Phoenix and Bahamut Summons

[Jordache]

It's about time we discussed Phoenix and Bahamut summons: how do they work? How big are they? What is the purpose of summoning them?

Phoenix: Regenerative Medicine!
Lv 99 Master Evoker Astral Flow summon: Rebirth Flame
Rebirth Flame: Regen V plus ARISE (where applicable) and gives Reraise IV effects (Maybe III) to all in AOE range.
Only available to Mastered Jobs (you have those three stars above your head).

Bahamut: Patent-Issued Industrial Power!
Lv 99 Astral Flow Summon: Mega Flare
Mega Flare: Catastrophic AOE damage like Zantetsuken, with a GEO-type lingering DOT halo effect within a specific radius.
Only available to MAX-level Master level jobs (we're not there yet).

I don't care what SE said 500 years ago. Get past COVID and cancer cures and get the job done.

[Alhanelem]

Phoenix doesn't have a model in the game (as far as I know?), so even though it definitely should be a thing, it's unlikely. Bahamut is already in the game and could reasonably be done, but... it might be on the obnoxious side as a summon unless it's an astral flow-only one- and tbh, I don't really want to see more of that.

What we need more tbh, is Chaos, since they're established to be a terrestrial avatar.

[Immortal]

Your post kinda makes no sense. Chaos is a direct copy and paste of the Bahamut model with a recolor, so why would it also not be obnoxious? This is probably one of the only FF games where Bahamut is not summonable, it should def be in summoners magic. They could make him astral flow only and allow him to break the damage cap. If they did make him astral flow only, it should also be while under conduit too and take alex/odin off astral flow only.

Phoenix does have a model in the game, its seen at the end of ROV... its also in the model viewer alone without Iroha.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/images/thumb/a/ac/Phoenix.jpg/462px-Phoenix.jpg?20160927140222

[Alhanelem]

Well i don't remember seeing it when I did it (But it was a long time ago at this point), so it's w/e. Then fine, put it in.

And sure, chaos would be obnoxious too. but it's chaos. And ultimately one is considered an avatar and the other is not or has not explicitly been stated to be. And I'd argue Chaos is subjectively cooler looking.

[Zenion]

Phoenix probably doesn't have animations, but that's fine; it doesn't feel like a "use it all the time" summon anyway. It would fit in with Odin and Alexander as an SP ability.

I still think the most sensible thing for it to do is already taken, Cait Sith's Altana's Favor ability, but what if it did something like Perfect Defense but for healing? Very strong Regen and Refresh effect that weakens over time, and maybe grants a Reraise IV effect while it's active?

As for Bahamut and Chaos... I mean, it's one or the other, right, since Chaos is Bahamut but with way worse TP moves to deal with? While Chaos would be neat, lore-wise I feel like summoning that thing would be like the worst idea. Karaha-Baruha would see that and be like "hey, hey buddy uh, maybe you should take it down a couple notches there." Bahamut, though... I'll be honest, the only reasons I can see to care about it - terror and dispelga - are the same reasons it's probably too much to give players. Take those away and it's just something you'd have for the sake of the collection, not a particularly worthwhile addition to a summoner's arsenal.


Well i don't remember seeing it when I did it (But it was a long time ago at this point), so it's w/e. Then fine, put it in.

And sure, chaos would be obnoxious too. but it's chaos. And ultimately one is considered an avatar and the other is not or has not explicitly been stated to be. And I'd argue Chaos is subjectively cooler looking.

I can't find a direct reference to Bahamut being a terrestrial avatar, but the indirect ones are pretty convincing. Bahamut talks about Phoenix as a peer, Tenzen talks about Bahamut and Diabolos when visiting Carbuncle, saying basically "why aren't the terrestrial avatars helping", Nag'molada talks about the Kuluu having the protection of the terrestrial avatars and Bahamut is the only one we know of to mention a pact with them. If you go through the Chains of Promathia script mission by mission, you'll probably find a mention, this was what I got just looking at the ones directly involving Bahamut and Carbuncle.

(EDIT: There it is. Darkness Named.

Tenzen: The terrestrial avatars are the five powerful gods born of Vana'diel and entrusted to protect her.

Tenzen: Many eons ago, the five avatars fought a fierce battle with an evil presence that attempted to envelop and suffocate our world.

Tenzen: There is the fiery bird of resurrection, Phoenix, whom the blade I carry at my side has been blessed by.

Tenzen: And then there is the ruler of dreams, Diabolos; the guardian of the moon, Fenrir; the bringer of rainbows, Carbuncle; and the conqueror of the skies, Bahamut... )

[Alhanelem]

I guess you got me there lol, Again though, it's been a very long time since i did that stuff, so the memory is fuzzy :p


While Chaos would be neat, lore-wise I feel like summoning that thing would be like the worst idea.When summoners form pacts, they only get a small fragment of the avatar's actual power, it's not like we'd be bringing the same doom upon Vana'diel that the actual Chaos was threatening.

[Immortal]

Bahamut I think is the only one that fits astral flow only these days, alex and odin should be removed at this point. I am imagining him just appearing and shooting off a mega flare for tons of damage, maybe give a buff at the same time and it would be nice for zerg situations since conduit is typically nerfed these days on new content.

Phoenix historically has done fire damage and AOE raise, and then a pseudo reraise. Maybe it can do AOE fire damage + cure and RR4, and take astral flow. Or it can be a normal avatar and do AOE fire damage + arise and maybe a status affect that occasionally procs raise if you die with no weakness.

[Immortal]

Actually OPs idea of a bubble lingering after the mega flare seems really cool and we haven't had something like that before. Or would GEO complain? lol

[Alhanelem]

also frankly if they were to add some special power for smn at ML30 they'd have to do the same for other jobs, so I don't think gating anything cool behind ML is going to happen, especially when it will encourage more botting.

