Since there seems to be a few other class/job threads popping up, I figure we might as well start one for the discussion on the newcomer to the party, especially since it seems like it could be fairly complex due to its ability to change party roles. Post pictures of your arcanists, discuss class quests, tell tales of your exploits against monsters of wee stature and big ferocity, and discuss the optimum gearsets.
I'll start off with a bit of informal testing! Carbuncle appears to share at least some stats with the summoner! A friend noticed how emerald carbys gust move has the same damage as the summoners ruin spell, which led me to experiment. At level 20, adding 1 point of vitality raised topaz's hp by 16! I easily added over 120 hp to him by simply changing my gear around slightly.
However! These changes do not apply instantly. If you change your gear, say, by adding more vitality, your carbuncles hp will not change until you resummon him!
Another thing i found out: your weapons base damage affects topaz's melee damage and skill move damage as well. Changing from the level 20 arcanist tome to a weathered tome made him hit for a puny 3 damage a hit on level 21 ochus, instead of 9-12 with a correct level tome.
And yes, adding more int increases your emerald carbuncles nuke damage. As far as I could tell, determination gear also boosts your carbuncles melee and nukes, although with only 3 determination in gear I couldn't say this with certainty.
This is leading me to think that strength will increase topaz carbys melee damage and skills as well, and my early testing ::seemed:: to support this, but with only 6 strength in gear, I couldn't say for sure, as it only seemed the average only increased by like 2-3 damage. I'm hoping to hit higher levels, since gear gives bigger boosts then and I could test more easily.
A friend, however, argued that he tested and found that adding INT increased topaz's damage, but I didn't find this to be the case myself. I'm thinking both int and str need to be tested to see how they affect or don't affect carbys melee damage. A few other things that could bear testing: things like defense. Is carby's defense the same as your own? Is this why protect can't be cast on him, because he would be double dipping on defense then? (does protect on the master boost carbys defense at all?) What about things like enmity increases? I'm curious to see if int will be the go to for ACN and SMN, or if we will wind up with a few different skillsets depending on which role we are playing as.