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

Ramuh wouldn't pull hate easier than DD Crevox, if the tank has a good flash set and does their job you shouldn't see it pull hate ever. I kited and flashed on NIN/RUN against RMEA DD doing 50k damage at a time from base+skillchains. SMN doesn't struggle in this fight at all, I'd take a well geared SMN over pub DD any day. What works best will depend on setup, strategy, and what jobs and how well they are geared available to you. I wouldn't be surprised if you're actually out of the entire fight quicker with what I posted, as you only need one buff and that I've seen over half the time isn't spent fighting, it's spent buffing. It's not worth arguing about, but your statement smn isn't good for it isn't objectively speaking, true. If you were really worried about 3 smn pulling hate from 4 volt strikes in a row you could unsummon ramuh and resummon him after the first apogee, adding an entire 4 seconds to the fight. You could also have room to rotate conduits then have COR wildcard after all 1 hours used and then use cutting cards on themself, for even more speed runs in there, for free. In fact, if you're in a LS with really geared SMN and not that many great DD this is what you should be doing. If you play with a lot of DDs, use DDs. Also, you can unlock garland without nirvana, but nirvana definitely is a great asset, as is an RMEA DD.

I can cover two buffs without apogee before the melee move in, or one and one as they engage.

Volt strike for me hits at about 8-10k, which moves his bar 4-5%.

You'd have to be doing 3, because you said you use Hastega II, so Apogee would still be more beneficial.


I never said this. I actually explicitly stated it was my opinion. :)

From what you're saying, it doesn't sound like you've tried to do that strategy... it sounds good, but I wonder, have you done it? What's the times on it?


I know this, but physical blood pacts are what is shining here. If you're expecting to kill this thing so quickly, I would imagine Nirvana would be assumed, but maybe I overestimate it.

By all means, use whatever strategy works best for you; however, I certainly believe that this is a fight that SMN does not shine in, and does not "do mean things to the froggy." That will be my opinion. :)

In an era when most melee parties are BLUs as far as the eye can see, "potentially" ends up being more like "rarely, if ever." Ramuh's Favor is fantastic for CDC spam.

It is, but the thread was saying they use Hastega II, and if they're using Hastega II, they're not using BLU... or they are... and they're still using Hastega... for some reason.

Beast roll should increase that to around 15k, if not 20k, considering I've had volt strike top out over 33k (more if weak to blunt) if pdif is capped and frod's gear has more HQ than mine.

I often use Hastega II even with BLUs around, if nothing else so the tank has a better chance of keeping hate which has been the biggest problem any time I've tried to do the melee strat on this frog. Granted I've only attempted it that way about 4 times, but every single time a DD pulled hate off the tank and killed everyone.

I'll use it when BLUs are around just so they don't have to refresh their flutter buff, but the short duration of the fight in this case doesn't warrant it. I can just cast Haste on the PLD and we're good to go.

There's other, more worthwhile buffs (Shiva, Ifrit) to cast than Hastega just for mr. tank, in my opinion.

Stupid Garland of Bliss questions since I should be getting Nirvana soon-ish(!):

I know it's magic damage and to stack MAB, but do I want physical accuracy or magic accuracy in my ws set? Also, will MND +20 on Campestres's give me better results than INT +20, or can I just build the one ws cape for both GoB and Shattersoul? Does Elan Strap count as MAB or will I be better suited with Alber/Niobid? Finally, Merlinic Hood (w/ INT and MAB) and Amalric everything else?

Thanks,
-TA

Early congrats :D

MND will be more useful, not sure INT has any effect since the dstat is based on MND. Magic accuracy. Elan strap does count as MAB as far as I know. Anything with MND and MAB on it both is great, MAB will be more valuable than MND. Magic Damage is also ok. Weaponskill damage should also perform really well, and if you have aurorastorm elemental obi will perform very well. TP bonus won't really help garland's damage.

What Verda said!

After the trials are over, I prefer to just use a magic accuracy set on Garland of Bliss, to help the Defense Down effect landing.

I'm curious to see how this upcoming change to BP's affects our only AOE BP Thunderspark.

