Following a small discussion which took place a few weeks ago, I'd love to expand on it.
Thanks to Indalecia for finding the original Patch notes post HERE.
Alllow me to quote SE:
That is extremely vague, as the majority of comments from that time (we're talking about 2006!). Before this patch Summoning Skill only affected the interrupt rate while summoning an avatar/spirit.Blood Pact will now receive different effects when the value added by equipment or merit points exceeds the skill cap for that level.
*Players can experience increased accuracy when using Blood Pact: Rage or lengthened effect durations when using Blood Pact: Ward. The length of the duration increased varies depending on which Blood Pact is used, but will not exceed 180 seconds.
So this leaves us with the following question to which I'd love to find answers:
- It mentions "skill which exceeds skill cap". Does this mean the current cap (417) or the cap back then at 75? (269)
- Does this imply that skill below cap, whichever it is, is still useless as it was before 2006?
- There's a talk of "increased accuracy for BP: Rage". Is it a generic omnicomprehensive accuracy? Or just physical accuracy?
- It says "increased duration for BP: Ward". It's pretty obvious for buff Wards, but what about debuff Wards?
The game separates between two groups: Blood Pact: Ward and Blood Pact: Rage.
But in reality there are four groups:
- BP Rage (physical)
- BP Rage (magical)
- BP Ward (buffs)
- BP Ward (debuff)
My theory is that whichever way this "conversion" works, it's the same way everytime. I don't think there really is a situational conversion that changes according to the BP used, imho it's just the same but you just do not notice.
For instance BP Ward buffs get the Skill>Physical accuracy but it makes no difference on buffs. Or BP Rage probably get the +duration but again it makes no difference.
What's left to be found out is if Skill converts into Magical Accuracy too.
If this happens, and if my theory is correct, then +Skill would be a valid alternative to Pet: Macc for debuff BP Wards.
Altough we don't know the conversion rate (doesn't necessarily have to be 1:1) so we'd still be left to wonder about that.
We can probably check the Skill>Physical accuracy conversion rate with /checkparam <pet> though, and we could assume a similar rate for Magic Accuracy (if there is a macc conversion at all)