[Jordache]

Phoenix doesn't have a model in the game (as far as I know?), so even though it definitely should be a thing, it's unlikely. Bahamut is already in the game and could reasonably be done, but... it might be on the obnoxious side as a summon unless it's an astral flow-only one- and tbh, I don't really want to see more of that.

What we need more tbh, is Chaos, since they're established to be a terrestrial avatar.

Go finish your story missions.

[Jordache]

Well i don't remember seeing it when I did it (But it was a long time ago at this point), so it's w/e. Then fine, put it in.

And sure, chaos would be obnoxious too. but it's chaos. And ultimately one is considered an avatar and the other is not or has not explicitly been stated to be. And I'd argue Chaos is subjectively cooler looking.

The entire friggen COP storyline and PSO'XJA as a zone, stop being so stupid, use the WIKIs.

[Jordache]

Actually OPs idea of a bubble lingering after the mega flare seems really cool and we haven't had something like that before. Or would GEO complain? lol

I think you can even get away with a Phoenix GEO aftermath ability like AOE regen: like it summons, explodes in a firey blaze, disappears and leaves behind this like: zone of phoenix dust for 3-5 min. maybe regain/regen/refresh halo? small but with 1/tic

[Alhanelem]

Go finish your story missions.
I did. When they came out.


stop being so stupid
You know, you don't need to be a jerk.

I'm just going of my memory, which when it comes to the story is... not a lot. that was all over a decade ago. I do remember, however, why you're on my ignore list, so thanks for reminding me about that.

[Zenion]

I'm just going of my memory, which when it comes to the story is... not a lot. that was all over a decade ago. I do remember, however, why you're on my ignore list, so thanks for reminding me about that.

Haha, come on man, you call yourself a summoner? That's your cultural heritage there, you should at least be able to remember the terrestrial avatars and Windurst's whole... thing.

Seriously though "Bahamut is a terrestrial avatar" is a really weird fact because, like, it's something that you sort of just know if you've got good retention for the CoP storyline, but it seriously is hard to find dialogue that actually explicitly spells it out. I could see losing that line of the cutscene to linkshell chatter and just not catching it. It's not like, say, "summoning magic is a bad idea" which is roughly half of every Windurst storyline so there's no way to miss it without just not interacting with that content at all.

[Alhanelem]

Seriously though "Bahamut is a terrestrial avatar" is a really weird fact because, like, it's something that you sort of just know if you've got good retention for the CoP storylineI mean I guess it is indirectly established by the overarching story, but I'm trying to find the dialogue where it is explicitly stated (Chaos was explicitly stated in the RoV story to be a terrestrial avatar- That's fresh in my mind because I only did it recently). I started with the missions which Bahamut is a direct part of which didn't turn anything up, now looking through other missions where they may be mentioned.

[Zenion]

I mean I guess it is indirectly established by the overarching story, but I'm trying to find the dialogue where it is explicitly stated (Chaos was explicitly stated in the RoV story to be a terrestrial avatar- That's fresh in my mind because I only did it recently). I started with the missions which Bahamut is a direct part of which didn't turn anything up, now looking through other missions where they may be mentioned.

I don't know if there's another point earlier or later in the storyline, but I did already give you one mission and the relevant dialogue from it - Darkness Named, where Tenzen discusses the terrestrial avatars and how none of them have been willing to help so far.

Sorry if you missed that since I had to add it in an edit after the fact, having done the very same searching myself.

[Beastorizer]

Agree with the OP, but a bit off topic......Always wondered what the deal with those Unicorns were. They look exactly like Avatars, don't they? The blur supernatural aura effect.

Anyway, Bahamut is past due.

[Jordache]

I did. When they came out.


You know, you don't need to be a jerk.

I'm just going of my memory, which when it comes to the story is... not a lot. that was all over a decade ago. I do remember, however, why you're on my ignore list, so thanks for reminding me about that.

I'm on eveyrone's ignore list because I'm right, AND also not wrong.

Also the carbuncle story line at the stone pillar in La Theine: Walking the Beast is important canonically.

[Alhanelem]

I'm on eveyrone's ignore list because I'm right, AND also not wrong.

Also the carbuncle story line at the stone pillar in La Theine: Walking the Beast is important canonically.
Believe what you want. People aren't ignoring you because of your opinions, they're ignoring you because you have a bad attitude.

[Jordache]

Believe what you want. People aren't ignoring you because of your opinions, they're ignoring you because you have a bad attitude.

It's hard to have a good attitude towards you when I know better.

Ah, and see there's your two-fold mistake: 1) It's an ebullient attitude, sought on correcting mistakes and or preventing failures, and 2) You think I care about people [you], I don't care about you [people]. People like you try to openly castrate something you don't have the capacity to read or understand properly, thereby making yourself out to be something better than you're not: this happens ALL the time in isolated social groups like LSs and online social forums/discords. The next thing (action in this process because it is actually a well known and studied process) is your butthurtness in your rebuttals and replies. You don't like it because it is a fast and open and erudite and truthful dialogue and you are none of those things, quite the opposite. Your next actions will be something like posting a reply that tries to garner social support for yourself like, you: "hey guys let's not listen to him anymore because he's different than the adipose hypnosis I've been rotting in." Instead of going to look at the Carbuncle quest story information that was graciously pointed out to you by: yours truly.


You should care about what makes people happy, or what tools people use, but never the people themselves: they're all independent actors operating under their own independent actions, you get sucked into that horrible Black Cloud caring about people in the amorphous, undefined sense b/c you're socially parasitic, you need people like a tick needs a host. It's the petty LS ownership observed when interacting with botting LS owners, or from Twitch hosts and their chat people: what's driving this is the fact that they're all trapped in the same thought patterns, cultivating the same robotic and dependent tendencies while everything around them rots.

