May Update Dissapointment

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Originally Posted by Clou777

i think Odin should be adjusted so if there is no instant KO it should do a conal 9999 damage as most of our BPs can do over 10k damage these days easily anyway. There should be no reason people should EVER waste 1 hour ability on Odin to have him do nothing for the summoner except pull hate for merely having used the avatar.

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don't forget ALL of our mp as well.

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Originally Posted by Clou777

i think Odin should be adjusted so if there is no instant KO it should do a conal 9999 damage as most of our BPs can do over 10k damage these days easily anyway. There should be no reason people should EVER waste 1 hour ability on Odin to have him do nothing for the summoner except pull hate for merely having used the avatar.

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Heck, I'd settle for Death Properties on an equal recast timer.

prime example of the unbalance

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Originally Posted by Sicycre

Hi, everyone!

Currently, there are no plans to make adjustments in terms of summoner's attack aspects; however, we will continue to make adjustments moving forward with the next one being adjustments to healing-type blood pacts.

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I'm very happy for both of these, thank you very much SE Dev team. I agree our attack aspects are fine for now but our wards do need help and healing wards aren't a bad place to start. The only attack thing I'd really like to see is as Shirai stated some sort of aoe pact would be nice or having Level ? Holy adjusted to always hit. For example, gears in salvage are thunder resistant, and the only aoe pact we have is thunder based. Thunderspark is also hard to position well and has a short range. I stated my views on wards before so I'll spare you just glad they some are being worked on!!!

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

Can we even get 700 summoning skill? Dunno about anyone else but I'm struggling to get over 550.

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I don't think the cap was put in place b/c it's obtainable just to let you have room for future growth on it. Bf is at 624, and only missing the HQ Apogee body and feet for summoning skill that we know of, which would add another 11 over what he's using. Yea, it's better to get telchine pieces, but it's still good for them to do this work of adjusting caps to keep gear relevant into the future.

Did anyone, ever use Pacifying Ruby constantly? i think i myself have used it twice. once to see how it looks and a 2nd on accident

Yes please do our wards soon.... SE has been saying they will upgrade our wards for years.

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Originally Posted by Windwhisper

Did anyone, ever use Pacifying Ruby constantly? i think i myself have used it twice. once to see how it looks and a 2nd on accident

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I use it during fights to help the tank maintain hate which allows my wifey to go all out on her DRG and just wreck things without worrying about becoming a target. Between that and super jump she never has hate issues anymore.

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Originally Posted by Windwhisper

Did anyone, ever use Pacifying Ruby constantly? i think i myself have used it twice. once to see how it looks and a 2nd on accident

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It's fine when you have a party, but if you're soloing it generates more enmity than it really should.

Greetings,

As a follow-up in regard to upcoming summoner adjustments, we are planning to make changes to Apogee in a future version update.

We’re currently in the midst of looking into change the way this ability works so that when used it would reset the cool down timers of Blood Pact: Rage and Blood Pact: Ward. However, we’d like to hear your feedback on whether there are any issues with this.

Please also understand that there may be the possibility that when testing it turns out that it will be unable to make this change.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings,

As a follow-up in regard to upcoming summoner adjustments, we are planning to make changes to Apogee in a future version update.

We’re currently in the midst of looking into change the way this ability works so that when used it would reset the cool down timers of Blood Pact: Rage and Blood Pact: Ward. However, we’d like to hear your feedback on whether there are any issues with this.

Please also understand that there may be the possibility that when testing it turns out that it will be unable to make this change.

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1.) Do you mean that we can use basically 4 Blood Pacts (2 Wards, 2 Rages) in rapid succession and that way it would be used after to then reset cool down?
2.) If that's the case, does that mean the x2 MP cost is going to be removed?

Also, While a change like this is still good, it doesn't help with the potency of our Wards. Which is what most people are asking about. Our Attack Strength is pretty good ATM with some decent time put into it.

