Suggestions to increase the current state of Summoner for Lv.99

[Sargent]

This is gonna get ignored by SE, but still...

Don't usually post suggestions on the OF, but given the current state of Summoner the devs need nudging into giving it worthwhile adjustments into current Abilities.

Blood Pact delay
As I've maintained when I've posted on the subject as to what Summoner needs, it's a re-working of the Blood Pact delay. Way I see it, there are a few options.
Option 1: Straight decrease in Blood Pact delay.
Option 2: Remove the universal timer altogether and allow individual Blood Pacts to be subject to their own timer. Change Blood Pact delay gear to a variant of Fast Cast for Blood Pacts.
Option 3: Add a "stance" type ability that works like a kind of opposite to Avatar's Favor. Increases perpetuation for a reduction in Blood Pact delay. Like Fan/Saber Dance, have each ability overwrite each other.

Adjustments to current Blood Pacts
Older Blood Pact: Wards need adjusting. I've posted my opinions on another thread, but I'll it quote here.

Blood Pact Wards.... the newer stuff they've thought through, even if some of their effects are useless (Heavenward Howl anyone?). So, I think the following needs to be changed:
- Earthen Ward; damage formula atm is: (Lv x2)+50, meaning at Lv.99 your looking at 248 from Stoneskin, which is around 80 less than capped Stoneskin (ignoring Stoneskin gear) from the spell (which can be accessioned). Simple fix, change the formula to (Skill x 0.66), capping at 500 skill like everything else, that's at least equal to Stoneskin from other jobs.
- Noctoshield; Caps at 13 (not sure if there's any sort of Lv/skill modifier). Make it equal to around -25~-30 at Lv.99, make it affected by skill if you want, but my gimp RDM mule with 140 enhancing can pump out better Phalanxes than my Main's SMN with 536 skill.
- Fenrir Blood Pacts; For the love of god, remove the moon phase modifier. It makes the Blood Pacts unreliable, so people don't use them instead make them something like;
-- Ecliptic Growl; Currently +1~7 stats, just make it something like +5 to all stats
-- Ecliptic Howl; Currently +1~25 Acc/Eva. Making it +15 would put it on par with Blade Madrigal, with the bonus of Evasion (Madrigal still being better due to Song+ gear, Marcato and Soul Voice)
-- Heavenward Howl; We really don't care about Enaspir. Really. Just get rid of that and make it purely Endrain, duration/potency based on skill or something.
- Dream Shroud; MAB/MDB +1~10 based on time of day. compare it to Wizard's Roll, +2~12, not based on time of day (however, based partially on luck). Remove the day modifier, make it +7~10
- Curative Blood Pacts; At least add some sort of modifier (other than TP) that will increase their potency to around 600~700 at least at Lv.99. Making them more potent than Cure IV is excessive, but atm they're pretty tame considering with a subjob that grants access to Cure IV and the gear for it, you can pump out more potent Cures (even if the Blood Pacts are AoE). Remove the TP modifier period.
In addition:
- Introduce a high level piercing Blood Pact. Cait Sith is a good opportunity to do this.
- Introduce a wave of Lv.99 Blood Pact: Rages. Where current Blood Pacts deal sufficient damage in terms of Damage per pact, I'm sure most Summoners would agree that we would like some diversity since we've been using the same damage pacts as we were at 75.
- This is something that Summoner surely needs in order to increase the effectiveness of enfeebling pacts: Add a message in the chat log when any debuffs inflicted by the avatar wear off.

Elemental Spirits
As it stands, Elemental Spirits are pretty useless besides LightSpirit for Cures/Buffs. My only suggestion on this would be;
- Add an ability on a Universal timer (like BP:R/BP:W) to allow to the Summoner to force the spirit to instant cast a spell from the spirit's spell list. The spell will cost the same amount as the spell from any other job, and ignore the spellcasting timer for spirits. This will allow for a little control as to what the spirits cast, as well as give Summoner's a few emergency proc spells.

