeks just randomly playing the job, going around and BPing EXP mobs for the hell of it, because for some reason he believes that experience is essential to being a Summoner. What he doesn't realize is that not everyone enjoys doing that. He said that it will go up if you "just play the job", but this is what he means, and I can assure him that most people would not call that "playing the job" but "wasting their time". Remember this is the guy who also said it's fun to race people for who gets faster skill-ups, so it's pretty obvious that he has some very unique definitions of fun.

Not everyone has the desire or the time to do that, though (most people have neither). Some people wanna play Summoner in group events, so they level it up but then they find out they suck for any relevant content and have to go out of their way to skill up every free chance they get, which for most people isn't that much. Let's assume every third BP gives you a skill-up of 0.3, it would mean that you would have to invest 30 hours straight to cap the skill. If you have a daily playtime of four hours (which is a lot for most people), and assume two of those you wanna have some fun, it means it will take you over two weeks of just skilling to get to cap. That's assuming you have no downtime there either, you can spam both Blood Pacts every 45s and never have to find a mob, change camp or run out of MP the whole time. And even under these idealized conditions and assumptions that's still pretty horrible. In reality it will easily be triple that time, which is just absurd if you compare it to any other skill.

Which brings me to my next point. Regardless of everything I just said, no matter how fine you make yourself believe that the system is, none of that matters when you look at it from a strictly comparative point of view. No other skill has it this bad (possibly aside from automatons, as I said before). This is in its entirely own class of skill-up speed, and there is no reason whatsoever for it to be this way. No one skill should be singled out and be worse to acquire than any others. By that merit alone, Summoning Magic should be revised in terms of skilling up, and there is no argument anyone could possibly bring against that.

To SE, all of these problems could be fixed if you made skilling up on PCs have as high a skill-up rate as skilling up on NPCs. I have no idea why there's a distinction in the first place. If you're that afraid of people skilling up on their own, you can just make PCs count a few levels less compared to NPCs. That way you'd simulate a quantitative difference without imposing a qualitative difference, which would make people feel like they're wasting their time.

[Annalise]

Shedding some light because I mentioned automatons...

Pup itself has its own skills:
h2h, guard etc.

Automaton also has skills:
Ranged (cap 417 sharpshot frame)
Magic (cap 424 stormwaker frame)
Melee (cap 417 valoredge frame)

Automaton before was probably worse than SMN, but now it's maybe about the same I'd say. There is now an attachment to increase skill chances.

For ranged skill, before it was 20 second ranged attacks (which can miss, especially since you are skilling up after all) which kind of coincides with 22.5 seconds of bloodpact (2x bloodpact every 45 seconds if using say netherblast and somnolence, ignoring resummon since bloodpact is way higher skill chance) though slightly quicker. There is an attachment that makes them quicker, before it was up to -6 seconds but also had a huge (very noticeable) penalty to ranged accuracy.
Now they lessened the penalty, and it can decrease ranged attacks to 5 seconds with 3 maneuvers, but you may not use three because then you lose out on skill up chance water maneuvers from the other attachment (find your balance!)

Magic skill ups was a global spell timer that was somewhere around 22 seconds. Also similar in time to the bloodpact timer being split in two.
Now the automaton can cast like crazy so this is substantially better

Melee all frames can skill but only valoredge frame can cap. This is the easiest to skill.

Automaton skill was a pain because not only were some hard (especially sharpshot if you chose it at level 30 and had 0 skill) but there were also three separate skills to level up. If you leveled in say, an experience points party, you usually would use sharpshot (and your magic skill would get pretty far behind). If you solo'd, you would use a mage frame and your ranged skill would get pretty far behind.
Thankfully this has gotten better for puppetmaster.

In summoners case, I think considering how most other skill ups can be spammed (e.g. high haste for melee, grab a bunch of mandies for defensive skills, spam bio 1 for dark, stone 1 elemental, cure undead healing, dia for enfeebling, etc) it wouldn't be unreasonable for there to be a base skill up increase to summoning and bloodpact usage. Hell, allow skill ups on spirit casts as well (though then you'd be banned for afking with light spirit out like people afking in grauberg on smn with avatar out?).

My only current suggestion for what seemed to work well for me (and sorry for some anecdotal evidence here Arcon) is to do voidwatch on summoner and use Ramuh alternating Shock Squall and Chaotic Strike or Thunderstorm whenever they are up. It took me from capped skill at 95 to capped skill at 99 in maybe 5-10 x3-x4 runs. Your mileage may vary, of course. Yet at least you will be perhaps getting something good out of your time spent (or maybe a bunch of logs, I don't know).

[Secondplanet]

I didn't say that everyone who doesn't complain was cheating, but quite a few of them are. And as for other jobs cheating their skill-ups, stop trying to change the subject.

Last i checked it wasn't me who changed the subject, you had made a post about people who were using 3rd party programs, so i was addressing the side topic that you in fact started.


And he won't, because he can't. The only argument he ever made was that it "worked for him", which is useless all by itself. It's like when people complain about being 0/tripledigits on Coruscanti and then someone comes in and goes "I went 1/12 so it's obviously not bad". Anecdotal evidence is no evidence at all.

Only argument? i have mentioned several times listen to others cause they are trying to help you, yes it worked for me cause i'm retro summoner so i know the tricks of the trade. If you were buying a car and it didn't have a motor would you buy it cause the dealer said it worked or would you listen to your mechanic and be told you need a motor to run it.


My only current suggestion for what seemed to work well for me (and sorry for some anecdotal evidence here Arcon) is to do voidwatch on summoner and use Ramuh alternating Shock Squall and Chaotic Strike or Thunderstorm whenever they are up. It took me from capped skill at 95 to capped skill at 99 in maybe 5-10 x3-x4 runs. Your mileage may vary, of course. Yet at least you will be perhaps getting something good out of your time spent (or maybe a bunch of logs, I don't know).

Here is what i have been saying over and over, but all most can focus on is it can't be done in a couple of hours. Again listen to the advise we are trying to give you and it will help you. you are your own worst enemy.

[Mirage]

So you were fine doing it back then and it taking forever to level but now cause they changed you feel robbed, so now summoner has to make up for some self entitled feeling you have? Back then i had skills capped on summoner at lvl 75 with only 1 bloodpact feature not 2 so its already a great deal easier to level it now then back then.

What are you talking about? Parrying was bad back then, and the slow skill made me eventually give up on capping it. I am glad it has changed now, and that I am getting skillups at an adequate pace even without specifically targeting skilling up. Now I want summoning magic to get the same treatment as parry did. What's entitled about that? I think you should stop projecting.