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Originally Posted by Windwhisper

Did anyone, ever use Pacifying Ruby constantly? i think i myself have used it twice. once to see how it looks and a 2nd on accident

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I used it on Hidhaegg on a BLU, while a THF was using TA on the PLD (which keeps being terror'd that fight). It did help, to the tune of like 1-2 skillchains more before the BLU would take hate and then have to turtle up or die but it seems for something I have to spam every 30 seconds to make that little difference it should have a boost.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings,

As a follow-up in regard to upcoming summoner adjustments, we are planning to make changes to Apogee in a future version update.

We’re currently in the midst of looking into change the way this ability works so that when used it would reset the cool down timers of Blood Pact: Rage and Blood Pact: Ward. However, we’d like to hear your feedback on whether there are any issues with this.

Please also understand that there may be the possibility that when testing it turns out that it will be unable to make this change.

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I am very happy to hear SMN adjustments are on the table! This is how I feel about this adjustment:

Uses could be found for it, as it gives us one more pact per apogee if we plan carefully but it also is limiting in that it doesn't help us say put on more wards sooner or do longer attack chains. It just lets us get more use out of wards in a battle situation where we'd favor rage over ward. Already doing Tumult Curator with a SMN in the party along with BRD and COR rotating buffs too, we reach the cap of max displayable buffs (especially since fenrir's takes soooo many slots), which lead to confusion and inability to determine when important buffs were going to fall off. I believe we and other SMN strongly feel that rather than the amount of buffs we can put on mid battle going up (or not sacrificing as much damage to apply the same number of buffs) our buffs should be more meaningful given that it takes so much time and often mana cost to put one on in the first place especially if you look at other mage jobs. To me our wards should be either unique or strong party wide versions of existing spells to constitute the cost of being able to apply less in a given duration. To me this was the original function and purpose of wards, just many have not kept up with the times at all. 13 damage reduction phalanx was meaningful at one point, but now that any mage with enhancing skill can reach 35 damage reduction, it is not useful to ever cast it (and I don't, I actually get more of using it as SMN with RDM sub and enhancing gear than using phalanx). SCH or a mage with SCH subjob can out do almost all our wards based on their spells, in shorter time. Phalanx AoE 35 damage reduction vs Diabolos 13. We get enfire, enthunder, ice spikes and shock spikes. RDM/SCH or SCH/RDM can accession these... and every other element, and I'm pretty sure at greater potency. What's worse, is that even though they can do that, they rarely do because they aren't valued. Endrain is a great ward, when the moon phase is right but Enaspir is very niche in use. Player stoneskin can reach 475 HP, but Titan's Earthen Ward is stuck at much worse values (still 248 if reports are to be believed which means it never kept going up with ilvl and is stuck at 99, much like healing wards and if that's the case with it, Ifrit's Warcry is probably in the same situation). I could go on but you get the idea, our wards are far behind and even what some of them do isn't valued enough to be cast by jobs that can both put it on the party faster and with higher potency. All that leaves a lot of SMN wards take both a high cost of time and have less meaningful effects, even compared to non support jobs, just other mages who sub sch for the aoe effect. It's not like our solo ability is great either, without 1 hours our dmg solo is painfully slow vs content Ifrit won't work on, and being so cornered into using a niche few pacts is I think the main problem. Out of all our cool toys I usually only use Haste 2, Earthern Armor, Flaming Crush, Volt Strike, Shock Squall, and occassionally TP Bonus, Warcry, and Enfire or Endrain if time. If doing bcnm runs for example, I won't get that entire list off. Our -25 Evasion down on thing's like Shiva's ward just don't make sense, why so little? During the right phase of moon Fenrir does more and it's not respectable either, not when Feint can put 250 evasion down, and distract 3 over 100, and again, any mage with rdm sub can put -35 evasion down distract, our wards for having a huge cast time are also very impotent. It makes them tend to not be used except for the ones most useful, which are usually the same ones which leads to less interesting play decisions and a lot of dead pacts.

