Summoning magic skill-ups and the rate of which we are getting them.

[Secondplanet]

Also please do keep in mind that the reason that a number of people "don't mind skilling up" is because they cheat and use third party tools to AFK skill-up. Obviously, their opinion doesn't count.

So am i to assume that when i see a white mage in Empyreal Paradox that they are doing it without 3rd party programs spamming buffs and cures and when i come back hours later they are still there doing it in the same order non stop perfect timing each time? Just because people don't mind certain aspects of their jobs and get it done doesn't mean they used 3rd party programs. I don't mind skilling my summoning to cap when i needed, it was fun, grab a friend and have a race to see who can get more and faster, my wife and i where always play fighting each other over who got a .3 or .4 and had to bow to the other when they get a .5

She isn't even trying to cap her summoning magic and she already only about 70levels from cap and still going strong. Don't worry about it they will come and you'll be done.

[Nawesemo]

This thread is tempting me to bust out the level 20 smn to see what all the hub bub was about. Details @7a.m. tomorrow.

[Hashmalum]

So am i to assume that when i see a white mage in Empyreal Paradox that they are doing it without 3rd party programs spamming buffs and cures and when i come back hours later they are still there doing it in the same order non stop perfect timing each time? Just because people don't mind certain aspects of their jobs and get it done doesn't mean they used 3rd party programs. I don't mind skilling my summoning to cap when i needed, it was fun, grab a friend and have a race to see who can get more and faster, my wife and i where always play fighting each other over who got a .3 or .4 and had to bow to the other when they get a .5

She isn't even trying to cap her summoning magic and she already only about 70levels from cap and still going strong. Don't worry about it they will come and you'll be done.

I didn't say that everyone who doesn't complain was cheating, but quite a few of them are. And as for other jobs cheating their skill-ups, stop trying to change the subject. We're not talking about cheating in other jobs, we're talking about the problem with SMN. You can't win your argument on the merits so you're trying to make a side-issue. You didn't address my point about the flaw in your observations and you didn't explain why it makes sense for SMNs to be cheaters, gimps, or people who are happy to do drudge work.

[Arcon]

You didn't address my point about the flaw in your observations and you didn't explain why it makes sense for SMNs to be cheaters, gimps, or people who are happy to do drudge work.

And he won't, because he can't. The only argument he ever made was that it "worked for him", which is useless all by itself. It's like when people complain about being 0/tripledigits on Coruscanti and then someone comes in and goes "I went 1/12 so it's obviously not bad". Anecdotal evidence is no evidence at all.

And this is still disregarding the biggest flaw in his argument, which is why it worked fine for him. It wasn't just random chance, but because he considers something natural that other people hate, namely spending days and weeks just randomly playing the job, going around and BPing EXP mobs for the hell of it, because for some reason he believes that experience is essential to being a Summoner. What he doesn't realize is that not everyone enjoys doing that. He said that it will go up if you "just play the job", but this is what he means, and I can assure him that most people would not call that "playing the job" but "wasting their time". Remember this is the guy who also said it's fun to race people for who gets faster skill-ups, so it's pretty obvious that he has some very unique definitions of fun.

Not everyone has the desire or the time to do that, though (most people have neither). Some people wanna play Summoner in group events, so they level it up but then they find out they suck for any relevant content and have to go out of their way to skill up every free chance they get, which for most people isn't that much. Let's assume every third BP gives you a skill-up of 0.3, it would mean that you would have to invest 30 hours straight to cap the skill. If you have a daily playtime of four hours (which is a lot for most people), and assume two of those you wanna have some fun, it means it will take you over two weeks of just skilling to get to cap. That's assuming you have no downtime there either, you can spam both Blood Pacts every 45s and never have to find a mob, change camp or run out of MP the whole time. And even under these idealized conditions and assumptions that's still pretty horrible. In reality it will easily be triple that time, which is just absurd if you compare it to any other skill.

Which brings me to my next point. Regardless of everything I just said, no matter how fine you make yourself believe that the system is, none of that matters when you look at it from a strictly comparative point of view. No other skill has it this bad (possibly aside from automatons, as I said before). This is in its entirely own class of skill-up speed, and there is no reason whatsoever for it to be this way. No one skill should be singled out and be worse to acquire than any others. By that merit alone, Summoning Magic should be revised in terms of skilling up, and there is no argument anyone could possibly bring against that.

