Concept: Avatar Enhancements

[Jerbob]

I like this idea. It lets you adapt your avatar's abilities towards different situations and different playstyles, which is something I am always very interested in. I actually think the numbers are about right, considering how weak avatars are as things stand. The fact that the idea can be extended and enhanced as time goes on - new Enhancement pet abilities, gear bonuses and the like - is also very nice and would give SE a real foundation upon which to strengthen our job in the future rather than just dumping completely worthless Blood Pacts on us (hurr Pavor Nocturnus).

Any ideas for other Enchancements? Maybe some that sort of some of our annoying weaknesses such as Ward pact area of effect, Blood Pact activation time (aside from Shock Squall), how terrible Avatar's Favour is etc? Also, how would someone go about removing Enhancements if they wanted to adapt quickly to another role? It would be nice if there was a system other than manually removing Enhancements - a "clear" JA that gives you half as many Enhancement JA charges as there were charges active, or something similar.

Liked! ^^;

[Keyln]

I like this idea. It lets you adapt your avatar's abilities towards different situations and different playstyles, which is something I am always very interested in. I actually think the numbers are about right, considering how weak avatars are as things stand. The fact that the idea can be extended and enhanced as time goes on - new Enhancement pet abilities, gear bonuses and the like - is also very nice and would give SE a real foundation upon which to strengthen our job in the future rather than just dumping completely worthless Blood Pacts on us (hurr Pavor Nocturnus).

That's the general idea. I wanted to do something that would make Summoner a more powerful job in general when it's not using bloodpacts. I wanted to give the developers an idea that would change Summoner into something that would allow the Summoner to better use avatars.

Any ideas for other Enchancements? Maybe some that sort of some of our annoying weaknesses such as Ward pact area of effect, Blood Pact activation time (aside from Shock Squall), how terrible Avatar's Favour is etc? Also, how would someone go about removing Enhancements if they wanted to adapt quickly to another role? It would be nice if there was a system other than manually removing Enhancements - a "clear" JA that gives you half as many Enhancement JA charges as there were charges active, or something similar.

Liked! ^^;

The general concept is that Avatar Enhancements are something that's perpetual and continually active while the Avatar's out. So, I don't see it being used for bloodpacts per say. With that said, though, I can see Avatar's Favor working through this system. Perhaps something like Level Favor = (1 + summoning magic/200) + skill level. It's something that the devs will have to work out.

As far as having a "clear" JA, it's not a bad idea, although dismissing the avatar does clear out all of the enhancements at once. The big challenge will be building the enhancements into the avatar rather than clearing them out. If the summoner wanted to make small enhancements, he can simply remove them by manually removing the enhancement similar to any other buff.