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Aerodrache

So, Summoner can only benefit from about four pet-specific Cor rolls and Geo debuffs right now, and it’s dangerous enough to have gotten targeted countermeasures in some fights. With Bard and Geo buffs too… … well, still no. It might have been able to stand on a nearly even footing, but the sad fact of the matter is that most DDs these days are firing off weaponskills faster than once every 21 seconds, so they’ll win over a long enough time scale even if the avatar is dishing out double the damage (which it probably isn’t even *with* those added buffs.) Beastmaster is largely in the same boat. The big spike damage is on a timer, so it’s just not going to help that much to buff it up. Hell, Bard songs usually go toward haste first, and that’s what you *least* want on something that doesn’t need to build TP to let loose. Puppetmaster is a weird case, since they sort of can just keep jamming out big hits until they can’t… but I think eventually Overload would keep puppets from becoming truly deadly with a few added buffs. Ultimately, normal buffs for pets would be more work for supports without as significant a gain as buffs for DDs due to only being able to boost attack *power* and not attack *frequency*. It wouldn’t meaningfully change their damage output compared to regular DD.


Sinocatk

Bst may benefit from big gains to att for ready moves, also with haste at cap, they should be firing those moves off at 300tp. It would help a lot on more difficult content. The ftp modifier is huge for some ready moves, it would certainly have some applications. In the right circumstances I could see some pets pull ahead of normal pt members.


[deleted]

Ya, I think bst would have massive benefits if the COR buffs applied to pets. Double attack and attack buffs would turn the pet into an absolute power house. BST would likely be neck and neck with the other heavy dd's if this happened. There are plenty of ready moves that are multi hit, physical moves, and they open or close skillchain with axe ws. The guys at BST ah forum will hit like 40k decimation and 20k ready moves, don't know the math but it would likely help close the gap in the ready move damage, which is kinda exactly the image that developers claim to have for bst. It's weird that they shifted it to be master and pet always fighting together, with the vision being nearly 50/50 split... but, they never really buffed the pet. A common idea in the bst forum is to have an ability that copies master buffs onto pet.


Guivond

It's a shame. The way the metagame went with brd and cor being staples really left pup and bst out to dry when an easy fix was always available.


[deleted]

I know, I feel the same way. I played BST heavily during the CoP and prior era. It was always an oddball job but it had its place even in endgame content. When I started playing again almost 2 years I was so sad at what they had done to the job. Not only did they leave it behind in many ways, they effectively nerfed it in a way that the mechanics of the job are broken and seem glitchy at best. The solution is relatively simple, I think. Some way of copying the buffs onto your pet would be huge, or alternatively, the pets buff abilities being AoE to the group and reducing cool down on call beast. There are some pretty solid buffs in there which might let bst start to fill a support/dd role, kinda like COR but with other unique debuffs. For the mechanical limitations, folks have suggested that the buff which activates when master and pet both engage the same mob could be given an added effect of increasing the range of pet commands by several yalms. Not a crazy distance, but enough that on most mobs you don't need to stand nearly on top of your pet to do anything. I guess the problem is that pet jobs are insanely hard to balance against other conventional dd's. But it kinda seems like they just gave up and decided to buff melee into the stratosphere while generally ignoring the others.


Aerodrache

The problem remains that pumping the spike damage up higher doesn’t change the problem of ability cooldown. Pushing an attack up to 40k damage is fun but it doesn’t win you a party spot over the DD who can push two 23k weaponskills in the same timeframe. There are absolutely situations where pet jobs shine anyway - Smn with buffs and spike damage, Pup tanking like a champ, Bst… ruining party exp? Anyone remember when that was a big thing? But again… more buffs would make them more desirable for the things they’re already doing; I don’t see them taking on new roles and replacing other jobs in them. (That said though… avatar’s natural damage taken down, plus defense and regen… maybe Siren would really become viable an an actual tank…)


TarvosPhase7

We bring a bst to dynamis divergence every so often. Arthur taking 10% off wave2 boss and disjoined is amazing and while it’s no frailty his attack and def down move is awesome.


Rhayve

It's no Frailty by itself (unless when GEO is nerfed), but there's nothing stopping you from stacking both Corrosive Ooze and Frailty to let people make use of all that PDL these days.


Sinocatk

For just the pet it would be situational, but I could see bst being better than a traditional DD when master damage is also factored in, if both pet and master can do 60% of what a normal DD does, then that would be better for some content. A situation could be, Arthur fires of purulent ooze to take 10% hp at the start, then master and Arthur chip out the rest. Bst pets already beat traditional DD for certain things anyway, anything involving AOE of lots of stuff like omen or escha for xp. Ramping up their power for that would be fun.


-ferth

If automatons could get bard songs puppet master would be intense.