[Mokeil]

I don't think we'll get an actual acknowledgment, either, but a part of me still holds on to hope. If we can get one solid location for all our hopes and ideas it might get a bit more notice, so here goes...

I said it in another thread and I'll go ahead and say it here: I wholeheartedly second the need for changes to the potency of older Wards, and for a change in our BP delay timer. From where I stand, these are the two biggest things holding back Summoner. There are other little things, yes, but these are the two biggest.

For Wards: Anyone subbing Scholar (even, say, a Thief) can give a better AoE Stoneskin and Blink than I can provide from my main job. Both RDM/SCH and SCH/RDM can give an AoE Phalanx (Accession MP Cost: 42) that easily knocks off over 30 damage, but Noctoshield (MP Cost: 92) is stuck at only 13 damage negated. This is not right. We need a potency boost.

For BP Delay: Let's face it, melees have gotten faster than ever these days. Thanks to all the haste and Store TP options out there, it is not hard for them to bust out a solid Weapon Skill at least every 30 seconds. And yet we're stuck back at 45. Cut back on the restriction to -BP delay, allowing us to hit -30 seconds, and suddenly our damage will start to shoot back up to respectable levels. We'll still be outclassed at overall DoT, but our spike damage will be on par with everyone else. Easing up on the -BP delay will also allow us to offer both buffing support and curing support a little easier, too.

Goodness knows, it might also have us actually switching avatars more often, helping to justify that recent, oh-so-awesome change to Avatar recast.

Our Spirits could use some love, too. Until Elemental Siphon came along, I only ever used these as emergency monster distraction devices. Now, they're just disposable batteries. A change to their AI and an ability to choose a spell off of their list to force-ably cast might do the trick.

Avatar's Favor is just loaded with problems. A good place to start looking to make it more usable is to remove the aura potency reset that happens when you use a Blood Pact. I understood that the trade off for the aura was a decrease in damage, but to then set it so that trying to do anything resets the aura? Really now, SE, we might start to get the idea that you all just don't like us at this rate.

There are a couple of other things, but anything else is just nitpicking small stuff. Not that they don't need looking at, but I consider Wards and BP delay the most important, with Spirits and Favor right behind them.

[Annalise]

I think your option #2 will be flat out denied because of how SE has said JA timers work in the past. This is why on many jobs, new JAs share timers. There apparently isn't the room to account for all the separate JAs and that's why they are shared.

SMN, through bloodpacts, has two JA timers. One for Rage, one for Ward. They would have to completely rework things to be able to separate all bloodpact timers.

Not to say I wouldn't love separate timers, because I would. Yet this is why they would not.

[Mirage]

They could just separate magical and physical abilities as a workaround. That would just lead to one, maybe two additional pet commands.

[Areayea]

I'm glad the split it up into two pacts, for that reason of having to wait a whole minute, but that's just me coming from the PS2 release with smn main most my ffxi career. However, I completely agree the new bps to lvl 99 are worthless, they should have given us better options, and smn used to be more about mp, but now with MM and actually useful gear (remember austere... only like 1 or 2 ava perp-), I think it's safe to say now we are more concerned about the blood pacts. WHY SE WHY DID YOU GIVE US AN ENASPIR... and most of the up to 99 bps are pretty much wards, why didn't we get any rages.

[Sargent]

However, I completely agree the new bps to lvl 99 are worthless
To be fair to them, the Lv.82~92 Wards are useful. Even Soothing Ruby is useful as a sort of Esuna+1. 95+ pacts are incredibly bad, however.


most of the up to 99 bps are pretty much wards, why didn't we get any rages.
We got 3 rages. They had the damage equivilant to Lv.65 Blood Pact Rages. The point is our damage source now is exactly the same as it was at 75. Same speed too, the only thing that's increased since is the damage per pact. While Summoner was never a replacement for a DD, it was still capable of fairly decent DoT in comparison at 75 and now it isn't.

