The update is hereFollow

hmmmm i wonder if these effects will affect the avatars themselves..
double attack etc..
or Shiva using her own magic attk+ for heavenly strike

and would a diabolos with lowered perp cost and its own refresh make it, free?
(-perp gear allowing)

hmm HMMM i say!

oh lord and i just realised the effect of this in campaign hahahahaa
i'll be refreshing about 40 people at once.. or giving them all double attack >.<



Edited, Oct 21st 2009 7:04am by Rostofff

lol ya!

I had the exact same questions about Shiva/Leviathan and Diabolos. Additionally, it could have rather strange ramifications for merit parties.

I hope they go to the avatar too. It would really make the avatar themselves "different", it all depends on how far these avatars perpet gets reduced, if it gets to the point where we can actually replace gear that has -perpet to gear that is useful to us.

I mean, Ifrit, 12% double attack..is nice, but you know, on something like Shiva, 10 MAB + fay weapon + expansion body alone, is a great boost to her merit pacts. I don't even see a magic accuracy boost for wiki, but I would be happy to have that in there for when we need to land some useful things like gravity, sleeps etc..

You know, Diabolos having him -perpet and - more perpet b/c of his 3 mp a tick refresh is most likely good enough to keep him out.

It now all depends on how far the perpet is reduced by, if it's by half? 1/3? as long as it lets us keep avatars out this update will be a big boost for us.

Either way, fun and great update, I cannot wait until it comes out so we can use it. I hope our new avatars, if we get them, have some nice favors to them as well. Store TP? something great and fun. Either way, as long as you have a great reduced perpet cost and we're nt suffering from the perpet, we're good.

I must admit this is rather neat, and it was a pretty well thought out way to get summoners more requested. I'm interested to see what exactly Fenrir's "Magic Evasion" will do personally.

I wonder if summoners are gunna get that new avatar this update though, and if it will also have a corresponding favor...

the update states that party members in range will receive these beneficial effects. i hope the range doesn't suck.

yay going to make diablos near mandatory to get, now i gotta stop slacking and get a group that can beat him lol.

ignore me, I can't read.

Edited, Oct 21st 2009 4:42pm by Jinte

I'm not gonna jump to conclusions, but i think there's a part 3 they're planning to keep secret until later. The way this is set up right now just doesn't make any sense. I was expecting to see an opposite ability for increased perpetuation for a boost in dmg, attack speed, magic acc, magic attack, evasion, defense, magic resistance, etc.

XI is not the lucky number for COR. It gives the most powerful buff, but it is not the lucky number. Each roll has its own lucky number. Chaos Roll, for example, has IV as its lucky number. So all of the buffs you stated are more powerful than what I think you should be expecting.

It's a stance move like velocity shot/hasso/light arts, so I'm sure it has a negative effect like weakenening the avatar somehow. Let's just PRAY it isn't increased Blood Pact timers,although that would be balanced...

Edited, Oct 21st 2009 7:07am by TheHolyDragoonSeraphus

composure for rdm has same duration and recast just hope this doesnt wear off when u zone hate that when campaign bouncing

The exact text is, 召喚獣の力を抑える代わりに

I can't think of any other way to translate it other than "In exchange for supressing the avatars power."

We will have to wait and see 1) how large/what kind of a penalty the avatars receive and 2) how long it takes to max out the favors. It could be a reduction in Rage power or it may increase the Blood Pact timer or prevent use of Blood Pacts entirely!

The longer it takes to reach the max boost, the more discouraged you will be from releasing avatars. You also have to have the ability active when you summon the avatar so there's no getting in a BP and then activating the favor.

I don't forsee MP management being a problem though. You can already get the costs down to 2 or 4 depending on the avatar. If we're talking endgame events, you will have at least 1 form of refresh. Add that with the reduction in perp cost and I think we're almost guaranteed to have free avatars with some refresh left over.



I don't see how that would be possible. The description makes it sound as though you must be within the avatar's range in order to receive the bonus. So if you had Garuda meleeing the mob and you are as well, then you get the evasion bonus. Run to the back line and you loose it. Run back in again and you get it back. I'm not sure how you could dispel the effect off of a player as the real effect rests on the avatar. Now, if it is dispelable off of the avatars themselves then that would be a HUGE problem. However, the ability is on the Summoner herself, so I don't see how that would work. I wouldn't put it past SE though . . .