For the adjustment itself I'm for it, if it's not the only thing in store. If it's a pick or choose thing though, I much rather would have at least some of our pacts scale with summoning skill because right now there is no way to enhance them, meanwhile mages get more skill, tons of fastcast and ability to put on tons of spell quickly, and more gear that enhances spells like stoneskin, and we are stuck in the past. If SMN had native skill in other magic schools, which they don't, they could at least use some of these on themselves. But they can't and defeats the point of having a lot of the wards in the first place. Even Aerial armor which I like, BLU gets a blink with many more blinks on it. It is not wonder so many BLU RME being made and jobs mastered, it really is stacked right now, and it isn't even used in the hardest endgame fights for aeonics. There always seems to be 8 or less people playing summoner at any given time on my server, there's even more WAR on all the time now. There's a few jobs less played than SMN but not many so I think SE would do well to give it help. The amount of work that goes into a good SMN is huge and it's much easier to gear a BLM, SCH or GEO in todays world than put that much effort into something unless you really care for and love it, and most the people here commenting outside people popping in because they want their jobs looked at instead, are dedicated summoner players that love summoner which imho is the right people to ask about the job because they not only will be most affected but have insights based on more knowledge. That said I don't pretend to speak for everyone, just myself. I thank SE very much for listening to us and I hope some of our suggestions make it into the game, thank you for making such an interesting and fun job to play and taking a look at the job balance.

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Originally Posted by Ulth

Nice wall of text. Ifrit's and a war's warcry give the same attack bonus, only Ifrit's lasts much longer and has a smaller cool down. Accession takes stratagems. When you are /sch you get a stratagem every 2 minutes, aka 4 times the cooldown of a bloodpact. Even if you are a main job sch with the gift for stratagem cool down gem recharge time is 3 seconds longer that ward recharge time, with the added bonus of not having separate timer for offensive stratagems. Occultation is self target, and no blu is going to blow a 10 minute cooldown to aoe shadows. A better example would be using accession with blink but that only gives 2 shadows instead of 4. If I was to take a gander over why feint has a higher evasion down than Diamond Storm, It's probably because feint degrades over time, only lasts 30 seconds, has a recast timer of 2 minutes, and isn't AoE.

You are basically complaining that you aren't better than every job at everything all the time.

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True to some extent, but there are still some things that need to be addressed.

Even if Feint fades over time, Diamond Storm is gained at Level 90. So both Feint and Distract II, which are Lv. 75 and 85, respectively, offer a -50 to evasion. So, it's not out of the realm of reasonableness to ask for -35 or even -40 to evasion. And while I agree that no BLU would use Diffusion on Occultation, most SMN also wouldn't waste the time on Aerial Armor either; as most things strip shadows/blink (Which ours is only 3, not 4). SMN shouldn't surpass another job outside the the effects that are ours alone, which are few, but we should most definitely be a viable substitute for something missing.

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Originally Posted by Zeargi

True to some extent, but there are still some things that need to be addressed.

Even if Feint fades over time, Diamond Storm is gained at Level 90. So both Feint and Distract II, which are Lv. 75 and 85, respectively, offer a -50 to evasion. So, it's not out of the realm of reasonableness to ask for -35 or even -40 to evasion. And while I agree that no BLU would use Diffusion on Occultation, most SMN also wouldn't waste the time on Aerial Armor either; as most things strip shadows/blink (Which ours is only 3, not 4). SMN shouldn't surpass another job outside the the effects that are ours alone, which are few, but we should most definitely be a viable substitute for something missing.

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It's not just that feint degrades over time, It also can only be up 1/4 of the time. Generally I only use it overwrite evasion up, but even then I think can't overwrite Distract II, but can be overwritten by Distract II, so there is probably evasion boosts it can't overwrite. Anyway what level the abilities were gotten at are irreverent. Thf gets its best ability at level 15, as for distract II they could have picked any arbitrary number over 49, it doesn't matter you are only using that spell at 99. And no, a smn should use Aerial Armor, it lasts 15 minutes, and they are out of range most of the fight anyway. Basically it's just an extra safety net in case something does happen. As for the number of shadows I'm going off what BG wiki says, and it says 3 at low levels otherwise 4. Really the only thing I agree on is Fenrir's moves being based on the moon phase being annoying.

As for what smn should be known for, it should be messing faces up with terrestrial avatars. Personally I think flaming crush needs to be dialed back a smidgen, and the other avatars brought up to that level to give a better representation of all the elements. I also think astral flows are way underpowered considering the lore of final fantasy and those move's history. Maybe that's what the 1200 gift should have been, Improved versions of those moves.