[Areayea]

To be fair to them, the Lv.82~92 Wards are useful. Even Soothing Ruby is useful as a sort of Esuna+1. 95+ pacts are incredibly bad, however.


We got 3 rages. They had the damage equivilant to Lv.65 Blood Pact Rages. The point is our damage source now is exactly the same as it was at 75. Same speed too, the only thing that's increased since is the damage per pact. While Summoner was never a replacement for a DD, it was still capable of fairly decent DoT in comparison at 75 and now it isn't.


eh true, that's just how useless they were >.> I forgot what they did, but yes the soothing ruby was a good one, and then again they did give us Alex... but now they're gimping him, and before fell cleave, Odin was the way to go

[Elphy]

They first need to remove the -15 cap on bp gear delay, my standard gear set has over -15 and it bothers me I went through all the work to get the perpet/bp timer staffs and the 2 staffs Im missing are not even needed since I up'd my gear. If I wouldnt have put so much work into them I would /toss them and get a chat staff. But my luck is then they would come out with another trial that would give them a worthwhile trait and I would have to redo them all.

They also need to make smn magic skill worthwhile. I hate that my capped/merited and geared 500+ smn magic skill does the same dmg as my roomies who burned his up and is sitting at 100 skill.

A reduction in BP timers would be wonderful 45 seconds is way too long considering the low damage output. I do not forsee SE doing anything about it tho

[Mokeil]

To be fair to them, the Lv.82~92 Wards are useful. Even Soothing Ruby is useful as a sort of Esuna+1. 95+ pacts are incredibly bad, however

With that blasted 45 second timer we have, its a pain to choose between which type of support we give - status removal or HP restoration. Soothing Ruby does one; Spring Water does both. Guess which one gets more use from me? :p



Now, Inferno Howl and Fleet Wind on the other hand... Those have easily become two of my favorite Wards to use. Its just a shame they ruined the trend of decent Wards by having the last two be an unreliable Samba and a targeted Dispel (because Altana knows I've never seen it land death, even it you manage to get the blasted mob to sleep first).

[Arcon]

They also need to make smn magic skill worthwhile. I hate that my capped/merited and geared 500+ smn magic skill does the same dmg as my roomies who burned his up and is sitting at 100 skill.

Accuracy is very much worthwhile. A 100 skill SMN will not land a BP on any kind of relevant content. Although I still agree that a damage boost be very welcome, along with the BP delay cap adjustment.

[Annalise]

To anyone saying Fenrir's Lunar Bay is useless... If you have any of the merit bloodpacts with only one merit in it, it is exactly the same as Lunar Bay, just a different element. I think that's something to keep in mind. Merit pacts have the advantage of TP bonus through additional merits (and now Relic+2 augments of course). Lunar Bay pales in comparison to a 5/5 merit pact, but I wouldn't write it off as completely useless. If Fenrir had a strong physical pact, it would make Lunar Bay that much more useful as you could alternate them, and have high TP Lunar Bays. Holy Mist and Night Terror are pretty terrible, though.

And I will also second that the new wards are great. Inferno howl has some uses, especially with single handers in the final limit break fight. Tidal Road + Slowga + Spring Water helps Leviathan survive awhile solo (I used that in the Fervor Ring BCNM solo) but also helps with other stuff too. Who doesn't love fleet wind? Shock Squall is borderline brokenly good at times. Diamond Storm is decent, and especially useful if overwriting evasion bonus. And Earthen Armor is just awesome, especially when stacked successfully with Scherzo. Soothing Ruby is also awesome for things that do multiple debuffs at once. Fenrir and Diabolos pacts... not so good.


Accuracy is very much worthwhile. A 100 skill SMN will not land a BP on any kind of relevant content. Although I still agree that a damage boost be very welcome, along with the BP delay cap adjustment.