[Arcon]

Last i checked it wasn't me who changed the subject, you had made a post about people who were using 3rd party programs, so i was addressing the side topic that you in fact started.

Them mentioning third party tools was not off-topic, it was related to the discussion by saying that you don't hear most people complaining, because they can cheat their way up. You then made it off-topic by drawing random comparisons to other jobs.


Only argument? i have mentioned several times listen to others cause they are trying to help you, yes it worked for me cause i'm retro summoner so i know the tricks of the trade. If you were buying a car and it didn't have a motor would you buy it cause the dealer said it worked or would you listen to your mechanic and be told you need a motor to run it.

Here is what i have been saying over and over, but all most can focus on is it can't be done in a couple of hours. Again listen to the advise we are trying to give you and it will help you. you are your own worst enemy.

Here's the thing you don't grasp: you can't help us. You're telling us nothing new. We know how skilling up works, and it works horribly slow. It's not rocket science. You get a certain skill chance when you summon an avatar and when you use a Blood Pact, you get a higher chance if you're targeting an enemy, that's it. There's nothing more to it. I did the math above, no matter which way you spin it it's horrible and it takes ages.

And for the record, I did cap Summoning Magic on two characters before, it took me days of doing nothing else and it was so lame and painful that I don't wanna go through it on my new mule again. Don't think you're lecturing anyone, your advice is simply not helpful. It doesn't change the way the game works. We're not idiots who can't figure out game mechanics, we're people who are annoyed at the way the game mechanics work.

[Rambus]

I kept my smn skill close to cap in the old days and there was some levels where i did have it capped (say like 37).

At 75 it was under capped and i end up getting SMN mitts +1 before capping it though when that happen it was only like 2 skill points away then.

enchaining was not a problem back in the old days as rdm. when mods take 2-5 minutes a kill for 150-280 exp each it was really easy to keep cap.

Now after ATU came out and killing mobs every 30 seconds was the norm it was much harder to keep any skill capped and that problem only got worse when abyssea came out.

The skill up rate was fine back in the day for pretty much everything but shield, guard and parry.

Now when "skill up mobs" is a special event that you need stones and those mobs die in 5-10 minutes there is a lot of issues keeping the old skill up rate as the game had in the past.

I am even experiencing this on bard now, getting 0-250 string was fine, 250-280 was tolerable, now 281+ it just dies. I done abyssea farming for seals, +2 items, VW new limbus NMs and it is like when will singing, wind and sting ever cap my GOD!

and brd skills are easier because even on resists you can get skill ups plus some of the debuffs are near instant cast but the thing is you need something to stay alive for more then 5 minutes to really skill up -.-

It is a simple fact, things just do not stay alive enough for the old skill up system we have that was based off killing one thing for 2 minutes to 2 hours ( depending NM or common mob your talking about)

Then with spaming songs with everything I try to do I get this sometimes:

Rambus spams random Threnody
*random person dies*
Me> I could of gave a cure IV but i was so focused in trying skill up I did not see you in low hp.

Now this did not happen much because i take the time to stop but ya it is annoying at any rate. My point is i would like to be more focused in helping progress kill hard mobs then worry about being stuck at 280-310 for 2 weeks of non stop playing brd.

[Babekeke]

If Summoning Magic skill wasn't so lame to skill up, people wouldn't feel the need to use 3rd party programs to cap it. It would skill up just fine as they play the game.

It doesn't.

[Kari]

Skilling up in general needs to be revamped. Again.
I don't mind this game having grinds, but the skill-up system for anything not-weapons has always been way too slow.
Sooo many people have resorted to botting skill-ups overnight, because doing it normally takes forever.

The rate at which we gain skill-ups makes absolutely no sense, when you compare to the rate that experience falls out of the sky.

[Arcon]

Skilling up in general needs to be revamped. Again.
I don't mind this game having grinds, but the skill-up system for anything not-weapons has always been way too slow.
Sooo many people have resorted to botting skill-ups overnight, because doing it normally takes forever.

You're not really wrong, but I can live with skilling from 0 to cap taking a few hours, which is the case for almost all magic skills (Enfeebling, Dark, Elemental, Healing and BRD skills). I did all of them on a mule in two days or so.

[Rambus]

You're not really wrong, but I can live with skilling from 0 to cap taking a few hours, which is the case for almost all magic skills (Enfeebling, Dark, Elemental, Healing and BRD skills). I did all of them on a mule in two days or so.

^ no, just no -.- I even did the sing while I wait for things to happen in jueno and that does not work anymore. I would say BS for all of that but I did not exactly put in effort into Enfeebling, Dark, and Elemental since those skills where a joke since level 80 and the fact I did not exactly get to play those jobs much when I returned. I have a BLM/WHM/SCH other charter that uses those skills but because i jam Threnodys for brd skills, he got a lot less attention with my farming and other things I was talking about for my return for 1 month now ( 3 weeks for the brd only kick)

Ok even with his low attention his elemental is close to cap but to level to 1-99 and capping that in 2 days from 0 skill? naaaa

btw 0-280 does not count as being capped, just because that is the skill point of being higher then 75. (0-280 was easy on brd, 281+ was/is freken hell)

[Arcon]

^ no, just no -.- I even did the sing while I wait for things to happen in jueno and that does not work anymore.

That has never worked, and that's not the proper way to skill. That's called wasting your time. You can skill all damage-dealing skills (all mentioned except the BRD skills) on worms in Abyssea (or skeletons, for Healing Magic). Only BRD skills require camp changes so you don't get full resists, but you can still do pretty large gaps (from 0 to ~100 on random lv50 worms, until ~200 on Hpemde in sea, then to cap on worms in Abyssea again). Offensive spells give skill-ups with a high frequently, and they all have spells with very fast casting and recast times (or enough spells to cycle). Set some macros up and spam them. It's very boring, but you can watch TV, work, study, play other games or w/e you do on the side.

[Rambus]

That has never worked, and that's not the proper way to skill. That's called wasting your time. You can skill all damage-dealing skills (all mentioned except the BRD skills) on worms in Abyssea (or skeletons, for Healing Magic). Only BRD skills require camp changes so you don't get full resists, but you can still do pretty large gaps (from 0 to ~100 on random lv50 worms, until ~200 on Hpemde in sea, then to cap on worms in Abyssea again). Offensive spells give skill-ups with a high frequently, and they all have spells with very fast casting and recast times (or enough spells to cycle). Set some macros up and spam them. It's very boring, but you can watch TV, work, study, play other games or w/e you do on the side.

no.................
not in 2 days you are not, no freakin way.
and I was skilling up in abyssea with 0 string skill and getting +.5s like every other song, i only went to sea because it was like 160? or so and guy wanted a break. I think i got it up to like 220 when we did abyssea more.

and healing skill I'm not even gonna try that, leveling it that way is stupid anyways. like others said about grinding SMN skill what is the point?

like i said before for songs 0-280 does not count as cap, 373 is, and after 280 it is very painful.

btw songs can resist and still get skill ups -.- pretty sure I got skill ups off no effect messages too.

