Do Relic, Mythic, and Empyrean staves lack utility?

[Byrth]

That picture is by far the best thing to come out of this thread. <--- sorry, I didn't read most of the posts between the picture and here. I just thought it was a funny image someone had stitched together. ; ;

AM3 for Mythics is just OAT, it's not all three.

Also, directions to post in the random question thread are in caps in the FFXI advanced forum description. BG's philosophy, as I understand it (not a mod), is that we should make threads for ongoing conversations within the community. Testing that's being done, events we're interested in, etc. Making threads like this one (http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/105...ansion-problem) get you in trouble. Probably not banned, if you didn't do it maliciously, but it'll at least get it unsympathetically locked. Making threads like this one (http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/104...nd-Igi-Ningi-2) get people trying to sex you out of happiness, even if your original conclusion ends up being wrong.

As far as wikis go, as the game dies out, SE adds less and less content but fewer and fewer people add it to the wikis. BGwiki has a huge advantage over other wikis in that Septimus, myself, Yugl, Blackrose and several other members of the BG community have been updating random things since the last patch. We've basically added all the information from the last patch to the wiki, and now I'm going through and adding old testing stuff that never made it to ffxiclopedia (or that they got wrong) and testing more things.

To be frank, the last patch kind of sucked for me. It has almost no content that I am obliged to take part in. The challenging and interesting content that they added (Voidwatch) is also unrewarding unless you go with a much larger crew than I. However, I use FFXI as $12.95/mo AIM so I'm on anyway and just do testing and lazily work on long-term goals/help friends.




Anyway, the basic problem with the whole melee-summoner thing is this, which I'm sure you've been told many many times, by me and others:
* There are three strategic uses for summoner:
1) You need Earthen Armor to mitigate heavy (often AoE) damage.
2) You need Perfect Defense for a zerg.
3) You need a low-hate/low-TP damage source often due to some hate-reset mechanism of the monster. In these situations, you sacrifice kill speed for safety and stability.

The reason that your job is only desirable in those three situations basically boils down to the 45 second recast on your BPs and lack of Haste buffs / competitive DPS for pets. It makes you uncompetitive as a melee damage source, which means you're only desirable in situations where meleeing is impractical. Think of it this way, with your Myrkr argument:
1) If you're using Myrkr (Empyrean WS), you're not using a weaponskill that does damage, but you can maintain avatar + BP full-time.
2) If your Avatar BPs for approximately the same amount that players weaponskill for, we can treat those BPs as the replacement for your empyrean weaponskill. I'm being kind when I say your Avatar BPs for as much as an Empyrean WS.
3) Even assuming that your staff wasn't the lowest DPS Empyrean and you weren't one of the least qualified melee jobs in the game, you're still only effectively WSing once every 45 seconds. Other Empyrean DDs self-skillchain by accident (Skillchain window is ~5 seconds).
4) Now you're left with three components:
* Melee damage from the summoner (less than any other DD)
* Melee damage from the Avatar (does not receive Haste buffs), and does not even compare to your own staff damage.
* BP damage (Less than weaponskill damage from any melee)

So you do less damage than any other melee DD that people would consider bringing. Now, why would anyone bring you along to melee DD? Because you can give them an evasion boost? Get real. A lolmeleeBRD can do competitive damage with you and can do a heck of a lot better than mambo. Also, as nice as a minor evasion boost may be, it's not anything people build a strategy around.

Can you go along on your Empyrean Summoner instead of a non-Empyrean DD in Dynamis have more fun? I'm entirely certain that you can. Will you kill more things and get more currency? Maybe, if you pay more attention because you really enjoy playing Summoner. Similarly, if you play both Warrior and Summoner, do I believe there may be times when you outparse your own WAR on Summoner? Sure! If you like the job more, you play it better. You don't AFK as much. You engage faster. Who comes what job and when is a decision you or your linkshell leader have to make due to an understanding of the personalities involved and game mechanics. I, personally, go Dancer a heck of a lot more than I should for this very reason.

However, it's worth nothing that game mechanics really do not favor melee summoners.

Edit: Also, I chose to support BG wiki basically because I noticed Septimus was still updating it long after I thought the community had abandoned it. Also, with the Gamer Escape/FFXIclopedia split, we lost all the talk pages and the updating community is split between the two websites. FFXIclopedia gets all the random updates with unsigned testimonies about BCNMs and stuff, and Gamer Escape gets people pulling information from my posts on BG. I like BGwiki, because there aren't 10,000 banners I have to adblock and there's a small enough updating base that people don't add incorrect information on a whim. I can't even begin to count how many hours of testing the unsigned Saber Dance mechanism someone threw onto ffxiclopedia set me back.

Edit2: lol1:30 sleepytarus go to bed

[Korpg]

I'll accept that things have probably changed over time. That doesn't rid me of my animosity towards them- But I suppose I can give some benefit of the doubt.