Be nice if they did something like 10-20 skill = +1% damage, capping at +25-50% damage at 500 skill. Blue magic skill raises base spell damage, why not make summoning skill do the same? We already have the "Increases Bloodpact Damage" on armor, can just make it a hidden effect of skill as well.

[Areayea]

Now, Inferno Howl and Fleet Wind on the other hand... Those have easily become two of my favorite Wards to use. Its just a shame they ruined the trend of decent Wards by having the last two be an unreliable Samba and a targeted Dispel (because Altana knows I've never seen it land death, even it you manage to get the blasted mob to sleep first).

Altana has been gracious to me I guess, I've landed death like 5 times... but that's it, it's not that great. LOVE the name tho, it's an actual Psychological problem :D

[Sargent]

Accuracy is very much worthwhile. A 100 skill SMN will not land a BP on any kind of relevant content. Although I still agree that a damage boost be very welcome, along with the BP delay cap adjustment.

Not entirely true. Your avatars gain exactly the same Acc/MAcc at a gimped skill as they would if they were exactly on cap. However, any skill over cap will grant an Accuracy and Magic Accuracy bonus. Source. (http://www.playonline.com/pcd/update/ff11us/20061017UJ0a71/detail.html)

[Annalise]

Not entirely true. Your avatars gain exactly the same Acc/MAcc at a gimped skill as they would if they were exactly on cap. However, any skill over cap will grant an Accuracy and Magic Accuracy bonus. Source. (http://www.playonline.com/pcd/update/ff11us/20061017UJ0a71/detail.html)

That's old. They changed that awhile ago and now it is directly ACC instead of cap. Believe it came around the time skill changed duration of wards as well.

[Arcon]

That's old. They changed that awhile ago and now it is directly ACC instead of cap. Believe it came around the time skill changed duration of wards as well.

What he said. Both Accuracy and Magic Accuracy give a boost for every skill point, I believe up until 500 Skill (because that's what where it caps for Wards), but the cap is hard to prove. However, I see no reason for it to not follow the Ward formula.

[Daydreamer]

In hopes that the Dev's give summoner back some of its power.

Mostly power that it had in final fantasy titles long since passed. Summoner has always been a powerful job with the downside of being made out of paper. I realize and I belive most of the community realizes the tactical advantage to the job. So when considering new content im sure the dev team always look's at the old and wore out "Lets toss 18 summoners at it" that tactic was abused in the first part of the game and im sure they dont want that to continue.

So with that being said. Let us have fun with summoner again ? Most fights have time limits to them now. they also have huge amounts of zerg potential. Many folks have no idea how to function outside of zerging things. The New SP2 that has been proposed is a wonderful idea for helping summoner be of a bit more use in certain fights. pet enmity issues still need to be fixed. These are the same issues which you recognized as not working properly.

Its been said by alot of players alot of times. So how about we do something about "AVATAR's LACK OF FAVOR"

The bonuses are bleh for the most part as it is minus ifrits 24% double atk bonus pretty sexy.
Dont remove the bonus when we use a "Pact" or "Ward" and Dont Limit the power of the Pact's simply because we have a limited range limited use bonus being handed out to those within its circle of use.

You gave teir5 spell's to elementals thats nice. Can you make them stop casting drown or shock 5 times before a substantial nuke? Perhaps give them some more debuffs of their element? Addle, attack down,?

Possibly a new JA to assist in this 10 min timer 3 mins of use (kinda the Berserk for summoners) "Elemental fury" or "Dual cast" opens up and allows you to call two elementals to your side. Both elementals gain the power of a real lvl 99 elemental. I.E. The huge fast cast bonuses, GA magics. Spells that regular players might not normally have, Stonega IV, they also focus on damage over debuff. The elementals can take 30% more dmg then normal to help increase the chances of them dying and needing to be resummond during use.

"Blood Pact Wards": I dont agree with these being set with the same delay as a regular "Blood pact Rage".

MP is always going to be a limiting factor to how fast any mage or how much any mage will be placing buffs on their team mates.

