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

A few questions for Astral Flow/Conduit.

How many blood pacts should you be able to perform?
How much time do you need between blood pacts? I think my timing is off and therefore reducing my ultimate output.
Would it be easier to setup a macro for performing said blood pacts and what would that look like?
I.e.
/pet "volt strike" <t> <wait X>
/pet "volt strike" <t> <wait X>

Should I completely disable my lua for AFAC or just lock main?

Thanks in advance for the help.

lock your gear into the midcast set as bp delay does nothing under AC and can sometimes lead to you firing a BP in your pre-cast if you're spamming, which you might do until you have a rhythm down on when to use your BP again, relying on a loop macro can work but its reliant on you not doing anything else and you wont get as many off as you would just proprerly timing the single use BP macro. Timing on BPs is the same as all JAs which is around 2~ seconds, best to practice on something until you get it down pat

How would I lock my blood pact set? I know how to manually turn off a specific piece but I don't know how to lock the whole set. I think this may be causing some issues.

Something like //gs equip nameofset then /gs disable all or /lua unload gs

Syntax may be off, just going off what people say.

You can use conditional checks in precast and aftercast to say "is buff astral conduit active? Ignore the gear switching code". That's how I do it. When I astral flow, on the first precast, if AF is active, I automatically activate AC and lock it down.

Including the two from Apogee before you start your Conduit, 15 is considered good and 17+ is considered amazing. Trying to fit more actually runs you into MP problems depending how lucky you are with Blood Boon.

I've had Reisenjima HELM burns where I blew my MP, Lucid Elixir II, blew my second MP pool, and had to use Convert to get MP for my last couple BPs. I don't think it was a record-breaking run or anything, I just got like zero Blood Boon procs. Every time you have to chug an elixir or hit Convert it spends time you could've spent on a BP so regardless of whether you have copious elixirs available, Blood Boon procs make a big difference and lead to some variance between runs.

A good way to practice your timing is with Hastega2 as it consumes a lot of MP just like the rage pacts do and you can do it right outside town.

1.5 seconds is the ready time. Global JA cooldown is 1 second. Meaning if you go before 1 second, no harm done the game won't let you. If you go after 1 second but before 1.5, your BP will still be readying and you'll get JA cooldown for another full second meaning your BPs will be at least 2 seconds apart, likely closer to 2.5 or more.

Because of that 1 second lockout, it's usually better to go late than early. People who spam their macro usually hit that lockout shortly after 1 second and it leads to them going about once every 2 seconds. You can still pull off 15 or so BPs that way, and it's adequate for most content, but not quite optimal. With good manual timing you can consistently get a few more BPs. I've also heard of people using <wait 1.5> with mixed results. The only method that requires locking gear is the one where you're spamming.

A tip that helps a lot of people get the timing down is to look at your character's hands. They glow green when the BP is executed. The moment you see that you can hit your BP again. (Technically a little before due to lag so as you get better you can go before the green glow but, again, going early is usually worse than going late.)

In case anyone was curious how ridiculous the gear/ML creep is these days, I helped some folks with Kirin/Kouryu the other day and we killed it with one SMN and no GEO (PLD WHM COR SMN).

Opened with Astral Flow, 3k Garland into Apogee double Volt Strike with the first making light. Random Deal and did two more. I think that got it to around 70%. Then I slow chipped it down to the 2nd form, popping Steadfast & Mirrors before the last BP that pushed him under 50%. Waited a few seconds for tank to get hate, then started my Conduit. He killed Ramuh with about 5% HP left but I managed to resummon and kill him with 1 more BP. The COR actually wild carded us with a 6 near the end but it was totally unnecessary.

Honestly went much smoother than I expected. Didn't need Wild Card, didn't need Super Revit, he just... died...

Sounds about right.

Not sure if this was discussed anywhere, but is it possible to add 3 pieces of empy +3 (feet, body, hands) and come out on top of what's currently considered BiS for physical BPs assuming you're getting regular blood boon procs? Currently, I use AF feet and body and Merlinic hands with ACC and 10BPD. Wondering if the additional ACC and potential blood boon procs are worth it.

IMO it's too random and better off to just gear for consistency. I think those pieces are better off in a ward set after you cover all your summoning magic bases and have extra room, as they can increase your buff timers by a lot when the set procs.

The math for that set bonus is downright awful.