Not at all, unless there's more they didn't announce.

finally afterglowed my nirvana for shits and giggles.
First thing i did was confirm that the +2 levels is the same (was no reason to assume otherwise)

Did find out that because of the +1 from campestres, nirvana's +2 on the top accounts for 74 acc and 59 atk, not the normal 57. Removing campestres and then nirvana accounts for the -74/-57 spread.

Also bgwiki has the values for acc and attack swapped.

Ok, so question: Does the Favor +3 from Beckoner's horn make me max out my BP recast- (from favor) sooner?

Second if so; if I swap off my beckoner's horn to a different horn for my BP precast and Beckoner's horn had just edged me over the threshould, I'd be edged back out of it and lose the tiers of BP recast from favor, right?

Therefor it's better to have beckoner's horn as part of your BP precast set, right? It's not terribly hard to pull off BP I -15, BP II-14 on top of beckoner's horn. Pulling off -15/-15 with beck horn though requires either apogee body+1 or Sancus Sachet+1 or swapping in espiritus (suboptimal for sure) or swappign in conveyance cape (also suboptimal)

Here's what I've worked out for a BP precast that lets you hit -15/-15 with beckoner's horn and doesnt lean on swapping out to espiritus or conveyance cape.

ItemSet 318548

Are you taking into account the -10 bpII from job gifts?

Yep, I realized that after I typed the message. Thunderspark is obviously magic-based.

What exactly does the "attribute cap" refer to? And I wonder as well if h2h dmg changes will affect ifrit.

I'm not really sure personally, maybe there's a cap on how much they can benefit from the avatar's stats (like STR, DEX, etc) and these are being increased.

For now, all we can really equate this to is more damage until we get more details.

No one really knows what attribute cap means. If I had to guess though I'd say it has to do with the currently unknown contribution of pet stats to bp damage calcs just like WS have stat modifiers to them. No idea if h2h will affect ifrit, but it could. Anything that isn't below cLVL 126 though it pretty much isn't worth using ifrit flaming crush on even with full buffs. The highest level mob I heard used with flaming crush and full buffs is cLVL 135 but that was a mob that had fire weakness and no physical defenses that are special and you'd prob need idris geo. For most people anything beyond CLVL 125 it won't work, and that's in escha where your pet is super boosted from vorseals so outside escha that number is far lower, it doesn't even work on over half the mobs in sinister reign and that's not hard content at all (mostly only works on some of first wave and rosalita).

We'll just have to wait and see how it affects physical bp damage :D To be honest they could really use a boost, most the time I still get more out of my merit pacts even with nirvana.

Based on my experience, I don't think the horn advances your timer at all, I think it simply adds its tiers on top. And yes, those "bonus tiers" do affect the BP timer, to a point. (It's not clear exactly how it works because we don't seem able to fully take advantage of the highest tiers when it comes to BP timer, we should be able to get down to 20 seconds but we can only achieve 22.)

If you swap out Beckoner's Horn during BP timer phase, you'll lose favor tiers. So yes, definitely use it. I'm not sure it's even possible to hit 22 seconds without Beckoner's Horn +1.

Your gear is also lacking summoning skill for favor as well. Yes, if your favor has been out long enough to cap a higher tier than you currently have, and you equip a bunch of summoning skill, the favor will shoot up to what it would've been if you had the skill equipped all along. So put a bunch of skill in that set too.

Fortunately, like Frod pointed out, you also get BP timer from gifts so if you have those, it becomes a bit easier as you don't need the full -15/-15 from gear. (Gifts are BP recast III or something, they don't contribute toward either of the -15 caps.)

Just assuming -5 from gifts, but yeah at the next gift you'd just not need Apogee body.

The important part is tier 1 BP recast time, as you still need the full -15 from that.

So, am I correct on my assumptions about how Beckoner's horn interacts with blood pact recasts in terms of swapping it out precast?

