Stout Servant and SMNs - Remove the halving effect

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Asking for 56.7% native PDT on pets with less HP than a BST pet and no way to heal many of them effectively is OP now?

BSTS went from 0% PDT to easily 40% outside Abyssea without the need to gimp their jobs and they got a few new pets in the process with bigger HP pools and greater base damage. SMNs went from 50 to 53.2% on the same avatars. Sure we can get more but that requires swapping out refresh and -perp gear and looking like a clown.

That's not asking for OPing a job.

They're not even close to the same league.. There is quite a large time-out if your BST dies too quickly, they can't just be re-summoned immediately. It's the first thing they did right in BST's case.

Like I said previously. SMN has a native 50% reduction, so even had BST had double a SMN's HP and no PDT it would make them basically equal. I wouldn't personally be moaning about a trait which is a bit meh was weakened due to a natural 50%- Physical DMG taken on my BST Pet.

Gimping a BST masters natural skills including a 10% -DT hat with no bonus for the BST itself, same with 2 axes I would not class as "not gimping their job"

[Dekusuta]

They're not even close to the same league.. There is quite a large time-out if your BST dies too quickly, they can't just be re-summoned immediately. It's the first thing they did right in BST's case.

Like I said previously. SMN has a native 50% reduction, so even had BST had double a SMN's HP and no PDT it would make them basically equal. I wouldn't personally be moaning about a trait which is a bit meh was weakened due to a natural 50%- Physical DMG taken on my BST Pet.

Gimping a BST masters natural skills including a 10% -DT hat with no bonus for the BST itself, same with 2 axes I would not class as "not gimping their job"

I'm not sure what league you're referring to. They are in the pet job class, and there aren't enough jobs to distinguish them as separate leagues.

I agree -PDT gear on bst don't give anything directly to the BSTs but that's generally always been the case. BST Empy helm is haste,acc,dex and CHR bonus which isn't going to make or break their job. Giving up Caller's Horn +2 is a much bigger trade off for only 5% real damage reduction.

I also agree the timer differential warrants BSTs gain preferential bonuses, which they do, in the form of pet foods that heal for 900+ HP on their pets, Pets with significantly more HP and hate generating ability, ability to rest and heal pets, and ability to shift hate and so on.

SMNs don't have any of that. So implying that asking for a job trait to be applied as a direct bonus instead of a pro-rated bonus is somehow going to suddenly bring our job above a BST or make up all the goodies BST gets for having a pet timer is a bit rich.

I should also add, a lot of gear SMN get don't add anything to SMNs and are situational or only works when we do something. SMN skill remain largely an abstract stat directly useful for wards, siphons and rages--at lvl 75, but I'm not sure if there was ever an ACC cap to those bonuses given we've gained 20 levels since.

[Dreamin]

3 of our Avatars have self healing capabilities already that doesn't cost any gilz but only in MP (which are cheap to come by anyway now a day anywhere). Also, if you dont already know, there's Dawn Mulsum that you can use to heal your avatar as well (works on any "pets" of the pet jobs).

The timer(s) on the BST is the main reason I basically retired my BST and leveled SMN way back when they came out (I'm referring to the pet TP move timer here). And then now consider that BST is like a NIN-or-RNG where in order for them to do their job, they would have to spend a lot of gilz (in fact cost for BST far outweight that of NIN and RNG too depending on ammo type used). SE took the defining features of BST as a job (CHARM) and basically removed it from anything worth doing in the game for BST (leveling and skilling dont really count). You can't charm anything in Abyssea/WoE/and VW.

[Dekusuta]

You either haven't played enough of BST post level increase, magian trials, new pet foods, Nazuna or you haven't played enough of SMN.

SMN is still a great DD , but it has lost a lot of ground to BSTs. You have one job where the pets gained enormous strength and tanking potential and a job that's treaded water with no new pets, no new notable attacks, and about the same tanking potential as before, and to add insult got a job trait that's realistically getting only half the benefit. Because of 'the math'.

I have nothing more to add other than to request Stout Servant be revisited for SMNs and the buff be applied in full and not pro-rated.

[Dreamin]

You either haven't played enough of BST post level increase, magian trials, new pet foods, Nazuna or you haven't played enough of SMN.

SMN is still a great DD , but it has lost a lot of ground to BSTs. You have one job where the pets gained enormous strength and tanking potential and a job that's treaded water with no new pets, no new notable attacks, and about the same tanking potential as before, and to add insult got a job trait that's realistically getting only half the benefit. Because of 'the math'.

I have nothing more to add other than to request Stout Servant be revisited for SMNs and the buff be applied in full and not pro-rated.

