Compendium of Summoner Job Issues

[Rakshaka]

2.5 years later: removed 15 second BP reduction cap

[Byrth]

Nice. The most recent patch to SMN was very useful, although it didn't address any of the listed issues really.


This is perhaps in a different vein than the OP, but there are a few mechanics issues that are problematic for physical BPs that really should be addressed. First I'll explain how the system works in practice:
* Most Physical BPs get their damage by multiplying fTP by base damage and scaling it by pDIF.
* First-hit fTP is very high, while additional attacks have an fTP of 1.
* Modifiers (30% DEX and uncapped fSTR, which is essentially 25% STR) are weak, which ensures low base damage.
* Against difficult targets, the Avatar's Attack / Target's Defense ratio is typically low (like 1 Attack / 2 Defense or something), which makes pDIF choose from a low range, and there are very few ways to affect this.


Now, this system creates three problems:
1) Physical BPs suck against hard enemies, because Avatars have lower base damage against hard enemies (due to fSTR) and their Attack/Defense ratio becomes crap. -- This forces everyone to use magical BPs against hard content.
2) Physical BPs are world-destroying moves against lower level enemies, because Avatars have higher base damage (due to fSTR) and their Attack/Defense ratio is comparatively good. -- This allows Summoner to solo Arch Dynamis Lord.
3) Physical BPs either do great damage (first-hit lands) or terrible damage (first-hit misses). -- This causes Predator Claws to either do thousands of damage or 400.



In order to fix the system:
* Increase Avatar Attack / Base Damage during Blood Pacts.
* Decrease first-hit fTP.

[Byrth]

Okay, Avatar's Favor. This job ability is one of the most complex and unique of any in the game. It's incredibly cool and intricate, but is unfortunately pretty fatally flawed. There are some very potent benefits that can be obtained from it, but its design makes them unreasonable to maintain. Currently it works like this:
* When you use Avatar's Favor, you gain Avatar Perpetuation Cost -2~4 and your Avatar starts emitting an avatar-specific Aura in exchange for an unquantified (probably substantial) Attack penalty, Acc-10, Avatar MAB-20, and potentially other debuffs like Magic Accuracy.
* The potency of the Avatar's Aura starts quite bad, but increases over time (every 10 seconds it increases 1 tier -- 12 tiers or 2 minutes to max it at the moment).
* This Aura potency caps out at a point proportional to your currently Summoning skill. Every 65 skill seems to be a new tier.
* When you use a Blood Pact: Ward, you drop 2 Tiers (20 seconds charge time).
* When you use a Blood Pact: Rage, you drop 5 Tiers (50 seconds charge time).
* If your Avatar dies or is Released, Aura potency is fully reset when you resummon it.
* The Avatar does not gain the benefit of its own Aura.

This system creates a few problems:
1) Summoners cannot use BP: Rage more than every 50 seconds and accumulate Aura potency at all. -- This (and the damage nerfs from Favor) essentially restricts Blood Pact: Rages when the ability is in effect.
2) Avatars frequently die in current content fights due to AoE damage. -- This means that the offensive buffs provided by Ifrit, Ramuh, etc. from Avatar's Favor is not useful in endgame. They do not have time to build an appreciable potency before the avatar is killed.
3) Avatars are frequently unsummoned in current content fights to apply different BP Wards. -- This, combined with the Ward potency reduction of Favor, means that you do not build appreciable potency in a situation where you're swapping between Avatars to buff the party. For instance, if you were maintaining Hastega, Earthen Armor, Inferno Howl, and Crimson Howl, Ifrit would be the only Avatar that got substantial time out, and it is penalized 40 seconds due to its BP: Wards.
4) Avatars are frequently fighting alone in solo content and because they do not gain the benefits of their own favor, there is no reason to use it. -- This kills another potential use of Avatar's Favor in endgame at the moment.


I would:
- Remove the Damage penalties and Avatar Perpetuation Cost reduction from Avatar's Favor.
- Remove the BP: Ward/Rage penalties
- Keep the wind-up mechanism, but allow Avatar's Favor potency to carry over between summons.
- Allow Auras to affect the Aura user. Stop being so god damned lazy, SE. Just create a second type of Aura already.

These changes would make SMN much more versatile and allow it to play a useful role in current content.

[Zeargi]

You can also add on that SMN needs to have it to where we can ALSO assault and keep the effects of invisible like PUP and BST. I have both the other jobs, and there's nothing wrong with them keeping it, but give it to SMN. I'm currently frustrated beyond belief at this stupid Colo. Rieves Bull-S*** and I can't get close enough to the (Insert stupid roadblock) without pulling everything else, and when I'm the only one in them and I'm trying to unlock KIs to help me bypass most of this crap. OR if you won't do that extend the range for assault so SMNs can have a fair chance with stuff like this.

