Avatar Behavior Issues and Requests

[Crimson_Slasher]

I do closer to 3.5k pacts, to maybe occasional 4k pacts as summoner (when lucky) to ash and trash, and aside from super-high tier VWNM, closer to 2.4k rages. Which sure, lots of DD can outdo that with or without emp weapons, but compared to beastmaster and their pet's Sic commands for the most part, avatar pacts tend to hit much higher. Which is what i was comparing.

[Lilia]

Sure the bp dmg is higher, but .... the dotdmg wins bst or pup 100%.

Highbp + low autoattack <<>> medium Sic + high autoattack

what i rly hate is the most pl see bp and think wow-nice > smn dont need higher rage bp or more dmg.
But why need smn so much more time for kill a mob? when bst can kill in 1/2 time or pup in 1/3 time.

I dont say nerf bst or pup- i rly like the dmg
Please more dot dmg for smn, bp-timer 30 sec. or autoenspell, or rage99 bp, or idk.

[Crimson_Slasher]

I wholeheartedly agree that neither bst nor pup should be nerfed. Both are respectible jobs that are shunned often in group play, where, only marginally summoner is more readily accepted. But as its been said, puppetmaster can fall back on its own skills in the event their pet died, as can beastmaster, and while neither is invincible, they certainly are a lot more frontline ready than summoner.

So the question comes down to this i guess. Will summoner recieve better front line capabilities? Or conversely, will their pet be made to overcompensate for the weakness as it is expected to do.

Im sure theres plenty summoners that would like to have more options and abilities to utilize say...Shattersoul, but I truly believe all summoners would willingly welcome more longevity to their pets, or harder hitting autoattacks, or perhaps both.

Pacts are great, and frankly if the avatar could match the average bst pet in longevity and damage, then it would be a pretty good position methinks. Especially when even though the avatar would become superior to the bst pet (argueably. In my head, the same toughness of the pet vs the jugpet and same relitive attack damages would put avatars ahead when comparing sic to bloodpact rages.) The beastmaster would still remain superior to the summoner and more evenly balance the job playing field between the two.

This ofcourse excludes things like beastmaster's pet traits, JA, gear selection, and native physical damage.

Ultimately I doubt this will be entertained by the development team, but id think the iconic powerhouses of finalfantasy being made to look foolish when measured up against a ladybug should rightly raise some eyebrows.

I mean... who here remembers all the times of using Ifrit, Shiva, Titan, Ramuh, Odin, and others in games like... FF3, Tactics, and still others and remembering how insanely powerful they were?!

Ah...Nostalgia.

Ahem! Now i suppose for ways to handle the auto-attack damage increase, if you dont want to have beastmasters barking up your tree about summoner getting such an enhancement, why not apply a double/triple attack or haste effect to the avatar rather than raise its base damage. Doing so would mean more TP feed for monsters, causing greater risk, not unlike comparing Ninja and Thief's autoattacking differences.

Or perhaps have the avatar's Attack/DMG scale with Summoning Magic skill, similer to hand to hand skill, where in a highly skilled up summoner would benefit more from the raised damage than one without. I think that would be fair atleast when you consider a beastmaster does not need a special skill leveled for their pets to output such impressive damage.

Conversely, the attack rate, or HP or whatnot could be managed in the same way. Though admittedly those summoners with low skill would suffer...

[Razushu]

Not really a behaviour issue but are our Avatars ever going to get a new BP: Rage? It's been 24 levels since they got a Magic BP and 29 levels since they've gotten a physical Rage pact. Addressing this issue would go a long way to solving what is probably the biggest problem with Summoner. Seeing as Blood Pact: Rages account for the bulk of our damage using the 70/75 pacts for Damage is like a 99 BST having to use Courier Carrie as a serious DD pet. Our tools for DD are seriously outdated compared to other jobs. I mean they didn't even get the Tier V nukes of their elements, the got the tier IVs at 60 so surely they should have gotten the Vs at 80 or 90. Even this would have been something.


Also Avatar's favor is almost completely useless in it's current form. It's an Aura buff that weakens our pet and requires said pet to be out for extended periods to reach a useful level, and then it goes and resets to half potency when the pet BPs. Nothing about that fits with an Avatar or Summoner as a job.

First off our pets are disposable, they tend to die frequently. They die we need to re-summon Favour hits level 0. This would be different if we had pets like BST with direct ways to heal it and a huge HP pool.

Second our ability to buff/DD/sometimes-heal our party relies either completely or very heavily on our BPs. Having our Rages weakened and the favour reset on using these makes no sense when this is taken into account.

Thirdly we have 9 Avatars all with different wards for buffing our party. If we were in a support role in a group trying to keep a DD group buffed, we need to switch pets quite often unless we just want to give them the favour effect. This goes counter to how buffing on SMN was designed, leaving us with a choice of wasting time using favour or actively trying to buff a group.

Is there any way Avatar's Favour could be changed from it's current form into something else?

Perhaps:

Avatar's Favour

duration 2:00 (possibly extended by SMN mag skill)

recast :30

cost:?? could possibly cost MP 50~100 maybe, or perhaps dismisses current Avatar automatically(possibly with extended recast as a balance).