Edit: Also Nirvana 119 III is pointless, make it better.

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Originally Posted by Ulth

It's not just that feint degrades over time, It also can only be up 1/4 of the time. Generally I only use it overwrite evasion up, but even then I think can't overwrite Distract II, but can be overwritten by Distract II, so there is probably evasion boosts it can't overwrite. Anyway what level the abilities were gotten at are irreverent. Thf gets its best ability at level 15, as for distract II they could have picked any arbitrary number over 49, it doesn't matter you are only using that spell at 99. And no, a smn should use Aerial Armor, it lasts 15 minutes, and they are out of range most of the fight anyway. Basically it's just an extra safety net in case something does happen. As for the number of shadows I'm going off what BG wiki says, and it says 3 at low levels otherwise 4. Really the only thing I agree on is Fenrir's moves being based on the moon phase being annoying.

As for what smn should be known for, it should be messing faces up with terrestrial avatars. Personally I think flaming crush needs to be dialed back a smidgen, and the other avatars brought up to that level to give a better representation of all the elements. I also think astral flows are way underpowered considering the lore of final fantasy and those move's history. Maybe that's what the 1200 gift should have been, Improved versions of those moves.

Edit: Also Nirvana 119 III is pointless, make it better.

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Is there some Special SMN magic skill required for it, because the last 15 casting of it has only given me 3 shadows.

Maybe? It wouldn't surprise me if the wiki was wrong. The information on feint was drastically wrong until September last year when Jeanpaul tested it, you could math it out with some tests if you really want to know.

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Originally Posted by Ulth

Maybe? It wouldn't surprise me if the wiki was wrong. The information on feint was drastically wrong until September last year when Jeanpaul tested it, you could math it out with some tests if you really want to know.

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Jeanpaul has been a boon for the player base both in and out of game. I'm still not sure what I'm missing, though. I've got over 500 skill which is listed as the head source. Maybe there's a piece of armor I'm not using that they are.

I have no idea where the 3~4 comes from, as far as I am aware Aerial Armor has always been 3 shadows regardless of player or avatar level.
Neither do I remember it being changed.

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Originally Posted by Zeargi

1.) Do you mean that we can use basically 4 Blood Pacts (2 Wards, 2 Rages) in rapid succession and that way it would be used after to then reset cool down?
2.) If that's the case, does that mean the x2 MP cost is going to be removed?

Also, While a change like this is still good, it doesn't help with the potency of our Wards. Which is what most people are asking about. Our Attack Strength is pretty good ATM with some decent time put into it.

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After this change takes place, Apogee would only reset the cool down timer for Blood Pact: Ward and Blood Pact: Rage. In other words, this is a complete redesign of the ability, and it would not be at all like it is at the moment.

So, to answer your question: yes, you will be able to use consequent Ward and Rage abilities by executing each, and then using Apogee. Furthermore we are planning to eliminate the increased MP cost as well.

Let us know your feedback!

Wow impressive; this should help alleviate many of the issues I've been seeing brought to the fore regarding smn. Thanks for listening SE.

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Originally Posted by Camate

After this change takes place, Apogee would only reset the cool down timer for Blood Pact: Ward and Blood Pact: Rage. In other words, this is a complete redesign of the ability, and it would not be at all like it is at the moment.

So, to answer your question: yes, you will be able to use consequent Ward and Rage abilities by executing each, and then using Apogee. Furthermore we are planning to eliminate the increased MP cost as well.

Let us know your feedback!

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I think after our wards get an overhaul this could help smn's get a place in parties again. I won't complain about this upgrade to that ability.

Thank you for clarifying Camate and sorry for any troubles my reply may have caused I really appreciate you and the other community teams work. The increased mp cost was also noticeable when you double up on huge cost pacts so that's great too.

So in the scenario where, assuming we have capped Blood Pact recast and Blood Pact recast 2 making our recast 30 secs: we have Garuda out, we use Blood Pact: Rage Predator Claws then Blood Pact: Ward Hastega, the recast timer on both is 30 secs. Now we use (new) Apogee, our recast timers are reset to 0 and we can use both again immediately and the recast will be 30 secs again or will it be whatever it would be for the first use?

