The 6th Ministry's Secret: A Summoner's Guide (v2)

I've never seen someone get mad because people on the forums won't help them kill themselves easier.

It's really irritating to ask a fact question but receive opinion answers

If a person asks a question, you don't ask why or interject your opinion, you just answer or don't.

(or answer and say your piece)

I'd actually rather be told I'm doing it wrong so I don't go off and get myself killed in dumber ways than I already do. Also because I would rather not try to "help" someone down the road and end up not helping them because I inadvertently gave them poor advice.

I do understand that they explicitly stated what they wanted, but they were given stats based on their set and given sets that addressed their wants, plus more. Sechs had a wonderful post for them. They didn't have to reply to anyone especially with attitude.

I mean I understand the concept of "Just answer the question, don't worry about my playstyle or try to tell me that I'm playing the game wrong, I don't have to be meta" or whatever, but like...if someone posts saying "Hey, I'm building a max VIT set for my idle set for SMN, to reduce the damage when I'm being hit by enemy's physical damage" and they posted a set full of trash gear with high VIT and 0% DT, I think it's reasonable to assume that people would tell them about how DT works rather than just blindly reply with the highest VIT gear you can get per slot.

At the end of the day, if you're looking for advice on your gear set, you really shouldn't be getting upset if people give feedback on the set you're using, especially when they're giving advice based on the scenario you gave them (being hit, trying to cure yourself). You may not agree with their assessment, and you can debate their decisions back and forth (that's what a forum is for) but I don't think it's unreasonable for people to try to give advice about gameplay style when talking about sets. As another example: if someone was looking for a BP reduction set for their BST/SMN so they could get Mewing Lullaby cooldown as low as possible, I'm sure someone would suggest that they try using Fatso instead, and that's not some oppressive mob telling them how to play the game, it's just trying to avoid some idiot getting themselves killed by playing the game in a dumb way.

How long did it take you to cleave for those cara gem's on smn?

Honestly idc if he "gets himself killed" or not, but ignoring some dumb ***on a public forum isn't how this ***works. If you wanted validation and asspats you should've asked someone on discord or something.

You can string it any way you want, but it boils down to "mmmboohoo I asked about THIS SET and everyone gave me suggestions to improve it, THAT ISN'T WHAT I WANTED AT ALL"

Additionally, no one is beholden to help anyone. No one on this site is your employee. If you care that much about your weird set that no one else would ever use maybe you should do your research and learn how to do it yourself like the people who actually wasted their time giving you a valid reply.

That's quite a big thing you're telling yourself here, Tarage :3

I'll acknowledge the FFXI community has been over the years somewhat adamant on being "sheeps" that follow the currently known "most efficient method" to do something, I can't and won't deny that.

But this situation here is clearly quite different.
You weren't trying to do something "different from the meta", trying to devise new strategies to complete something (you didn't even reply to the people asking which targets/content you wanted to use this set for...).
You were simply trying to do something... stupid. Some people have been aggressive to you maybe, I'm sorry for that, but others have tried to explain to you in a very calm and reasonable way what were the problems at the core of your reasoning, despite all your good intentions.

At this point it becomes a matter of either "Ok guys I see what you mean now, I'll think of a new approach" or you being overly stubborn and not wanting to admit you were, alas, wrong.
Which can be a sour pill to swallow, we've all been there before. I know I have been countless times and these forums testify how many times I've been incredibly wrong about something.
Admitting you were wrong on something gives you the chance to improve yourself.
Refusing to accept it just means to continue doing whatever you're doing just to avoid what comes with that acceptance.

Ultimately, it's up to you of course. This is just a game, who are we to play moral judges on the lives of others in the end?
Personally I'm sure some people were honest in offering additional info out of good will, within the replies of this thread.

Theres thinking outside the box to do something in a certain way that may actually work or cater to your playstyle, and then theres "I need capped SIRD, capped cure potency & cure potency received and capped cure4 recast because I need to have cure4 recast available as quickly as possible otherwise theres a good chance I'll die if I have to resort to cure3, no F you I dont need any DT in that cure 4 set, stop avoiding my question and tell me how to accomplish the capped SIRD, cure potency, cure potency received, fastcast / haste, I dont care for your feedback just answer the damn question".

And the troll has continued so I'll continue.

I'm casting cure4 on myself.

What this means to any reasonable person on the forum: "I'm missing hp and I need to replace it"

Things that effect this: Cure Potency and Cure potency received.

I need to cap SIRD during midcast

What this means to any reasonable person on the forum: "I'm actively being hit while casting and being interrupted could mean me dying"

Things that effect this: SIRD, PDT, Vit, Def.

I need my recast to be as minimal as possible to be able to continuously cast Cure4 instead of downgrading to Cure3

What this means to any reasonable person on the forum: "I'm taking quite a bit of damage continuously, physically, and need to rapidly recover hp"

Things that effect this: Gear Haste, Magic Haste, enemy Buffs, Enemy resistance to Debuffs, PDT, Vit, Def, Fast Cast.

