Suggestions to increase the current state of Summoner for Lv.99

[Sargent]

1. Avatars Favor - No more 'build up' phase. Give full buff on summon as long as stance is on. Also remove Favor losing tiers of buffs when Avatars BP.

Also, SE was able to get around the whole 'sphere only applies to everyone except the person with sphere' deal with Geommancers getting buffed by their own spheres. Can we get this fixed for our pets?

Definatly agree with the full effect of favor upon activation, this also removes the potency resetting upon using a Blood Pact. I doubt SE will extend Favor to the avatar, but that's just SE.

2. Avatars Rage(?) - As suggested earlier in this thread, add an opposing stance that increases Avatar attk/acc/magic attk/acc. and possibly unlocks new level 75+ damaging bloodpacts. It's very sad that at 99, our mainstay for damage is still lvl 75 meritable bloodpacts and physical pacts from pre-Abyssea era.

Agreed, hopefully see some sort of new Pacts with Group 3 merits. Always thought Diabolos should have Cacodemonia as well, even if it doesn't land on NMs.

3. BP Timers - ? This may be a 'PS2 limitation' type issue. I'm glad though our new 1hr will essentally be a Chainspell style effect for summoners. But I frankly Don't think timers is the issue here. (see my next 2 points)

I'm holding my breath on this since SE are working on extending the maximum amount of JA timers that can be active per job. That's the main drawback, and the reason Pacts are grouped as well as Waltzes, Steal/Despoil etc. I just hope SE realise that it won't be overpowered for Summoner, even if the indiviual recasts are longer than that of elemental spells to compensate for the hate-free aspect, it's still a big improvement. (Of course, the hate-free aspect is assuming the Pet Enmity issues will be addressed).

4. Avatar HP/Attk/Def/Melee Acc/Buffs/ - Seriously, this needs work. Yes, we have a few pieces of gear that enhances acc/attk, often sacrificing -perp or refresh ; but HP is the real issue. Even with -50% PDT, they die way too quickly with Adoulin content and the revised Attk/Def ratios for damage calculations.

Defense improvements - allow pro/shell on the summoner to copy over to Avatars in a Dragoon style way. Alternatively Avatar's Rage (the opposing stance to favour) should also give pets massive defensive bonus and bonus HP. (see next point)

At ~1600 HP at 99, it's just not enough. Avatar HP needs to be doubled at minimum to ~3,200. Still way below BST pet levels but an improvement.

In a way, it's not a massive issue, Avatars already have 50% PDT before applying Stout Servant. Saying that, they can be easily oneshotted by anything worth a damn that nukes. A minimum of 2k HP is needed with all the AoE spam in the game at the moment.
Melee damage is lulzy, and there's no real way to improve it. We have all this Pet:Atk gear which we can stack as much as we want for the ~40 seconds we wait on our Blood Pact timer and it does nothing outside Blood Pacts. Pet: Haste gear is lacking for SMN (12% cap, really? And you lose 2/tick Refresh for 5% of that), unfortunatly Pet: equipment has always been something SE have been reluctant to release. Think the first worthwhile pieces outside Evoker's Spats/Summoner's Bracers was the Royal Redingote and ACP earrings. It's nice to see them add "Blood Pact" damage gear though, shame some pieces never drop (looking at you, Esper Earring).

5. Hate management& transfer - Why doesn't SMN have this? Avatars serve the summoner right? Summoners need a pet voke or a hate trasnfer to the Avatar. Also while on the subject, Mana Cede should be on a 1 minute timer and boost HP and TP. This can also double for a hate transfer mechanism. 200 HP/TP back every minute hardly is overpowered IMHO.

An ability where we can restore Avatar's HP would be nowhere near Overpowered. On the subject, stackable Dawn Mulsum's would be awesome and would warrent me investing in them.
Hate transfer would be nice, both other main Pet jobs (ignoring DRG since it's mainly a heavy DD and GEO since it's not really a pet job) have a hate transfer/switch ability, why does the squishiest Pet Job have nothing? Sure we can recast Avatars quickly, but SMNs themseleves can hit that hate cap too.

6. Elementals (do you need it?) - Why are we still stuck with incomplete spell lists and elemental AI that is roughly 100 times worse than what puppetmasters get?

Light elemental needs Cure VI, and -ra spells like Protectra/Shellea to buff parties. Casting timer should also be further reduced, perhaps in conjuction with the Favour/Rage stances. Light elemental could be a great buffer and backup healer if they could get the AI more inline with a healer puppet.

The other elementals need a DD buff along the lines of Tier V spells and Tier II ancient magic.

Elementals are just borderline useless in their current state. The addition of Tier V nukes didn't do much. Already posted my thoughts on how to improve them, though saying that, would be nice for completion sakes to give us Hybrid Elementals since they now exist outside Abyssea/Legion.

[Karbuncle]

Would like to throw this here incase it wasn't already:

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

My suggestions for BP:Ward system.

[Mokeil]

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

My suggestions for BP:Ward system.

It was this post that first got me looking really closely at the potency and MP costs of our Wards, and making comparisons to options from other jobs. In general, we pay more for less. Our only real advantage is in duration and being "hate free". But why settle for an inferior buff when almost any other of the party's support units can give a better one?

Here are three easily made comparisons using some of our classic Wards for you guys.

Earthen Ward: MP Cost 92, Stops 250 Dmg
Stoneskin: Accession MP Cost 58, Stops 350 Dmg
(Something I can gain access to via my support job should not be able to out-perform something from my main job!)

Noctoshield: MP Cost 92, Blocks 13 Dmg
Phalanx: Accession MP Cost 42, Blocks 35 Dmg

Aerial Armor: MP Cost 92, gives 3 Blink shadows
Blink: Accession MP cost 40, gives 2 Blink shadows
(Here we actually get an advantage, but its over twice the price in MP for only half again as much benefit)

Rolling Thunder: MP Cost 52, Never seen this break +15 Dmg
Enthunder: Accession MP Cost 24: Starts at +23 Dmg with just the Enhancing Magic from Light Arts - capable of hitting +30 with 500 Enhancing Magic

It is very clear we need across the board increases to potency to nearly everything to make them worth something again. Karb's ideas would be a good start.