Basically will the new Apogee give us free Blood Pact uses regardless of the recast timer (not resetting or interacting with the timer at all) or will it just reset the current timer to zero? I ask for clarification because the first change is more powerful than the second because it will essentially give us the ability to self-skillchain AND Magic Burst AND buff/heal in rapid succession effectively using ONLY our Avatars, at least while Apogee is usable (every 2-5mins I presume).

Another example to illustrate this:

30 second recast on Blood Pacts (both recasts capped)

Fenrir uses Ecliptic Growl (Ward) (Timer starts from 30)
Fenrir uses Crescent Fang (Rage) (Timer starts from 30)
Summoner uses Apogee (Both Blood Pacts are available again- recast timers are not tampered with)
Fenrir uses Moonlit Charge (Rage) (Timer continues from would be from the first use so let's say 15)
Skillchain Compression!
Fenrir uses Impact (Rage) (Timer starts from 30)
Magic Burst!

Not sure if you can actually self skillchain with a 15 second window but if you can, this will open up a lot for Summoners. They will be in same group as SCH or BLU to be able to self-skillchain for a limited time through the use of Job Abilities, which is a great boost SMN desperately needs. It would allow us to use up to 3 rages and/or wards in the span of 30 seconds per Apogee use, which is very similar to BST's Ready charges (they can already successfully self skillchain/magic burst with only their pets). With this new Apogee, we no longer have to choose between participating in the skillchain or Magic Bursting because now we can do both (every few minutes). If this is how Apogee will work, please let the recast timer be 5 minutes or less (preferably 2 minutes like Chain/Burst Affinity).

The way it sounds is that it actually just resets the counters. So if you go and use Hastega II -> Predator Claws, then using Apogee will simply reset both BP cooldowns from their current timer to 0. It won't preserve the previous one, it will simply reset the timers. It still has more potency then current Apogee, especially if the MP cost boost is removed, because you can now get in four pacts in a very short period whenever Apogee is up as opposed to three, with no additional cost if their plans go through.

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Originally Posted by Kensagaku

The way it sounds is that it actually just resets the counters. So if you go and use Hastega II -> Predator Claws, then using Apogee will simply reset both BP cooldowns from their current timer to 0. It won't preserve the previous one, it will simply reset the timers. It still has more potency then current Apogee, especially if the MP cost boost is removed, because you can now get in four pacts in a very short period whenever Apogee is up as opposed to three, with no additional cost if their plans go through.

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Well the simple explanation is for example would be. Predator Claws > Apogee <Resets timer> >Predator claws > Predator claws so you could BP 3 times, it wouldn't be limited to Predator claws though lol.

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Originally Posted by dmuller30

Well the simple explanation is for example would be. Predator Claws > Apogee <Resets timer> >Predator claws > Predator claws so you could BP 3 times, it wouldn't be limited to Predator claws though lol.

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I don't think that's how it's gonna work. I feel that it's going to reset the timer once for each ability. So if you use it while the Ward time is still at 0, it'll do nothing for it.

After further discussions and testing within the development team, they have decided that they will not be making the aforementioned changes to Apogee. I apologize to those of you who were looking forward to this change. With that said though, they do feel that improvements to the usability of Blood Pacts are necessary, and they are currently in the midst of exploring other ways to address this. Once the plans have come together, I will make a follow-up.

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Originally Posted by Camate

After further discussions and testing within the development team, they have decided that they will not be making the aforementioned changes to Apogee. I apologize to those of you who were looking forward to this change. With that said though, they do feel that improvements to the usability of Blood Pacts are necessary, and they are currently in the midst of exploring other ways to address this. Once the plans have come together, I will make a follow-up.

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Awww as sad as the announcement is for those summoners who were so looking forward to this; thank you for letting us know.

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Originally Posted by Camate

After further discussions and testing within the development team, they have decided that they will not be making the aforementioned changes to Apogee. I apologize to those of you who were looking forward to this change. With that said though, they do feel that improvements to the usability of Blood Pacts are necessary, and they are currently in the midst of exploring other ways to address this. Once the plans have come together, I will make a follow-up.