[Mirage]

The point of leveling healing magic would be to pump out superior cures. You might have been away when it happened, but healing magic skill actually makes a difference now.

[Rambus]

Mine was capped as a 75 whm.. maybe.. I know i capped it as a 75 rdm so how does that change for sub?

he was talking about capping it in two days for a level 99 job not 49.

Anywaywas my point was why do i have to level it off undead for 48 straight hours? isn't that a bit counter productive on things you could be doing? I did not mean healing magic was worthless to skill. Meaning I was asking what is the point of griding it like that.

[Mirage]

Oh, with that, I agree.

Skillups for all skills should level up at a reasonable pace doing normal content, like they do for combat skills.

[Arcon]

no.................
not in 2 days you are not, no freakin way.

Like I said in an earlier post, I just made a new mule. I'll make a video of skilling it on her (if I remember) just to give you an idea of how quick skills are flying in. I wasn't exaggerating, a few hours are enough to cap it, and I don't mean 75 cap, but ~95 cap. It won't go entirely to 99 because mobs need to be DC or higher for that, so unless someone leveled them up, it'll only go to the ~95 area. But from there it's really not too difficult to skill anymore.

Anyway, you don't have to believe me, either try for yourself or wait for me to do it in the future when I'll post the video. The point is, it works extremely fast, completely incomparable to Summoning Magic skill-ups. I didn't know about resist skill-ups for songs, but if that's true it only makes things easier, it means you can start skilling it in Abyssea right away.


Anywaywas my point was why do i have to level it off undead for 48 straight hours?

On my PLD I got my healing skill from ~200 to ~90 cap (I'm not sure if it was at 90 cap or 95 cap back then) in four hours on undeads in Abyssea - Attohwa, without any skill-up food. Would work faster in Abyssea - Grauberg.

[Rambus]

Let me repeat myself.

I returned to the game a month ago.
in that first week i found out my ls could make use a good active brd and since i already had key +3 interments I took it upon myself to gear it ( no emp gear)

So I went from 90-99 starting skills was like 340ish singing/wind and 0 string.

So I got 99 and started to only use brd for all events, even for farming for emp gear.
After some farming for 2-3 days (first week of brd im talking about) i went 0-280 string pretty easliy and in the mist of that i went to sea for a bit as my farm help went afk, that was like 140-160, not sure to 220 or so.

Then after more farming, even before i had +2s I got around 280 skill. After seaing my skill go up so deadlfy slow i went to do merit pts.

While doing this i went to exp pts for merits for the sole base of leveling skill. I did two parties of getting 30 merits so that is 60 merits total for skill.

Then in those next two weeks of starting at 280 skill I still did VW events and other things and the skill up rate is still dead. I do not care about you bragging about getting cap skill for 90 or 95 for a brd that is a c+ skill anyway. Im talking how much a pain it was to level after 280.

and in those 3 weeks I STILL did not cap SINGING even when that was cap for level 80 or 85 or so? before i came back. and singing can skill up using wind or string. Also in the 3 weeks of playing brd only (kinda forgot to say this earlier) I still went to VW events and ended up getting some skills of bismark for string during my down time, he might of took me 10-50? fort string? do not remember.


skilling past 280 on brd is a huge pain, before that it is easy.

Add up all the exp i got in those 3 weeks while trying to skill up shall we?

I started with 6 points in int and 2 str, I now have 12 str and 11 int ( i forget what this would total)

I maxed a ws to 5, unlocked 3 others. with a random hp merit 6 to 7.

actually idk what that is but im sure it is over 100 merits.

oh and don't forget those 10 merits to unlock accessing the wss.

I do not care if you got cap for a 95, i am telling you getting cap to 99 is a pain as a brd after a point (0-280 easy, 281- cap is a pain)

You're video is not going to change what I experienced in the last 3 weeks or need to tell me a worm might give you a .XX after 10-20 Threnodies after 280 skill.

[Nawesemo]

Meh... I still don't get it,

I mean we either are happy we can hit 99 in hours, and pissed we can't skill as quickly.

Or, we'd be pissed that the grind to 99 was insane, and happy our skills stayed fairly close to where they should be for our levels.

In either case we are happier than we would be otherwise, I don't think I'd play as much as I do if everything was just ... simple and lacked any time, effort or whatever... pathetic.. sure but still it's why alot of us play, to keep up with the jones's yeah? and it wasn't ever the destination no? but the Journey?

So yeah.. skilling sucks but it's better than being handed a 99 smn and feeling no accomplishment for it?

(my test failed misserablly I got on smn @ 20 chilled with the wife, seen modest skill ups (every other blood pact thingy)... we Hooked up with a dude in the dunes, made our way to gusen and after that I started rambling on and on about leveling in aby... vs trying to get to 99 the ancient way to our new buddy. or something like that. so I did see some skill ups, and they came alot quicker than they used to so yeah.... I'm not seeing the grip.)

[Arcon]

Let me repeat myself.

There's absolutely no need. I read everything you said and I understood it. You're wrong, and here's why:

You're video is not going to change what I experienced in the last 3 weeks or need to tell me a worm might give you a .XX after 10-20 Threnodies after 280 skill.

First of all, I did mean to cap, not to 280. I only said I skilled healing on PLD to ~90 cap in a few hours. Secondly, skilling does not get magically worse after 280. There is no tier you break into where skilling up starts to be shitty. It simply gets slower the closer you come to cap, and it's a gradual decrease. Thirdly, nowhere did you mention skilling up. You mentioned being in EXP/merit parties and doing VW and whatever else you think helped, but that's not skilling. That's just randomly getting skills here and there. And there's a huge difference in that.

I'm not sure if you knew this (it's common knowledge, I just can't tell from your post), but you get skills a lot faster from casting on NPCs instead of players. Every cast you spend buffing (which is a majority of what a BRD does in any group scenario) is time wasted for skill-up purposes, hence when you're meriting, doing VW or certain LS events you're not skilling up. I mentioned worms, because they serve a purpose, because skilling on them is far more preferable to anything else you could be doing if you want to increase your skill levels.