[Alhanelem]

It's hard to have a good attitude towards you when I know better.Your attitude is bad in general, I see it in your interactions with everyone, not just me. If you were less of a jerk all the dang time, everyone here would be able to take you more seriously.

No one asked you to care about anyone or anything. But you don't display even a basic level of decency in your interactions with others. Eventually you will come to realize that not being an arse has benefits.

Yeah, this is the internet, and there are little to no reprecussions for your actions. But just because you CAN be an arse, doesn't mean you HAVE to be. You were a jerk to me for misremembering stuff from 15+ years ago. You're being a jerk now and you've been a jerk in every interaction I've ever had. But it's not just me, I've seen you do it to others. Why should anyone take you seriously when you don't give a (something something) yourself? And that's not my words, you said it yourself that you don't care: Again, why should we then?

The biggest problem is your ego. Opinions are not facts, not even yours. You're really full of yourself to declare that you are simply right and everyone else is wrong. You're going down the exact same path that made many people here resent me, and frankly you're better at it than I ever was- that server merge thread must be the first time I ever got more likes than the OP of any thread.

People gave me feedback in a thread of my own creation that dunking on people's opinions without giving them any due consideration was a huge factor in their resentment and I'm trying to correct that, because I *do* care what people think and would frankly rather be friends with people if possible.

[Jordache]

Your attitude is bad in general, I see it in your interactions with everyone, not just me. If you were less of a jerk all the dang time, everyone here would be able to take you more seriously.

No one asked you to care about anyone or anything. But you don't display even a basic level of decency in your interactions with others. Eventually you will come to realize that not being an arse has benefits.

And you did the same thing that I said you were going to do in the previous post, like you walked off a cliff of attempted manipulation.

Yeah, this is the internet, and there are little to no repercussions for your actions. But just because you CAN be an arse, doesn't mean you HAVE to be. You were a jerk to me for misremembering stuff from 15+ years ago. You're being a jerk now and you've been a jerk in every interaction I've ever had. But it's not just me, I've seen you do it to others. Why should anyone take you seriously when you don't give a (something something) yourself? And that's not my words, you said it yourself that you don't care: Again, why should we then?

The biggest problem is your ego. Opinions are not facts, not even yours. You're really full of yourself to declare that you are simply right and everyone else is wrong. You're going down the exact same path that made many people here resent me, and frankly you're better at it than I ever was- that server merge thread must be the first time I ever got more likes than the OP of any thread.

People gave me feedback in a thread of my own creation that dunking on people's opinions without giving them any due consideration was a huge factor in their resentment and I'm trying to correct that, because I *do* care what people think and would frankly rather be friends with people if possible.

You value likes? Holy: you're really trapped. Also: I don't care about stranger's resentments either. So why do you think online anonymous social reprimands mean or are valued by me? Your narratives and attempts to control them are garbage. It's the same loser sob story every single time because you can't cross reference data and information to provide something valuable at time of interaction.

You're drowning in social conflicts requirements and confusion when you're missing the source of all of the problems in their entirety prima faci.

Being friends with people doesn't make you right, or get your things from a gigantic information repository, which leave you poor because you can't get stuff done right or correctly or fast enough to even function. Then you get all uterine when you ignore the information provided: It happens every single time. It's not ego when its actually witnessed skill and or talent, your lack of skilsl and or abilities are probably why you were resented in the first place and didn't like yourself.

Yeha but I'm the best jerk ever, and that's the attitude that you're not liking because despite being in an online world now you never learned to be yourself. I did. I like myself that's why you're getting wrecked.

I'm not going to "overcooked celery" to you just because you're all manipulative. And you are, you are manipulative. Every interaction has been an attempt at manipulation and the narrative and conversation so that you're liked and that is exactly why you're not liked.

People can see through that and they hate it. So they just breakthrough against you.

[Alhanelem]

I'm not going to "overcooked celery" to you just because you're all manipulative.Manipulative?

Dude, you're insane. I'm the straightest talker here. I say what I mean and that's all there is to it. Who said being friends makes people right? Your post makes so little sense that it's hard to believe it was written by a human. You straight up literally have no idea what you're talking about.

Having rational arguments is not being manipulative. Either you agree with something or you don't. I may certainly attempt to convince someone of my point of view, but there's no "manipulation." I make the best case I can for my position as I would expect anyone else to do. You on the other hand, attack the person, which is an informal logical fallacy. You're spending all this time trying to break me down- the antithesis of any rational argument. You are not worth my time and that's that.

[Jordache]

I may certainly attempt to convince someone of my point of view, but there's no "manipulation."

See: and that's where you're dead wrong: you try to convince people of your view point instead of your collection of facts being the best for forward progression and value creation. We all know that each other's viewpoints are not our own, that's a de facto prima faci about stuff; however, it's about the bestest future possible without getting pulled into your viewpoint. The bestest future doesn't involve your viewpoints, because your viewpoints are from your past, and because your viewpoints are limited. This is about creating something better than exists because someone somewhere knows better than your atrocious viewpoints. The manipulation occurs when you try to get others to fall into the deleteriousness of your viewpoint at the expense of their own. It is in this mannerism that you fail to contribute anything of value until you've ruined everything and everyone is at your viewpoint's perspective: then and only then are you satisfied to begin allowing others to move forwards towards that bestest future fabulous.

You don't make the best for the position stupid, your position; you make the best for want you want: that's the key difference, that's the money maker, that's the magic, that's the everything. Meaning no one ever gets sucked into your horrid viewpoints ever again.


You are not worth my time and that's that.

Tut Tut. Congratulations! Wow, you're learning. My, you're denser than flotsam!

[Jordache]

It's about time we discussed Phoenix and Bahamut summons: how do they work? How big are they? What is the purpose of summoning them?