Think of it this way, Blood Boon conserves anywhere from 1/16 to 1/2 of MP. The average works out to 28.125% when it procs so the average damage boost is the same.

If you wear 3 pieces, you have 3% chance on Blood Boon activation for this to happen. Meaning the average damage increase on Blood Boon procs will be 0.84%.

If you have the normal 29% activation rate for Blood Boon, then that's a 0.24% overall average damage increase from 3 pieces. It's laughable at best.

My feelings are similar on its use for wards. The average duration increase will be the same, 0.84% on Blood Boon procs with 3 pieces equipped. This will be less than half the time even if you use the spats for +14 blood boon, so likely less than 0.4% average duration increase.

Edit: Now that I'm thinking about this, I recall from back when testing was originally done that maybe this set bonus works differently. Is it a 1~5% activation rate per BP and guarantees a blood boon proc? Does anyone remember if that's the case? So you can ignore the reduction from 0.84% to 0.24%/0.4%. It's just a flat 0.84% with 3 pieces if that's the case. Either way it's still horrible.

Edit2: For a more practical comparison, if you're using optimal gear, swapping to Empy+3 body/hands/feet on physical pacts gains you 15 BPD but loses 23 DA, for a total loss of 6.5% damage. That's waaaay more than the 0.84% you gain. And that's not even counting the pet:attack and pet:crit that you lose, which is considerable. It's slightly less unfavorable if looking to use it only in your Nirvana AM3 set, where it would cost you only 8 BPD and 0 DA, a loss of only about 2.8% damage. Still that's losing a lot more than you're gaining.

Thank you. This is exactly what I was looking for and thank you for bringing numbers. I'm not the best at mathing all of this stuff and I wasn't paying close enough attention to all of the pros and cons of swapping out those pieces. I was really hoping to find value in adding a few +3 pieces, but it appears that my first two pieces to +3 (after i finish stage 4 prime!) will be head and feet. I had high hopes for that set too.

Edit: I feel like feet might be useful for more than just siphon since it does have high ACC and more BPD than the AF+3 feet.

Yeah that's a good point. Even if they aren't exactly BIS, that doesn't mean they aren't usable.

Feet are probably the best example, if you don't have a nice pair of Helios then Empy+3 feet look pretty nice. They beat AF+3 outright, and are competitive with Apogee+1. So then you just need to find a way to fit 1 other piece and you'll get the set bonus going.

I could also see people not wanting to deal with Merlinic augments so maybe using hands+feet is a practical option for people who hate random augments.

Hiya guys, interested in gearing up SMN, does anyone happen to have more general gearsets? I have a ton of accessories already from gearing other jobs, but is there a modern list of af/relic/empy gear that I should prioritize getting?

Thanks in advance!

There's some debate amongst the community for a few pieces, but I think the summoner's gear guide is pretty much up-to-date with a couple possible exceptions. It's at least good enough to get you up to 95% of where you'd need to be.

Ah, I see now that it was indeed updated with Empy +3 despite the text saying last updated in 2021. Thank you very much! Reading up now.

it's missing nyame but no one will ever do the pet augs over the wsd option.

Would have been nice if path B had pet WSD. Oh well. WS all the things!

Just for clarification; Fenrir's Impact is not % based and the max is like 35 give or take?

Where as actual impact is % based and is like -50ish (on ilvl targets obviously)?

I think I've read befor that it's a flat value and always had the impression it made less of a impact on higher lvl targets than the magic one.

It's odd that they took something unique to SMN and gave it to all mages on the twilight/crepuscular cloak while also making it stronger than the original.

One might argue the cloak impact has high MP costs but imho the SMN one isn't cheap either with 222 MP it takes longer to set up with pet switching and since Fenrir isn't the avatar of choice it usually interfers with what ever avatar favor you're trying to provide for the party.

Wasn't Twilight Cloak added in game before they gave impact to SMN through Fenrir's BP?

Twilight cloak is lvl 90 and the blood pact is 99 but I don't remember if shinryu was accessable befor level cap 99. They raised level cap in 5 lvl increments right?

Either way, the SMN version is weaker and has worse drawbacks imho.

Shinryu was available at level 90 cap.