I want to maximize Cure Potency, Cure Potency Received Fast Cast and SIRD simultaneously to the exclusion of all other stats, for an undisclosed situation, with other confounding factors I'm unwilling or unable to disclose, because it's how I want to play

What this means to any reasonable person on the forum: "This person wants to do something. And obviously there's something missing, so maybe we should explain how 7 other stats effect this situation because right now the set proposed will make the initial problem (I want to cast cure4 on myself) worse."

The response received: "REEEEEEEEEEEE YOU JUST WANT ME TO PLAY LIKE YOU GUYS AND DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT I WANT WHETHER OR NOT ITS GOING TO GET ME KILLED I JUST WANNA DO IT"

The Forum response:" We're trying to help you"

I think that about sums up this entire exchange.

... Yeah, but Nynja's summary was better :P

What I don't get is if we are using precast and midcast in this scenario or the OP just wanted one set for both.

I personally can't imagine a scenario where I'd want to cure bomb myself on summoner in false hopes that an avatar would get hate back after that.

The difference between CureIV 8 second recast time reduced by 76% (1.92 secs) like response set above and 80% of that 8 second time (1.6 secs), is not much and might not be worth some of those other stats like PDT etc.

Can you cap em all is your question and doesn't look like it so then gotta make decisions.

I was assuming that the person is using a standard precast and this midcast was solely for the purpose of recast, since in the OP they had said "I understand the difference between precast and midcast".

However the minimum recast you actually need is < 3 seconds because you're locked out of casting another spell for 3 seconds no matter what because of forced delay. Most spells even recast fine immediately with a 4s delay(50% recast).

Can you cap everything? I agree with you, no.

Should you cap everything? My answer is "As many as you can in order of priority" prio being SIRD + DT > Cure Pot > Pot Received = FC and sechs gave him a set that works ridiculously well for 80% of the categories and the guy didn't even acknowledge it.

I think it's less than 3 seconds but this thing is totally in there and it's one of the reason why I (and other people) tried to say that for a spell with a short natural recast like C4 (that you can alternate with C3...) is sorta useless to go that low on recast.

From a certain point of view you could argue that in a situation where you want your avatar to get back enmity as soon as possible then arguably using C3 would be better because of the less enmity generated, and you would focus on stuff like Enmity- for SMN and Pet Enmity+ (granted there's not a plethora of options for the latter, but still there's some space to move in I'd dare to say!)


Bingo!

It wasn't a perfect set, but still I'd say it was a way better compromise for doing what he claims he wanted to be doing, don't you think?

I'm still skeptic on the necessity for a SirD set for C4 spells and for a job like SMN.
To be fair, more in general, when do you even have the need for SirD in general?
On PLD and RUN when you need to tag stuff and you have 20000 monsters hitting you, sure.
On BLU or other jobs when you're cleaving, SirD for Dream Flower and other situations similar to these, I mean I can totally see the meaning for a SirD set.
But anywhere else?
I mean I can't think of a situation where you'd want SirD for C4 when you have, what, one or two targets hitting you at worst?
In a situation like this I would rather focus on DT and Enmity- if my purpose is losing hate as soon as possible while hitting me.
Even if I were absolutely being paranoid for interruption, why should I even care when on SMN I can get up to 10 interruptions protection from something as powerful as Aquaveil? I can't think of a situation where Aquaveil won't be up other than the ones where I sucked and forgot to use it in advance lol.

Or a better use of blood pacts over casting C4 on yourself, or if it's just 1 mob, casting C4 in between rounds (not always possible but easier to do than max out every single extra Stat)




I really do. I hadn't even thought about daybreak but it makes alot of sense trying to fit in everything. I figured Empy staff was what he was looking to build around anyway.


I think the last statement says it all, maybe some people just suck more than others #1, or #2 don't even realize Chinook exists.

Honestly there's alot a smn can do without resorting to self cures.

But again kudos on the set and trying to stay in the guidelines.

I'm a big fan of using a SIRD set for casting aquaveil on most jobs so if I do forget to cast it before hand I can fix it.

Okay, i didn't think about that before. love the idea though.
ItemSet 369331
from my current gear, inv-1. (don't own the body)
could improve w/ JSE pdt cape & halasz earring instead of odnowa, but that'd be another inv-1 for me.

If you want more swaps, there's Culminus too that offers 10% SirD, equippable by SMN.
That would mean losing the 10 PDT on Genmei of course so I'm not implying it's necessarily a better option. It's just... an option? lol

Not sure if you're using Culminus for anything these days, I personally have it muled so if you're like me I guess that would be inv-1 as well, alas.
Can't think of anything else.
Oh well uhm Evanescence Ring, but it's just 5% iir.

There's some other options I didn't list but my main point is that tryin to go for a SirD build without Rosette Jaseran and its impressing 25% in a single slot is, well it's not impossible but don't think it's gonna be worth it.
Unless you want to sacrifice the legs slot for Bunzi. You would lose 1 interrupt protection but this is maybe the best "worth it" compromise I can think of, given how you would gain very good defensive stats and 9% DT, compared to the pre-ilevel stats of the Limbus pants.