Flaming Crush can reach the 60~99k on several lvl 135/140 NMs (Shockmaw, Urmahlullu, Blazewing, Wrathare, Duke Vepar, Pakecet, AAs) but Languor is absolutely required or the magic portion will get resisted reducing damage to something like 10~20k. I never dared to try it in Reisenjima since all the T2s seems to be either strongly resistant to fire, magic, physical or very weak to something else but I'll be curious to test the next time.
About Sinister Reign, things have changed quite a lot with the recent stuff and capped Job Points. Flaming Crush works on 8/9 enemies there (Impact being far more effective on August). Only Teodor, Arciela V2 and Sajj'aka require Languor, all the other NMs can be killed with a single Flaming Crush closing a Light SC. The last time I did SR in group we were taking 2:40 per run with Ifrit doing 80%~ of the dmg. The event is also soloable on SMN.

I'm really excited about the next update. I started to use physical BPs only recently on CL 150 NMs (melee zergs) and got amazing results so far. Predator Claws was doing 24~26k on Teles (I should have used Ramuh...) and Volt Strike 41~48k dmg on Kirin/Kouryu. To be honest, even with the recent change I wasn't sure if my avatar could cap acc on them but it's actually entierly possible with vorseals/food/torpor/drachen/astral flow/100 acc bonus on BPs.

Hmm ya I've never tried languor thanks Papesse (and it has been a while since I went). Bringing two GEO or giving up frailty/malaise? I doubt entrust languor does much. Two GEO, COR, and possibly RUN is a pretty heavy support load for SMN but I can see it being effective.


I'm excited too. Outside Old Shuck and Teles though I find it isn't really favorable to use physical BPs on most high end stuff like that. For instance even with ramuh's results, hard to argue with 99k windblades even if they aren't quite that in final form and you aren't always bursting. We did recently do a Teles with 2 DD and SMN in off party we won but DD's died more than once and I still wasn't top of parse even having used 1 hours 2x. I was getting about the same pred claw numbers you're reporting too so I feel it's a very welcome change for SMN and hope it's potent enough to put physical BPs back to being useful on a variety of stuff again rather than just, when stuff doesn't take magic damage well...

Also since you're here, I saw you were SMN for Black & White in the screenshot one of your teammates posted would you care to share the strategy you used? Thanks.

In lowman situations (CL 135), Flaming Crush can already reach 50~70k with Dunna Languor/Frailty and COR. If you add Idris, Malaise, EA/BoG or Gambit it's almost guaranteed to hit 99k. Entrust Languor wasn't strong enough the last time I checked.
In SR Flaming Crush can reach 99k with just Idris Malaise/Frailty/Dia. Don't really need of a COR, RUN or second GEO there now. Malaise is replaced by Languor when it's necessary.


99k Wind Blades are sure hard to beat if you go with the traditional way and can SC/MB. It all depends of the situation, chosen strat/jobs and SPs used. MB setups seems to still give better results on most T4s atm but the melee way is also fun and kill the monotony. On Kirin, a fellow SMN and myself respectively ended first and third on the parse (vs THF, BLUs, DRK, RUN, NIN) with Volt Strike. Since it's the result of a single fight where SMN is already useful it's too early to make projections but it sounds promising.
I think Ramuh would have give better results on Teles, especially if he manage to survive Clarsach Call during Astral Conduit which shouldn't be a problem with a RUN SP or Bolster Vex. 25k~ Predator Claws usually means that Garuda is ATK capped for me (or that the enemy's defense is set to the lowest level possible I should say) and that Volt Strike will average the usual 30~35k dmg or even more perhaps? Frankly, I had not anticipated these multiple 41~48k BPs on Kouryu, maybe it come from the All Stats+100 granted by AF and criticals.


General strat has been detailed in the other thread but I made a video.

I found this fight harder than Unafraid of the Dark because of the raw power these 11 mobs have together (and we can't "cheat" with NT Horde Lullaby this time) and the randomness of Zantetsuken Jin, below 50% Odin can really kill the tank whenever he want. There is also the Geirrothr spam (7500~ distribued dmg) to handle.