To SE, all of these problems could be fixed if you made skilling up on PCs have as high a skill-up rate as skilling up on NPCs. I have no idea why there's a distinction in the first place. If you're that afraid of people skilling up on their own, you can just make PCs count a few levels less compared to NPCs. That way you'd simulate a quantitative difference without imposing a qualitative difference, which would make people feel like they're wasting their time.

[Annalise]

Shedding some light because I mentioned automatons...

Pup itself has its own skills:
h2h, guard etc.

Automaton also has skills:
Ranged (cap 417 sharpshot frame)
Magic (cap 424 stormwaker frame)
Melee (cap 417 valoredge frame)

Automaton before was probably worse than SMN, but now it's maybe about the same I'd say. There is now an attachment to increase skill chances.

For ranged skill, before it was 20 second ranged attacks (which can miss, especially since you are skilling up after all) which kind of coincides with 22.5 seconds of bloodpact (2x bloodpact every 45 seconds if using say netherblast and somnolence, ignoring resummon since bloodpact is way higher skill chance) though slightly quicker. There is an attachment that makes them quicker, before it was up to -6 seconds but also had a huge (very noticeable) penalty to ranged accuracy.
Now they lessened the penalty, and it can decrease ranged attacks to 5 seconds with 3 maneuvers, but you may not use three because then you lose out on skill up chance water maneuvers from the other attachment (find your balance!)

Magic skill ups was a global spell timer that was somewhere around 22 seconds. Also similar in time to the bloodpact timer being split in two.
Now the automaton can cast like crazy so this is substantially better

Melee all frames can skill but only valoredge frame can cap. This is the easiest to skill.

Automaton skill was a pain because not only were some hard (especially sharpshot if you chose it at level 30 and had 0 skill) but there were also three separate skills to level up. If you leveled in say, an experience points party, you usually would use sharpshot (and your magic skill would get pretty far behind). If you solo'd, you would use a mage frame and your ranged skill would get pretty far behind.
Thankfully this has gotten better for puppetmaster.

In summoners case, I think considering how most other skill ups can be spammed (e.g. high haste for melee, grab a bunch of mandies for defensive skills, spam bio 1 for dark, stone 1 elemental, cure undead healing, dia for enfeebling, etc) it wouldn't be unreasonable for there to be a base skill up increase to summoning and bloodpact usage. Hell, allow skill ups on spirit casts as well (though then you'd be banned for afking with light spirit out like people afking in grauberg on smn with avatar out?).

My only current suggestion for what seemed to work well for me (and sorry for some anecdotal evidence here Arcon) is to do voidwatch on summoner and use Ramuh alternating Shock Squall and Chaotic Strike or Thunderstorm whenever they are up. It took me from capped skill at 95 to capped skill at 99 in maybe 5-10 x3-x4 runs. Your mileage may vary, of course. Yet at least you will be perhaps getting something good out of your time spent (or maybe a bunch of logs, I don't know).

[Secondplanet]

I didn't say that everyone who doesn't complain was cheating, but quite a few of them are. And as for other jobs cheating their skill-ups, stop trying to change the subject.

Last i checked it wasn't me who changed the subject, you had made a post about people who were using 3rd party programs, so i was addressing the side topic that you in fact started.

And he won't, because he can't. The only argument he ever made was that it "worked for him", which is useless all by itself. It's like when people complain about being 0/tripledigits on Coruscanti and then someone comes in and goes "I went 1/12 so it's obviously not bad". Anecdotal evidence is no evidence at all.

Only argument? i have mentioned several times listen to others cause they are trying to help you, yes it worked for me cause i'm retro summoner so i know the tricks of the trade. If you were buying a car and it didn't have a motor would you buy it cause the dealer said it worked or would you listen to your mechanic and be told you need a motor to run it.

My only current suggestion for what seemed to work well for me (and sorry for some anecdotal evidence here Arcon) is to do voidwatch on summoner and use Ramuh alternating Shock Squall and Chaotic Strike or Thunderstorm whenever they are up. It took me from capped skill at 95 to capped skill at 99 in maybe 5-10 x3-x4 runs. Your mileage may vary, of course. Yet at least you will be perhaps getting something good out of your time spent (or maybe a bunch of logs, I don't know).