SMN version gives 20~60 all stats down, with proper gear it's roughly 60, where the crep cloak is -20%. Using Ongo's INT as an example on V25 that would be -89 INT where SMN would be -60. Not as good, but it also costs 1/3 as much MP and the recast is ~20 seconds, which is lower than an Impact cast by a crep cloak user even if they somehow managed to get full spell recast reduction capped.

If fenrir's impact is skill/20 where is 60 coming from

(If you're counting dumpsterfire, it'd be higher, but that's not how that weapon works)

Ah you're right, for some reason I read the 20 twice so I thought it was skill/20+20.

Guess it's be more like 35ish, so half or so Impact. But on mobs with lower stats it would be comparable/better than crep cloak.

Either way, I'd say most of the time it's not as good, but that's kinda SMN's bread-and-butter. Able to do 100 different things, each of which is half as effective as jobs which do that thing in a dedicated way. They can heal, remove debuffs, do damage, put debuffs on the mob, buff allies, and many more things, just...worse than other jobs.

SMN's bread and butter used to be it's 1hour. Since it's been nerfed SMN doesn't have much going for it.

All those drawbacks for weak buffs/debuffs and then they don't even stack.
Like, what were they thinking when they decided warcry is overwritten and prevented by crimson howl.

The 1 hour is just what it's best known for by people who don't like SMN and only acknowledge its existence when it's the top absolute 100% fastest and most efficient way to do something (and even then, usually moan about it the entire time).

It's always been a jack of all trades like Maletaru said. As the saying goes, "a jack of all trades is master of none," and that's how it should be. Our tools should be weaker than the versions a specialist job has access to.

I've often described it like a putty you smear over your party to fill in any gaps in your composition. It can literally fit in ANY composition and contribute meaningfully, even if it may not be the most efficient choice for that slot. Can't find a buffer/debuffer? Grab a SMN. Can't find a DD? Grab a SMN. Can't find a healer? Grab a SMN. They'll rarely do that specific thing as well as a "real" buffer/DD/healer, but they'll also do other things those jobs wouldn't do. They'll find other gaps in your composition and fill them.

It's also the slower & safer approach (hate-free damage of any type or skillchain property from a distance) versus the more common methods which tend to be faster & more risky. SMNs can often kill things with much less support than others would need so they excel at low-manning. I've literally done Ou with 2 people (PLD & SMN) with zero deaths. Lots of people don't care for the slow & safe method so I understand why this isn't popular, but personally I love it.

SMN's bread and butter is safety and adaptability. Don't fall into the trap of thinking the top meta is the only way to get anything done. Stay on the beaten path and the only thing you'll ever see SMN doing is Conduit burns and Mewing Lullaby spam, so of course you'll think that's its bread and butter. The top meta favors a specific mix of specialist jobs and SMN isn't a specialist, thus SMN's strength lies off the beaten path in unconventional setups. If you can't think outside the box, you'll be incapable of understanding how SMN is actually played most of the time.

Side note on Impact: People often struggle to land Impact for full duration with the cloaks, but Fenrir's is extremely accurate. So that's another benefit on the SMN side, I think. Once applied, it lasts. (Although unfortunately you don't get to see when it wears off so that's another downside worth considering as well.)

Tradeoff is that fenrir's is often much weaker

SMN suffers from never getting an update to their toolkit.
SE stopped doing it after they had to revert their WHM change i think. if they had gotten around to SMN, maybe Diabolos' phalanx would be like RDM Phalanx2 potency, not to mention all the other BPs that seriously need the Majesty treatment.

The problem is it's 2024 FFXI, not 2008 FFXI, and that is the entire game. Everything is lowman, everything is timed, and your speed and efficiency IS your reward in something like Sortie. If you take too much time and time out, you get virtually no reward, like in Ody. Those are the endgame.

If you want to 7/8 or barely 8/8 sometimes, you absolutely can bring SMN. And some fights need multiple KI, so SMN is actually used in some Ody fights, though that is due to having to use 12-18 jobs, not because it's a prefered job for the main KI most of the time.

This game has always been about having many jobs and it's slowly morphed over the years into playing the appropriate one for the right situation. Before, timers weren't as prevalent and you could make all kinds of fun and safe setups and people played what they wanted more, at least in endgame content. The entire meta of the game, not just players, but actual game design, has shifted to time based speed runs and that is almost entirely SE's fault. SMN either needs to be buffed, or SE needs to adjust their entire design philosophy for SMN to be a "good" job to use for most of this stuff.