The first phase is really much more simple with Mewing Lullaby but it took us a lot of testing to understand how to employ it without having to claim the whole group. If you ever choose to go with this method (and I really recommend you to try it if your PLD doesn't have Burtgang) : Mewing Lullaby must be used on the claimed Valkyrie, all the others will deaggro upon Cait Sith's release/death, idling for a few seconds before attacking the tank again however if the Valkyrie you are fighting decides to go after someone else during that specific moment, all the mobs who are left passive will follow (link) but this situation almost never occured. They can also simply aggro someone who is standing VERY close to them. Though it sounds a bit strange and risky this method is actually very reliable.
Bolster was used at the start on the Valks and at the end on Odin but I think it's better to save it for Alexander, RNGs can cap ATK on the rest easily it seems.
I wasted Perfect Defense toward the end, the initial plan was to use it only if the PLD get killed again during Overkill so the RNGs could continue their zerg... I also forgot to use Pacifying Ruby (lowers enmity by 25%) on RNGs.
As a side note, our Zantetsuken CAN be useful. It did 25297 on almost everyone at the beginning after Grimgerde's death. Despite Astral Conduit failures, the avatars did about 1,6m~ dmg altogether (1/4~ of the total).

Papesse, I assume you tried SMN pull on those mobs? The way you describe them going idle again after Cait Sith releases, it almost sounds like SMN pull would work and you could fight things one at a time.

The hate in there is kind of weird like incursion, but I wouldn't even call it incursion hate. You can't recover at all no matter how far you are away, and if you try pulling just one they will hunt you down and find you is really weird. They'll basically still track you even if everyone died and is no longer on the hate list anymore, even standing where you did before you engaged and they didn't aggro.

Also thanks Papesse :D

And I did notice getting 44k on old shuck a few times but most my volt strikes even with 1 hours tend to be in the 32k-36k range, I thought it might just be gear improvements and lucky on multiple crits tho. I've done over 30k pred claws on the dvergr in sky too with 1 hours but maybe he takes special damage I don't know.

So I am, trying to maximise my damage of my Shattersoul -> Crush -> Crush double SC, so I am currently very focused on solidifying my Flaming Crush build.

In terms of armor from the Psycloth, NQ Apogee (not HQ, I cant afford HQ atm while building nirvana), and Merlinic sets (with medium not perfect rolls), as well as a perfectly rolled Enticer's pants... what reigns supreme for Crush?

I also basically have every piece of AF/Relic/Empy reforged to 119, so if any of those are better let me know.

Also, how does ifrit's ring stack up against varar ring for crush?

And, finally, Gridarvor or Espiritus(C) for Crush?

My aim is to be able to solo many fights purely via building up to 300 TP and just double SCing, then following up with popping off both 1 hours and finishing the fight off if needed.

As far as I can tell, Apogee is solid and only is beaten by merlinic gear when it has really solid rolls, except legs. Apogee legs win anyways.

Am I correct here?

Are exact stats known for 119 Avatars? Like stats and base dmg? Att can be checked and they have some MAB job traits right?

If so I think we could try to derive an exact fomula for FC. If we assume it follows the same idea of hybrid WSs it would deal 3 phys hits and then adds magical dmg based on the total phys dmg as add-effect on the 3rd hit. Something like:
Dmg = Phys_1 + Phys_2 + Phys_3 + ((Phys_1 + Phys_2 + Phys_3)*fTP+mDmg)*MAB/MDB
Where fTP here is not really fTP as FC doesnt depend on TP...but its a factor translating phys to magical dmg. Would be interesting to have an exact formular so we can get exact answers which gear is best for it.

Well, "best" of course is still situational with acc requirements and mob resistance and stats and anyways but still. Would help ^^

Well as they work the same as WS, it will have a WSC term and a ƒTP. It's just like all the WSs that don't have variable ƒTP terms.

Also, the ƒTP wouldn't transfer between hits. So it would only be applied to the first dmg calc term. (Your math is for a ƒTP transferring hybrid.)

The biggest issue for sussing out a formula is the WSC. We just don't know what that is. (Namely because unlike player WSs, there isn't a large amount of +stat gear in large quantities so checking a change in stats isn't really feasible.)
Luckily though SE might tell us the WSC this update, as that seems to be what they are adjusting.
EDIT: that's always been what SE refers to as "attribute cap" when they talk about WSs. BPs (and every other TP move) works under the same system, if slightly modified as monsters don't require TP to be able to use one. I've always hated the WSC term... as it doesn't intrinsically make any sense. Most players tend to refer to them as "WS mod/ifiers".

Once we have that, we can determine the ƒTP. And thus, finish a proper equation.