Phoenix: Regenerative Medicine!
Lv 99 Master Evoker Astral Flow summon: Rebirth Flame
Rebirth Flame: Regen V plus ARISE (where applicable) and gives Reraise IV effects (Maybe III) to all in AOE range.
Only available to Mastered Jobs (you have those three stars above your head).

Bahamut: Patent-Issued Industrial Power!
Lv 99 Astral Flow Summon: Mega Flare
Mega Flare: Catastrophic AOE damage like Zantetsuken, with a GEO-type lingering DOT halo effect within a specific radius.
Only available to MAX-level Master level jobs (we're not there yet).

I don't care what SE said 500 years ago. Get past COVID and cancer cures and get the job done.

I want to expand on this and amend the Phoenix summon to:

Rebirth Flame: AOE fire+light damage that casts Raise III on party members and leaves behind a GEO-type luopan that gives Regen/refresh/regain to all within AOE. All trust magic summons are consumed/dispelled upon use.

Or that is consumes trusts summons to cast O_o. No probably no, just thought it sounded cool, like there's a Phoenix burden or something. But maybe that's the way: Liek how tusts have more power the fewer there are in a PT, maybe this works like the more trusts summons you sacrifice the better the phoenix summon is:
1 trust: only AOE regen;
2 trusts: AOE regen, and refresh;
3 trusts: AOE regen, refresh, and regain;
4 trusts AOE regen, refresh, regain, and AOE fire + light dmg;
5 trusts: AOE regen, refresh, regain, fire + light dmg, and raise gets cast on all within the AOE and the caster gets RR effect and HP/MP retored.

[Alhanelem]

Overpowered and ridiculous, just like your over-the-top unhinged personal attacks. You're basically combining three already ultimate abilities into one.

Let's one up this with Chaos' Instant Win Button: lower all enemies in a 50' radius to 1 HP and give all allies invincible status.

[Jordache]

Overpowered and ridiculous, just like your over-the-top unhinged personal attacks. You're basically combining three already ultimate abilities into one.

Let's one up this with Chaos' Instant Win Button: lower all enemies in a 50' radius to 1 HP and give all allies invincible status.

Like you invented a gun that cures cancer. >.>

Instead of taking the time to stop and analyze what is written and critique and improve upon, or preferably, enthuse with (you kinda did, but ruined it without critical thinking being scarcastic), instead you: take a quote I quoted from myself and try to make the post about your victim hood.

[Zenion]

I want to expand on this and amend the Phoenix summon to:

Rebirth Flame: AOE fire+light damage that casts Raise III on party members and leaves behind a GEO-type luopan that gives Regen/refresh/regain to all within AOE. All trust magic summons are consumed/dispelled upon use.

Or that is consumes trusts summons to cast O_o. No probably no, just thought it sounded cool, like there's a Phoenix burden or something. But maybe that's the way: Liek how tusts have more power the fewer there are in a PT, maybe this works like the more trusts summons you sacrifice the better the phoenix summon is:
1 trust: only AOE regen;
2 trusts: AOE regen, and refresh;
3 trusts: AOE regen, refresh, and regain;
4 trusts AOE regen, refresh, regain, and AOE fire + light dmg;
5 trusts: AOE regen, refresh, regain, fire + light dmg, and raise gets cast on all within the AOE and the caster gets RR effect and HP/MP retored.

So you want Searing Light plus Inferno, a little Altana's Favor, and maybe Embrava just for fun, and you want it to be neutered if the user is playing with other people?

The consuming five trusts to add Raise effect is especially funny because that effect would literally never be usable: if the one party member you had needed a Raise, they'd already be incapacitated and unable to summon Phoenix at all.

You could maybe get away with doing it in two parts: Phoenix's Favor gives Regen/Refresh/Regain/Reraise IV, and you have access to an AoE attack, but you can only have Phoenix active while Astral Flow is active and using the attack consumes the rest of the Astral Flow timer.

Or maybe we can throw Summoner a bone for once and make this the one blood pact that targets alliance instead of party, and it applies an Arise or Reraise IV effect as appropriate to alliance members in range, but the user dies like they used Mijin Gakure (whether you should get a free reraise is debatable there, if you do it's basically just like Final Sting applying Weakness.)

As for Bahamut... I mean, the halo thing is basically just impossible, because FFXI doesn't like having two pets attached to one player at all, so you'd be trading all of your Summoner class features for one Geomancer one. Maybe do it the same way as my proposal for Phoenix, with a Bahamut's Favor effect which boosts, say, physical damage level, and your final Mega Flare gets its damage scaled up based on how long that effect has been active? Makes it a bit risk/reward, you want to hold off on pulling the trigger as long as possible for maximum effect, but you still need to give yourself a buffer in case your positioning is off or you get stunned. This would also strongly incentivize using the relic piece which enhances the duration of Astral Flow.

[Jordache]

Yeah something like that: It's intended as a trust post-Siren, so its like a fully-mastered SMN (three-stars) spell-only, and more like the trusts are going to be sacrificed to fuel Phoenix's flame or something, but I was more like in FF8: where you're dead and phoenix come and does dmg and raises your party. There's some COP-level cannon that phoenix is SUPER weak [dispersed?] because vana'diel is in decay so I'm not really expecting more than an odin/alex type of summon>move>release thing.

OR its a model with auto attack ai and a super stong avatar boon like a bird-shaped luopan.

See: phoenix is a huge model so I don't want it to be out for like logistical/lag/framerate reasons. I like the Odin/Alex type of smn, but it should be closer to Siren in execution/reality.

And no bones lol this is FFXI, nothing ever targets alliance :P

And your Mijin idea: I'm imagining the SMN to just like explode and die (w arrise on) as this GIANT bird erupts through its abdomen like one of those things from the Aliens movie. :D

I'm not attached to the idea but as an explanation/elaboration:
I was thinking for smn that phoenix becomes MORE useful the more trusts you have out in exchange for the trust's power, so you're trading 5 trusts for one ultimate SMN move to save yourself lol. I thought there was an exchange element in there to play with. I like a lot of parties are a mix of trusts/players and I think trusts are phoenix magic or something (probably wrong on that).