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Sad to hear about apogee but glad to hear that bloodpacts are finally gonna get a review ^^ i wouldn't mind a new set of physical/magical BP's for our avatars since other jobs have gotten new weapon skills to match a new level of combat skills.

Glad to see SMN getting some attention, really hoping our BP wards will get a buff. It's a shame about apogee I was coming around to the idea of this change after forgetting to use apogee before a BP a couple times >_>

The Apogee thing is quite ok, would've been cool but in its current state Apogee is a good ability to have too.

As for pacts that need updating, I think I will put together a list of things for you to look at soon.
(This list will be mostly based on my personal opinion, my fellow summoners, feel free to debate some of my choices once I've made them or add your own once I have.)

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Originally Posted by Shirai

The Apogee thing is quite ok, would've been cool but in its current state Apogee is a good ability to have too.

As for pacts that need updating, I think I will put together a list of things for you to look at soon.
(This list will be mostly based on my personal opinion, my fellow summoners, feel free to debate some of my choices once I've made them or add your own once I have.)

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I'll be looking forward to this list >^.^< not many summoners i can talk to on my server that know the job that well.

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Originally Posted by Camate

After further discussions and testing within the development team, they have decided that they will not be making the aforementioned changes to Apogee. I apologize to those of you who were looking forward to this change. With that said though, they do feel that improvements to the usability of Blood Pacts are necessary, and they are currently in the midst of exploring other ways to address this. Once the plans have come together, I will make a follow-up.

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Can they at least look into removing the Apogee MP+ effect at least while we wait for the other things?

Dear Camate and Dev team,

Hereby a list of Blood Pacts, both Wards and Rages, I'd like you to take a look at improving.
Fellow Summoners, feel free to add your own input in this matter.

Blood Pact Wards (Defensive):
- Aerial Armor (Garuda) Level 25 - Having a few more shadows. Scaled by level would be nice if at all possible.
- Ecliptic Growl (Fenrir) Level 43 - Please increase the maximum values. I know that this idea might be a bit of a pain for the Lore lovers, but perhaps removing the moon phase mechanics and making the potency scale with level would be a good solution for this.
- Earthen Ward (Titan) Level 46 - This one desperately needs a boost to at least the non-augmented Stoneskin cap of a mage main job.
- Noctoshield (Diabolos) Level 49 - A flat -13 damage isn't going to make a healer's job a lot easier, preferably I'd like to see potency scaled with Level.
- Ecliptic Howl (Fenrir) Level 54 - See Ecliptic Growl.
- Dream Shroud (Diabolos) Level 56 - Maximum values definitely need to be increased, preferably scaled with level. And like with Fenrir's Moon Phase mechanic, perhaps it's time to abolish it for Diabolos too.

Blood Pact Wards (Offensive):
All of them - Please increase magic accuracy over the board, Summoner gets very little pet-macc gear as it is.
- Lunar Cry (Fenrir) Level 21 - Please increase maximum values. Perhaps abolish moon phase mechanic.
- Nightmare (Diabolos) Level 29 - The potency of Bio is a tad low, please scale this by level.
- Ultimate Terror (Diabolos) Level 37 - The stat drain needs a potency increase scaled by level.
- Diamond Storm (Shiva) Level 90 - Please change the flat -25 Evasion to a percentage.
- Pavor Nocturnus (Diabolos) Level 98 - For the love of whatever deity you worship, change this one to a Rage pact and instead of making it an extremely expensive Dispel make it do some dark damage instead when it does not KO a target.

For all of the above, if scaling's going to be used to increase the potency of the pacts please consider using the Avatar's level for this and not the player's main or iLevel. While it may not make a lot of difference, it will be an extra bone to those of us that have invested a lot of time and gil in making a Nirvana.

Blood pact Rage:
- Zantetsuken (Odin) Level 75 - Please sever its connection with Astral Flow and make it a seperately castable spell like Atomos. With the same recast time as Death. Heck, I wouldn't even mind if this were changed to a single target ability. Heck, this might even give us a place with the blms on mobs where the Death MB strategy is used.
- Level ? Holy (Cait Sith) Level 76 - I don't mind the randomness of the diceroll, really. But can you please change this pact to always do damage? Just make the diceroll decide the damage.
Related to the above is that us Summoners have a severe lack of powerfull AoE attacks, they are either tied to our Astral Flow Ability or are more miss than hit due to a quirky mechanic (See Level ? Holy). The only other viable option we have is Thunderspark, which by itself is fairly weak, even with proper gear.