At the end of the day a 9 protection Aquaveil is still what I'd call quite impressive, even if 1 away from the current cap.

It won't be 9 aquaveil, it would be 7 no?

Smn doesn't have enough enhancing skill for the 3x interruptions. its getting all enhancing skill from support job so only 1x... unless you are smn/sch I guess.

Base (1 interruption)
Amalric head (2)
Vadose rod (1)
Regal Cuffs (2)
Shedir Seraweels (1)
Emphatikos Rope (1)

Should be 8. Possibly missing something but that's what's on the wiki.

Gear wise you're not missing anything.
It was just an oversight on my end.
To reach 3 interruptions (base) you need 500+ enha skill and of course you're not reaching that with /rdm even with ML50

ML50 + 16 from merits should give smn main something around 207 enha skill I think?
So yeah, one interruption from the base spell.

It actually turns out that there is no known threshold for the 2 interruptions enha skill number required.
I thought that value was 355 enha skill, but we actually don't know.
It could be 250, or 380, we simply don't know and it's honestly quite hard to test, although not impossible.
So I made up this set (lol):

ItemSet 391004

144 Enha skill at ML0
191 Enha skill at ML50
+16 Enha from Merits
+98 Enha from gear

For a potential grand total of 305 Enhancing Magic Skill.
Would that be enough?
Eh, who knows.
Someone should test it lmao XD
Is there any enhaskill gear that I forgot, better than the ones I listed? I mean for the slots where we don't have Aquaveil+ gear, because of course it's not worth it to equip enha+ gear in those slots.

I'm kinda late to the game here probably. but I haven't seen it discussed and I saw a few interesting things.

Summoner support job has a few interesting utilities with Master levels.
Particularly, Avatar's Favor is level 55, so there are all those passive buffs you can get now. I wonder about potency though from the support job. from the avatar's favor page on bg-wiki I take it those are the minimum values for Avatar's favor? 0-skill to 316 skill no change in potency?

so you can give the whole party 12% double attack w/ support job avatar's favor?

gonna have to toy w/t he idea but it seems it could be useful for support. brd/smn ?

It's a potential niche, the problem comes in keeping the avatar alive when aoes are still somewhat common, even weaker AoEs are likely to wipe a summon, plus hindering either your own dd potential, survivability, healing depending on what your alternate sub would be, its a rough trade off

Yeah I think that's the main issue. I learned real fast when trying to RUN/SMN for Mewing Lullaby that /SMN avatars don't live long. They did increase pet defensive stats recently, but I doubt it'll be enough to make much difference with a Lv55 avatar getting smashed on by a Lv130+ enemy.

That said, there are cases where you can get around this. For example a job like GEO or WHM that might not be right on top of the mob could potentially find a safe place to stand, hitting DDs with favor while avoiding most/all of the AOEs. It would be a fine line to walk.

One scenario that wouldn't have that problem is manaburn groups, using Shiva/Leviathan/Diabolos or even Siren to buff the mages.

This could also be an excuse for us old-timers to bust out the magian perpetuation staves and get some more usage out of them.

Thinking about this is making me want to try SCH/SMN in Sortie... I usually sub /WHM for utility but that's a holdover from when I went with a RNG, these days it's usually double SCH and I could drop /WHM without missing it. /RDM's 24 MAB doesn't seem that useful compared to Shiva's 15 MAB for the entire back line.

WHM yes, GEO is sadly out of luck cause geo-bubbles count as pets, only 1 allowed

Aw crud, I forgot about that

Edit: Tried SCH/SMN in Sortie last night. It went fine. I felt like a slacker not being able to Haste people, but there were still 3 people who could cast it so it wasn't really a problem and that was literally the only spell I missed. Shiva got wiped out on C/G, as well as the Botulus and Naraka, but for the most part she survived. 15 MAB wasn't world-changing but I'm sure it helped. It's definitely viable. I also changed to Ifrit on the elementals to help the RUN get TP for Ground Strike. Or I tried anyway, I need to make better SCH/SMN macros to change avatars faster, but the idea is solid.

Not to mention managing perpetuation cost for some support jobs wouldn't be easy or possible to do without making defensive or offensive sacrifices. You're talking 8MP/tic at 55, 9 at 56. A job like SCH can get -6~-8 relatively easily but at the cost of defensive stats, but a COR for example wouldn't be able to get more than -2.

Anyway, it isn't an impossible idea and would work for some stuff but it'd take some specific circumstances to work well.

What, you weren't pulling Garuda out for that sweet Hastega? =P

Every job can get -4 perp via the level 30 SJ belt and evan's earring, but beyond that yeah its down to refresh if you arent on the 2 sets of alluvion gear/merlinic or kept some of those amazing oseem -perp augs

Lol I tried that, it's way too short :( I tried Crimson Howl for the elementals and it barely lasted as long as my blood pact timer!