And finally, I offered the video because it would be strong evidence to what I'm saying is correct. I know it's not gonna change your experiences, but I'm saying your experiences are not relevant to the skill-up discussion, because you weren't skilling up. Fact is, you can skill up BRD skills very quickly (and I'll post some evidence for that). Fact is, you can't do the same on SMN (I suppose I could post evidence for that, but it would be very long and messy, it's hard to show the absence of something like this). This discrepancy is the entire crux of this discussion. That's why we want SE to adjust the skillup mechanics for the few jobs/skills that were left behind.

[Rambus]

casting brd spells on npcs?

and I know skill gains go slower as you get closer to cap but after 280 that was the point it got intolerable as brd. Like others pointed out skill in your main thing really should come naturally and I said I spammed things on high level mobs. I do not know for sure but most VW nms are higher level then worms in abyssea right? or abyssea nms for seals?

How is spamming Threnodies on things not skilling up as you do things? -.-

I told you after 280 WHILE getting merits, I spammed Threnodies on worms and after 1-2 full cycles it takes for a skill up gain, 0.x not a full point, this is 8-16 casts. It is the same for vw nms just about though when I did that to abyssea mobs i was a bit lower so might been a bit faster then now just doing the nms.


Meh... I still don't get it,

I mean we either are happy we can hit 99 in hours, and pissed we can't skill as quickly.

Or, we'd be pissed that the grind to 99 was insane, and happy our skills stayed fairly close to where they should be for our levels.

In either case we are happier than we would be otherwise, I don't think I'd play as much as I do if everything was just ... simple and lacked any time, effort or whatever... pathetic.. sure but still it's why alot of us play, to keep up with the jones's yeah? and it wasn't ever the destination no? but the Journey?

So yeah.. skilling sucks but it's better than being handed a 99 smn and feeling no accomplishment for it?

(my test failed misserablly I got on smn @ 20 chilled with the wife, seen modest skill ups (every other blood pact thingy)... we Hooked up with a dude in the dunes, made our way to gusen and after that I started rambling on and on about leveling in aby... vs trying to get to 99 the ancient way to our new buddy. or something like that. so I did see some skill ups, and they came alot quicker than they used to so yeah.... I'm not seeing the grip.)

Was never happy with the hand me exp. If common mobs die 5-20 seconds and nms die in 30 seconds to 10 minutes then skill rate needs to be made faster.

The rate of skill ups went along with how you progress in the game when cap is 75, ever since abyssea came, making the game 80+ the that was no longer true. Like i said before only skills where it did not fit that rule back then was shield (before the change) parry, and guard. Now evade, parry and guard may be like that (unless maybe being thf for everything, not sure. I might be wrong with evade but the way things are i am just guessing that might be slow.

What is the point of a skill up grind? like i said earlier I would rather toss out cures more then juggle that with spaming Threnodies.

*In other words i be happier if we kept the old system to 99 then this fast exp, slow skill gains. That is like tricking people that they do not have to grind anything anymore.

I did SMN in the new 75 though so it was easier be close at cap ( got 75 smn sometime between ATU and before level sync so i got the skill up as you bp. I think might of been before the separation of ward and attack though, not sure.)

My point is just that skilling up is too slow for the times for a lot of skills with how the game is now. I had no problem with skill gains at 75 but now i do at 99, wonder why that is .... mobs dieing to fast could be the issue even the harder nms now don't like long, live vw nms is like 5 mintues. I know it is always less then 10 because I have to wait on Nightingale, Troubadour, and Marcato recasts.

That is the other thing when those are up one VW mob it is play 4 songs once ( 2 melee and 2 for mage) sometimes it is just 2 like hug blob thing then i can just spam Threnodies for about 7 minutes.

[Karbuncle]

Meh... I still don't get it,

Most don't friend.


I mean we either are happy we can hit 99 in hours, and pissed we can't skill as quickly.

Or, we'd be pissed that the grind to 99 was insane, and happy our skills stayed fairly close to where they should be for our levels.

Cause Being able to hit 99, and Skill up in less than 3 weeks would be Blasphemous.


In either case we are happier than we would be otherwise, I don't think I'd play as much as I do if everything was just ... simple and lacked any time, effort or whatever... pathetic.. sure but still it's why alot of us play, to keep up with the jones's yeah? and it wasn't ever the destination no? but the Journey?

This is where its "To each his own". I prefer the Journey to be doing content with friends, being useful, and having fun. Not sitting in An abyssea zone, alone, spamming Bloodpacts on a bunch of fodder mobs hoping to see a 0.1 fly by.

I've never thought of skilling up as exciting content to keep me playing, only a mindless grind. But, As i opened with, This is where its "To each his own"...

I don't mind having to skill up, It just shouldn't be so very drawn out. I actually get to play SMN every so often, VW, and ADL, And i've been 99 SMN since the cap... Yet my skill still sits a little under 400, Which is well from cap. I spam BP's at those events like no ones ever seen, and I'll be lucky to see a 0.1 in all 6 VW fights, Or even in the entirety of the 2 hours at ADL.

It. Is. Ridiculous.


So yeah.. skilling sucks but it's better than being handed a 99 smn and feeling no accomplishment for it?

You're already handed a 99 SMN in most cases, With how quick Exp Is. I felt accomplished at 75 with a Maat's cap, Before Abyssea exp, That accomplishment? Dead now. I don't walk around like SE p*ssed in my cheerios either. IN the same light, I feel Skilling up Defensive/Non-Offensive Magics should be greatly adjusted and to split with people who did it the old way.

They can sit in linkshell babbling about the old days of HNM and how they had to walk to Dragon's Aery up hill both ways to camp Fafnir and skilled up their Guard on Behemoth.


(my test failed misserablly I got on smn @ 20 chilled with the wife, seen modest skill ups (every other blood pact thingy)... we Hooked up with a dude in the dunes, made our way to gusen and after that I started rambling on and on about leveling in aby... vs trying to get to 99 the ancient way to our new buddy. or something like that. so I did see some skill ups, and they came alot quicker than they used to so yeah.... I'm not seeing the grip.)

Skilling up under 200 skill is so easy a trained monkey could do it, 200+, or more specifically 250~ or so is where it begins to get really bad. Come back when you get there.

[Rambus]

Said that ^ only she said it better so i am just saying I hit like for the post and agree to it.

funny how she said around 250 and i said around 280 for my brd skills. I know it is not the same though as brd is a bit easier because of being able cast more for no mp but the rates still feel dead after that point.

But ya I had maaaats cap befor abyssea yada yada agreeing with how abyssea is hand me exp where before there was more commutation and meeting people not this chronic afk thing... ect etc just say agree ^

[Camiie]

Meh... I still don't get it,

I mean we either are happy we can hit 99 in hours, and pissed we can't skill as quickly.

