Avatar's Favor still lackluster

Papesse on the FFXIAH.com forums found that the potency of Shiva's Favor and Cait Sith's Favor has actually been increased. I haven't tested it myself yet to confirm.

I would really like a developer response to the issue of swapping equipment affecting favour potency. All the changes to avatar's favour show us that the developers want to encourage blood pact use while avatar's favour is in use, but adding new tiers to the skill requirement encourages the exact opposite of that.

SE, we cannot maintain full strength favour and use blood pact abilities at the same time. There needs to be a major shift in Avatar's Favour design before this works properly. Is this even a recognised issue?

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Originally Posted by Jerbob

I would really like a developer response to the issue of swapping equipment affecting favour potency. All the changes to avatar's favour show us that the developers want to encourage blood pact use while avatar's favour is in use, but adding new tiers to the skill requirement encourages the exact opposite of that.

SE, we cannot maintain full strength favour and use blood pact abilities at the same time. There needs to be a major shift in Avatar's Favour design before this works properly. Is this even a recognised issue?

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I don't see what the problem is. When you want to use a BP, put on your BP- gear, then command the BP, then swap to attack/mab/accuracy/whatever gear you need for the blood pact, then swap back to your favor set. Remember, the potency of favor is determined by your current skill, caller's horn, and the duration that favor has been active. When you use a blood pact, you effectively increase the duration counter by a set amount according to the mp that the BP costs. So, if you're already at capped duration, and you use a BP (while swapping gear normally), you don't have to swap back to your favor gear and wait until the duration is capped again. It was capped before, and it stays capped. All you have to do is swap to favor gear, and BOOM! you're at max favor potency.

Has that been confirmed to be true by testing? I may be mistaken.

I was under the impression that, when you add skill+ gear, Avatar's Favour takes time to increase to maximum potency as dictated by that new tier - the same time it would take to move from one tier to the next when first activated. If, instead, it is definitely based on the time that Avatar's Favour has been active, then I gladly withdraw the majority of my complaint! It's still dumb that our favour blinks in and out of existence when using BP, though less critically problematic than I believed.

I will have to see for myself on a day when I have some spare time. Thanks for the heads up.

Jerbob is correct in my experience. If you lower your tier by dropping skill, you have to wait the number of tier tocks for it to go back up.

I just did some testing. I started in my smn skill gear with caller's horn for a total of 533 skill. At this point I had 475 defense. I summoned Titan, turned on avatar's favor, did a few earthen armors, and my defense ended up at 562, for total of 87 defense from favor. I then stripped naked for a defense of 226. I then immediately put back all of my smn skill gear with caller's horn, and my defense was immediately 562.

There was no waiting to tick back up to maximum potency.

I've been too distracted with other things to post about this again, but I'm back for more...

So basically what we've got here is that a few of the Avatar's Favor effects have been increased but not all of them. Why was this not the answer from the developers from the start? Why were our concerns met with evasiveness and misdirection instead of honesty? It seems clear now that the 575+ Summoning skill response was most likely just to avoid answering directly.

So, Camate, why are the developers giving us misinformation instead of a relevant response? Even getting a "it's a secret, keep looking" response would be preferable to "quick, look over there!"

We were able to confirm additional adjustment details on Avatar’s Favor.

The following are the adjustments that were made:

1. Raised the effect on all the Avatar’s Favors.
2. When you maintain a summoning skill 575 or greater, the effects on Avatar’s Favor will be much higher.
3. When equipped with the Caller’s Horn +1/+2, the effect will also be higher than usual even if summoning skill is below 575.
4. Shiva and Cait Sith have received an overall potency increase.

In regards to the required summoning skill (575 or above) being too high, the development team intentionally set it to this level so that there will be a buffer when they decide to make further adjustments to the summoning skill, so please wait for an update on this.

Additionally, the devs. are considering to apply an item level on the Caller’s Horn +2.

Hopefully they're considering making a full set of Empyrean iLevel armor instead of just Caller's Horn +2.

What the heck does number 1 mean? How can they have raised the effects of all avatar's favors yet only boosted Shiva and Cait Sith's?

Grekumah, they better not just upgrade the Caller's Horn +2 or all the denizens will riot!
They'll all, repeatedly, cast Firaja II and and burn Ru'Lude Gardens down! Aht Urhgan Whitegate will be next!

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

We were able to confirm additional adjustment details on Avatar’s Favor.

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Thanks for the update Grekumah. I do appreciate your continued communication about this subject. That being said, the points you've provided are contradicting and are not new information. It seems like you're giving our own proven facts back to us and claiming that these are additional details from the development team.

1. This has been proven false by players and point #4 contradicts this.
2. This is irrelevant in relation to the update note since it's impossible to reach 575 summoning magic skill.
3. The Caller's Horn +1/+2 has always had this effect and the update made no changes to that.
4. This was actually found by the player Papesse and avoids the issue of what changes where made to the other Avatar's Favars that was claimed by point #1

I don't mind getting flamed but perhaps avatars favor effect may want to be linked to the ilvl of the pet? This would avoid the issue of having to stack summoning skill on for a mediocre effect while still allowing the SMN to maintain pet melee/refresh idle gear. It may be useful to have temporary boost to the effect when apogee is used (still keeps effect boosted by amount of mp used). Especially for career summoners who pride themselves on using bloodpacts often, there will be more damage dealt over time by blood pacts than by the buff given by avatars favor.

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Originally Posted by Rakshaka

I just did some testing. I started in my smn skill gear with caller's horn for a total of 533 skill. At this point I had 475 defense. I summoned Titan, turned on avatar's favor, did a few earthen armors, and my defense ended up at 562, for total of 87 defense from favor. I then stripped naked for a defense of 226. I then immediately put back all of my smn skill gear with caller's horn, and my defense was immediately 562.

There was no waiting to tick back up to maximum potency.

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I've just looked at this myself and got the same result. I guess I was mistaken. Thanks for looking into it.

This makes me a little happier about avatar's favour, at least.

Summoner has gotten some long awaited attention thank you devs!!!!!!!!!

Your adjustments to avatars favor eh not bad not amazing mind you but better than nothing? How else can summoner gain utility without being over powering ?

1. Abolish the global ward timer on all ward pacts, much like what was done with dancer. Give each ward an individual timer, none of the timers would ever need to be greater than 30 secs or max bp down with gear kinda thing (not claiming this is the current max bp down this is just for example). but waiting 30 secs between casting a buff and another buff and another buff hinders summoner's support job abilities.

BP rage seems fine the way it is. I don't see any reason why astral conduit wouldn't be able to continue to work the same way it does now.

Slightly off topic but not really... "Odin Pact" make it useful or turn it into a ward ? just a thought. WS dmg +50% to all in range for 45 secs kinda thingy wouldnt suk ^^

Thanks for reading my suggestions. All and all I love summoner even as it is. but the tweaks to Ward timers would help alot. New BP rages all around never hurts either even if they are just fun extras. the wimpy potency on the ward's wont be an issue if we can use alot of the wimpy wards alot faster. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!;)