And for the bahamut thing: I'm thinking is more of an environmental effect, not a pet, like a lingering residue of the mega flare after-birth/math[?]. Like how nuclear stuff has a devastated environment or a forest fire is all charred earth. But ideas are ideas.

[Zenion]

Yeah something like that: It's intended as a trust post-Siren, so its like a fully-mastered SMN (three-stars) spell-only, and more like the trusts are going to be sacrificed to fuel Phoenix's flame or something, but I was more like in FF8: where you're dead and phoenix come and does dmg and raises your party. There's some COP-level cannon that phoenix is SUPER weak [dispersed?] because vana'diel is in decay so I'm not really expecting more than an odin/alex type of summon>move>release thing.

OR its a model with auto attack ai and a super stong avatar boon like a bird-shaped luopan.

See: phoenix is a huge model so I don't want it to be out for like logistical/lag/framerate reasons. I like the Odin/Alex type of smn, but it should be closer to Siren in execution/reality.

Fafnir was a huge model, but they managed to fill a map square with it. Now, whether the team that actually remains can do that or not, that's another question entirely, I'm not convinced they held on to any 3D modellers.




I'm not attached to the idea but as an explanation/elaboration:
I was thinking for smn that phoenix becomes MORE useful the more trusts you have out in exchange for the trust's power, so you're trading 5 trusts for one ultimate SMN move to save yourself lol. I thought there was an exchange element in there to play with. I like a lot of parties are a mix of trusts/players and I think trusts are phoenix magic or something (probably wrong on that).

Anything that erases trusts needs to be an instant win button for it to appeal to players, though. You'd be sacrificing a crucial role that your remaining party members aren't able to fill: your regen and regain won't replace the only tank in the party, or active healing. Maybe in an edge case where you're using nothing but buffing trusts, but it's still putting you at a large disadvantage if it doesn't get you out of whatever encounter you're in immediately. If you're in a position where you're relying on five trusts for a fight... forget about it, losing them and your pet at the same time would be certain death.

Also I don't think Phoenix was involved in trust magic, she was pretty busy with keeping Iroha in the game when that was making its big story appearance, not really a whole lot of room there.

(You know what Phoenix is involved with, though? Omen. Omen and Fickblix, if I remember correctly; it would be cool to see something happen with that. Maybe you do enough Omen, Incantrix has enough Phoenix magic from your breath to finally revive Fickblix (only not quite because Chaos fight says no happy endings) and there's enough left over to reconstitute Phoenix?)


And for the bahamut thing: I'm thinking is more of an environmental effect, not a pet, like a lingering residue of the mega flare after-birth/math[?]. Like how nuclear stuff has a devastated environment or a forest fire is all charred earth. But ideas are ideas.

So, the thing there is, how do you think that works, mechanically? I can only think of a couple of zones where effects are applied to locations, and that feels very much like something that had to be baked into that zone specifically. To be able to do an area effect that can just be arbitrarily dropped anywhere, there would need to be a source. Whatever that source is will need to be attached to whoever created it, in order to handle cleanup - as fun an idea as it is to have an effect that lasts after you zone out, that would have all sorts of disastrous potential given the overall fragility of FFXI's code; your effect needs to be automatically culled if you zone out or are defeated.

There's basically one system presently in place to handle that sort of thing: pets. It would take up the pet slot. I don't know why a luopan counts as a pet (besides making it easier to fit multiple jobs on one piece of gear) but it does; this would almost certainly have to be the same situation.

You could wave it off by saying Bahamut is just that much, that you need to take time to recharge before you can summon again, but I just can't see a way that you'd get a lingering area effect without it having to eat the pet slot, in the game as it's presently structured. I don't know what the FFXI source code looks like so I can only speculate, but I think this is probably also the reason we don't have beastmaster or puppetmaster trusts, and the summoner and geomancer ones barely leverage their job features. Trusts aren't quite pets, but they tie themselves to their owner in such a way that having them generate a pet would probably make that pet count as the player's one and only available pet? Which is... a weird problem, on the surface, but programming-wise I can see exactly how it could happen.

Getting a little off track now but TL;DR I don't think Bahamut could have a lingering after-effect without either a non-trivial change to the game's code base (creating a new pet class that doesn't count as your pet, similar to your adventuring fellow, or copying Reisenjima's darkness spheres to every zone and instance where Bahamut could potentially be used just in case) or blocking the summoner's summoning.

[Alhanelem]

Like you invented a gun that cures cancer. >.>

Instead of taking the time to stop and analyze what is written and critique and improve upon, or preferably, enthuse with (you kinda did, but ruined it without critical thinking being scarcastic), instead you: take a quote I quoted from myself and try to make the post about your victim hood.
Well literally anything is better than what you proposed, because what you proposed is so flawed from the start. You're suggesting that we take some of the most powerful things that already exist and combine them into one ability (and, as noted by someone else, render one of those effects irrelevant).

I admit the only reason we have this problem is because Cait Sith stole what would otherwise be Phoenix's signature ability. If you want to take that and make it better or different in some way, it needs to be in a way that's balanced. I could see Arising someone without weakness and giving them some powerful buffs at the same time. But not the entire party whilst also nuking the enemy. That's just too much stuff packed into one ability. As noted. If it was just one person and particularly strong? I could see that, as it would have different use cases from Cait Sith's ability.


See: phoenix is a huge model so I don't want it to be out for like logistical/lag/framerate reasons. I like the Odin/Alex type of smn, but it should be closer to Siren in execution/reality. The framerate issues in this game don't really have much to do with how big or how many polys a model has (in any normal case, it's the latter- scaling something doesnt really affect performance much). I would much rather have a regular summon than an astral flow one I will hardly ever see.