I don't know, I wouldn't be so quick to accept that BG has changed. I was banned from that forum just because I argued with one of their locals on a different forum. When that local idiot decided to make a thread on BG about me. I got banned from that website because a local idiot from BG made a thread about me, where is the justice in that?

I don't care what anyone says about BG, they are a bunch of a**hats regardless of being "changed" or not.

[Alhanelem]

* There are three strategic uses for summoner:
1) You need Earthen Armor to mitigate heavy (often AoE) damage.
2) You need Perfect Defense for a zerg.
3) You need a low-hate/low-TP damage source often due to some hate-reset mechanism of the monster. In these situations, you sacrifice kill speed for safety and stability.

There are a lot more uses for summoner than that. That's an EXTREMELY narrow minded perspective. You could say "There are three uses for summoner in the BG elitist community" or "There are three things summoner can do that no one else can do or do well," the latter of which I would accept only grudgingly because that's a matter of opinion.

If your Avatar BPs for approximately the same amount that players weaponskill for

Avatar blood pacts do far more damage than any of your weapon skills could hope to do (on SMN), and do more damage than typical weapon skills from several other weapons. A predator claws does not do less damage than weaponskills, unless you perhaps whiff 2/3 hits and get no critical.

[Alhanelem]

Gamer Escape gets people pulling information from my posts on BG.

No one I know is doing this. It's fluke/coincidence if that's happening. I personally have put up some information from FFXIAH discussions, that may or may not have originally come from elsewhere, again by fluke/coincidence.

If we had a choice, FFXIclopedia would be gone and GamerEscape would be fully in its place, but Wikia doesn't let you just pack up and move, unfortunately. BG wiki makes this problem a little bit worse because now there's THREE wikis when there used to only really be one. Until about a month or so ago, I thought BGwiki was dead and gone, because I didn't even see links to it on the BG forums.

I like BGwiki, because there aren't 10,000 banners I have to adblock

We don't have "10,000 banners" to block. And normally, if you are so opposed to ads (which support the sites that run them, so by blocking ads you're effectively denying them funds needed to pay bandwidth costs), you could just turn Ad Block Plus on with an appropriate filter subscription and you shouldn't have to manually block anything.

... man... got really side tracked there.

[Raksha]

There are a lot more uses for summoner than that.

notice he said strategic uses.

That's an EXTREMELY narrow minded perspective. You could say "There are three uses for summoner in the BG elitist community" or "There are three things summoner can do that no one else can do or do well," the latter of which I would accept only grudgingly because that's a matter of opinion.

Or we could say that there are only three thing that SMN can do well, which will optimally allow you to kill something you weren't able to kill before (or at least with much less hassle)

Avatar blood pacts do far more damage than any of your weapon skills could hope to do, and do more damage than typical weapon skills from several other weapons. A predator claws does not do less damage than weaponskills, unless you perhaps whiff 2/3 hits and get no critical.

And you have parses to back this up?

I know you're allergic to BG, and I know that lucky high hitting WSes shouldn't be used to determine DoT, but read the last 10 or so pages of this thread:

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/912...-or-Comic-Sans

And then show me your best predator claws.

[Greatguardian]

Unless you're rocking consistent 10k Pclaws, you're not blowing any good Empyreans out of the water. Smite and Ukko's can easily average around 5k with RCB and not-suck gear. Hi can probably average closer to 3.5, maybe 4. Wildfire is just bumcrap ridiculous, too.

Pclaws hits, what? 4k average? Maybe 5 on trash mobs? Does it even scale up well on NMs? Serious question, do not know. I still hit 4.5-5 average on Scars NMs, and some lower tier heroes NMs. TA procs can max me around 9k damage on a VSmite on NMs.

[Byrth]

Actually, I'm pretty sure that I covered all of the strategic uses of Summoners, unless you want to add:
4) Can kill most monsters in a group of all summoners slower than an equal number jobs with a more traditional setup.
5) Good for holding monsters if you're in a pickup group, wipe, and have a good summoner.

Still, none of my situations are involving meleeing somehow.

No one I know is doing this. It's fluke/coincidence if that's happening. I personally have put up some information from FFXIAH discussions, that may or may not have originally come from elsewhere, again by fluke/coincidence.

If we had a choice, FFXIclopedia would be gone and GamerEscape would be fully in its place, but Wikia doesn't let you just pack up and move, unfortunately. BG wiki makes this problem a little bit worse because now there's THREE wikis when there used to only really be one. Until about a month or so ago, I thought BGwiki was dead and gone, because I didn't even see links to it on the BG forums.

We don't have "10,000 banners" to block. And normally, if you are so opposed to ads (which support the sites that run them, so by blocking ads you're effectively denying them funds needed to pay bandwidth costs), you could just turn Ad Block Plus on with an appropriate filter subscription and you shouldn't have to manually block anything.