I'm just going to remain midly optimistic until the update when I can test it out for myself.

looks cool but i expect some kind of downside. weakened avatars sounds very possible, be it weakened pacts or something similar.

maybe skill related, maybe a set % skill loss on pacts, could affect the accuraccy of offensive pacts or the duration of wards with the ja active,

would kinda make sense, your avatars would be a bit weaker as a loss of skill would be a loss of accuracy on rage pacts and also kill the duration of various ward pacts. even something small like a 10% loss in skill could see you needing to find and stack over 60 to keep hastega capped with the ja up.

but either way just a theory.

edit:- also like someone above said it wont make smn as desirable as cor/brd. it never will. since favors are linked to the avatar you're restricted to 1 at a time, so gonna be impossible to have like a refresh favor on your mages and a double attack favour on your melee. but stacking it with existing wards may work well, keeping the party hasted with garuda while being able to keep your pld and blus refreshed for example. aside from the loss of potency everytime you swap avatars to put a ward up,

all that said though it's still something i imagine i'm going to have a lot of fun playing around with :) just waiting to see how it all works out.

Edited, Oct 21st 2009 11:18am by Dzian

Actually, I thought a SMN would be a nice addition to a BLM pt in dynamis. Not only for the reasons you mentioned, but for Nightmare as well.

Holy hell, what the heck is Mellowy going to complain about now?

Not to mention Warlock's Roll's values are known. Lucky Number buff is 10 Macc and 14 Macc with rdm.

Edit: The reference to cor buffs with regard to the smn update and the fact that Titan buffs physical defense makes me wonder why cor doesn't have this available (on gallant's roll would make sense to me). Oh well, gratz smn's looks like a nice update for you guys. ^^

Edited, Oct 21st 2009 12:21pm by tmlane

wth is Mellowy?

<Found it!>:



I kid you not.

No, you can't buff "as well as CORs". You can just buff better than SMN used to be able to.

COR = can have two different buffs on each party member, and can have different buffs on different players. SMN = One party buff at a time, active on everyone in range.

COR = is not restricted from doing anything else while buffs are active (e.g. DD). SMN = is restricted in that you can't change avatar, and favors possibly weaken the active avatar.

SMN appears to be able to equal a lucky # COR roll for similar effects, but not the highest strength COR roll (XI, which is always better than a lucky). And that's "at its peak", with the update notes saying the strength of the effect is "gradually increasing". So as soon as you put up the buff, it won't be equal to a lucky COR roll.

Merit allows COR to make their buffs much more consistent on the high end.

Snake eye and Fold(the abilities you're referencing) do not guarantee consistent lucky rolls or XI's on a Cor's respective buffs (which is what they're going to need to match one of these Aura's these avatars give at peak strength). The chance for an inadequate buff is still very likely.

I think it sounds like a fair tradeoff. 1 Cor buff of value equal to a lucky roll up at all times is very good (this is still up in the air since it's unknown how long it takes to reach this level). Having anything more could potentially be overpowering.

i think it's a bit of a dis to not put the +DA/crit (or hell, +haste) on garuda, since that would be a real boon for SMN in merit parties. other than that, it looks like a really strong update, especially the magic stuff.

It doesn't guarantee consistent roll number, but it does provide a statistical increase to occurrence of higher results and a statistical decrease to the odds of a bust. (IE you don't need to double up/re-roll for higher number)

Edited, Oct 21st 2009 4:55pm by taishokukanoki

Edited, Oct 21st 2009 4:55pm by taishokukanoki

Not gunna do my old school choo-choo's but I'll just go in order

"Why is it an Ability not a trait"
Because it's only logical to expect a negative side effect that SE doesn't want us to spam back and forth between the 2 options, and assume we'll just choose one or the other. I'm thinking along the lines of Hasso/Seigan and whatever the new Nin 2 abilities were. But instead of giving us 3 choices (depending on part 3 of the update) we only get 2. Normal avatars where we can BP>Release>Repeat in a DD role (loose term) or Weakened Avatars that support the party.

"Will the pet get the buff as well"
Assuming the above is the way it will actually work, I doubt the pet will get the buff, although a weakend pet + a buffed pet = back to a normal strength pet? It will all depend on what the 'weakened' pet will constitute. Few Idea's already thrown out, BP timer, Smn skill, etc etc.

Looking at a few of these, My first guess, and probably (imo) most preferable, is double blood pact timers. At first thought there will be a lot of complaints, but assuming most of us are near 45 second recast as is, we're only looking at 1:30 timer. That's not really that bad when considering any of our Ward's normally used. In fact, it fits perfectly assuming our durations are 3 minutes. All buffs will still be active as before with no change. Hastega, Howl, and any other party buff used, is expected a 3 min duration, and your recast won't matter, unless you're keeping 3 wards on as is, and there are very few of you who do keep 3 buffs active. The reason this is my first guess, is because it's the same concept as hasso. But again it's just a guess.

Second possibility, someone mentioned a reduction in Smn Skill. While this would solve a handful of complaints of "Why did I spend this much time/effort getting 340+ Smn Skill, if I see no effect after the ~310 mark on anything but Siphon?" A percentage cut to Smn Skill would emphasize the need for the better gear to reach the Smn skill needed under the negative effect. While I won't write this idea off, it's less likely to be implied, because SE won't like the idea of All the positives of the job ability, if the negative effects can be negated with enough +Smn Skill gear/merits.