I do respect and share the desire to make pacts with the remaining avatars, but going nuts with crazy powerful ability ideas is not really the way to go. I doubt SE would solicit ideas from us on something like this, but if they did, I'd rather we put our best foot forward when it comes to ideas of how these summons would work.

[Zenion]

I would much rather have a regular summon than an astral flow one I will hardly ever see.

That's really not a great way to approach Phoenix, I'm afraid. To start with, consider the design space: We're not seeing new blue magic because the game is allegedly running out of room for spells; if pet commands take up the same kind of space, even two abilities might be asking a lot. Having autoattacks and blood pacts would mean having to make new animations, which may not be possible with the composition of the remaining dev team. Even lore-wise, having Phoenix be something that only works because you're pouring as much power into it as possible makes sense because Phoenix is always depicted as being weakened, diminished, almost half an avatar. Everything about this says "astral flow super-summon."

On top of that, consider... what would a Phoenix moveset look like? We've only seen revival, so is it just going to be cures and raises? A couple of fire spells? You could risk making Carbuncle and Cait Sith nearly obsolete, though I imagine Ifrit would be just fine. Absolutely nothing about Phoenix says "physical threat", I find it hard to imagine it having the usual basic physical blood pacts that tend to decide the difference between starting lineup and benchwarmers.

Now, Bahamut could work, if the limited space for new abilities weren't an issue. Already has a proven moveset, has the animations, no lore reason not to work besides being super uncooperative in general. Again, I think the one thing players would want most from that would be AoE Terror, which is the one thing I don't imagine the devs wanting to just hand to players (the blue mage equivalent being locked behind a job ability to keep it under control.)

[Jordache]

So, the thing there is, how do you think that works, mechanically? I can only think of a couple of zones where effects are applied to locations, and that feels very much like something that had to be baked into that zone specifically. To be able to do an area effect that can just be arbitrarily dropped anywhere, there would need to be a source. Whatever that source is will need to be attached to whoever created it, in order to handle cleanup - as fun an idea as it is to have an effect that lasts after you zone out, that would have all sorts of disastrous potential given the overall fragility of FFXI's code; your effect needs to be automatically culled if you zone out or are defeated.

There's basically one system presently in place to handle that sort of thing: pets. It would take up the pet slot. I don't know why a luopan counts as a pet (besides making it easier to fit multiple jobs on one piece of gear) but it does; this would almost certainly have to be the same situation.

You could wave it off by saying Bahamut is just that much, that you need to take time to recharge before you can summon again, but I just can't see a way that you'd get a lingering area effect without it having to eat the pet slot, in the game as it's presently structured. I don't know what the FFXI source code looks like so I can only speculate, but I think this is probably also the reason we don't have beastmaster or puppetmaster trusts, and the summoner and geomancer ones barely leverage their job features. Trusts aren't quite pets, but they tie themselves to their owner in such a way that having them generate a pet would probably make that pet count as the player's one and only available pet? Which is... a weird problem, on the surface, but programming-wise I can see exactly how it could happen.

Getting a little off track now but TL;DR I don't think Bahamut could have a lingering after-effect without either a non-trivial change to the game's code base (creating a new pet class that doesn't count as your pet, similar to your adventuring fellow, or copying Reisenjima's darkness spheres to every zone and instance where Bahamut could potentially be used just in case) or blocking the summoner's summoning.

I can do the bahamut thing with a one-two-punch: 1) is the pet as a summon, then 2) is the summon as inert NPC, you're gonna pallet swap the model to a point model (lie a pixle sized bahamut or clear box) that counts as a pet until the effect timer is finished. Basically you can write a conditional to the summoned pet that silences of deactivates JA upon use like a stance, it's not conceptually hard:

summon pet
pet animation
pet transition to non-interactable npc aura
SMN cooldown timer starts
summoner silenced or unable to take further actions (silence and amnesia or something) until effect timer ends, say.

You're changing the smn pet model for a different smn pet model within the same set of animations, like a luopan.

or you reverse the summoning: the bahamut animation is not the pet that's counted but the loupan after effect, like a scripted npc like Atomos: the pet you summon is the after effect, but there's no pet commands, and what the player actually sees as the avatar is a summoning special effect animation. So the pet is the after effect and the bahamut is like tied into the summing glyph.

Also that flixblix ting: maybe just give me lots (500/ 1000?) of merits points to revive phoenix, lol.

[Zenion]

I can do the bahamut thing with a one-two-punch: 1) is the pet as a summon, then 2) is the summon as inert NPC, you're gonna pallet swap the model to a point model (lie a pixle sized bahamut or clear box) that counts as a pet until the effect timer is finished. Basically you can write a conditional to the summoned pet that silences of deactivates JA upon use like a stance, it's not conceptually hard:

summon pet
pet animation
pet transition to non-interactable npc aura
SMN cooldown timer starts
summoner silenced or unable to take further actions (silence and amnesia or something) until effect timer ends, say.

You're changing the smn pet model for a different smn pet model within the same set of animations, like a luopan.

or you reverse the summoning: the bahamut animation is not the pet that's counted but the loupan after effect, like a scripted npc like Atomos: the pet you summon is the after effect, but there's no pet commands, and what the player actually sees as the avatar is a summoning special effect animation. So the pet is the after effect and the bahamut is like tied into the summing glyph.

Sure, that basically works, and you don't even need to silence or amnesia the summoner: if you control a luopan, you cannot summon an avatar, there's already specific code preventing it (as tested on geo/smn.) There would be an edge case where smn/geo would hypothetically be able to dismiss it with Full Circle, that would need to be addressed, but otherwise it's a relatively simple approach to implementation.