Everything the Elemental avatars dish out SHOULD be stronger then it would be from any other job Dependant on the summoner's magic skill. ( they are GODS essentailly loaning you some of their power to save your idea of reality the more skilled in accessing their power the stronger your damage and buffs should be. Perhaps up to the point that you are summoning the near full strength of the avatars.) TITAN shouldnt have the strongest stoneskin ? Im just kinda poking a little at some of the more obvious wards that need to be fixed. They all need some revision.

I realize fixing summoner wont mean more money. Focusing on Seeker's of adoulin means more money. So maybe with seekers you can fix our summoners please ? Pretty please ? Would love to see summoner rise from the Ashes *hint* *hint*. Summoner on staff mastery list "Yes Please" ( I shouldnt have to sub "White mage" to use those other staff abilities. White mage being a club user ?) you really cant cry balance on that. Black mage and summoner use staff's more then any other job.

Overall I love the Job It has had amazing potential for 10 years now. It is capable of all sorts of cool little things that make it a tactical job which is nice. While summoner's tricks are "nice" I would love for summoner to finally shine bright and whip out some serious power in final fantasy 11. Somewhere inside each of you Dev's I know there is a summoner just waiting to call upon "ARK" or "Eden" or perhaps push a Firey "Pheonix" on us. Balance as you must!! Perhaps special Blood Pact's will reset your BP timer to 5 MINS because of how damaging it is. Giving larger resistance to the Mobs after an initial BP of that type and element is used... Sound familiar (meteor?) .. There are ways to give summoner higher damage blood pacts. Then its just up to the players how they use them properly. MP consumption. BP timer limitations all the same stuff to shutter at. But perhaps 5k damage to make us smile from ear to ear.

[Umisame]

Remove 45 sec cap, all jobs can spam their WS or magic and we have to wait 45 sec.
We still use lvl 70 BP and sometimes lvl 75, we need good BP rage post 75.
Avatar's Favor should affect avatar too.
It could be great that pets(not only avatars) could get buffs like a party member, protect, minuet, etc.

Do something with smn because we need a good update to our job not just a new pet/2h.

[pim-ptarutaru]

lower the bloodpact delay down to 25 or 30 let me make use of my relic +2 5/5 and/or prep/delay staves... xD but SE hates smn so will never happen =/

[Dekusuta]

Kind of sad that the last big adjustment we got was in 2006 with the splititng of the BP timers and the addition of skill over cap bonus.

In light of Geomancer's sphere effects Summoners Avatar's Favour are even less relevant. Here's my suggestions

1. Avatars Favor - No more 'build up' phase. Give full buff on summon as long as stance is on. Also remove Favor losing tiers of buffs when Avatars BP.

Also, SE was able to get around the whole 'sphere only applies to everyone except the person with sphere' deal with Geommancers getting buffed by their own spheres. Can we get this fixed for our pets?

2. Avatars Rage(?) - As suggested earlier in this thread, add an opposing stance that increases Avatar attk/acc/magic attk/acc. and possibly unlocks new level 75+ damaging bloodpacts. It's very sad that at 99, our mainstay for damage is still lvl 75 meritable bloodpacts and physical pacts from pre-Abyssea era.

3. BP Timers - ? This may be a 'PS2 limitation' type issue. I'm glad though our new 1hr will essentally be a Chainspell style effect for summoners. But I frankly Don't think timers is the issue here. (see my next 2 points)

4. Avatar HP/Attk/Def/Melee Acc/Buffs/ - Seriously, this needs work. Yes, we have a few pieces of gear that enhances acc/attk, often sacrificing -perp or refresh ; but HP is the real issue. Even with -50% PDT, they die way too quickly with Adoulin content and the revised Attk/Def ratios for damage calculations.