Here is what i have been saying over and over, but all most can focus on is it can't be done in a couple of hours. Again listen to the advise we are trying to give you and it will help you. you are your own worst enemy.

[Mirage]

So you were fine doing it back then and it taking forever to level but now cause they changed you feel robbed, so now summoner has to make up for some self entitled feeling you have? Back then i had skills capped on summoner at lvl 75 with only 1 bloodpact feature not 2 so its already a great deal easier to level it now then back then.

What are you talking about? Parrying was bad back then, and the slow skill made me eventually give up on capping it. I am glad it has changed now, and that I am getting skillups at an adequate pace even without specifically targeting skilling up. Now I want summoning magic to get the same treatment as parry did. What's entitled about that? I think you should stop projecting.

[Arcon]

Last i checked it wasn't me who changed the subject, you had made a post about people who were using 3rd party programs, so i was addressing the side topic that you in fact started.

Them mentioning third party tools was not off-topic, it was related to the discussion by saying that you don't hear most people complaining, because they can cheat their way up. You then made it off-topic by drawing random comparisons to other jobs.

Only argument? i have mentioned several times listen to others cause they are trying to help you, yes it worked for me cause i'm retro summoner so i know the tricks of the trade. If you were buying a car and it didn't have a motor would you buy it cause the dealer said it worked or would you listen to your mechanic and be told you need a motor to run it.

Here is what i have been saying over and over, but all most can focus on is it can't be done in a couple of hours. Again listen to the advise we are trying to give you and it will help you. you are your own worst enemy.

Here's the thing you don't grasp: you can't help us. You're telling us nothing new. We know how skilling up works, and it works horribly slow. It's not rocket science. You get a certain skill chance when you summon an avatar and when you use a Blood Pact, you get a higher chance if you're targeting an enemy, that's it. There's nothing more to it. I did the math above, no matter which way you spin it it's horrible and it takes ages.

And for the record, I did cap Summoning Magic on two characters before, it took me days of doing nothing else and it was so lame and painful that I don't wanna go through it on my new mule again. Don't think you're lecturing anyone, your advice is simply not helpful. It doesn't change the way the game works. We're not idiots who can't figure out game mechanics, we're people who are annoyed at the way the game mechanics work.

[Rambus]

I kept my smn skill close to cap in the old days and there was some levels where i did have it capped (say like 37).

At 75 it was under capped and i end up getting SMN mitts +1 before capping it though when that happen it was only like 2 skill points away then.

enchaining was not a problem back in the old days as rdm. when mods take 2-5 minutes a kill for 150-280 exp each it was really easy to keep cap.

Now after ATU came out and killing mobs every 30 seconds was the norm it was much harder to keep any skill capped and that problem only got worse when abyssea came out.

The skill up rate was fine back in the day for pretty much everything but shield, guard and parry.

Now when "skill up mobs" is a special event that you need stones and those mobs die in 5-10 minutes there is a lot of issues keeping the old skill up rate as the game had in the past.

I am even experiencing this on bard now, getting 0-250 string was fine, 250-280 was tolerable, now 281+ it just dies. I done abyssea farming for seals, +2 items, VW new limbus NMs and it is like when will singing, wind and sting ever cap my GOD!

and brd skills are easier because even on resists you can get skill ups plus some of the debuffs are near instant cast but the thing is you need something to stay alive for more then 5 minutes to really skill up -.-

It is a simple fact, things just do not stay alive enough for the old skill up system we have that was based off killing one thing for 2 minutes to 2 hours ( depending NM or common mob your talking about)

Then with spaming songs with everything I try to do I get this sometimes:

Rambus spams random Threnody
*random person dies*
Me> I could of gave a cure IV but i was so focused in trying skill up I did not see you in low hp.

Now this did not happen much because i take the time to stop but ya it is annoying at any rate. My point is i would like to be more focused in helping progress kill hard mobs then worry about being stuck at 280-310 for 2 weeks of non stop playing brd.

[Babekeke]

If Summoning Magic skill wasn't so lame to skill up, people wouldn't feel the need to use 3rd party programs to cap it. It would skill up just fine as they play the game.

It doesn't.