Have you ever even play BST pre-Abyssea and pre-timer nerf at all? Or even BST now? The only real use now for BST is BST with Dipper Pet in Dynamis and that's if you are looking to farm up currency (or AF2/-1) because of the TH from Dipper. I have yet to see any VW that will accept a BST when THF is plentiful (or even RNG for TH). WoE is just a big waste of gil for BST (you'll be lucky to break even with Conflux 9 on avg for jug+med cost and Conflux 7 only if you're looking for Coins).

As for SMN, I've spent quite a lot of time on it and I cant tell you that SMN >> BST when it comes to overall availability of Pet. You dont ever have to deal with the timer issue like in the case of BST pet. When BST call timer is down, you're more or less useless whereas as SMN, you almost never have to worry about that situation.

[Dekusuta]

What would cause your BST pet to die so easily? You keep going back to timers, but a BST pet has so much more HP, they have gear that multiplies their reward ability and pet foods that heal instantenously. They can /heal away from the pet, they can heal their pet, and most importantly hate isn't provisional even when a pet dies because they can transfer hate to the new one. Then on top of that, they get a hold of ~40% PDT. That's just insane.

A good BST will often have call bst timer up while fighting and yes, they falter when their pets are slaughtered quickly, but the list of mobs that can do that to them would slaughter a SMN pet and the SMN as well. Probably far more easily.

There's absolutely no eqivalency, SMNs have lost a lot of ground and after this latest round of items being tested
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/17017; it's embarassing we're not getting anything more useful.

And I still fail to see what your personal views on BST being underpowered has anything to do with my OP suggestion recommending Stout Servant be applied in full rather than pro-rated on the portion of the damage not mitigated by the avatar's PDT. That is, to effectively boost the PDT to 56.7%

I never thought asking for ~3% extra PDT could illicit so many words.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

What would cause your BST pet to die so easily? You keep going back to timers, but a BST pet has so much more HP, they have gear that multiplies their reward ability and pet foods that heal instantenously. They can /heal away from the pet, they can heal their pet, and most importantly hate isn't provisional even when a pet dies because they can transfer hate to the new one. Then on top of that, they get a hold of ~40% PDT. That's just insane.

A good BST will often have call bst timer up while fighting and yes, they falter when their pets are slaughtered quickly, but the list of mobs that can do that to them would slaughter a SMN pet and the SMN as well. Probably far more easily.

There's absolutely no eqivalency, SMNs have lost a lot of ground and after this latest round of items being tested
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/17017; it's embarassing we're not getting anything more useful.

And I still fail to see what your personal views on BST being underpowered has anything to do with my OP suggestion recommending Stout Servant be applied in full rather than pro-rated on the portion of the damage not mitigated by the avatar's PDT. That is, to effectively boost the PDT to 56.7%

I never thought asking for ~3% extra PDT could illicit so many words.

You're asking them to change the format that exists in this game for almost everything just for SMN... There is a big difference.

[Dreamin]

What would cause your BST pet to die so easily? You keep going back to timers, but a BST pet has so much more HP, they have gear that multiplies their reward ability and pet foods that heal instantenously. They can /heal away from the pet, they can heal their pet, and most importantly hate isn't provisional even when a pet dies because they can transfer hate to the new one. Then on top of that, they get a hold of ~40% PDT. That's just insane.

A good BST will often have call bst timer up while fighting and yes, they falter when their pets are slaughtered quickly, but the list of mobs that can do that to them would slaughter a SMN pet and the SMN as well. Probably far more easily.

There's absolutely no eqivalency, SMNs have lost a lot of ground and after this latest round of items being tested
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/17017; it's embarassing we're not getting anything more useful.

And I still fail to see what your personal views on BST being underpowered has anything to do with my OP suggestion recommending Stout Servant be applied in full rather than pro-rated on the portion of the damage not mitigated by the avatar's PDT. That is, to effectively boost the PDT to 56.7%

I never thought asking for ~3% extra PDT could illicit so many words.

Every done Flux 7 or 9 in WoE? Those are almost all magical damages. And yes, BST can heal their pets. But guess what, Reward also has a timer and it cost gilz to use per reward. Mulsum is another option too but that also cost a lot of gilz (!10k per on my server). So again, yes, they can heal their pet but at the expense on GIL while we can heal with both MP on some of our avatars or gilz (mulsum) on all. When a BST lost their pet, they're stuck with the timer and in many of today's events, they dont have much options whereas a SMN can just resummon and the cost is next to nothing.

Again, my reference point are for all the newer events - WoE and VW and not the Abyssea or old content or on leveling.

[Annalise]

Every done Flux 7 or 9 in WoE? Those are almost all magical damages. And yes, BST can heal their pets. But guess what, Reward also has a timer and it cost gilz to use per reward. Mulsum is another option too but that also cost a lot of gilz (!10k per on my server). So again, yes, they can heal their pet but at the expense on GIL while we can heal with both MP on some of our avatars or gilz (mulsum) on all. When a BST lost their pet, they're stuck with the timer and in many of today's events, they dont have much options whereas a SMN can just resummon and the cost is next to nothing.

