Suggestions to increase the current state of Summoner for Lv.99

[Annalise]

To anyone saying Fenrir's Lunar Bay is useless... If you have any of the merit bloodpacts with only one merit in it, it is exactly the same as Lunar Bay, just a different element. I think that's something to keep in mind. Merit pacts have the advantage of TP bonus through additional merits (and now Relic+2 augments of course). Lunar Bay pales in comparison to a 5/5 merit pact, but I wouldn't write it off as completely useless. If Fenrir had a strong physical pact, it would make Lunar Bay that much more useful as you could alternate them, and have high TP Lunar Bays. Holy Mist and Night Terror are pretty terrible, though.

And I will also second that the new wards are great. Inferno howl has some uses, especially with single handers in the final limit break fight. Tidal Road + Slowga + Spring Water helps Leviathan survive awhile solo (I used that in the Fervor Ring BCNM solo) but also helps with other stuff too. Who doesn't love fleet wind? Shock Squall is borderline brokenly good at times. Diamond Storm is decent, and especially useful if overwriting evasion bonus. And Earthen Armor is just awesome, especially when stacked successfully with Scherzo. Soothing Ruby is also awesome for things that do multiple debuffs at once. Fenrir and Diabolos pacts... not so good.

Accuracy is very much worthwhile. A 100 skill SMN will not land a BP on any kind of relevant content. Although I still agree that a damage boost be very welcome, along with the BP delay cap adjustment.

Be nice if they did something like 10-20 skill = +1% damage, capping at +25-50% damage at 500 skill. Blue magic skill raises base spell damage, why not make summoning skill do the same? We already have the "Increases Bloodpact Damage" on armor, can just make it a hidden effect of skill as well.

[Areayea]

Now, Inferno Howl and Fleet Wind on the other hand... Those have easily become two of my favorite Wards to use. Its just a shame they ruined the trend of decent Wards by having the last two be an unreliable Samba and a targeted Dispel (because Altana knows I've never seen it land death, even it you manage to get the blasted mob to sleep first).

Altana has been gracious to me I guess, I've landed death like 5 times... but that's it, it's not that great. LOVE the name tho, it's an actual Psychological problem

[Sargent]

Accuracy is very much worthwhile. A 100 skill SMN will not land a BP on any kind of relevant content. Although I still agree that a damage boost be very welcome, along with the BP delay cap adjustment.

Not entirely true. Your avatars gain exactly the same Acc/MAcc at a gimped skill as they would if they were exactly on cap. However, any skill over cap will grant an Accuracy and Magic Accuracy bonus. Source.

[Annalise]

Not entirely true. Your avatars gain exactly the same Acc/MAcc at a gimped skill as they would if they were exactly on cap. However, any skill over cap will grant an Accuracy and Magic Accuracy bonus. Source.

That's old. They changed that awhile ago and now it is directly ACC instead of cap. Believe it came around the time skill changed duration of wards as well.

[Arcon]

That's old. They changed that awhile ago and now it is directly ACC instead of cap. Believe it came around the time skill changed duration of wards as well.

What he said. Both Accuracy and Magic Accuracy give a boost for every skill point, I believe up until 500 Skill (because that's what where it caps for Wards), but the cap is hard to prove. However, I see no reason for it to not follow the Ward formula.

[Daydreamer]

In hopes that the Dev's give summoner back some of its power.

Mostly power that it had in final fantasy titles long since passed. Summoner has always been a powerful job with the downside of being made out of paper. I realize and I belive most of the community realizes the tactical advantage to the job. So when considering new content im sure the dev team always look's at the old and wore out "Lets toss 18 summoners at it" that tactic was abused in the first part of the game and im sure they dont want that to continue.

So with that being said. Let us have fun with summoner again ? Most fights have time limits to them now. they also have huge amounts of zerg potential. Many folks have no idea how to function outside of zerging things. The New SP2 that has been proposed is a wonderful idea for helping summoner be of a bit more use in certain fights. pet enmity issues still need to be fixed. These are the same issues which you recognized as not working properly.

Its been said by alot of players alot of times. So how about we do something about "AVATAR's LACK OF FAVOR"

The bonuses are bleh for the most part as it is minus ifrits 24% double atk bonus pretty sexy.
Dont remove the bonus when we use a "Pact" or "Ward" and Dont Limit the power of the Pact's simply because we have a limited range limited use bonus being handed out to those within its circle of use.

You gave teir5 spell's to elementals thats nice. Can you make them stop casting drown or shock 5 times before a substantial nuke? Perhaps give them some more debuffs of their element? Addle, attack down,?

Possibly a new JA to assist in this 10 min timer 3 mins of use (kinda the Berserk for summoners) "Elemental fury" or "Dual cast" opens up and allows you to call two elementals to your side. Both elementals gain the power of a real lvl 99 elemental. I.E. The huge fast cast bonuses, GA magics. Spells that regular players might not normally have, Stonega IV, they also focus on damage over debuff. The elementals can take 30% more dmg then normal to help increase the chances of them dying and needing to be resummond during use.

"Blood Pact Wards": I dont agree with these being set with the same delay as a regular "Blood pact Rage".

MP is always going to be a limiting factor to how fast any mage or how much any mage will be placing buffs on their team mates.

