SMN adjustments....seriously?

[Dekusuta]

Had to go back in time and look around a bit.

http://kegsay.livejournal.com/#item5510


As we see I remembered it slightly wrong. No melee attack effects, and extremely little effects on pacts. Probably just my brain that translated it into no effect since it was so trivially small.

Right you misrepresented/remembered incorrectly the findings.

That's significantly different from your assertion that Attack merits has no effect. As the tests clearly show they do. Also with Attack gear like the trial staff, You're looking at +35 attack; that's not including enhance avatar attack gear.

Most melees spends millions for +~6% attack output. But a SMN with full +attk gear is going to be putting out significantly more +attk.

[Malamasala]

Right you misrepresented/remembered incorrectly the findings.

That's significantly different from your assertion that Attack merits has no effect. As the tests clearly show they do. Also with Attack gear like the trial staff, You're looking at +35 attack; that's not including enhance avatar attack gear.

Most melees spends millions for +~6% attack output. But a SMN with full +attk gear is going to be putting out significantly more +attk.

Doesn't change the fact that the damage increase on anything difficult is too small to be worth it. If I have the attack gear, I'd equip it of course. But I wouldn't merit or hunt for gear that does so little difference. You'd do far more damage if you melee on SMN and use Garlands Bliss, than if you go full avatar attack. (It could be more efficient to just Dia II the mob though, I have no track on how the WS and spell compare)

[Saiken253]

@Aequis

Sorry for the confusion, bst is one of the 2 jobs that I haven't bothered to even look up. I know of only a few abilities and from training my dogs, Sic seemed more of the logical choice of naming what they would have gone with for their version of our Assault.

I still think it's backwards :<

[Aequis]

No worries. Would be easier if they kept the names the same across pet jobs, but that's SE for you. Heh.

Shouldn't be too hard to test whether pet attack affects BP or melée damage. Just go into Abyssea and put raw +att atma on. Stronghold (+40), Stout Arm (+40, this has +STR too), Baying Moon (+30), Smouldering Sky, Lone Wolf, Raised Tail, Sundering Slash and Entwined all have pure +attack.

I merited physical att/physical acc, but this was what...six years or so ago? Haven't bothered to change it as I've used SMN so rarely since recently when I've started doing Voidwatch. I will change it when I have enough free merits to do so, but then will probably only change phys acc to magic att.

[Sargent]

Even if Avatar Attack merits only affect melee swings (and since this is not the case for gear, I don't see why they would), I'd still choose Avatar Attack over lolSpirit MP Cost/Acc, because it would still deal more damage over time then any of the other options.

[Dekusuta]

Makes 0 sense for avatar attack merits to not work with BP; but I'm more than certain gear works.

Mujin Obi;Sac torque; Karura all had strong anecdotal evidence to suggest they modify bp damage. Granted BP damage formulae differ from avatar to avatar so its difficult to get a consistent count.

[Saiken253]

but it is, still, not a very remarkable increase... increase the formulas/flooring/ceiling on our BPs to be at least x2.5 if we are going to have to suffer through 45sec fastest that we can use our BPs(personally, i think x5 damage is reasonable... again look at any DD and what they can do in 45sec)

[Sargent]

but it is, still, not a very remarkable increase... increase the formulas/flooring/ceiling on our BPs to be at least x2.5 if we are going to have to suffer through 45sec fastest that we can use our BPs(personally, i think x5 damage is reasonable... again look at any DD and what they can do in 45sec)

Personally, I would rather see them increase the amount in which Avatar/Pet: Attack gear/merits add rather then an overall boost in damage. It would make it even more worthwhile to invest in the gear for it

[Tinuviel]

From this thread, it appears that people dont care about what SE is proposing and asking feedback on, in regard to elementals. Basically what we're saying is: "OK, reduce elemental MP cost... but why should we care? What are you doing to make elementals useful?" The question of how to make elementals useful is what SE should be asking feedback on and giving us details about.

This would be an intelligent approach to game development for obsolete content:
1. Update a specific content so that it is useful/interesting
2. Observe the new activity in this content that is generated by the updates
3. Modify content so that its balanced and appropriately accessible

In regard to SMN's elementals, we're at step #1!!!! SE's news release falls into step #3.

Here is what I propose for elementals: To improve usage of elementals, I propose the JA "Elemental's Favor". When favor is up, you should be able to switch between offensive and defensive modes (pet commands rage/ward, to initiate mode). In defensive mode, perhaps elemental gives a +MDB aura specific to its element? Perhaps if SMN has high enough skill potency is increased... and maybe new gear will enhance the effect? (like, you're in VW and the NM casts aeroja... and the wind elemental has 5% chance to nullify the spell on party members within 15' of it, otherwise just 5-50+MDB based on skill). Offensive mode aura... perhaps it could be an aura that impacts monsters in area of effect, such as imposes mag.eva/mag.def down effect specific to its element?

[Rakshaka]

Here's a fun idea:

Replace the merit in question to the following:
Elemental Detonation: a targeted offensive ability that deals aoe magic damage and sacrifices your current elemental. The element of the magic damage would be the element of your elemental. (5 min recast, additional merits increase the MAB of the ability)

This would give us something to do with our elementals, and it would help increase our currently lacking damage output.