update to summoner (player) abilities

[Secondplanet]

With all the reviews and adjustments to other jobs in the game recently i feel summoner should get a strong look into its abilities and even more so its 2hr. While other jobs have received new or modified 2hrs over the years like DRG and SCH i feel astral flow with its exclusive attack and lack of avatar cost is wasted in this age.

With SE's refusal to even out damage of avatars attacks and to raise the caps of our AoE buffs we're a job that is stuck in time waiting to be rediscovered and cared for again. I've seen summoners who've made me cringe and others who do it justice but we're still lacking ways to heal our pets or even a way to boost their defence.

Maybe a new ability will be to pump up a status of a pet by using an ability like pup's maneuvers. Have one for each stat and even feel free to make it cost us to use it to stop players from complaining we're getting overpowered like they always have. Now its underpowered to NOT be dealing out 3-5k attacks.

As for the summoner 2hr ability they should really give summoner something new, a 2nd 2hr ability that shares a timer with the other that would allow us a new aspect of playing the job. Like maybe it would be we use it then summon our avatar and they summon like the "waking the beast" ones do with 4 elemental's and then the 2hr is over but we have in some sence 5 pets out for the cost of the main "more powerful" avatar. Give a regen effect (or elemental damage absorbing) effects to it so we can go for longer with them.

just my 2 censts.

[Cabalabob]

a couple abilities i'd like to see added to smn is an emnity ability, like blm gets emnity douse, bst gets snarl, sch gets stratagems and the animus spells. I think smn should get an ability that reduces emnity back to 0 in exchange for the same percentage of your current hp. (e.g. you have 30% emnity, you use the ability and lose 30% of your current hp and lose all emnity, but not aggro altogether).

This ability would be helpful for when solo kiting a monster and say your blood pact misses or gets stunned and the monster is after you, you could use the ability and the monster would go after your pet instead, the loss of hp from the ability would probably be better than the loss of hp from the monster coming after you, especially if it's been a long fight and your pet can't get hate back.

Another ability i'd like to see is, less a new one and more an adjustment, i want to see odin and alexander come off of our 2hr and have their own ability, like BLU's unbridled learning. Keep Odin and Alexander's effects the same but put them on an ability with a 5 min recast, cause let's face it they're not that great, or at least not enough to cost us our entire 2hr and all our mp, leaving us with nothing and, in the case of odin, missing the target...

[Soranika]

a couple abilities i'd like to see added to smn is an emnity ability, like blm gets emnity douse, bst gets snarl, sch gets stratagems and the animus spells. I think smn should get an ability that reduces emnity back to 0 in exchange for the same percentage of your current hp. (e.g. you have 30% emnity, you use the ability and lose 30% of your current hp and lose all emnity, but not aggro altogether).

This ability would be helpful for when solo kiting a monster and say your blood pact misses or gets stunned and the monster is after you, you could use the ability and the monster would go after your pet instead, the loss of hp from the ability would probably be better than the loss of hp from the monster coming after you, especially if it's been a long fight and your pet can't get hate back.

Another ability i'd like to see is, less a new one and more an adjustment, i want to see odin and alexander come off of our 2hr and have their own ability, like BLU's unbridled learning. Keep Odin and Alexander's effects the same but put them on an ability with a 5 min recast, cause let's face it they're not that great, or at least not enough to cost us our entire 2hr and all our mp, leaving us with nothing and, in the case of odin, missing the target...

Small disagreement with that statement. Odin may be useless, but Alexander has it's uses. And there's ways around not having MP after using. Elemental Siphon soon after. Sublimation if subbing sch. Convert if subbing rdm. Myrkr if have Hvergelmir or Taiaha +1 if you got tp before hand or have tp wings.

Also, SMN may not have the ability to cure avatars outside of their natural ability (Carbuncle, Garuda and Leviathan), but there's this interesting food out there called Dawn Mulsums that are absolutely fantastic if you find yourself in a position where re-summoning after defeat may be hazardous or generally ill advised. They're pretty cheap too, depending on the server. Between 5k to 7k I've seen.

[Cabalabob]

I didn't say they were useless i said they weren't that great, odin, yeah ok useless, but alex, he's useful but he's so situational and said situations where you'd use him you'll probably want to use him more than once per 2hrs, especially since they changed stuff like HNM's and dyna bosses to pop monsters. Having a 5-10 min ability for them rather than putting it on our 2hr would be nice and make it more accessable.

I'm not saying they're useless, just not useful enough to warrant needing our entire 2hr duration and all our mp. After all perfect defense is just a jacked up version of paladins rampart, I'd like to see paladins reaction if they were told their 5min ability was being turned into a 2hr ability that takes all their mp and the duration is effected by not having full mp.

[Cabalabob]

Or, if taking Odin and Alexander off 2hr doesn't float your boat, how about making a job trait at level 75 that makes the normal avatars (carbuncle, Ifrit, etc.) 2hr blood pacts available all the time. Seeing as Odin, Alexander (and i assume Atomos when we get him) will take over the 2hr ability attacks, and by level 75 the 2hr blood pacts aren't much more powerful (if not less powerful) than high level black magic.
They would still consume all MP and work exactly the same as they do now, they would just be available whenever.

[Covenant]

@cabala bob what you seem to be getting at is a "normal" AOE magic move which is available with pacts. This has been suggested before and I agree, it would be a nice move, but what beats diabolous's "nightmare"?

How about a carbuncle "light" version of AoE sleepga?

[Malamasala]

I just wish SE had put some effort into making SMN its own job. Ice based sleep on Shiva would have done so much to make it a real job instead of a "mix of other jobs".

[Cabalabob]

@cabala bob what you seem to be getting at is a "normal" AOE magic move which is available with pacts. This has been suggested before and I agree, it would be a nice move, but what beats diabolous's "nightmare"?

How about a carbuncle "light" version of AoE sleepga?

not quite, yeah what i want is a normal AoE move, but rather than asking for a new one i think the ones we've had since level 1 being made more readily available is a better idea, seeing as by level 75 they're not that strong anymore it wouldn't be too bad to have them useable like a normal pact from that point. they could still work the same (take all mp and need at least double your level in mp to use) just without the need for our 2hr anymore, seeing as we have odin, alexander and atomos from that point the original astral flow blood pacts aren't that appealing anymore.

I ask for the astral flow pacts to be made available rather than asking for new ones, because if we ask for new ones you just know they will decide to make our final lvl 99 blood pacts some AoE blood pact and the new content really anti-AoE rather than giving us something cool and new.

as for nightmare.... evil blood pact!! >_> not only is it gimped compared to the real version, but rather than making the DoT effect compatible with sleep they made the sleep compatible with DoTs, so once you use nightmare it's the only sleep you can use from then on. Ultimate terror, THAT'S a fun one ever tried it on a full group of campaign monsters? Diabolos goes into super mode. If it had hp drain on it aswell as attributes it would be such an amazing blood pact