[Rakshaka]

The top page has been updated with the following content:

Fixed bugs (Thank you SE!!!)
- Avatars fail to perform self-targeted blood pacts if their auto-attack target dies

Removed a lot of points that were either currently beneficial, or would
be an undesired change:
- Using the Assault ability with a spirit sets their timer to max recast
- Fire Spirit does not learn Addle
- Earth Spirit does not learn Break
- Light Spirit does not learn Repose
- Light Spirit learns Banish 4 before WHM or PLD.
- Every hit of an avatar's multihit bloodpact will give them full TP for
each hit (9-10% TP).
- Shiva's Sleepga has the potency of Sleepga 2 (1:30), but has the same tier
as Sleep/Sleepga 1. (It can't overwrite Sleep/Sleepga 1). (The reason that
I removed this is because it may be beneficial to have access to a tier 1
sleep vs a tier 2 sleep, depending on who you're playing with, i.e. anyone
with tier 2 sleep.
- Added a note to one issue, indicating that many blood pact wards currently
do not scale past level 75

Removed the spirit assumptions section:
Spirit spell access has been very random with light spirit getting banish 4, but not any regen past regen 1. Because of this, I won't assume that spirit spell access follows any certain rules. Here's the old section for record keeping:
Spirit Assumptions:
The spirit comments listed here are all assuming that the old rules of spirit spells still apply:
Spirits don't gain access to self-buff spells (stoneskin, aquaveil, enspells, etc)
Spirits don't gain access to elemental aoe spells
Spirits don't gain access to merited spells
Spirits do gain access to enfeebling/divine/elemental/dark/healing(cure and curaga)/enhancing(regen, protect, shell) magic spells at the minimum level that any other job can learn it.

Added a section for graphical glitches:
This applies to both spirits and avatars.

Added the following issues:
- Pavor Nocturnus uses the same animation as the Death spell.
- Fenrir's right eye is not modeled correctly. Compare the right eye with the left eye while looking at him from the front. Beneath the right eye, the model goes into fenrir's body, instead of creating the red area underneath the eye that exists under the left eye.
- Ramuh's Thunderstorm animation has two parts, the vertical lightning, and the glowing circles on the ground. The vertical lightning rotates clockwise, while the glowing circles that should be aligned with the vertical lightning rotate counter clockwise. The rotation direction of either the columns or the circles is inverted.
- Ramuh's Judgment Bolt animation has four parts, the inner vertical lightning, the outer vertical lightning, the inner glowing circles on the ground, and the outer glowing circles on the ground.The inner vertical lightning rotates clockwise, and the outer lightning rotates counter clockwise. However, the inner circles rotate counter clockwise, and the outer circles rotate clockwise, which is the opposite direction of their corresponding vertical lightning columns. Again, the rotation direction of either the columns or the circles is inverted.
- Puppetmasters and beastmasters are able to command their pet to attack without losing the invisible status effect. When summoners use assault, their invisible status effect wears off. Please let summoners use assault without losing the effect of invisible.

I did not add anything for Avatar's Favor, as this should be rectified soon
(Thank you SE!!!!).

I didn't add any notes about increasing fTP for physical pacts, because physical pacts don't use TP. Also, these days, the physical pacts are doing more damage to high-level monsters than magical pacts are (by magical pacts im referring to merit pacts; flaming crush still does great damage depending on the target).

[Rakshaka]

Removed the following issue (thanks devs!):
Diabolos loses all his TP with any Blood Pact used (even Ward) when his only TP based BP is Night Terror (* and Nether Blast).

[Byrth]

Apparently Avatar's Favor's potency was not actually affected by the patch either, so you might consider revising your decision to not request more changes with that.

Issue:
* Using Apogee circumvents normal enmity mechanics. So using Apogee -> BP on an enemy won't aggro it until the BP lands.

[Jerbob]

I'm a little confused about the Avatar's Favour adjustment. Blood Pact use now increases favour potency rather than reducing it, but in order to use those blood pacts most effectively (delay down >> potency up gear) we have to dip below the 512 skill tier needed for maximum potency favour, which reduces our favour potency. Presumably the blood pact going off then subsequently increases the potency, but as our skill isn't above the 512 skill tier when the blood pact goes off, it presumably doesn't recap us again when we swap our skill gear back in.

So we're stuck with either Blood Pact use reducing favour potency (as we swap out skill gear), or Avatar's Favour reducing BP potency (as we don't swap in delay/potency gear).

Am I missing something, or are we right back where we started?

[Crevox]

Issue:
* Using Apogee circumvents normal enmity mechanics. So using Apogee -> BP on an enemy won't aggro it until the BP lands.

They fixed this with the patch.

[Rakshaka]

Added the following issues:

The following bullet point of [dev 1239] was not implemented. Avatar's Favor saw no increase in potency. Both the initial and final values of Avatar's Favor were checked after the update; these values matched the values of Avatar's Favor prior to the update.
"The effects of Avatar’s Favor will be increased."

Light spirit does not learn Curaga 5.