[Autumn]

I just want to note out quickly which skills already have no benefits for having a white spirit, not for the sake of argument, but as an example.
Convert, Cleanse Body, Recklessness, Hand Trigger, Pocket Sand, Watchful Eye, Bashfix, Steel Mind, Absorb Veil, Charge Mind, High Speed Divine Words, Backflip, Winter's Bite, Create Shade.

And not to mention numerous skills that only have reduced FP costs instead as their reward for spirits, Fast Offense would fall under this category if this change took place, as its FP cost is reduced per rank.

So I will change my proposal slightly:
Fast Offense does not scale momentum addition after rank 5, but fp cost scaling still remains.

I'm not trying to sound like an asshole, I'm just standing up for the very few people who bring summoner to summon, and encouraging class diversity amongst them, but if you want to erase one of the two skills Bonder has compatible with grand summoner, instead of addressing the actual problem, be my guest.

[Selfish Gene]

Spoops, if you took the time to read my first response, you would have read that I'm one of said "few summoners" that you speak of. One of my characters is a dedicated Bonder and the reason I'm sharing many opinions in regards to this is because I know full well of what they're capable of. Also, here's the problem with all of the skills you listed, none of them have scalings. The main difference between those skills and Fast Offense is that it does scale, in the description it even states it gains 1+Rank momentum. Since white spirits increase the rank by one, it literally makes sense as to why it does do something. Let's see the issue with that regarding some skills you've mentioned:

Cleanse Body: Each rank gives a new status it can cleanse, therefore adding another rank doesn't work since it doesn't scale.
Pocket Sand: It doesn't increase the duration of the blind or anything with more levels, it just lets you inflict them with blind.
Watchful Eye: Yet another ability that doesn't scale off of rank because it lets you use the ability with a pre-determined cost and range.
Charge Mind: No scaling, it just lets you use it to amplify your next spell by 2.5x with a pre-determined cost.
Backflip: Max rank is already 0 FP, therefore if you tried to get another white spirit for it, it would refund you FP which doesn't make sense.
Winter's Bite: Yes, in the description it even says 1+Rank duration, but once again it doesn't have scaling properties. It just outright nulls out things that can resist, absorb, reflect ice.

Notice the trend with those skills? No scalings, therefore unless Dev took the time to make white spirit exclusive benefits it wouldn't make sense regardless. For Fast Offense, however, yes, it does make sense. And the issue with your fix is that it goes against the very description of Fast Offense itself. *motions to italicized text*

The mentioned fixes aren't anything horrible for Bonders either, it's literally people saying:

Oh hey, why doesn't Fast Offense just work for 1 Youkai before needing to be re-cast? and Why not limit it to Bonded Youkai instead of every Youkai?

None of these are crippling and will render summoners useless, which is coming from one of the very few summoners there are in the game. I appreciate you taking the time to debate this, though. As I've said, it's great to be able to spark conversation with this.

[Snake]

Aaaaaaa.

Too many words. (Not that I ain't reading, and I can bet a certain developer will be skimming if we don't put TL;DRs)

Anyway, Destiny Summoner is a bad choice no matter how much you look at it, but Youkai being glass nukes will always 'justify' whatever argument anybody has against buffs or blocking nerf attempts.

Fast Offense gives any Youkai the possibility to inflict over (260% X Elemental ATK magic damage) * 2, and you can amplify that for each Youkai over the first one spawned. That multiplies the damage by like, 2 then 4, then 6, then 8. (Literally, if we take all numbers it will do over 2080% X Elemental ATK magic damage. What in the five hells can survive this?)

And can anybody say that is okay? Not even an Evoker can do this much magic damage for no momentum.

This was okay but only pre-GR, when Youkai were actually both 'tanky' and had decent damage instead of, as how it stands right now, paper and insane damage. Sadly, this is not a thread to talk about Youkai, but Fast Offense.

So TL;DR: Limiting it to Bonded Youkai only may mitigate some of this overkilling nuisance, and seems to be more agreeable after Spo's input. There's no need to make the buff get depleted, especially due to option A, when it may only work with Bonded Youkai.
(So option A is what I'm digging for, now)

But it will not solve the problem with Youkai. They really need their magic damage to go down, and VIT/DEF/RES to go up, so we can have more fun things (or maybe a new class?) instead of this 'youkai lol 2080% damage' trend.

[Soapy]

Fast Offense leads to an insane amount of damage, since youkai deal a ton of damage in general, especially if you have it spirited and even moreso if they're fast enough to double turn the enemy.

However, I think the best solution would be to make youkai do less damage in return for being harder to put down, instead of nerfing the skill itself.

I do also think it should be changed to only function with bonded youkai, though.

[Shujin]

I agree with Spo here mostly. Bonders are already limited to 3 youkai, and fast offense pretty much works like this:
-Fast burst damage the turn after Fast offense.
-If opponent slower they can double turn for more damage, if not? They can manage to take out the youkai or get out of range from everything that isn´t sniper fairy. sometimes even sniper fairy.
-Now...Yeah...U-unsummon(3M) to resummon(3M) and hope you still have Fast offense up? but the youkai are probably dead already.