Defense improvements - allow pro/shell on the summoner to copy over to Avatars in a Dragoon style way. Alternatively Avatar's Rage (the opposing stance to favour) should also give pets massive defensive bonus and bonus HP. (see next point)

At ~1600 HP at 99, it's just not enough. Avatar HP needs to be doubled at minimum to ~3,200. Still way below BST pet levels but an improvement.

5. Hate management& transfer - Why doesn't SMN have this? Avatars serve the summoner right? Summoners need a pet voke or a hate trasnfer to the Avatar. Also while on the subject, Mana Cede should be on a 1 minute timer and boost HP and TP. This can also double for a hate transfer mechanism. 200 HP/TP back every minute hardly is overpowered IMHO.

6. Elementals (do you need it?) - Why are we still stuck with incomplete spell lists and elemental AI that is roughly 100 times worse than what puppetmasters get?

Light elemental needs Cure VI, and -ra spells like Protectra/Shellea to buff parties. Casting timer should also be further reduced, perhaps in conjuction with the Favour/Rage stances. Light elemental could be a great buffer and backup healer if they could get the AI more inline with a healer puppet.

The other elementals need a DD buff along the lines of Tier V spells and Tier II ancient magic.

Conclusion:
Note none of these involve hairbrained new summons. Just fixing what SE has already given us.

[Luvbunny]

Summoner need some sort of "Snarl" command - now that they are adjusting enmity - which means your avatar is no longer able to hold hate and you need to stay so far away, or the mob will come and get you, for doing not much of anything. Until they fix the hate issue, we are dealing with far worse problem now.

[Sargent]

1. Avatars Favor - No more 'build up' phase. Give full buff on summon as long as stance is on. Also remove Favor losing tiers of buffs when Avatars BP.

Also, SE was able to get around the whole 'sphere only applies to everyone except the person with sphere' deal with Geommancers getting buffed by their own spheres. Can we get this fixed for our pets?
Definatly agree with the full effect of favor upon activation, this also removes the potency resetting upon using a Blood Pact. I doubt SE will extend Favor to the avatar, but that's just SE.


2. Avatars Rage(?) - As suggested earlier in this thread, add an opposing stance that increases Avatar attk/acc/magic attk/acc. and possibly unlocks new level 75+ damaging bloodpacts. It's very sad that at 99, our mainstay for damage is still lvl 75 meritable bloodpacts and physical pacts from pre-Abyssea era.
Agreed, hopefully see some sort of new Pacts with Group 3 merits. Always thought Diabolos should have Cacodemonia as well, even if it doesn't land on NMs.


3. BP Timers - ? This may be a 'PS2 limitation' type issue. I'm glad though our new 1hr will essentally be a Chainspell style effect for summoners. But I frankly Don't think timers is the issue here. (see my next 2 points)
I'm holding my breath on this since SE are working on extending the maximum amount of JA timers that can be active per job. That's the main drawback, and the reason Pacts are grouped as well as Waltzes, Steal/Despoil etc. I just hope SE realise that it won't be overpowered for Summoner, even if the indiviual recasts are longer than that of elemental spells to compensate for the hate-free aspect, it's still a big improvement. (Of course, the hate-free aspect is assuming the Pet Enmity issues will be addressed).


4. Avatar HP/Attk/Def/Melee Acc/Buffs/ - Seriously, this needs work. Yes, we have a few pieces of gear that enhances acc/attk, often sacrificing -perp or refresh ; but HP is the real issue. Even with -50% PDT, they die way too quickly with Adoulin content and the revised Attk/Def ratios for damage calculations.