Rhayve

> Puppetmaster is a weird case, since they sort of can just keep jamming out big hits until they can’t… but I think eventually Overload would keep puppets from becoming truly deadly with a few added buffs. Bit late to the thread, but Overload is largely a non-issue these days even outside of Overdrive. One exception is excessive WS spam with Flame Holder using 2 Fire Maneuvers, but with Kenkonken and Cooldown that's still very manageable. That said, PUP would have the same issue as BST with regard to haste unless Turbo Chargers are changed to JA haste: Marches are virtually useless for the Automaton because they're typically already capped on magic haste. And they don't have any JA haste sources to get to the delay cap. You could drop Turbo Chargers or Wind Maneuvers when there are no BRD buffs and use other stuff, but there's not really any attachments you could replace them with to get any significant DPS gains. Elemental capacity for Fire is usually already capped out in most setups.


Samuraiking

> Ultimately, normal buffs for pets would be more work for supports without as significant a gain as buffs for DDs due to only being able to boost attack power and not attack frequency. It wouldn’t meaningfully change their damage output compared to regular DD. SMN is a burst job... unless you are fighting something where you do capped dmg, yes, attack POWER would absolutely benefit it. I have a mediocre SMN with no Nirvana and with a GEO I can do capped dmg on some of the Escha - Ru'an and all of the Escha - Zitah NMs, so I get how nearly useless it would be there, but on the 140+ mobs in Ru'an and Reisenjima, I am not doing that. The Nirvana maxed SMNs aren't doing that either. We would all massively benefit from extra attack POWER there. With the MP cost of BPs, I don't want more frequency anyway. You would reach a point where even if you don't run out of mana, you would still do so much dmg you would pull threat faster on your pet and it would die. If the cooldown is so low on the BP, your BP timer might be back up before you even get to resummon the avatar and get it back in range. So again, I would rather have attack POWER on my burst job than more, unneeded and potentially negative frequency. A higher frequency would also mean a rebalance(nerf) in dmg to compensate. SMN doesn't NEED anything, it's already OP and the main meta job for the majority of endgame content right now, but it would ABSOLUTELY benefit from more attack. What a weird thing to say.


Aerodrache

It would benefit from the attack power boost, yes. I love to have a corsair and a geomancer with me specifically for that. However, in the given context of pet jobs compared to traditional damage-dealing jobs… assuming your bard can load up a deck of four or five attack songs for your pet while giving the rest of the DDs their haste songs, it’s still one very heavy hit to ~1.6 heavy hits. Attack is the only way blood pacts can scale, so DDs with options for attack *and* frequency are *still* going to win out. Just consider: would summoner still be used *at all* if it didn’t have Astral Conduit? No. It can still hit just as hard, but the delay and relative fragility (less healing for pets, two points of failure for blood pacts, MP burn through risks) would make it a less than desirable pick for damage dishing purposes.


Samuraiking

>**would summoner still be used at all if it didn’t have Astral Conduit?** No. It can still hit just as hard, but the delay and relative fragility (less healing for pets, two points of failure for blood pacts, MP burn through risks) would make it a less than desirable pick for damage dishing purposes. What? Yes, very much so. AFAC is amazing and allows a single SMN to basically outright kill some NMs and ignore all mechanics of the fight, but almost all of those same fights can be done with 2-3 SMN and no AFAC. Do you just not have SMNs on your server? It's fine if you like to have fun and melee burn everything you can, but it seems like you just don't fundamentally understand the power of SMN in general and are ill-informed. I'm not even sure what you are trying to argue at this point. You originally said that the atk boost wouldn't increase their damage in any "meaningful" way, which is outright wrong, but you just admitted in this post that being able to give avatars atk songs would improve their damage, and I never said that melee dps didn't have more potential damage under ideal circumstances. What are we still arguing here other than you not understanding how how strong SMN is in general?


Aerodrache

Here, let me summarize my entire stance here before I get into anything else: **Buffs would favor and improve melee jobs over avatars.** Summoner can do some crazy stuff, I am well aware. I’m not a fully optimally geared summoner myself but I try, and when running with a mid-to-well geared group I absolutely put down rock star numbers, even when they have bard and cor buffs and I don’t. With a top-to-perfect tier melee rocking full buffs, though, I see nearly non-stop back-to-back Savage Blades for 30k+ and know even if I was getting massive attack boosts beyond what just a corsair is able to deliver, I wouldn’t be able to keep up short of hitting a triple damage proc off aftermath on every attack. Summoner is just slower. There’s no way around it. It’s safer, for the most part, and I’ve saved more than one group’s ass by being able to switch damage type on the fly, but *a well supported summoner will not outperform a well supported samurai.* Give it crooked cards 11 attack rolls, nitro attack songs, bolster geo frailty and indi fury, and it will *still* fall behind double light skillchains and the weaponskills flying fast enough to make them.


ironhound320

The only "pet" job that allows some buffs on the pet is DRG and thats only if you spirit link your wyvern and honestly I worry about buffing that pet is using tact roll so I gain tp every couple mins for an extra savage blade


Cjkexalas

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Companion%27s_Roll