Fast offense is pretty much one strong burst, with a lot of damage, but after that, it´s mostly done for and with the youkai gone the bonder is completly out of options. So while I agree the damage is pretty high, its pretty much a trumpcard thing that, once the opponent managed to come over it, pretty much renders the bonder useless.
I could also get behind Soapys idea, to make them do a bit less damage for more survival powers. Youkai die very easily.

I also like to point out that a bonder doesn´t really have any more valid Options to fight even. Most others skills are pretty tame to lame or need you to use install which is mainclass only.


So yeah, I personally think Fast Offense itself is fine. The interactions with spirit might be to much, yeah.
Else making Youkai a bit weaker for more survival power is also fine.

[Selfish Gene]

In a sense, I can see where you're coming from, Shujin, but I would barely call Fast Offense to be a "trump card" by any stretch of the imagination. Oftentimes when I'm facing (or using my own) Bonder, the primary tactic is, in fact, to take advantage of how open-ended and strong the skill tends to be. I would say that "fast burst damage" is an understatement for the most part as Fern even said that he was being dealt ~130 damage from Youkai with 40 resistance. Is the pairing with the white spirit strong? Scarily so.

And I have to disagree with you on the "after Fast Offense is done and Bonders being completely out of options" thing as well. By the time you've summoned your 3 Bonded Youkai, you already have three Youkai who are ready to go with 6 momentum in their following turns. At that point, it's not uncommon to see some Youkai double-turn some tanks which are honestly quite frightening. Yes, the initial burst of the skill is gone, but that damage output is still pretty steady until the Youkai dies out. The thing with that is that it's not always extremely easy to burst down Youkai before they can repeat the process. A good example of this being the dragons. Are their damage output high? Definitely. Are they relatively tanky? Yes, they are. Is it feasible to tackle all three of them down when they've been planted in your face with 7 momentum a pop? Definitely not. And after that initial spirit burst, if you're somehow alive they can still follow you and burst you down unless you flee like a Felidae/Grimalkin at 1 HP.

I mean, not to mention that Fast Offense doesn't require the Youkai to be Bonded. I think you're forgetting that you can have up to 3 Bonded Youkai, but that doesn't mean you can't have more Youkai who are sub 50 FR to take advantage of this two. In Fern's case, he was fighting 4 Youkai all at once and was bursted to hell because he genuinely couldn't do anything. And you say that the whole unsummon + resummon combo is unlikely because the Youkai is most likely dead... That's entirely dependant on if they double-turn you and if you even managed to kill them and every other Youkai that was summoned.

tl;dr:
- I disagree that Bonders are useless post-FO (Fast Offense) because the likelihood of the Youkai still being alive are relatively higher than people give them credit for.
- White Spirit + Fast Offense = OP; but so are other white spirit combinations.
- Fast Offense affects more than just the 3 Bonded Youkai. Bonders can have more than 3 Youkai (Just won't get bonded effects) and can benefit from Fast Offense all the same.
- Fighting a Bonder is basically a "run like a Felidae/Grimalkin at 1 HP match".
- It's not uncommon for Youkai to double-turn tanks (and even some really nimble people at times, looking at you Fairies)
- Even without the white spirit, Youkai damage is honestly pretty ridiculous (180+ is pretty common for squishies and ~130 is pretty common for ~40 RES tanks)
- Unsummon + Re-summon = Unreliable because Youkai are probably dead? Purely dependent on the build you're using against them and how many you're trying to take down with 7 momentum. Some Youkai are scarily tanky and will bat an eye.

[Neus]

It doesn't make sense to nerf Youkai because of Fast Offense + White Spirit being a little too strong. I'd rather just make Fast Offense give a maximum of 6 Momentum.

[Shujin]

Or, make fast offense also just work when you have 3 or less youkai. I kinda feel after reading here that this might aswell be one of the reasons why it´s considered to strong.


" Are they relatively tanky? Yes, they are. Is it feasible to tackle all three of them down when they've been planted in your face with 7 momentum a pop?"
Uh well the least of them are actually tanky, most people can burst them down quite easily.

But I keep standing on the point that Fast offense is the only weapon from a BONDER. that the youkai still do damage, is obvious, but after you lose the advantage of Fast offense, there is no reason to not have GS instead. You know what I mean?
Bonders sorta rely to use the few Youkai they have to burst down the enemy, while GS has the army and versatile zerg rush strategies.
So I believe that Bonder becomes inferior to GS if we go down to 6M fast offense.
As I said, I would rather see it being limited to 3 Youkai so the theme of "I have few but good youkai!" remains valid.

[Lolzytripd]

Fast offense is half effective rounded down on non bonded youkai?

[Snake]

I'd rather go for Fast Offense working on Bonded Youkai only, really. A non-Bonded Seiryuu giving a pair of total 600 magic wind damage nukes every time is not healthy.

Besides, if said Summoner is using spirits. They're very very veeery vulnerable to Holy. So, having FO adjusted for Bonded Youkai only may be all that's necessary.