Information on Favor systemFollow

Any indication that the avatars themselves receive the favor?

No idea yet. I'll test it with Ifrit to see if he gets double attack.

Actually, without Summoner's Doublet, the perp cost is at -2. If you have help, such as a SCH, COR, BRD, or RDM, or even Sublimation in a clinch, can do very well to keep MP up. Add in Elemental Siphon, and you can even use BPs regularly.

Did some tests with Ifrit, and it appears that favors do NOT affect avatars. In my fighting with enemies outside Windurst [S], Ifrit did not do any Double attacking.

Summoners are, yes. Avatars are not.

So, this means that Ifrit will not get Double Attack, but Summoners can get things like Regen and Refresh from the favor.

Notes on range:

It appears the range is Ward range/Protectra Range. If the party member runs out of range, the favor will stay on for a tic and then disappears. If the party members runs back in, it will be a tic before the favor comes back on.

Edited, Nov 9th 2009 4:24pm by Keylin

A SMN friend with HQ staff, YY doublet and the stuff is losing 2mp/tic using diabolos ... could it be that SMN can't get refreshed by their own diabolos ? Or is it maintenance time already ?

It looks like it takes about 1:20 for max favor to hit, at least with Carbuncle. Using the favor timer as a guide, I watched how much HP was being restored per tick. When favor was started, it started at 1 HP/tic, and went up to 2, to 3, to 4, to 6, to 7, to 8, to 10, and finally, after 1:20 it hit 12.

It appears that Diabolos takes a bit longer, as it hit 3 MP/tic at 1:30. A bit slow for my tastes. It appears that different avatars hit different favors at different paces.

As far as Diabolos, I can get him free with the following equipment:

Weapon: Dark's Staff
Grip: Staff Grip
Ammo: Fortune Egg
Head: Summoner's Horn (No Dark Weather)
Neck: Summoning Torque
Ear: Loquacious Earring
Ear: Summoning Earring
Body: Summoner's Doublet (No Dark Day)
Hands: Nashira Gages
Ring: Evoker's Ring
Ring: Conjurer's Ring (HP lowered with -HP gear)
Back: Summoner's Cape
Waist: Heirarch's Belt
Legs: Evoker's Spats +1
Feet: Evoker's Pigaches +1

I also had refresh sigil and full Diabolos favor in effect.

Edit: If I had a Pluto's Staff or a Bahamut's Staff, I would not need refresh sigil.

Edited, Nov 9th 2009 5:03pm by Keylin

As noted in my earlier post, I'm also using Nashira Gages, Conjurer's Ring, and Evoker's Pigaches+1 (Feet +1). Those three items would knock your perpetuation down to -1. Get a Nirvana, and you can have free avatars any time.

Ok. Unless I'm doing something wrong, as far as I'm concerned, this ability is totally useless. The perp reduction is not enough, we won't be able to keep our avatars out for long in any party situation, and unlike COR and BRD, we'll be a burden on other party members. There'll be too much downtime as we rest our MP, and with that in mind, no party will want us when they can get a BRD or COR instead.

I was hoping there would be more to this ability than we were expecting, but so far, there isn't.

One note, the favors do NOT carry over when zoning.

The carby mitts are not working at all, i'm pretty sure this wasn't intentional at all as they would now have carby mitts in the game that are rare-ex, cannot be bought/sold/augmented, and have no function whatsoever. They'll fix it in the coming "I fugged up" patch.


I'm very happy with favors though. -2 is a good amount, this ability was not meant to completely remove the need to collect good end game gear to have your avatars cheap or free. Also if you take advantage of day/weather instead of ignoring it you can have the avatar of day or weather free with favor effect. I'm happy also that the weakening of the avatar is not very harsh at all for what you get in return. If anyone is having trouble keeping their avatar out for 3 minutes, what you need to do is work on a good perpetuation gear set. I can't wait to use this when camps pick up again tomorrow in my endgame shell, since i logged out as drg last night and had to camp as that when i logged on.

Edited, Nov 9th 2009 5:29pm by shadowkind

Has anyone really tested Ifrit's Favor? I went to fight things, and I didn't Double Attack at all with Ifrit's Favor on.

It's incredibly easy to test if the avatars favors work on themselves. I'd test it myself but I'm on PS2 and the download keeps screwing up and going slow, only to restart itself.

Anyways...

The T2 nukes (ie Fire 2, Blizzard 2, learned at level 10) deal the same damage for each avatar.

Take out ifrit, throw on a favor, and have him use Fire 2 on a level 0 mob in a starter zone.

Take out shiva, throw on a favor, and have her use Blizzard 2 on a level 0 mob also.