Even when XP was much harder to come by, Summoning Magic skillups never even remotely kept up with XP gain. It's always been a problem and it's never been addressed. It's just much more pronounced now. You can work your fingers to the bone and still not see appreciable progress. When people are putting forth time and effort to skillup and still not getting anywhere, that's a problem.

[Arcon]

I know it is not the same though as brd is a bit easier because of being able cast more for no mp but the rates still feel dead after that point.

BRD can cast on NPCs and thus get massively faster skill-ups. Casting on NPCs gives substantially faster skill-up rates. See everything I said in my last two posts. SMN can use BPs on NPCs, but that only works twice in 45 seconds (if you're lucky), while BRD can do it indefinitely every 4 seconds or so.


But ya I had maaaats cap befor abyssea yada yada agreeing with how abyssea is hand me exp where before there was more commutation and meeting people not this chronic afk thing... ect etc just say agree ^

Only they never said that. It seems you didn't quite understand what they meant in the first place.

[Rambus]

really?

You're already handed a 99 SMN in most cases, With how quick Exp Is. I felt accomplished at 75 with a Maat's cap, Before Abyssea exp, That accomplishment? Dead now. I don't walk around like SE p*ssed in my cheerios either. IN the same light, I feel Skilling up Defensive/Non-Offensive Magics should be greatly adjusted and to split with people who did it the old way.
and I did the same^

anyways can you please tell me how brd casts on npcs? or where is your lieing proof that brd is easy past 280? because this is the start of week 4 of spaming Threnodies on NMs and not capped in anything yet.

[Arcon]

really?

and I did the same^

You even quoted and bolded the very same part that's different to what you said:

I don't walk around like SE p*ssed in my cheerios either. IN the same light, I feel Skilling up Defensive/Non-Offensive Magics should be greatly adjusted and to split with people who did it the old way.

You do walk around as if SE pissed in your cheerios.


anyways can you please tell me how brd casts on npcs?

Why should I tell you? You answered it yourself one sentence later:

because this is the start of week 4 of spaming Threnodies on NMs and not capped in anything yet.

A NM is an NPC. NPC means non-player character. So anything that isn't another real player is an NPC. I didn't say mobs, because magic is more effective when cast on any NPC. For example, casting buffs on Besieged generals will give higher skill-up rates than casting buffs on PCs (other players or yourself).


or where is your lieing proof that brd is easy past 280?

I said I'll post it when I do it. I'm not going out of my way and adjust my schedule to prove something to some random guy on the forums whose rants don't show any signs of an open mind.

[Rambus]

Well I do not know if this is a modern slang but when I quit NPCs where those people that help you fight, like the campaign battle tarutarus. "A SCH can AOE protect on NPCs" and so on


You do walk around as if SE pissed in your cheerios.

that is your view on me because you do not like me calling you a lier. always funny seeing 'elite' people lie vs real experience.

just because in your little world playing for 72 hours straight to skill up something to cap is reasonable does not mean it is reasonable for others.

Like I said before to your first comment abyssea worms to cap was not cutting it, i tried that and got 60 merits in the process. (I accepted a 'party' twice just for the sake of skilling) I think i even stayed the first one even though i had 30/30 and 9999 points because exp is handed to you these days lol.

I give Troubadour and nightingale buffs then found a worm no one was killing and spam Threnodies. Was that too hard of a concept to understand? that i just did not just sit there and spam Threnodies solo? I did it while getting exp? I guess i tried to skill up wrong because i did not do it during a new moon *rolls eyes*

[Arcon]

that is your view on me because you do not like me calling you a lier. always funny seeing 'elite' people lie vs real experience.

So my experience wasn't real? I imagined capping BRD skills on two characters and Enhancing Magic on three? And what makes you think I'm elite. I'm not the one who bragged how proud I am of my Maat's Cap and that EXP these days is worthless. That is elitist talk right there.


just because in your little world playing for 72 hours straight to skill up something to cap is reasonable does not mean it is reasonable for others.

It's not, which is why I'm posting in this thread in the first place. Because if I was alright with it, I wouldn't be complaining about Summoning Magic taking that long. I'm posting because I noticed Summoning Magic takes a lot longer than most other skills, and that seemed unreasonable to me. I don't think we're on a different page about this, the only difference is that my experience about BRD songs contradicts yours. And I dare to say that my experience is not a lucky streak, because I have a solid theory for it (which is widely accepted, even within this thread) as well as extensive evidence supporting it.

[Rambus]

So my experience wasn't real? I imagined capping BRD skills on two characters and Enhancing Magic on three? And what makes you think I'm elite. I'm not the one who bragged how proud I am of my Maat's Cap and that EXP these days is worthless. That is elitist talk right there.

The bold, what? I hate your type that tries to show off by twisting other words around and troll people, same with your lieing experience. "Oh skill gains are fine because I play 72 hours straight doing it" "I am better then you cuz i did something that takes you weeks to do" < that is what you did and it is elitist.

where is the video you said you would show?

[Mirage]

Both agree skillups are too slow, arcon's experience is that brd is much faster than summoning, and can be capped more easily because you can spam songs much faster and on targets that will not fight back, while summoner cannot do this nearly as fast. I find this likely to be true, so can't be just leave this argument alone now?

And the pissing in cheerios comment wasn't even directed at you, Rambus. Calm down.

Anyway, please keep the thread as clean as possible, wouldn't want it closed because it turned into a huge fight about which skill levels how fast.

[Rambus]

I did say it was faster then smn skill long ago but I also said it was still slower then reasonable (past 280).

then he started arguing with me like it was ok because he can do it in 3 days by playing 72 hours stright and claim he has a video, then he said i was showing off just because I sad 'maats cap'

If he did not start with me none of this would been an issue

[Okipuit]

Greetings,

We understand that a some of the posters feel that raising your summoning skill feels slow while others feel that the rate is not too bad. We brought your feedback to the Development Team to receive some insight as to how they feel about this system's current state. The team informed us that the rate at which skills increase when using offensive blood pacts against enemies was set high to compensate for how often they can be used. Due to this, they aren't currently planning to make any changes to the rate of skill ups.

[Rambus]

I think you are misunderstanding, we where talking about other magic skills and how they compare to Summoning skill.

Thanks for the comment but the skill up rate is too slow. For level 75 back in 2007 it fits, now with how the game is the slow skill up gain makes no sense.

If you are going to keep the skill up gain as it was at 75 can we have the 10k exp per hour back? Along with 2 hours to kill any high end NM?

[Byrth]

I can cap any weapon skill in an hour using Counterstance, Retaliation, and Mandies. I can cap any Defensive Skill in about ~2 hours now thanks to the Guard/Parrying update.