Which leaves the original issue: For however long the geo effect lasts, the user is not a summoner, they're whatever their subjob says they are. If that's not a deal-breaker, then problem solved; as I said before, just add on a snippet of lore that says the Bahamut summon is just that little bit more taxing and takes some time to recover from, maybe tweak the message the player gets when they try to summon up too soon, and you're settled.

Interesting sub-issue that this raises though, for avatars and luopans at least you get the pet HP bar glued to your message window. I wonder if it would be more helpful to find a way to hide that, or to use it as a visible timer counting down your summoning lockout: when this hits 0%, you can have pets again.

[Jordache]

Well literally anything is better than what you proposed, because what you proposed is so flawed from the start. You're suggesting that we take some of the most powerful things that already exist and combine them into one ability (and, as noted by someone else, render one of those effects irrelevant).

I admit the only reason we have this problem is because Cait Sith stole what would otherwise be Phoenix's signature ability. If you want to take that and make it better or different in some way, it needs to be in a way that's balanced. I could see Arising someone without weakness and giving them some powerful buffs at the same time. But not the entire party whilst also nuking the enemy. That's just too much stuff packed into one ability. As noted. If it was just one person and particularly strong? I could see that, as it would have different use cases from Cait Sith's ability.

The framerate issues in this game don't really have much to do with how big or how many polys a model has (in any normal case, it's the latter- scaling something doesnt really affect performance much). I would much rather have a regular summon than an astral flow one I will hardly ever see.

I do respect and share the desire to make pacts with the remaining avatars, but going nuts with crazy powerful ability ideas is not really the way to go. I doubt SE would solicit ideas from us on something like this, but if they did, I'd rather we put our best foot forward when it comes to ideas of how these summons would work.

Yeah but you have to critique it like Zenion is doing, pretend it works then try to fix it or improve it so that something *CAN* exist in that better future we're talking about, not just fall into the: this sucks, you're dumb, stop thinking, cellphone user malaise.

If anything is literally better, then why aren't you sharing your wisdom with us into what is the anything that is better? Because you can't, so you try to demoralize everyone, because you didn't think of it, worse, you didn't share anything.

I'm saying it has to *BE* powerful, because they all are.

You make a good point about balance issues, which is kinda where the alex.odin/atmos style vs cait sith style avatars come from: maybe the solution is a timed summon: you get 3 minutes with phoenix that's it. This timed summon thing kinda fits cannonically b/c phoenix is weakened, and we can make jokes about 7 minutes in heaven with phoenix ;). It hasn't been done before, reasonably feasible to balance skills and abilities, then give it like an hour long recast or only under astral flow.

Said softly: Don't fear the possibility of being unbalanced, it can be refined. '-')-b

[Jordache]

Sure, that basically works, and you don't even need to silence or amnesia the summoner: if you control a luopan, you cannot summon an avatar, there's already specific code preventing it (as tested on geo/smn.) There would be an edge case where smn/geo would hypothetically be able to dismiss it with Full Circle, that would need to be addressed, but otherwise it's a relatively simple approach to implementation.

Which leaves the original issue: For however long the geo effect lasts, the user is not a summoner, they're whatever their subjob says they are. If that's not a deal-breaker, then problem solved; as I said before, just add on a snippet of lore that says the Bahamut summon is just that little bit more taxing and takes some time to recover from, maybe tweak the message the player gets when they try to summon up too soon, and you're settled.

Interesting sub-issue that this raises though, for avatars and luopans at least you get the pet HP bar glued to your message window. I wonder if it would be more helpful to find a way to hide that, or to use it as a visible timer counting down your summoning lockout: when this hits 0%, you can have pets again.

Ooh I like that: it's like: a yes, with a short if *pun intended* lol.

"Um it's like an undispellable summon" we would just not give it a pet command menu like the spirits have. Maybe just apply a temporary weakness type of status effect[?], and when the effect wears the pet "releases", like an auto-script?

Maybe we have something lol

For that window thing:
I think that it's a player state or status: player in command of pet: ON/OFF

Which we could just have it be a pet called "Flare Residuum", give it no controls, and stick a bio effect on it until it dies, like you said, and slap the summoner with a weakness lol. I say weakness b/c other mobs like Tchakka can apply it as a temporary stats.

[Alhanelem]

That's really not a great way to approach Phoenix, I'm afraid. To start with, consider the design space:Abilities are not spells and are subject to their own set of limitations that are seperate from those of spells. Further, we should not use technical limitations as an excuse to not do something that would (debatably) bring more enjoyment to the player. To me, astral flow summons themselves have been a waste of resources. Alexander really isn't used that often and Odin probably even less. Atomos isn't even an astral flow summon but is never used because of how long it takes to do its thing, combined with the relatively niche cases where it is even useful at all- mainly because there aren't many buffs that can be taken from enemies that the player themself doesn't already have. Anything cool enough to justify its use probably can't be taken with it anyway.
To put it another way, I don't feel like the addition of astral-flow-only summons has contributed a lot to the job or the game- Despite being more heavily restricted in their use than normal summons, Odin and Alexander aren't better enough than other ultimates to justify being relgated to a once-in-a-blue-moon use case. Alexander is fine (to me) but I never see it used much for some reason; Odin is just not good enough. It only reliably executes a single target, and if you have a whole swarm of enemies, it might kill two or three, and against NMs, it isn't significantly stronger than other astral flow attacks. I can understand why they're so guarded with Death effects, but when literally any other AoE is more useful, they've erred too far on the side of caution.

The only issue truly relevant to what you're saying is that unlike the other summons currently available, there is no already existing set of abilities established for Phoenix (Bahamut on the other hand, does already have an extensive pool of abilities to draw from- and thus nothing new needs to be created). You did mention this and I concur to that end. But as far as what the move set would look like, we can look to other games in the series and adapt them for FFXI's play environment (With the only obvious issue being an ability to revive the party, as Cait Sith was given this role).