Everything the Elemental avatars dish out SHOULD be stronger then it would be from any other job Dependant on the summoner's magic skill. ( they are GODS essentailly loaning you some of their power to save your idea of reality the more skilled in accessing their power the stronger your damage and buffs should be. Perhaps up to the point that you are summoning the near full strength of the avatars.) TITAN shouldnt have the strongest stoneskin ? Im just kinda poking a little at some of the more obvious wards that need to be fixed. They all need some revision.

I realize fixing summoner wont mean more money. Focusing on Seeker's of adoulin means more money. So maybe with seekers you can fix our summoners please ? Pretty please ? Would love to see summoner rise from the Ashes *hint* *hint*. Summoner on staff mastery list "Yes Please" ( I shouldnt have to sub "White mage" to use those other staff abilities. White mage being a club user ?) you really cant cry balance on that. Black mage and summoner use staff's more then any other job.

Overall I love the Job It has had amazing potential for 10 years now. It is capable of all sorts of cool little things that make it a tactical job which is nice. While summoner's tricks are "nice" I would love for summoner to finally shine bright and whip out some serious power in final fantasy 11. Somewhere inside each of you Dev's I know there is a summoner just waiting to call upon "ARK" or "Eden" or perhaps push a Firey "Pheonix" on us. Balance as you must!! Perhaps special Blood Pact's will reset your BP timer to 5 MINS because of how damaging it is. Giving larger resistance to the Mobs after an initial BP of that type and element is used... Sound familiar (meteor?) .. There are ways to give summoner higher damage blood pacts. Then its just up to the players how they use them properly. MP consumption. BP timer limitations all the same stuff to shutter at. But perhaps 5k damage to make us smile from ear to ear.

[Umisame]

Remove 45 sec cap, all jobs can spam their WS or magic and we have to wait 45 sec.
We still use lvl 70 BP and sometimes lvl 75, we need good BP rage post 75.
Avatar's Favor should affect avatar too.
It could be great that pets(not only avatars) could get buffs like a party member, protect, minuet, etc.

Do something with smn because we need a good update to our job not just a new pet/2h.

[pim-ptarutaru]

lower the bloodpact delay down to 25 or 30 let me make use of my relic +2 5/5 and/or prep/delay staves... xD but SE hates smn so will never happen =/

[Dekusuta]

Kind of sad that the last big adjustment we got was in 2006 with the splititng of the BP timers and the addition of skill over cap bonus.

In light of Geomancer's sphere effects Summoners Avatar's Favour are even less relevant. Here's my suggestions

1. Avatars Favor - No more 'build up' phase. Give full buff on summon as long as stance is on. Also remove Favor losing tiers of buffs when Avatars BP.

Also, SE was able to get around the whole 'sphere only applies to everyone except the person with sphere' deal with Geommancers getting buffed by their own spheres. Can we get this fixed for our pets?

2. Avatars Rage(?) - As suggested earlier in this thread, add an opposing stance that increases Avatar attk/acc/magic attk/acc. and possibly unlocks new level 75+ damaging bloodpacts. It's very sad that at 99, our mainstay for damage is still lvl 75 meritable bloodpacts and physical pacts from pre-Abyssea era.

3. BP Timers - ? This may be a 'PS2 limitation' type issue. I'm glad though our new 1hr will essentally be a Chainspell style effect for summoners. But I frankly Don't think timers is the issue here. (see my next 2 points)

4. Avatar HP/Attk/Def/Melee Acc/Buffs/ - Seriously, this needs work. Yes, we have a few pieces of gear that enhances acc/attk, often sacrificing -perp or refresh ; but HP is the real issue. Even with -50% PDT, they die way too quickly with Adoulin content and the revised Attk/Def ratios for damage calculations.

Defense improvements - allow pro/shell on the summoner to copy over to Avatars in a Dragoon style way. Alternatively Avatar's Rage (the opposing stance to favour) should also give pets massive defensive bonus and bonus HP. (see next point)

At ~1600 HP at 99, it's just not enough. Avatar HP needs to be doubled at minimum to ~3,200. Still way below BST pet levels but an improvement.

5. Hate management& transfer - Why doesn't SMN have this? Avatars serve the summoner right? Summoners need a pet voke or a hate trasnfer to the Avatar. Also while on the subject, Mana Cede should be on a 1 minute timer and boost HP and TP. This can also double for a hate transfer mechanism. 200 HP/TP back every minute hardly is overpowered IMHO.

6. Elementals (do you need it?) - Why are we still stuck with incomplete spell lists and elemental AI that is roughly 100 times worse than what puppetmasters get?

Light elemental needs Cure VI, and -ra spells like Protectra/Shellea to buff parties. Casting timer should also be further reduced, perhaps in conjuction with the Favour/Rage stances. Light elemental could be a great buffer and backup healer if they could get the AI more inline with a healer puppet.

The other elementals need a DD buff along the lines of Tier V spells and Tier II ancient magic.

Conclusion:
Note none of these involve hairbrained new summons. Just fixing what SE has already given us.

[Luvbunny]

Summoner need some sort of "Snarl" command - now that they are adjusting enmity - which means your avatar is no longer able to hold hate and you need to stay so far away, or the mob will come and get you, for doing not much of anything. Until they fix the hate issue, we are dealing with far worse problem now.