[dev1010] Spirits

[Korpg]

I simply don't think inside of Abyssea for balance adjustments. Frankly, I don't know why anyone does. Abyssea isn't balanced at all, and hardly any job needs any real adjustment to be viable inside Abyssea (you could throw practically anyone in there and they can half-ass their way to success with the right atma and temp items). I feel it's everything before Abyssea that matters in terms of balance, and of course.. eventually what comes after Abyssea, assuming much of anything ever does come after Abyssea.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to do this, it would. It'd be handy and it would give SMN something to actually do for a change in the endgame. But I'd rather have something that was more globally useful than something I can only make real use of in Abyssea.

Endgame nowadays is Abyssea. It will probably be like this for a while, until we get new or better content. But I still see for at least 3 years that Abyssea will be the new "sky" or "sea."

As for global use, good luck finding a reason to have a spirit out in the first place. Even if we are given the option of selecting spells, BP:Merit will always win out on damage. Elemental Siphon is the only reason why spirits have a use at the moment, and given our choice in spells, the only use outside of Abyssea.

I've honestly never noticed the spirits having defense relative to Elementals. Admittedly I've never used them in a serious encounter before (for obvious reasons) but at the very least.. NPC spirits certainly die a hell of a lot faster than elementals. So unless this is just a player exclusive thing and I just never noticed because they're too unreliable to pull out into a serious encounter.. I don't know. Even with high defense though, I don't think they have considerably high health. From what little I have used them, I seem to recall them dying pretty quickly actually.. but it has probably been years now, so who knows.

And they don't necessarily have to remove perp or make it significantly lower, that was just a thought given how meh they are right now. I do not think they should cost more than the avatars though, and I'm iffy on them costing the same as avatars too.. Maybe a couple of MP less? Something around there anyway, it's silly for them to be so expensive.

The reason why they die a whole hell of a lot faster than elementals is because mobs generally have more HP than players at the levels we fight them, which increase as we increase in levels. Since most pets (outside of BST jugs and Charmed pets) have roughly the same HP as players, don't be looking at staying alive against a NM solo. But the nice thing is, we can do a lot more damage to a mob (usually) than what they can do to us, so it evens out...somewhat.