Magic Skills in general have lagged behind, but Summoner is particularly bad. I got 1~2 skill levels every 6 VWNMs BPing at max speed and using Ramuh so both of my BPs could target the monster. At this rate (assuming 1.5 skill levels per 6 VWNMs average), it would take 600 VWNMs to go from the 75 to 99 cap. Assuming 30 minutes per set of 6 VWNMs, it would take 50 hours to do that.

600 Voidstones and 50 RL hours to cap a skill vs. 1~2 hours for melee skills is a little bit of a huge difference, especially considering what a minor benefit having capped Summoning Magic Skill gives in the first place. Could you guys please reconsider?

[Zubis]

You're skilling up fighting NMs >.>

I easily capped my SMN skill in Abyssea parties going from 75 to 99.

[Waldrich]

Greetings,

We understand that a some of the posters feel that raising your summoning skill feels slow while others feel that the rate is not too bad. We brought your feedback to the Development Team to receive some insight as to how they feel about this system's current state. The team informed us that the rate at which skills increase when using offensive blood pacts against enemies was set high to compensate for how often they can be used. Due to this, they aren't currently planning to make any changes to the rate of skill ups.

SE: We don't care enough.

[Rambus]

You're skilling up fighting NMs >.>

I easily capped my SMN skill in Abyssea parties going from 75 to 99.

this is why i brought up brd. how is this possible when .x point is after like 8-16 Threnodies? It feels like they are not high enough level because 1-280 i was getting something every 1-3 songs, after 280 that concept died turning a .x after 8-16 songs on NMs, abyssea is nearly non-existent.

[Sp1cyryan]

You're skilling up fighting NMs >.>

I easily capped my SMN skill in Abyssea parties going from 75 to 99.

Must have had some slow abyssea PTs.

[Arcon]

"Oh skill gains are fine because I play 72 hours straight doing it"

Liar. I said the exact opposite to that the last time you accused me of this bullshit:


just because in your little world playing for 72 hours straight to skill up something to cap is reasonable does not mean it is reasonable for others.

It's not, which is why I'm posting in this thread in the first place. Because if I was alright with it, I wouldn't be complaining about Summoning Magic taking that long.

I said it takes "a few hours" and by that I mean less than 10. I don't know exactly, because I didn't time it exactly, but I had it done in a day of playing (not a 24 hour day).


"I am better then you cuz i did something that takes you weeks to do" < that is what you did and it is elitist.

Liar. Again. I also never said that, and even if I did it faster it does not make me better, because there is no real skill involved in skilling up, it's just spamming magic. This has nothing to do with elitism. This is you having the IQ of a fruit fly and not being able to understand what I'm saying.


where is the video you said you would show?

Just like the other two things, I also answered that in my last post. I said I'll post it when I do it. I cannot post it before then. Do I have to explain why, or is your brain slowly absorbing the logic behind that?


You're skilling up fighting NMs >.>

I easily capped my SMN skill in Abyssea parties going from 75 to 99.

I'll bet you all the gil I have that that's a lie. The only way to do that would be soloing from 75 to 99 and using nothing but BPs to do damage, which would take you about two months, which is an unreasonable amount of time as well, and not an indication of things working the way they should.

[Rambus]

Must have had some slow abyssea PTs.

more like curse word ___ slow because now that i think about it I do not think I ever capped anything off one trip to abysse and I had everything capped at 75 (expect minor skills in weapons for the time, I/E club, staff, GS)

The closest thing I have capped for 99 is blu in sword and blue magic skill because I used blu a lot at level cap 85 and level cap 90 for abyssea farming. Even after farming and meriting I do not think that was even capped lol. (Was high though like close to cap but not quite since im 400+ in both things) Note that I did not go out of my way just to skill those (I/E doing w/e to help kill faster)

For Main skills skilling should not be a chore, it should come naturally while exping while doing some events on the side. I was not cap in smn skill in the day but I was close and after i got relic +1 SMN mitts it became cap shortly after that even though SMN was not my main thing to be (However at 75 I played it a lot more before caps since it was abyssea > BLU and WAR, with a side of SAM to now BRD)

To the other guy, they told us to stop arguing so i am. All I am going to say is even 8 hours of nothing but skilling up for 3 days IS UNRELEASABLE. If you can sit and play a game for longer then 4 hours a day it means no life. (8 work, 8 sleep, 8 game hours is no life lol I have no idea why or how 'few' means 'only' less then 10 hours a day.)

[Mirage]

Greetings,

We understand that a some of the posters feel that raising your summoning skill feels slow while others feel that the rate is not too bad. We brought your feedback to the Development Team to receive some insight as to how they feel about this system's current state. The team informed us that the rate at which skills increase when using offensive blood pacts against enemies was set high to compensate for how often they can be used. Due to this, they aren't currently planning to make any changes to the rate of skill ups.

No, I would not say that it is simply "some" that feel one way,and "some" that feel the other way. To be more precise, it's more like 95% of the posters feel that it is too slow, while a very very small minority feels that it is not to bad, probably because they already have the skill capped the "slow way" and don't want to see newbies cap it faster than when they did it. When forwarding our concerns to the developers, I hope you let them know the very big difference in number of agreeing players compared to disagreeing players. I also hope you forwarded the strong, logical arguments of the players in the process.

I am sorry, but I really can not understand why the same people that increased parrying skill-up rates over 20 times would not consider increasing summoning skill up rate a measly 2-3 times. It simply does not make any sense to me. It feels as if the developers have never actually tested out how slow certain skills level up in pratice, only through looking at the numbers in their code.

I suggest that one of the developers create a warrior, put it at 250 axe skill, then try to skill it up to 350, utilizing dual wielding and the appropriate targets for skilling up that level of skill. After that, I suggest that the same developer create a summoner, give it 250 summoning skill, then attempt to skill this up to 350.

I apologize on beforehand for psychological trauma this developer might develop.

[Hashmalum]

Greetings,

We understand that a some of the posters feel that raising your summoning skill feels slow while others feel that the rate is not too bad. We brought your feedback to the Development Team to receive some insight as to how they feel about this system's current state. The team informed us that the rate at which skills increase when using offensive blood pacts against enemies was set high to compensate for how often they can be used. Due to this, they aren't currently planning to make any changes to the rate of skill ups.Okipuit, I hope that you didn't report to the dev team that "some of the posters feel that raising your summoning skill feels slow while others feel that the rate is not too bad", because that's deeply misleading. It makes it sound like a 50/50 or similar sort of deal rather nearly two dozen on one hand versus a couple of people who can't even advance a meaningful and coherent argument on the other.