... man... got really side tracked there.

I didn't realize you were from ffxiclopedia/gamer escape, but I block your background, banners, and avatar pictures, along with a lot of the other pictures. All pictures that don't give information, I block. You don't have to just use Adblock to block ads, though I block all of those too. If it makes you feel better, I block the BG logo and absolutely every single one of the incredibly numerous ads on bgwiki that they use to pay for server costs. Just as a side-note, you guys really should have done away with the fixed width website and installed some scaling CSS when you made the hop. Resolution doesn't have to be your enemy, and there's a whole lot more screen width out there.

Also, I confused the two wikis. None of my testing has shown up Gamer Escape that I can see. The testing I did on Tranquil heart yesterday got pulled onto the wiki hours later pretty much verbatim from my post without a citation, as did many (but not all) of the other values determined in the same thread. It looks like the guy only took the ones that he cared about. I don't hold it against you or any of the people who deal with ffxiclopedia personally, because I know you're not responsible for the edits people make and there are too many people to police (basically the YouTube defense to accompany the YouTube motivation) and it essentially doesn't matter because I don't really test things for the sake of public recognition.

Still, providing the information without a citation based off a single spell cast I did is probably not responsible. I could well revise that information, add trait tiers, question how the bonus is actually applied, etc. and no one who reads the page would have any easy way to check because there isn't a citation. Consider ffxiclopedia finger-wagged at.

There's plenty of testing I've added to BGwiki without even posting on the BG forums, which likely means it'll be as under-appreciated as some of the pages I've found (like the awesome Wild Flourish page, which sure taught me something about Dancer). That's fine with me. If I'm unsure of my conclusions, am verifying a new testing method, whatever, I post it on the forums so it can be peer reviewed by the other "mathologists." If I'm using something that's well established, I just add it to the wiki. Rather than trying to put every crafting recipe in the game on the wiki, my focus is basically to get the game mechanics sections ship-shape (and Dancer, because lol<3) and keep us at the top of the barrel on new content.

[Alhanelem]

notice he said strategic uses.

"strategic" uses in his opinion. There are many "strategic" uses for summoner. That list is oversimplified and ignorant.

I didn't realize you were from ffxiclopedia/gamer escape, but I block your background, banners, and avatar pictures, along with a lot of the other pictures.

Why? Are you on a 7200 baud modem and can't handle images? Even if not, you are an incredible anomaly here. You may as well just turn off the display of images in your browser.

Just as a side-note, you guys really should have done away with the fixed width website and installed some scaling CSS when you made the hop.

A liquid width skin is available as an option. That said, fixed width is a standard adopted by every major website out there, and the current fixed width is based on typical screen resolutions of the majority. Very few people maximize a browser window at 1080p, where a whole paragraph practically fits on one line. Personally, I'd need a magnifying glass to read that. Now, I'm all about options and choices, personally. Thats why we have a variety of wiki skins available, wheras Wikia forces you to use their skin.

Consider ffxiclopedia finger-wagged at.

Finger-wag at FFXIclopedia all you want, we aren't responsible for the site anymore. The premeire site status is actually supposed to be transferring to the new site, but there's red tape to cut through before that happens.

[Byrth]

"strategic" uses in his opinion. There are many "strategic" uses for summoner. That list is oversimplified and ignorant.

I challenge you to name a single one where Summoner is the best choice that doesn't fall into the categories I named. As a 90 Summoner with 5/5 AF3+2 and capped skill, I'd love an excuse to actually use the job.

Why? Are you on a 7200 baud modem and can't handle images? Even if not, you are an incredible anomaly here. You may as well just turn off the display of images in your browser.

If you look at something at work, at school, on the bus, I'd rather not have a big cartoon image of galkas and tarus being super best friends in my background. Personal choice, I know.

[Alhanelem]

I challenge you to name a single one where Summoner is the best choice that doesn't fall into the categories I named.

I don't care about best case. Many jobs overlap eachother in usefulness. I only care about viability.

As a 90 Summoner with 5/5 AF3+2 and capped skill, I'd love an excuse to actually use the job.

Personally, I use it all the time for all kinds of activities, both solo and group. If you want a very specific strategic use for abyssea, then here you go: SMN is one of the most effective

You can't just assume that everyone in any given group will have every ideal job for everything covered. SMN doesn't need to be the #1 best choice for 20 different strategies in order to get used. It simply has to be acceptably effective and viable. And there is very little that SMN isn't viable to be used at. There's a huge difference between strategically useable and "#1 absolute best." It doesn't have to be the best. It just has to be good. But being someone from BG, maybe you don't realize that.

If you look at something at work, at school, on the bus, I'd rather not have a big cartoon image of galkas and tarus being super best friends in my background. Personal choice, I know.

Then turn images off when you're in a place where you don't want people to see you're not doing work when you should be. Would be a lot simpler than adding 2384765 entries to your ad blocker.