Other possibilities, lower attack/accuracy, or a more delay. I don't foresee SE going through the work of alternative tables for avatar acc/att for this ability, but slowing the avatar attack speed down would be as easy as applying a constant 'slow' effect which would be easy, but again, I doubt this will be the actual down side, but who knows.

Going back to my first guess of double the blood pact timer, let's take a look at the other side of the spectrum. First I'll just say, yeah it will suck for wards like sleepga from shiva when we're solo'ing etc. But lets look at the Rage side. For anything End game, where Smn are the main DD, yeah, it'll be no good, but for party situations or other events you have to see the bigger picture.
We're comparing BP/Release 3 times a minute, vs 2 BP + 3 minutes of melee dmg, lower perp cost, and a party AoE bonus. That's not a bad payoff, and I've even willing to bet, that on merit mobs, 3 minutes of melee damage will be near the damage 1 BP provides on average.
>> Quick math side note << 320 delay = 5.3 seconds, 3min = 180sec 180/5.3 = 33 melee swings, 33*70%acc = 23 hits. (celestial based on enil's melee threads on birds)42 Damage a hit would mean 966 Damage in 3 minutes. Which more than likely is what you're probably averaging with most 70 Pacts. Assuming the lowest cut in perp is -1tick, 3 minutes, is 60mp. So for 100 less MP you get the same damage expected. Which looks good on paper, but 3 minutes of avatar out means zero /healing. So, you're actually losing MP overall, but not nearly as much as you'd think. We can get into the melee'ing with spirit taker discussion if you want, I'm not really up for it. But It's hard not to expect anyone to have a -3 Perp Fay Crozier by now, which has a decent 50 base Dmg, which isn't too horrible for Spirit Taker, espesually if you're macro'ing in Mnd/Int. But like I said, different story, different time. And then you have to start fighting the 'omg tp feeding' issues.

Side Note>>> Fenrir's expected melee dmg is 52 per hit, and he attacks @ 4.6 seconds, which is 39 swings in 3 min @ 80% acc = 31 landed hits = 1612 damage in 3 minutes. WAAAAYYYY more than you can expect from a 3rd Eclipse bite. And that's based on Merit Mobs. Add in the fact fenrir is already the cheaper avatar and you're looking at potential, but his AoE effect is not as desirable, but Ecliptic Howl can be useful for the Party. Again on the Melee thing, any avatar other than Garuda allows you to use Walmart Turban, and 5% haste is a chunk to gain when considering melee dmg.

For the Solo'ers... Assuming option 1 is correct, this will be huge. I can't see any down side to this for you, you should all be jumping for Joy. Especially after reading what I wrote above about Fenrir's DoT and MP. Also take into consideration, that the damage will be more than double above when applied to EP/DC mobs, due to the higher avg melee as well as higher Acc rate.

For the General Smn's, you wanted lower perp cost, and incentive to keep avatars out, congrats you got it. If you expected it to come without any downsides, be realistic. Although I agree even with zero down sides to this ability, I didn't see it being over powering, but, such is life. And as a 'hybrid' job SE is always trying to push us into 1 choice of 3 roles. No downsides would allow us to do multiple roles. This gives us more tools to choose between the 3. End Game DD won't see any change, but our healer and support roles will be more viable in game, giving back some options we use to have.

For the Main healers, If you remember the relief you got when we were given /sch for Regen 2 in merits, this is even better. We just got Regen3GA with no mp cost. Free, FREE carby WITHOUT the need for a light staff, means you can use martial staff for your spirit takers, and /healing shouldn't be an issue. You get to keep Carby out for 3 minutes at a time (assuming you're still going to be hastega'ing) and shouldn't run into any MP issues even with /whm casting the occasional cure 3's. I read a lot of people say "I wouldn't mind being the party's b*tch/healer if I could at least do it with my avatars because that's why my jobs suppose to be about!!!11one1!!" While not everyone agrees with this, we can all certainly agree it's a large step in the right direction, and even is support roles, running around with carby will always be a regen 3'ga

For the other kind of solo'ing... Carby Kiting!
Guess what? HUGE update for us as well. Hate Free Regen 3 on (lets say half the time) Obviously you won't be in range for regen constantly, but there's no reason you can't stay withing Regen range until <pethpp> reaches 50%, plus we don't always need hp. But this will definitely help in the extend carby kiting situations where casting carby over and over, slowly builds hate over time, and carby doesn't pull hate back after the first hit or two (or miss or two if you have my luck, lol)

Again, the above is all based on the assumption the only downside is BP timer being doubled, which as I said, I think is the most preferable downside listed so far. Well... Actually the -smn skill would be the easiest to overcome, lol. But for that specific reason I don't see it becoming the implemented downside.

Wall o text, but I've been quite for a while. :p