[Mirage]

I also do not like the word "feel", when there isn't so much feeling involved, but instead hard statistics.

Just line up all combat and magic skills and look at maximum skill-up rate per X amount of time. It is impossible to not notice that a few of these skills will have a vastly lower amount of skill gained per hour than others, and these skills are summoning and enhancing.

Therefore, it is not a feeling, it is a fact.

[Camiie]

You're skilling up fighting NMs >.>

I easily capped my SMN skill in Abyssea parties going from 75 to 99.

No you didn't.


Greetings,

We understand that a some of the posters feel that raising your summoning skill feels slow while others feel that the rate is not too bad. We brought your feedback to the Development Team to receive some insight as to how they feel about this system's current state. The team informed us that the rate at which skills increase when using offensive blood pacts against enemies was set high to compensate for how often they can be used. Due to this, they aren't currently planning to make any changes to the rate of skill ups.

I never saw this supposed "high" rate of skillups against enemies. They may think they set it high, but it doesn't seem to be showing in actual gameplay.

[Abbylu]

Greetings,

We understand that a some of the posters feel that raising your summoning skill feels slow while others feel that the rate is not too bad. We brought your feedback to the Development Team to receive some insight as to how they feel about this system's current state. The team informed us that the rate at which skills increase when using offensive blood pacts against enemies was set high to compensate for how often they can be used. Due to this, they aren't currently planning to make any changes to the rate of skill ups.

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".

[Mirage]

But of course, we'll never get another reply addressing our concerns about the first reply. This thread is probably tagged as "solved, do not reply again" by SE now.

[Vold]

Greetings,

We understand that a some of the posters feel that raising your summoning skill feels slow while others feel that the rate is not too bad. We brought your feedback to the Development Team to receive some insight as to how they feel about this system's current state. The team informed us that the rate at which skills increase when using offensive blood pacts against enemies was set high to compensate for how often they can be used. Due to this, they aren't currently planning to make any changes to the rate of skill ups.Oki I am going to give the dev team the benefit of the doubt on this one and say they feel they are speaking 100% truth.

But I'm here to inform you to inform them that there's an error in their coding because in practice that's damn wrong. I suggest they or one of you reps spend a measly half a hour trying to skill up a character using BP only. If they come out of it feeling it's working as intended, well, that's all I can ask for but the RNG happened to be heavily HEAVILY in their favor during that 30 minutes >.>;

You got freebie tester help 24 hours a day. Hell you got freebie tester help PAYING you 24 hours a day. I strongly suggest you take advantage of that more often than rarely.

You know what I want to see for that next magical Job Adjustment stage? Old everything being fixed, rather than a slew of new crap. Because every new thing you add is another current and future priority over fixing the older problems.

[Daniel]

I play SMN in legion and my LS does about 10 runs per week. I get about 1 skill up a week spamming Shock Squall and offensive BPs on the high level mobs found in legion. Yup definitely where summoning skill should be at, at this rate I might hit cap before my job is useless again. >_> Looking at you PD nerf

[Mirage]

Yeah, if it is true what the dev team says about skillup rates being higher for smn, maybe we'd be better off filing bug reports. What if we all posted one in sync? That would be cool.

[Okipuit]

Hello,

Thanks for the additional feedback. I've collected your comments and have passed it along and if we get any more information I'll be sure to let you all know.

[Mirage]

That's nice to hear. Thank you, Okipuit. No hard feelings, I know you are just the messenger :).

And I am sorry for the frustration expressed in my post at the bottom of the previous page. I don't usually like being wrong, but in this case I am glad I was.

[Sp1cyryan]

But of course, we'll never get another reply addressing our concerns about the first reply. This thread is probably tagged as "solved, do not reply again" by SE now.

Yet the thread got replied to after this. XD

They did it just to spite your instant negativity!

[Mifaco]

As someone who leveled their SMN skill from 230 to the level 99 max over the course of a few months, allow me to give some perspective.

It takes approximately 96 hours of doing absolutely NOTHING but summoning in absolutely perfect conditions
That means:
-Constantly summoning and releasing, minding the timers
-Siphoning when MP is low
-Constantly doing BPs, keeping track of both timers
-Casting Refresh on yourself and converting
for a full 96 hours.

Is this what the Dev team really wants?
Don't forget your family, friends, school, etc. but put timesinks like this in the game? No wonder some people are quitting.

[Mirage]

Yet the thread got replied to after this. XD

They did it just to spite your instant negativity!

That was my plan all along!

[Sp1cyryan]

That was my plan all along!

So genius, it might just, work.

[Rambus]

Okipuit, I hope that you didn't report to the dev team that "some of the posters feel that raising your summoning skill feels slow while others feel that the rate is not too bad", because that's deeply misleading. It makes it sound like a 50/50 or similar sort of deal rather nearly two dozen on one hand versus a couple of people who can't even advance a meaningful and coherent argument on the other.


Oki I am going to give the dev team the benefit of the doubt on this one and say they feel they are speaking 100% truth.

But I'm here to inform you to inform them that there's an error in their coding because in practice that's damn wrong. I suggest they or one of you reps spend a measly half a hour trying to skill up a character using BP only. If they come out of it feeling it's working as intended, well, that's all I can ask for but the RNG happened to be heavily HEAVILY in their favor during that 30 minutes >.>;

You got freebie tester help 24 hours a day. Hell you got freebie tester help PAYING you 24 hours a day. I strongly suggest you take advantage of that more often than rarely.

You know what I want to see for that next magical Job Adjustment stage? Old everything being fixed, rather than a slew of new crap. Because every new thing you add is another current and future priority over fixing the older problems.

^ this and that, hit like for both posts. Yeah I posted earlier saying how that was misleading.


Hello,

Thanks for the additional feedback. I've collected your comments and have passed it along and if we get any more information I'll be sure to let you all know.

Is there any words about other skills? Thanks for re-replying

[Lilia]

I rly dont know why you go fight vwnm for skillup, for me the best place is solo the abyss dolls.

Last time skillup from lvl95> 99, was round 30 min. for new cap.
all ~5 bp a 0,1~0,5
or fight hedjetjet all~2 bps as 0,1~0,5

[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.

[Xilk]

I have found the following guide to be very effective for skill ups. The goal is too find targets approximately 7 to 9 levels above your current skill level. skills grow best when keeping in this range.
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Skill_Ups:_A_Guide_by_Kyrial

[Sp1cyryan]

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.

This is like calling a helpline for a computer hardware issue and being asked if you have "turned it off and then on again" after already being on the phone for 20 minutes with the person.

