Blood Pact Enhancement Stats Explained

Yes, the blood pact usage >> Avatar's Favour reset thing is insane. I'm fairly sure most summoners don't know about any drawbacks to the job ability, to be honest - so many seem to full time it for the perpetuation reduction.

With regards to the accuracy penalty, I don't think more penalties are the way forward here. Personally I already rage enough when my blood pacts deal <500 damage so this would be particularly irritating for me. Advovating avatar's favour as a support stance with reductions to offense is ostensibly fine (SE's glass-eatingly awful implementation notwithstanding) but the benefit and flexiblity must be very much there to compensate for that reduction in offense; I would say that before discussing specifics re: penalties a re-worked set of bonuses should be drawn up first.

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...the mechanics behind Avatar's Favor, which seem relevant when talking about Summoner buffs, are still as weird and off-putting as somebody's grandpa in butt-less rubber pants.

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This sums up my feelings so perfectly. Bravo.

As a side note, I think it would be worth keeping things as on topic as possible with regards to Ward effects. General SMN discussion is always a great idea, but with Okipuit specifically focusing on Wards I think this is the optimal time to get our thoughts on them across once and for all, and get them sorted out.

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Originally Posted by Okipuit

Greetings!

With that said, there would not be any kind of trade-off when the effect is increased as the number of party members decreases. Similarly, there have also been requests to simply increase the effects of Blood Pacts as well as to change it into a single target effect. For the first request, the Blood Pact's effects has been set keeping similar spells in mind, so this aspect would need to be considered...

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Noctoshield's potency increases until level 75, then stops. The same thing goes for other avatar buffs. These should be re-adjusted for the level 99 cap.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

Instead of the damage reduction, silly.

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Oh I see.
I dunno if it would be worse or better, but in all honesty as other users pointed out the main issues with Avatar's Favour are in the "reset potency every BP" mainly, and in the silly 10yalms range secondly.

The damage nerf is unwelcome and I'd love it to go away of course, but it's not as huge as someone wants it to look like. I'm talking about the mab one, can't really comment on the attack one since I don't even know the exact amount.
But really, they need to solve those two issues first, and then we can talk about what to do with the damage nerf, imho.

I'm in favour of buffing the old Ward pacts- they need it. As was said, the whole scaling with party members thing is a bit what. I dunno who suggested it >.<. The useful newer Blood Pacts are fine. Thing's like Heavenward Howl will always be useless, so no point going into them.

Regarding Avatar's Favor, and similar ideas into an "stance" type ability... I had always hoped that SE would make an opposite if you like to Avatar's Favor. Maybe something along the lines of "reduces Blood Pact: Rage timer for increased perpetuation cost". That's what I think most people are crying out for, myself included. Would it break the job? Not really since you still have the MP pool, are using more MP through perpetuation and would be using Blood Pacts faster, meaning your MP gets depleted faster that way too. Even if it's -15 seconds, it's better then spike damage every 45 seconds. It wasn't mentioned, but before it is- damage dealt per Blood Pact does not need an increase. It's fine as it is.

Now onto Avatar's Favor... I personally don't use it, unless our healers are in real dire need of as much Refresh as possible. The 10' range is a bit... weak, but buffs are OK for situational use. You're not supposed to fulltime Avatar's Favor, it's just another buff option. Although I'd agree, the potency should not reset when you perform an offensive Blood Pact.

I can't think of a single post that asked for such an odd request as scaling buffs with party members. Maybe the reps should have a rule that once a post has reached a certain number of likes, it gets translated for the devs to see. Because as I see it, Karbuncle's post about updated buffs for SMN on the SMN forum was more or less spot on.

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Originally Posted by Ophannus

SCH can AoE stoneskin but they also have their own limitations. (Light Arts has to be up, need to waste a strategem on Accession; recast is doubled with accession) also SMN is more versatile than SCH in terms of being able to AoE Stun, do considerable BP damage, Hastega, etc. So SMN isn't going to get any ridiculosuly strong enhancement bloodpacts(besides 2hr) since enhancing a party isnt the job's main focus(SMN is versatile, not a buff specialist like cors/brds). Usually if a job can fulfill multiple tasks/roles i.e SMN, the bufs they can use aren't the best. Yeah SCH has *slightly* less restrictions on AoE stoneskin but can they Hastega? Can they Stunga as well as Shocksquall? Can they do 1k+ damage to hard, magic resistant mobs? Can they AoE cure+remove status ailments simultaneously?

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Both jobs are extremely versatile, one is simply much better at it than the other. Wasting a stratagem to turn something into AoE is no different than using a BP because both have roughly the same recast except SCH can stack them unlike SMN.
SCH can switch with 1 button, we need to Release an avatar, resummon another, wait for the casting time, position said avatar where we want it and fire off the BP. We cannot do that any of that in a quick and respnsive way unless we happen to be on the correct avatar (and if we are we're severely gimping our damage output).
If we're gonna argue that Summoner is not meant to buff so our weak buffs are fine then let's talk about damage.
1k damage every 45 seconds isn't good. True damage dealers can do a lot more than that in less time because not only do their Weapon Skills hit for more but their melee swings actually deal some sort of damage unlike our avatars.
Not to mention our BPs don't fire off instantly so that gives the mob all the time to oneshot our pet, stun it, sleep it, etc. wasting our only shot for those 45 seconds.
The job needs something to stand out or it'll be mediocre forever, having weak buffs and gimp damage output in the name of versatility isn't the correct way to go.
Summoners stopped at 75 for some reason, very little has come out of the cap increase and I really don't see how people can be fine with this. Gear is even a rare thing to see... we're always slapped on mage sets that have barely any use to us.