New suggestion regarding the Blood Pact timer.

[Sargent]

Most Summoner's would agree with the basis that the restriction to the job is currently the universal Blood Pact timer, set at 60 seconds (able to reduce to 45 seconds with delay gear) in order to execute a Blood Pact. This restricts Summoner's damage potential massively and it's ability to keep multiple buffs up as well. The development team have taken the first step here in acknowleding that Battle Speed has increased since Abyssea, hense the proposed adjustments to 2hr abilities.

Also, the situation of not having enough recast timer slots has not yet changed. In order to resolve this problem we are currently working to expand the space; however, this resolution is critical for the separation of the special job ability recast timers. This is also one reason for the delay in implementation.

Once we have completed this expansion, we believe that we will be able to improve not only the special job abilities, but other abilities that have been limited by this restriction (Steal/Despoil, Soul Jump/Spirit Jump, etc.)

This brings me to a new suggestion: Remove the universal timer for "Blood Pact: Rage" and "Blood Pact: Ward" completely. This will allow every Blood Pact to have it's own timer, no more shared timers. It will allow Summoner to pull out damage on a quicker basis, and make it comparable to say BLU, only with pets. Have the timer for each Pact drop a number of levels after you gain access to it, that way at Lv.99 you can spam lesser Blood Pacts if you wish, but this would not be overpowered at lower levels. As a general example:

---------------- Lv.99 Lv.75 Lv.50 Lv.30
Lv. 75~99 Pacts: 45sec 45sec
Lv. 50~70 Pacts: 40sec 45sec 45sec
Lv. 31~55 Pacts: 30sec 35sec 40sec
Lv. 1~30 Pacts: 15sec 25sec 30sec 45sec
Exclusion being Nightmare, keep that at 30 seconds to coinside with Sleepga's timer, and Astral Flow pacts- keep those static as you level.

If this change were to happen, it would prompt a change in current "Blood Pact ability delay -" equipment. So simply change this to the Blood Pact equivilant of Fast Cast, and make it a percentage proportionate to the value's existing effect on a 60 second timer. For example:
-6 seconds: 10% Fast Cast
-5 seconds: 7~8% Fast Cast
-4 seconds: 6% Fast Cast
-3 seconds: 5% Fast Cast

Perhaps change the cap to 33%, so for a Blood Pact with a 45 second base timer, maximum you can reduce the recast to is 30 seconds.

This change would encourage use of more Blood Pacts, and the fear of it making Astral Conduit redundant would be eliminated since you would be unable to spam higher level pacts without it.

[Herby]

That's quite an interesting idea as to how to adjust Blood Pact Timers.

You would feel way more like a "real mage" as you could blast through your MP really fast.

But i guess that's a bit shooting for the Stars.
one question is, do you want the BP timers also separated for each avatar? because that would be pretty overpowered: imagine rotating all lvl 75 physical blood pacts with only casting the new avatar as wait time and more or less no enmity.

Even I as a SMN99 think that'd be too much.

But if it's like there are "tiers" (something like flourish I and II from dancer) that would be more realistic:

Something like This:

BP Rage I (lvl 1-20 Pacts)
BP Rage II (lvl 21-40 Pacts)
BP Rage III (lvl 41-60 Pacts)
BP Rage IV (lvl 61+ Pacts)

Regarding ward pacts i'd divide them further along those lines:

BP Soothing Ward I (healing pacts until lvl 50)
BP Soothing Ward II (healing pacts lvl 51+)
BP Strengthening Ward (all Enhancing Pacts)
BP Weakening Ward (all enfeebling Pacts)

regarding the pact recast I'd actually stay @ 60 seconds base but instead reduce the the cap to something like 20~30 seconds instead of 45

[Sargent]

one question is, do you want the BP timers also separated for each avatar? because that would be pretty overpowered: imagine rotating all lvl 75 physical blood pacts with only casting the new avatar as wait time and more or less no enmity.

In a way it is, I do see your point. With the reduction in Avatar recast timers, you could rotate your capped Merit Blood Pacts for example. However, this would more or less be the same as say, BLM spells. the damage is not much different, however the hate-free element is there. Another thing is, you would not only have to wait for the command to execute, but also, wait on summoning the avatar, that itself would take around 5 seconds, so around a 10 second execution if the avatar spawns on top of the mob.
The adjustments SE are proposing would certainly open up ways to make Summoner a more active job, and thats what the playerbase want.

[Herby]

I guess we all agree that we want to be a more active job.