All party members in AoE of Pet gain a Summoner specific Buff based on Avatar used with Favour.

Namely the same buffs as already given by Favour.

Buffs have a Base value(equal to current min. value) which is enhanced to current max. value but based on Summoner's magic skill level as opposed to Avatar's time on the battlefield.

Each player can have a maximum of 2(maybe 4 if not OP) Favour buffs up, same avatar buffs do not stack i.e Diabolos followed by Diabolos would still only give a max of +6MP per tick.

[Badieh]

Not really a behaviour issue but are our Avatars ever going to get a new BP: Rage? It's been 24 levels since they got a Magic BP and 29 levels since they've gotten a physical Rage pact. Addressing this issue would go a long way to solving what is probably the biggest problem with Summoner. Seeing as Blood Pact: Rages account for the bulk of our damage using the 70/75 pacts for Damage is like a 99 BST having to use Courier Carrie as a serious DD pet. Our tools for DD are seriously outdated compared to other jobs. I mean they didn't even get the Tier V nukes of their elements, the got the tier IVs at 60 so surely they should have gotten the Vs at 80 or 90. Even this would have been something.


Also Avatar's favor is almost completely useless in it's current form. It's an Aura buff that weakens our pet and requires said pet to be out for extended periods to reach a useful level, and then it goes and resets to half potency when the pet BPs. Nothing about that fits with an Avatar or Summoner as a job.

First off our pets are disposable, they tend to die frequently. They die we need to re-summon Favour hits level 0. This would be different if we had pets like BST with direct ways to heal it and a huge HP pool.

Second our ability to buff/DD/sometimes-heal our party relies either completely or very heavily on our BPs. Having our Rages weakened and the favour reset on using these makes no sense when this is taken into account.

Thirdly we have 9 Avatars all with different wards for buffing our party. If we were in a support role in a group trying to keep a DD group buffed, we need to switch pets quite often unless we just want to give them the favour effect. This goes counter to how buffing on SMN was designed, leaving us with a choice of wasting time using favour or actively trying to buff a group.

Is there any way Avatar's Favour could be changed from it's current form into something else?

Perhaps:

Avatar's Favour

duration 2:00 (possibly extended by SMN mag skill)

recast :30

cost:?? could possibly cost MP 50~100 maybe, or perhaps dismisses current Avatar automatically(possibly with extended recast as a balance).

All party members in AoE of Pet gain a Summoner specific Buff based on Avatar used with Favour.

Namely the same buffs as already given by Favour.

Buffs have a Base value(equal to current min. value) which is enhanced to current max. value but based on Summoner's magic skill level as opposed to Avatar's time on the battlefield.

Each player can have a maximum of 2(maybe 4 if not OP) Favour buffs up, same avatar buffs do not stack i.e Diabolos followed by Diabolos would still only give a max of +6MP per tick.

I suggested something similar in the following Topic forum.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/th...t-this-new-cap

[Babekeke]

How about the issue where your pet dying, or you releasing it in a situation where there are multiple monsters, where some of which who have yet to procure emnity on anyone, make a beeline directly for the Summoner?

It's pretty easy to see the problem in action when fighting Jailer of Love when it summons a wave of three mobs. Release your pet while they are out and untouched, and they'll go directly for you even with you performing no action on them.

Good News! Not sure if you're seen this yet?

[Clou777]

How about the issue where your pet dying, or you releasing it in a situation where there are multiple monsters, where some of which who have yet to procure emnity on anyone, make a beeline directly for the Summoner?

It's pretty easy to see the problem in action when fighting Jailer of Love when it summons a wave of three mobs. Release your pet while they are out and untouched, and they'll go directly for you even with you performing no action on them.


There is also the quirk where using Assault with an Elemental Spirit resets its recast timer, which are long enough as is.

way to fix this would be to give summoner 2 new job abilities (since other jobs were given extra job abilities like solace/misery) which should be...

Avatar Idle : Duration 2 hours, Recast 1 minute, Avatar wont attack enemies with hate on the summoner.
Avatar Protector : Duration 2 hours, Recast 1 minute, Avatar will attack enemies with hate on the summoner.

easy fix

[Badieh]

This may be a little off topic, but I think they avatar should have a "Provoke" ability and/or a "Cover" ability for the summoner.

[Artimecion]

In regards to the July 23rd version update, SMN was left behind for the protect effect band-wagon. They missed out on increasing Carbuncle's Shining Ruby defense effect, and Titan's Favor. Oversight? Maybe. But I'm glad I decided to put SMN down and play a new job, being the red headed step child of classes was getting old.

[Dreamin]

In regards to the July 23rd version update, SMN was left behind for the protect effect band-wagon. They missed out on increasing Carbuncle's Shining Ruby defense effect, and Titan's Favor. Oversight? Maybe. But I'm glad I decided to put SMN down and play a new job, being the red headed step child of classes was getting old.

RDM said Hi. I at least can break out SMN when I go WoE but RDM has been gathering major dust for me. Last time I used it was for VW way back when I needed RDM to cover the tier 2 proc magic.