Again, my reference point are for all the newer events - WoE and VW and not the Abyssea or old content or on leveling.

While they're both pet jobs, I think beastmaster and summoner are kind of like apples to oranges.

Beastmaster's limitation is of course the call beast timer (when you can't charm, which is pretty much all of endgame), as you said, which is 4:10 with merits. Reward is 1:15 with merits, and you should at least be using a bonnet to reduce the recast by 10 seconds. Reward with +reward gear and the regen every 1:05 is pretty big, actually.

You talk about summoners as if they have absolutely no constraints. They do have MP pools to deal with that beastmaster's do not. If a summoner is out of MP, you have to rest for awhile and get some mp back. Siphon or now having convert help as well. Also temporary items in voidwatch, abyssea, etc.

Yes, you can have good -perpetuation gear and refresh. At the same time, a BST can have a boatload of gil and plenty of supplies. I have really good gear on summoner (and get 3/tick refresh with garuda out before I even get refresh) but a lot of summoners do not. I also have 113 cooking so when I play BST (or other jobs for that matter), I can make supplies for myself really cheap (and I do enjoy farming materials for a bit, anyways). I leveled a mule to 57 ninja (for my hocho) just for saving gil on cooking. I did so in east ronfaure on birds pre-abyssea, and it would now be pretty easy to get 57 ninja on a mule. You don't even need ninja though if you don't want to bother with a hocho.

BST used to be more expensive when lifedrinkerlars was the pet of choice, and while dipper is expensive, nazuna does a pretty good job and is very inexpensive.

Both jobs are limited in access to their pets in different ways. You are right, a summoner has an easier barrier to overcome, though. In many situations its easier to keep your mp up than it is to keep a jug pet alive. There are other things that a beastmaster may not consider, though. If your pet is on the verge of death (e.g. voidwatch and at 3% life) and call beast will still be down for a few minutes, you can always pull it away and have it 'stay' and toss it a reward or two. If it is essentially going to die anyways, you may as well save it and heal it a bit rather than just outright losing it and being screwed, because either situation gives you the same loss in DoT. If you heal it to near full and have a fresh call beast timer (or close to it) then you now have an expendable pet. This of course isn't always an option, but it is something to consider rather than just letting your pet die.

A beast with no pet can also accomplish more than a summoner without MP. A summoner can do essentially nothing, whereas a beastmaster can still at least contribute some damage (though not as much as another DD class without their pet.) But this of course really depends on the situation and what they're doing.

All in all, I really don't think gil (or perpetuation for that matter) are really a good argument to use for either job. Gil a problem? Learn to make more or go farm. Level cooking and synergy and save a lot of gil. Perpetuation a problem? Get better gear.

And as per stout servant, it is a difference.

While it does reduce the adjusted damage taken by the same percentage, the global -50% PDT is calculated separately.

In regards to total damage taken:

53.2% - 50% = 3.2% damage reduction. Just like adding 10 MAB on a level 95 black mage does not increase your overall damage by 10%.

Other pet jobs have their overall damage reduced by twice as much a summoner, though.

I am unsure though of wyverns, as with their new ability, it may be possible that the damage reduction is smaller depending on the math.

It's also possible that certain jugs (i.e. fatso) might get a lower overall reduction on blunt, depending on who it is calculated.

All in all, I don't think that 3.2% on summoner is going to make that big of a difference. Nothing compared to something like ducal guard, anyways.

I also don't think summoner and beast are that comparable aside from being pet jobs. Summoner has always been only pet focused, whereas in the past a good beastmaster was much stronger than the pet (though the new jugs brought the two much closer together). Puppetmaster was always more of an even split, and Dragoon was by far the master doing most of the damage. Beast is more of a DoT job (especially nazuna's DoT), and SMN is more of a Spike damage/support/utility job. They're pretty different.

[Dreamin]

Annalise,

I agreed with you in the regard on the 2 pet jobs being like apple and orange. One is based on MP the other used to be based on Charm but is now essentially 100% on jug. My agrument is that for almost all the use cases between SMN and BST, a SMN can overcome their limitations whereas the BST has a much harder limitation to overcome which is the timer. There's a physical hard limit (time reduction gears) that is much harder to deal with then say MP recovery (i.e. temp items, /refresh, refresh 2, ballard, convert, etc).

As for the other pet job, DRG has Steady Wing which is basically a SS on your bird (3min duration, 5min recast). Not sure how many dmg it reduces since I've hardly ever play DRG anymore other than doing proc as DRG in VW now a day.