If the damage is the same, even after letting shiva's favor build up a little bit, then the favor has no effect on the avatar.

would love for someone to prove me wrong, but after 10 minutes of playing around with this ability it looks like it's time to put summoner away again for another 3 years.

hmm, could be...

Overall, a neat little tweak, but +62 defense or refresh only when perpetuating an avatar doesn't exactly fix Summoner... especially at the cost of ~15% avatar power. Basically I get to have less perpetuation in exchange for less avatar. T _ T

Edited, Nov 9th 2009 11:14pm by KaneKitty

I'm really disappointed with this update. It just does nothing for SMN. It has sparked some interest, yes - but in the long run, it won't boost our chances of getting party invites. Why? SE has put us in the same realm as Bards and Corsairs, but the problem is, BRD and COR can both do their jobs without downtime, and without their primary job functions being bound to something that is constantly depleting like MP. They can also put up more than one party effect at a time, and can potentially give a stronger bonus than the SMN ability does. For SMN to even be comparable to either of those two jobs, our ability would have to have a stronger effect (to compensate for only having one effect at a time), and our MP cost would have to be nil. But since that isn't the case, parties will always choose a COR or a BRD over a SMN. Even if neither of those jobs are available (for whatever reason), a party would more than likely choose another DD than a SMN. Especially since if we are in a party specifically to use Avatar's Favor, we won't be able to play the role of healer or backup healer - not with an avatar out full-time. This ability, sadly, is a joke.

I think a majority of the SMN community including myself are mainly upset with SE's mind set of "Lets beat around the bush".

Don't get me wrong Avatar Favor is a welcome change and a great idea. However, SE could have handled it much much better instead of leaving the community with a "Why" feeling.

ie: Why does avatar Favor lower our dmg ~15% when we are already 1 of the slowest DD/Support jobs in the game?

Why does avatar Favor NOT work on our avatars?

And why are Carby mitts broken!

On the plus side at least they are finally starting to realize we need more then just +mp and are adding much more gear that enhance our avatar performance.

So, I had an opportunity to test Ifrit's favor in a "real world" setting. In this case, I was in a party with a BLU/NIN, MNK/WAR, BLM and RDM. It was the Excavation Duty assault, and all I really did was pull out Ifrit, throw out a Warcry, and use his favor the entire time.

BLU and MNK were definately reporting an increase in Double Attack, and I even did a couple of DAs as well (In a 15 minute period, I did about 3). So, Ifrit's Favor might not be borked as we originally thought, but it definately seems to be subtle. Perhaps great for NINs or /NINs or MNKs or PUPs where there's a good amount of attack rounds, but not so great for 2 handers...like SMN.

I..well agree with you, they had a chance to do something amazing and just ended up screwing up. Their entire "We want smn's to keep their avatars out" can't be done if these avatars do nothing but cost mp to keep out and more mp to use pacts while we're using more MP to cure. I got on right after the update, was already outside summoned Ifrit..saw my perpet still ticking away..and instantly felt the same way.

I understand not giving shiva the 10 MAB because she would be the one to use. The others? I have no clue, i don't think it would kill if Ifrit got DA, Ramuh got critical hit rate % boost...Don't even think Titans def boost would make him into a tanking god...so I don't see how it would hurt especially if we're taking out a 15%.

You people would actually prefer that Shiva not get the 10 MAB just so all of the pacts can be equal?

I don't see many BLMS lobbying for every nuke to have Stone potency....

Hey guys I'm really happy for you, and I'm gonna let you finish, but a free Garuda with this new ability and my NQ wind staff, relic body on windsday, af+1 feet, evoker's ring, and karura hachigane along with FoV refresh is one of the greatest things of all time.

Ok perhaps I should slow down on the memes a bit lol...

Right, well I guess that's part II of my disappointment. If only these buffs would have applied to the avatars, and not weakened them, this update would have been amazing.

But SE is VERY stingy about giving us ways to increase the damage of our avatars, so it makes sense that this big SMN update actually restricts the offensive output of our job.

Yes it may be a glitch, using 'ward' effects also turns off the favor efforts for a brief period.

my perp with diabolous at full buff out went from 'free' to -5 perp to -3, to -1 then back to free in a matter of 1-2 seconds.

doing more testing on offensive bps

What MAB? Avatars do not get the favor bonus themselves.

This is more like BLMs complaining about retrace, since it doesn't help US, but it helps others.

Right, avatars don't get the bonus themselves. And more than one person has said something along the lines of "Well I'm glad that the avatars don't get the bonus, because that would make Heavenly Strike the best merit pact."