Why would I ever rank up a familiar?

[m0inkster]

When a familial ranks up, it gets new stats.

Which is a bummer, as I would expect it just to increase the stats. I.e 3% IED becomes 5% IED on rank up, but nope, I just lost my good stats & get 2@ 10% chance to have as stupid face.

So since I would have to spend along time with a lousy familiar, ranking it up & hoping to win the jackpot at top rank, then repeating until I finally get a good one at top rank - which could take years - I see no reason to go beyond whatever was dropped & revealed as good.

Or do I totally fail to understand?

[CherryKakyoin]

Ranking up a familiar comes down to this:

You get a decent low rank familiar, either 15% ignore defense or some party healing familiar.

Then you keep those and start grinding familiars, any familiar will work as long as you can easily farm it (i.e moonbridge familiars)

Afterwards you start getting duplicates of that familiar to lv it up and rank it up, hoping to get something good such as 30% ignore defense, party healing or 30% boss damage.

The thing is that you work on random familiars tiering them up while you keep decent ones by your side during the process until you eventually replace them.

[m0inkster]

Thanks for that. So, you are ranking the useless familiars up by fusing, not training with them?

In either case, it seems like a crap shoot, which might take years to yield a decent result. Also, as I level, I will be grinding different mobs, so if I want a few hundred of the same familiar, I might have to stay at a lower level, which is non-optimal.

Hmmm, according to https://maplestory.nexon.net/news/57190/familiar-revamp-details "When first added, all Familiars are Lv. 1, and will gain 1 EXP when the player defeats monsters near the player's level with the Familiar summoned.

When the Familiars gain enough EXP, they will increase in level, up to Lv. 5:
Lv. 2: 300 EXP
Lv. 3: 600 EXP
Lv. 4: 1,200 EXP
Lv. 5: 2.400 EXP",

which is nor really a lot. Maybe an hour to get to level 5? Or, if I can raise them by fusing, then either farm, or buy on the auction house (currently selling from 40k in Luna), but I ma not sure how many I would need.

I have 2 familiar slots, so I guess that I will dedicate one to a good familiar & one to leveling a crapshoot.

The burning question, though, is which are the coolest looking familiars? ;-)

[CherryKakyoin]

You MUST lv them up to lv 5 before fusing them, iirc it's a requirement to rank up, the thing is that you farm familiars at lv245+ when grinding takes hours and you most likely stay at the same map or fight the same enemies, before that point you'll level up so quickly that you'll never get enough familiars to rank up even once.

As for your other question, IMO Lucid familiar or Yakuza familiar