Summoning skill ups are slower than other skill ups in this game and pretty much unbalanced in the face of how anything else in this game skills up faster. It is that simple, and since it has been made clear the Dev team does not wish to change that. Then why not just lock the thread so people stop asking?

[Nawesemo]

Because its entertaining , while unable to play, working to pay for my real "job"? Dont lock the thread! /sarcasm

[Puck]

------------------
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" :)

You should bump that thread or re-post it if bumping isn't possible. It's been, what, over a year since it was active? It's worth another go.

[Camiie]

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 would attempt to skill on anything and everything from EP-IT and not at all in Legion. It simply didn't matter. The skills came at a very low rate against everything. It doesn't help that we can only BP: Rage once every 45 seconds at best. I realize we get skills from summoning and BP: Ward as well, but as stated those proc at an even lower rate than BP: Rage. Increasing the rate at which those can proc skillups would help.

[Babekeke]

I would attempt to skill on anything and everything from EP-IT and not at all in Legion. It simply didn't matter. The skills came at a very low rate against everything. It doesn't help that we can only BP: Rage once every 45 seconds at best. I realize we get skills from summoning and BP: Ward as well, but as stated those proc at an even lower rate than BP: Rage. Increasing the rate at which those can proc skillups would help.

Offensive BP wards proc at thesame rate as bp rage. eg. shock squall, somnolence, diamond storm, sleepga, slowga etc.

[Camiie]

Offensive BP wards proc at thesame rate as bp rage. eg. shock squall, somnolence, diamond storm, sleepga, slowga etc.

Yeah, that's true. It'd be nice if buff-type Wards would get a higher rate though.

[Luvbunny]

Well they just delivered another bad news for summoners everywhere with the recent "adjustment" to Perfect Defense. And conveniently NOT doing anything to this thread when we are asking that skills up to be improved at faster rate.

[Babekeke]

Well they just delivered another bad news for summoners everywhere with the recent "adjustment" to Perfect Defense. And conveniently NOT doing anything to this thread when we are asking that skills up to be improved at faster rate.

I was just coming in to say the same thing. I'm currently stuck around the ~420 mark with gear (about 350 without) and I was capped at 75 and didn't leech a single level of SMN ><

Leaves me with a 51 second PD

[Herby]

I was just coming in to say the same thing. I'm currently stuck around the ~420 mark with gear (about 350 without) and I was capped at 75 and didn't leech a single level of SMN ><

Leaves me with a 51 second PD


Funniest thing about this is, they set the cap for PD @ 600 skill. I know of no legit way to get SMN skill that high!
I'm @517 skill and there's not much room for a higher number with gear.

Nice way to troll SMN even harder after the cait sith delay...

[Karbuncle]

They didn't set the cap at 600, They just used it as an Example.

(The JP Side had a follow up, We'll see it soon).

[Herby]

They didn't set the cap at 600, They just used it as an Example.

(The JP Side had a follow up, We'll see it soon).

Well that's at least SOMETHING, though they should consider their wording better, before posting something like this then.

I can't read Japanese and the english wording doesn't sound like this was an example.

[Babekeke]

They didn't set the cap at 600, They just used it as an Example.

(The JP Side had a follow up, We'll see it soon).


First, there is a question about the cap on summoning skill being 600 being a mistake; however, this is the correct number. While it might not be currently possible to reach this number, the development team set the cap to 600, so consider that there may be room to increase this in the future.

IDK, I think this follow-up is pretty clear.

[Karbuncle]

Except that Follow up was mentioned after My post by some significant margin, and was not worded as such in the JP post...

Regardless, Its still rather troubling, Even at pure best, Its a 30 Second less duration than Pre Nerf. Though, I expected something like this. I'd say I was happy they didn't touch the potency, But with the Decay set as is, the Potency is technically nerfed too.

It'll still be a vastly useful ability, Will just need to be more properly utilized and require capped or near such summoning Magic.

[Mirage]

So, how many are going to cap azure, pearl, then rely on spamming the new Special for skillups?

[Mystier]

Random Question. May not even be the right place for it. But noticed talk about smn skill now effecting the duration of PD.

Personally i'm sitting at 528 Skill. So should put me at almost 56 Second Duration.

Here's my Question. The Relic AF Horn that's fully augmented gives additional bonus time to Astral Flow. With the idea of allowing for another Special BP during it's Duration.

So, will it affect PD's timer in any way if it's equiped when summoning Alex?

May lose some skill in your goal for max potency, but extending the "Special BP/Allowing Additional Benefits" of Astral Flow seems fair to me.

If not affecting PD, will the Relic Horn effect the new "2 Hour Ability" Since originally they were going to be an either or I'm assuming that the bonus on the horn would eventually affect either choice.

Guess that brings up an interesteing question for alot of the jobs and special Relic Augmented +2s.

[Infidi]

Naw, I highly doubt it will effect PD. It's to make the 2hr last longer so doubt it's gonna extend duration of PD.Once you use Alex it removes your 2hr effect.

[saevel]

Personally i'm sitting at 528 Skill. So should put me at almost 56 Second Duration.

From my understanding on the test server it's much worse then that. It's 30s of invulnerability that then wears off for the rest of the duration (24s in your case). This means that even with some as-of-yet-reachable 600 skill, your still only at 30s of immunity to the NM annihilation moves. After that you reach an ever increasing chance of dieing en-mass. Makes ADL a 50% win rate due to it wearing once you kill the first clone, and makes other events VERY sketchy at best. We're back to stun locking things and hoping that SE doesn't re-introduce stun resistance rapidly building mobs.

[pim-ptarutaru]

without gear/merits im @ 335 skill with gear/merits im at 424 Takes forever to freakin lv this damn skill up! been playing smn for a long time now lol. They really need to change the rate on skill ups for smn magic

[Trumpy]

I havent actually used my summoner in a while but i appear to be 34 skill levels behind. i have 399 naked with full merits. I am pretty sure i was capped at 95, and most of that was just from me soloing Iron Giants in abyssea via summoning but more often pacts.

Someone near the beginning of this thread said it was difficult as enhancign magic skillups and one good place was in gustav vs turtles and worms. in which someone said it wasnt working for them. What im curious about is... I was attempting to level my pld (with my whm mule) in gustav and try for the skillup earring from the caskets there. i was doind a crab goblin and skeleton page and i got several levels of skillup prowess. So since i had the skillup prowess i decided to try and see if i could cap enhancing while i was there on my whm who had pretty low skills. i ended up cappin pretty fast. Then i moved on to healing jsut curing myself over and over and it also capped fast. So did the person who tried cappin summonin magic there also get the prowess for skillups?