Defense improvements - allow pro/shell on the summoner to copy over to Avatars in a Dragoon style way. Alternatively Avatar's Rage (the opposing stance to favour) should also give pets massive defensive bonus and bonus HP. (see next point)

At ~1600 HP at 99, it's just not enough. Avatar HP needs to be doubled at minimum to ~3,200. Still way below BST pet levels but an improvement.
In a way, it's not a massive issue, Avatars already have 50% PDT before applying Stout Servant. Saying that, they can be easily oneshotted by anything worth a damn that nukes. A minimum of 2k HP is needed with all the AoE spam in the game at the moment.
Melee damage is lulzy, and there's no real way to improve it. We have all this Pet:Atk gear which we can stack as much as we want for the ~40 seconds we wait on our Blood Pact timer and it does nothing outside Blood Pacts. Pet: Haste gear is lacking for SMN (12% cap, really? And you lose 2/tick Refresh for 5% of that), unfortunatly Pet: equipment has always been something SE have been reluctant to release. Think the first worthwhile pieces outside Evoker's Spats/Summoner's Bracers was the Royal Redingote and ACP earrings. It's nice to see them add "Blood Pact" damage gear though, shame some pieces never drop (looking at you, Esper Earring).


5. Hate management& transfer - Why doesn't SMN have this? Avatars serve the summoner right? Summoners need a pet voke or a hate trasnfer to the Avatar. Also while on the subject, Mana Cede should be on a 1 minute timer and boost HP and TP. This can also double for a hate transfer mechanism. 200 HP/TP back every minute hardly is overpowered IMHO.
An ability where we can restore Avatar's HP would be nowhere near Overpowered. On the subject, stackable Dawn Mulsum's would be awesome and would warrent me investing in them.
Hate transfer would be nice, both other main Pet jobs (ignoring DRG since it's mainly a heavy DD and GEO since it's not really a pet job) have a hate transfer/switch ability, why does the squishiest Pet Job have nothing? Sure we can recast Avatars quickly, but SMNs themseleves can hit that hate cap too.


6. Elementals (do you need it?) - Why are we still stuck with incomplete spell lists and elemental AI that is roughly 100 times worse than what puppetmasters get?

Light elemental needs Cure VI, and -ra spells like Protectra/Shellea to buff parties. Casting timer should also be further reduced, perhaps in conjuction with the Favour/Rage stances. Light elemental could be a great buffer and backup healer if they could get the AI more inline with a healer puppet.

The other elementals need a DD buff along the lines of Tier V spells and Tier II ancient magic.
Elementals are just borderline useless in their current state. The addition of Tier V nukes didn't do much. Already posted my thoughts on how to improve them, though saying that, would be nice for completion sakes to give us Hybrid Elementals since they now exist outside Abyssea/Legion.

[Karbuncle]

Would like to throw this here incase it wasn't already:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/20628-Request-Update-Summoner-Bloodpacts-To-be-more-useful-at-this-new-cap

My suggestions for BP:Ward system.

[Mokeil]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/20628-Request-Update-Summoner-Bloodpacts-To-be-more-useful-at-this-new-cap

My suggestions for BP:Ward system.

It was this post that first got me looking really closely at the potency and MP costs of our Wards, and making comparisons to options from other jobs. In general, we pay more for less. Our only real advantage is in duration and being "hate free". But why settle for an inferior buff when almost any other of the party's support units can give a better one?

Here are three easily made comparisons using some of our classic Wards for you guys.

Earthen Ward: MP Cost 92, Stops 250 Dmg
Stoneskin: Accession MP Cost 58, Stops 350 Dmg
(Something I can gain access to via my support job should not be able to out-perform something from my main job!)

Noctoshield: MP Cost 92, Blocks 13 Dmg
Phalanx: Accession MP Cost 42, Blocks 35 Dmg

Aerial Armor: MP Cost 92, gives 3 Blink shadows
Blink: Accession MP cost 40, gives 2 Blink shadows
(Here we actually get an advantage, but its over twice the price in MP for only half again as much benefit)

Rolling Thunder: MP Cost 52, Never seen this break +15 Dmg
Enthunder: Accession MP Cost 24: Starts at +23 Dmg with just the Enhancing Magic from Light Arts - capable of hitting +30 with 500 Enhancing Magic

It is very clear we need across the board increases to potency to nearly everything to make them worth something again. Karb's ideas would be a good start.