SMN adjustments....seriously?

[Malamasala]

MAB and ATTK merits is a must for any summoner worth their salt.

ATK doesn't help BP:Rages. It has been tested and confirmed ages ago. I never understand why people insist on boosting their pet melee attack rounds, because that is all it does.

Unless SE sometime the last year noticed they had a bug in their Summoner code and changed it. I haven't kept as much track of the facts during 2011 as before that.

[Dekusuta]

ATK doesn't help BP:Rages. It has been tested and confirmed ages ago. I never understand why people insist on boosting their pet melee attack rounds, because that is all it does.

Unless SE sometime the last year noticed they had a bug in their Summoner code and changed it. I haven't kept as much track of the facts during 2011 as before that.

Where are the test results?

[Aequis]

I have another suggestion for SMN as well that hasn't been addressed: Have us commanding our pets to Assault NOT break Invisible. BST's ability Sic doesn't break Invisible and if you go into lore they would have to point and say what to attack, so Sic should break Sneak AND Invisible.

SMN's ability Assault is done telepathically: I.E. There's no need to verbal or visual aid(which the monsters BSTs control would require) for the Avatars, seeing as their minds are linked with ours.

"Sic" and "Fight" are different things. The only job ability we BST get that doesn't break invisible is "Fight", which is the command to set a pet onto a monster. Heel, Sic / Ready, Spur and Run Wild etc. all break invisible.

You could turn it around and say, SMN pets will defend their masters automatically whereas BST pets need to be commanded to do anything. I honestly don't think that if this were given to us as SMNs it would change our job a great deal, and we certainly need to be asking for more needed changes.

It's almost as if each pet job has its little quirks and that one belongs to BST. I still get annoyed at the Retreat glitch on SMN, and that's been in the game a very long time. :/

[Sargent]

Where are the test results?

This I want to see. The only testing I've seen relating to Avatar attack concluded that gear did not enhance melee attack rounds in any way, only Blood Pacts. Eyeballing it myself, there is no increase in melee damage when you stack Attack gear, but Blood Pact damage goes up.

[Saiken253]

@Aequis

Sorry for the confusion, bst is one of the 2 jobs that I haven't bothered to even look up. I know of only a few abilities and from training my dogs, Sic seemed more of the logical choice of naming what they would have gone with for their version of our Assault.

I still think it's backwards :<

[Aequis]

No worries. Would be easier if they kept the names the same across pet jobs, but that's SE for you. Heh.

Shouldn't be too hard to test whether pet attack affects BP or melée damage. Just go into Abyssea and put raw +att atma on. Stronghold (+40), Stout Arm (+40, this has +STR too), Baying Moon (+30), Smouldering Sky, Lone Wolf, Raised Tail, Sundering Slash and Entwined all have pure +attack.

I merited physical att/physical acc, but this was what...six years or so ago? Haven't bothered to change it as I've used SMN so rarely since recently when I've started doing Voidwatch. I will change it when I have enough free merits to do so, but then will probably only change phys acc to magic att.

[Sargent]

Even if Avatar Attack merits only affect melee swings (and since this is not the case for gear, I don't see why they would), I'd still choose Avatar Attack over lolSpirit MP Cost/Acc, because it would still deal more damage over time then any of the other options.

[Dekusuta]

Makes 0 sense for avatar attack merits to not work with BP; but I'm more than certain gear works.

Mujin Obi;Sac torque; Karura all had strong anecdotal evidence to suggest they modify bp damage. Granted BP damage formulae differ from avatar to avatar so its difficult to get a consistent count.

[Malamasala]

Where are the test results?

Had to go back in time and look around a bit.

http://kegsay.livejournal.com/#item5510

The implications of these 13 results are startling. Avatars have a ton of attack. But that's not all. This puts into perspective several augments. Pet:Attack+5 only adds ~1% to your attack, a hardly worthy amount. Furthermore, Attack+15 is just 3%. Do not this excludes 'Enhances Avatar Attack' gear, since this only works on Blood Pacts and needs more testing to quantify. Also, this means that you needn't worry about capping attack on harder level monsters, with caps of 3+, you'd need 999+ attack (most likely not possible due to caps on attack value?) to cap on any monster with over 333 DEF. This also means the merits in Avatar Physical Attack are completely and utterly worthless. With 5 merits you'd have Attack+10, equivalent to 2% increase in attack. This also means that DEF is very important for ratio.

As we see I remembered it slightly wrong. No melee attack effects, and extremely little effects on pacts. Probably just my brain that translated it into no effect since it was so trivially small.

If you wish to increase your damage with avatars, it's far better to lower the monster's defence than it is to raise your avatar's attack.

[Dekusuta]

Had to go back in time and look around a bit.

http://kegsay.livejournal.com/#item5510


As we see I remembered it slightly wrong. No melee attack effects, and extremely little effects on pacts. Probably just my brain that translated it into no effect since it was so trivially small.

Right you misrepresented/remembered incorrectly the findings.

That's significantly different from your assertion that Attack merits has no effect. As the tests clearly show they do. Also with Attack gear like the trial staff, You're looking at +35 attack; that's not including enhance avatar attack gear.

Most melees spends millions for +~6% attack output. But a SMN with full +attk gear is going to be putting out significantly more +attk.