But we still have to think about the overall picture.
We can't expect that SE will give us the same amount of damage output as a BLM (because getting entirely rid of the BP Timers would be just that), while we can still buff better as a BLM and don't have to fear that the Monster we're fighting will attack us and probably kill us in less than 4 hits.

If we do, we'll only get dissappointed.

The most we should expect is either a reduction in the BP delay cap or if being really optimistic a charge system like SCH where you get like 2 charges in 45-60 seconds.

That being said i'd love to have no restrictions on our BPs. I just see it as unlikely

[Badieh]

Something similar has been suggested by me.. in the following forum.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...t-this-new-cap

[Ophannus]

Avatars seem to ignore level correction (because Spinning Dive still does 1.2-1.6k to Odinv2 whereas other melee are doing way, way, way less even when buffed out the ass, and BLU spells barely break 300-500.) That being considered, doing Spinning Dive into Predator Claws into Mountain Buster into Chaotic Strike is pretty amazing damage, not only is it nice, consistent damage, but it's also hateless. They'd need to remove that ignores level correction thing on BPs before they'd ever allow this. BP damage is just too consistent on NMs that are 20 levels higher than players compared to other forms of damage.

[Ezikiel]

Most Summoner's would agree with the basis that the restriction to the job is currently the universal Blood Pact timer, set at 60 seconds (able to reduce to 45 seconds with delay gear) in order to execute a Blood Pact. This restricts Summoner's damage potential massively and it's ability to keep multiple buffs up as well. The development team have taken the first step here in acknowleding that Battle Speed has increased since Abyssea, hense the proposed adjustments to 2hr abilities.


This brings me to a new suggestion: Remove the universal timer for "Blood Pact: Rage" and "Blood Pact: Ward" completely. This will allow every Blood Pact to have it's own timer, no more shared timers. It will allow Summoner to pull out damage on a quicker basis, and make it comparable to say BLU, only with pets. Have the timer for each Pact drop a number of levels after you gain access to it, that way at Lv.99 you can spam lesser Blood Pacts if you wish, but this would not be overpowered at lower levels. As a general example:

---------------- Lv.99 Lv.75 Lv.50 Lv.30
Lv. 75~99 Pacts: 45sec 45sec
Lv. 50~70 Pacts: 40sec 45sec 45sec
Lv. 31~55 Pacts: 30sec 35sec 40sec
Lv. 1~30 Pacts: 15sec 25sec 30sec 45sec
Exclusion being Nightmare, keep that at 30 seconds to coinside with Sleepga's timer, and Astral Flow pacts- keep those static as you level.

If this change were to happen, it would prompt a change in current "Blood Pact ability delay -" equipment. So simply change this to the Blood Pact equivilant of Fast Cast, and make it a percentage proportionate to the value's existing effect on a 60 second timer. For example:
-6 seconds: 10% Fast Cast
-5 seconds: 7~8% Fast Cast
-4 seconds: 6% Fast Cast
-3 seconds: 5% Fast Cast

Perhaps change the cap to 33%, so for a Blood Pact with a 45 second base timer, maximum you can reduce the recast to is 30 seconds.

This change would encourage use of more Blood Pacts, and the fear of it making Astral Conduit redundant would be eliminated since you would be unable to spam higher level pacts without it.

i like this would make summoner way more useful

[Annalise]

The idea of splitting into separate timers for pacts has been suggested many many times over many years. Yet it is a good idea.

If you're concerned about the spamming of level 70 bloodpacts being overpowered, you could always put those on a universal timer. On a side note, I'd definitely see Garuda and Ramuh becoming the two main avatars for merit pacts because Rush sucks (though it has the highest TP return potential). Granted, Garuda and Ramuh were already up there (Shiva being the highest for merit pacts though) but this would just push that I'd imagine.

This would help a lot lower level when SMN is weaker and soloing is pretty common. It would also be kind of cool for Summoner duo. Let's say...

Ifrit [Burning Strike] -> Ifrit [Punch] -> Liquefaction -> (Magic Burst) Ifrit [Meteor Strike]

If you had three summoners you can actually do a third Burning Strike for Fusion, and have everyone burst on that.

Also can do (though tricky timing)...

Shiva [Double Slap] -> Leviathan [Barracuda Dive] -> Reverberation -> (Magic Burst) Leviathan [Grand Fall] -> Shiva [Axe Kick] -> Induration -> (Magic Burst) Shiva [Heavenly Strike]

I do wonder though if they would have a programming issues with that many job ability timers, though. I believe that SE stated that they can only have like 12 job ability timers the way the game is built, which is why a lot of the later job abilities share timers. If that were the case, they could do the other suggestion with breaking it into tiered bloodpact timers, similar to dancers with flourishes.