By the way, a high level pact with Piercing attributes wouldn't be a bad thing either. (I'd say a change to Spinning Dive could be a viable option.)

Would like to see Aerial Armor over time be scaled up to work like BLUs Occulation, Noctoshield really does need more than -13 dmg, Odin i think should do 9999 dmg when it doesnt instant KO an enemy as most of our BPs at 99 do well over 9999 damage nowadays anyway and this way will avoid a complete waste of the astral flow, as for Level?Holy i think it should do a typically decent amount of damage each time (maybe a tad above thunderspark) but when matched with a mobs level does double or triple damage.

I agree with a lot of the items Shirai mentioned, but I'm gonna repost and add some of my own: (New Wards marked with *)

Wards:
Heavenward Howl (Fenrir) - There needs to be a clear break of this. A ward like this isn't something needed when it comes to a fight. Hoping for one, but getting the other is extremely unfortunate. Make this one Endrain
Ethereal Beckoning (Diabolos) - Grants Enaspir to all Party Members within the area of effect * The other clear divide is that so few creatures in this game have MP, so why waste your time if you know that the thing you're fighting isn't going to give you a return.
Lunar Roar (Fenrir) - Scale up with SMN Magic Skill and offer 4-5 buffs removed.

Rages:
Regal Gash (Cait Sith) For a Level 99 ability it's awful DMG, even more so when you take into the fact that both Carbuncle and Cait Sith can beat the lvl cap of other Avatars. Both of these Avatars are Extremely weak for being Light. And Her attack also closes Darkness, very weird.
Blindside (Diabolos) - Also a lvl 99 Ability and it's just as bad as Regal Gash's DMG

Astral Flow - DMG for these need to be looked at

To tack onto Zantetsuken item mention:

Make Odin use Zantetsuken I - Single Target Death
Make Alexander use Mega Holy - Massive AoE Light DMG

But while under Astral Flow:
Odin uses Zantetsuken II (Perfect Zantetsuken) - AoE Death
Alexander will use Perfect Defense

Both casting of them Still Taking all MP.

I know it's not really worth talking about, but I've been playing around with Atomos in ambuscade to take off the demon's dread spikes, and I was thinking that it might actually be somewhat useful if it would just speed the hell up. Cut the cast time down as low as it will go, like BLM stone, or even just to spirit cast time, and speed up the charge/discharge time so the whole thing happens in under 5 seconds rather then the 15-20 seconds it takes now.

Also, I'm rather partial to Carbuncle's Shining Ruby buff. +10% defense and static +4 MDB isn't nothing, and it especially helps trust tanks since they rely a lot more on defense values then player tanks do. It would be nice if it got a slight buff, but my biggest issue is that it is the only ward that cannot overwrite itself. I can't imagine why that is the case, but just fixing that would be a nice change in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Zeargi

To tack onto Zantetsuken item mention:

Make Odin use Zantetsuken I - Single Target Death
Make Alexander use Mega Holy - Massive AoE Light DMG

But while under Astral Flow:
Odin uses Zantetsuken II (Perfect Zantetsuken) - AoE Death
Alexander will use Perfect Defense

Both casting of them Still Taking all MP.

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Actually, Zantetsuken Kai (Massive dark damage instead of Death) for a non-Astral Flow Pact would also be agreeable.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shirai

Actually, Zantetsuken Kai (Massive dark damage instead of Death) for a non-Astral Flow Pact would also be agreeable.

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Had this idea a while ago to make them have a non-astral flow attack, 1 min recast and requires all the summoner's mp.

Odin - geirrothr - 10000 needles
Alexander - gospel of the lost - AoE heal and removes all debuffs (including doom).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

Odin - geirrothr - 10000 needles

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Thing is, in this day and age 10.000 damage to a single entity doesn't amount to anything.
Especially if the damage gets divided over more than one mob, Thunderspark would easily outdo it.