Spirits Re-make

[Covenant]

Only trouble I see with your "spirits" are only good for a quick mp burst is that the same could be accomplished with a /JA wITHOUT the need for spirits. Since speed of spirits summons is negilable.

As I said once before, I have a long memory...if SE DIDN'T want spirits to expand why allow them to evolve over time matching blackmage lvl casting up until 75 then completely forget them?

The ONLY answer that makes sense is that at higher lvls elementals AND mob Summoners would become quite overpowered. Since for the most part mob Summoners DON'T have access to avatars, this issue isn't raised in the normal scope of things except for the astral flows.
By this same token, giving access to "high level spirtis" to BOTH players AND mob Summoners SE thinks it will overpower BOTH jobs.

The ONLY balance between a BLM and spirit nuking is in Fact, the already established spirit nuke casting cycle and timer.

As far as the silly melee summoner nonsense...every job thinks it can melee. And guess what they can, but they CANNOT do it on par with other "dedicated" melee types. That's game balance. A melee summoner is balanced between the player AND it's avatar/spirit. Whereas, a warrior is balance by nothing other than it's own gear and /ja choices. If you need a number. Warriors are 100%melee damage while a summoner is 25%player damage AND 75% avatar/spirit damage. One can play a little with those numbers but basically both jobs will reach the same quota of damage if player on average.

Now I'm sure a player can "parse" the number to disprove my basic arguments, but will this be taking into all accounts of a summoner buffn/debuff, summoning, mp consumption, etc...all of which slows a summoner damage output. Summoner still argue that they CANNOT melee or make it better despite having access to incredibly distructive AoE astral flow, especially AOE death(Odin).

I think SE needs to breakout their testing server, unlock spirits "full" capabilities and see whether or not both players, mob Summoners and those fighting them can be effective choices(if they haven't already).
if SE believes as I stated that this would be too strong, they should at least publicly state this to drop the spirits upgrade discussion.

[Razushu]

Only trouble I see with your "spirits" are only good for a quick mp burst is that the same could be accomplished with a /JA wITHOUT the need for spirits. Since speed of spirits summons is negilable.

As I said once before, I have a long memory...if SE DIDN'T want spirits to expand why allow them to evolve over time matching blackmage lvl casting up until 75 then completely forget them?

The ONLY answer that makes sense is that at higher lvls elementals AND mob Summoners would become quite overpowered. Since for the most part mob Summoners DON'T have access to avatars, this issue isn't raised in the normal scope of things except for the astral flows.
By this same token, giving access to "high level spirtis" to BOTH players AND mob Summoners SE thinks it will overpower BOTH jobs.

The ONLY balance between a BLM and spirit nuking is in Fact, the already established spirit nuke casting cycle and timer.

I think SE needs to breakout their testing server, unlock spirits "full" capabilities and see whether or not both players, mob Summoners and those fighting them can be effective choices(if they haven't already).
if SE believes as I stated that this would be too strong, they should at least publicly state this to drop the spirits upgrade discussion.

They could have given us the /ja as a non-conditional ability, but I don't think they would consider that balanced. Elemental Siphon over time will give us back MP comparable to Convert, if it were to work withut needing to call out the appropriate spirit it could be called OP. As it works now to Siphon we need to dismiss our Avatar(which can be dangerous solo), which loses us things like Avatar TP, Avatar hate built up, and favor charge. This is balanced against the likes of Convert in battle.

They never matched BLM casting, they got the same spells at the same level as wild elementals(iirc), I think sE was updating their spell lists up until 75, because the wilds were getting spells up until this level too, I don't think SE has completely forgotten them, it's more a case of they weren't really doing anythiong with them in the first place, they already served their purpose.

Another answer that makes sense is that spirits are supposed to be weaker, hence why regular mobs use them, while NMs opt for Avatars. I don't see how higher level spirits could OP either, Avatars are already far stronger in both cases. The behaviour of SMN monsters, could be a clear indication of what SE thinks of spirits, and their uses.

SE could breakout their testing server to do this but honestly what would be the point? Spirits might close the gap some when it comes to nuking power, but would would SMN actually gain from this? Lets say you're fighting a monster that is weak to fire in a small group and a lvl1 merit pact and a spirit tier5 do similar damage. First off an update like this gains SMN nothing they still have the same nuking capability, just another pet to do the same damage, but then you add in the fact Ifrit is giving enfire and warcry fulltime to everyone in the group, the spirit once again falls behind leaving SE to say whoops, and the people demanding a buff to spirits scrathing their heads wondering why they thought it was such a big deal in the first place.

If SE is going to buff spirits, it cannot do it in a capacity an Avatar is already filling better than a spirit or it's a waste of time. It will be interesting to see what they do, if anything regarding spirits in this lin of thinking.