In short, I agree with you about Phoenix's move set, but that's a solveable problem. Although it may be the simple fact we already have a phoenix-like ability on Cait Sith that has kept Phoenix from being implemented.




Said softly: Don't fear the possibility of being unbalanced, it can be refined. '-')-b Sometimes unbalanced things are easily tweakable with number/stat changes. Other things are inherently unbalanced and it is difficult/improbable to make them balanced- i.e. they're either obviously too strong, or not good enough and a waste of the effort spent on it. Put simply in this particular case: If raising an entire party and also giving them all reraise at the same time is good enough to be an ultimate ability (as it is one), then throwing in an attack and multiple buffs to the same is a step too far. I agree with you that we can throw whatever we can think of out there- but let's work together to refine our ideas ourselves as members of the community such that it has the best chance of impressing whoever might read it. Perhaps instead of dealing direct damage and granting buffs that would probably offer far too much, we can include something else that fits with the theme- like an AoE arise that also grants enfire II and a strong blaze spike effect (comparable to the substantial spikes that some NMs get). This would also be a bit more distinctive, at least to me, compared to rolling Arise, Embrava, and a nuke into one ability.

Thanks for the reasonable response, and I apologize for being too aggressive with my comment. To be clear, I want to see these summons as much as you do. I just want to make sure it's something that we would all want to use without being way too OP (or useless). Also I would greatly prefer something I can use regularly to something that's exclusively used as an oh-crap button that I will at best see once in a 45 minute period.

[Zenion]

Further, we should not use technical limitations as an excuse to not do something that would (debatably) bring more enjoyment to the player.

Where we're at in the game's life cycle, technical and resource limitations are two of the largest driving forces behind the content being added. Voracious Resurgence teased a whole new dimension ripe for exciting new content, but what we got was Sortie because reusing Outer Ra'Kaznar was more feasible than creating a whole new zone. We can dream all we want about what something could look like in a perfect version of the game, but if we want to discuss this as something we have any hope of actually seeing, it is unfortunately necessary to bear in mind that the less we ask for, the more we're likely to actually get.


Alexander really isn't used that often and Odin probably even less.

On the one hand, yes, it's rare to see Alexander used. On the other, Alexander is the one thing that keeps Summoner relevant in content where you can't Astral Flow/Astral Conduit your way to victory. It can massively shift a group's strategy. It just isn't popular because Summoner is a relatively lackluster job otherwise - less damage slower than a Naegling DD, requires its own special buffs to scale up, and all those amazing unique buffs are abysmally slow to apply unless you use Conduit on them. That this is all put aside for the sake of a single ~90 second defense boost is a testament to how powerful that summon really is.

Odin can go climb back up in his tree and see if he can learn how to be useful, though.


Although it may be the simple fact we already have a phoenix-like ability on Cait Sith that has kept Phoenix from being implemented.

Yeah, that is the sticky bit. Altana's Favor is literally what you would expect Phoenix to do, which narrows the possibilities. You could give it Reraise V, but that steps on the specialness of the Pandit's Staff. "Altana's Favor but it also removes Weakened" would be a huge recovery tool, but it might not feel like enough to justify the whole avatar.

Maybe area fire damage plus a buff effect would be justifiable on a full-time avatar - Siren's Clarsach Call is just Aerial Blast with a side of major avatar buffs - though I can't imagine that being satisfying as an Astral Flow only summon's sole ability. I wish I could say "maybe have it reset job ability cooldowns", but then it's stealing from Wild Card's gimmick.

Altana's Favor really does make it hard to make a truly appropriate Phoenix SP ability.

[Alhanelem]

Where we're at in the game's life cycle, technical and resource limitations are two of the largest driving forces behind the content being added.Generally, I am of this mind, however when it comes to something like summons, I really don't want to see them do something if they can't put the full effort into it. That's why seeing any of these summons is realistically incredibly unlikely; but if they do implement them, I don't want to see them half-arsed.

I was actually surprised when we got Siren, and the fact that, at least in a relative sense, she's actually pretty good.

[Zenion]

I was actually surprised when we got Siren, and the fact that, at least in a relative sense, she's actually pretty good.

Siren kind of made sense in the same way Bahamut does, though: They'd already done half the work for the fight in Rhapsodies, all that was left was adapting. Though, that said... it's still a bit of a surprise considering that they could have just not called Siren a terrestrial avatar and washed their hands of it.

Phoenix is still... having an in-game model makes it seem possible, but it's still creating everything from scratch basically.

Would making Phoenix multi-elemental - fire and light, like a Baelfyr - open up any interesting possibilities? Fire with the Banish effect versus undead? Ooh, or Cursna, you give Phoenix a Cursna with potency that scales to summoning magic and certain Doom-happy fights will become summoners-mandatory.

[Jordache]

we can include something else that fits with the theme-

That's the problem right there: I am so requiring theme-breaking and or motif-deviations for phoenix's paradigms (new life, regeneration, resurrection motifs) it's: the total opposite of Shiva but more Siren than Ifrit.

For statement sake: Bahamut would be total opposite Phoenix but more Odin than Shiva, maybe even cental or neutral.

There seems to be a character-based spatial reality to the terrestrial avatars thinking on it in relation to the celestial avatars.

[Jordache]

Odin can go climb back up in his tree and see if he can learn how to be useful, though.


You use him on a bunch of maimed or injured exp (65% dmg) mobs to Zantenzuken all of them or to show off.

[Alhanelem]

You use him on a bunch of maimed or injured exp (65% dmg) mobs to Zantenzuken all of them or to show off.

Target's current HP is not cited to have any effect on Zantetsuken's accuracy on any online resource I'm familiar with. Accuracy is only affected by the caster's current MP at time of execution.