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

I would honestly like to see Conduit nerfed hard in exchange for a tweak to Summoner as a job instead of it being a 1hr force of destruction. I always disagreed with 1hrs fixing SMN. I didn't like it with Perfect Defense strats and I don't like it with Conduit zerging. Conduit is so incredibly strong when you have it but Summoner falls way behind properly buffed DDs when it is down. All your damage coming from a 20 second timer just doesn't work, not to mention avatar white damage is VERY low.

It doesn't matter if Flaming Crush hits for 50k+ if your DD are firing off 15-20k ws every couple of seconds + whatever white damage they are doing. Sure, you can probably close a light skillchain here and there but you are still falling way behind in damage.

I'd like to see Conduit go to 10-15 second duration instead of 30 seconds but put bloodpacts on a points timer like bst pets have. That way you could have something like 2-3 charges for bloodpacts that recharge every 20 seconds (or whatever your bp timer would be when you ready it). You could choose to do a bloodpact each time the charge is ready or you could store them for later. If you don't need to use wards with your avatar then use that charge for an extra rage bloodpact. If you want to focus on support then save all your charges for wards. This would really help avatars like Carbuncle that are good at support but are held back by the ward timer. This would also help a lot for putting our buff up at the start of a fight.

That seems like an unfair comparison though, they are pure DPS jobs. SMN has massive support and utility options included - it should not out dps the dps in most situations.

New item:
Regal Belt (Waist)
DEF:12 HP+88 Damage taken -3% Avatar: Attack+20 "Magic Atk. Bonus"+10 Set (avatar only): Increases Accuracy, Ranged Accuracy, and Magic Accuracy

And Convoker's is notably the only Artifact +2/+3 whose new set bonus affects the pet and not the master. And it looks like the Regal set bonus is connected to AF+2/+3, since each job only gets 1 Regal accessory with a set bonus (SMN is all alone).

I'm not asking for SMN to out damage everything. If I wanted that why would I ask for Astral Conduit to be nerfed... That's exactly what Conduit is doing currently. I just want SMN to function better without 1hrs and adjusting the shitty recast system would help a lot. There is only so much support you can give when everything you do locks you out from doing anything else for 20~ seconds. Summoning a new avatar punishes your recast even more by resetting the favor potency.

I can only imagine how good Carbuncle would become if ward timers were lowered or even split like how they did DNC waltz timers after ages of complaining. Not everything has to be about damage output to fix something. I would love to see the favor penalty dropped and each avatar have their own ward timers (rages would stay shared) so you have more leniency to swap avatars for things like Soothing Ruby + Whispering Wind + Spring Water rotations. That or the charge system in my last post.

And the answer is YES.
On fights like Schah where you prebuff with AM3, the difference with non-nirvana options is pretty huge.

In situations without AM3 up, the difference with Nirvana and Gridarvor is not really that high. Tipically Nirvana is ahead but in some extreme situations Grid can actually get slightly ahead.

Schah aside, in situations where the SMN is meant to be using Flaming Crush, there too Nirvana is gonna make a huge difference, even with AM3 down.


What a lot of people hasn't been considering here is that *tipically* (not always, of course) a Nirvana SMN is gonna have better gear than a non-nirvana SMN, making the difference much higher, but only a fraction of that difference comes from Nirvana itself, the rest comes from gear and how well you use it.

But if we're considering equally geared SMNs, then I'm pretty confident things are close to how I described, with the difference of Nirvana being huge in some situations, but greatly overestimated in others.


I agree, but some weapons really do make quite a difference.
Take RUN, Lionheart turns RUN into quite a powerful DD. Take next best non-REMA option for RUN and you're hardly competing with other DDs.

Nirvana *can* make a similar difference I suppose, but only in very specific situations (described already in these last few pages).
Lionheart makes that difference pretty much in 100% of situations where you're supposed to DD.


I completely agree, with a couple of noticeable exceptions like you mentioned maybe, but all in all I completely share your view on the matter.

New belt looks like a fc/magic damage piece. Shame like all of af+2/3 is so incompatible with magic damage pacts. Don't think the atk will best the da on incarnation sash for phys.

Macc too.

I agree. Any reasonable way to activate the set bonus?

The body & feet seem like the best bets. Probably the body, I suppose, is the better of the two. You could get a pretty hefty magic accuracy bonus (+60 including the set bonus) as well as 6 BP Dmg compared to Apogee+1 with set bonus, but at a cost of 35 Pet:MAB. Damage may go down very slightly, but that's a large chunk of magic accuracy (and accuracy too, for Flaming Crush).

Did Convoker's Doublet +3 just become the top body for all rage BPs?

Regal Belt is such an awkward piece it's hard to fit in anywhere. If it follows the af sets then it only adds 15 acc/macc which is the same as Incarnation Sash. It could make a decent idle dt option but the -2 perp on Lucidity Sash pairs perfectly with Nirvana and Evan's earring to cover perp cost without sacrificing any important gear slots. Apogee +1 lacks macc so idk if I want to use Regal Belt for magic pacts either honestly.

It looks good for Flaming Crush if you want to trade the double attack from Incarnation Sash for consistent damage.

Theres no point in nerfing conduit. Like i said in the original schah win post, you need top tier SMN gear wise and skill wise.
(hint, if you have top tier gear/skill you will win anyways on another job..)

If you need more evidence...
Schah took us 23bpacts to kill in 36 of a possible 60 seconds
(edit: alot of those bpacts being garuda, doing far less dmg than ramuh)

Apogee x2 is 4 bpacts.(super revit)
If you gimped conduit I would just take more SMNs and apogee it to death.

That's just a bit ridiculous. You admittedly need a GEO, your BP recast is 22 sec at best(does favor reset when gaes fete pops?), and you have like 80 seconds to kill it.

Even if you brought a COR for wild card, you'd need at least 5 smns.. then you have SMN x5 COR GEO tank, at which point it's gained another 33% hp and you're coming up short again. Let's not forget that apogeex2 is only 3 BPs.. apogee is +1 BP.

The synergy of astral flow/conduit job points with how much spike damage conduit allows on its own creates an obscenely potent zerg. Try killing all the adds and downing it with SMNs without 1hrs, you'd be amazed how slow it was. Try doing teles with SMNs without 1hrs.

There's no question conduit is obscenely strong, the question is whether the devs are ok with it.. which none of us can answer.

Also, you do not need 'top tier skill' in any way. Using a bunch of JA in a preset order is not anything remotely difficult.

The gear is copy-pasted and anyone can acquire it, especially with all the tier bumps from escutcheons. All you need is the will to do so. It's not even that expensive compared to gearing a DD properly.

apogee x2 would still be 4bpacts in the same time span of the previous fight.

i mean if you just want to argue, we can even use your stats of 80second fight

Apogee >bpactx2 in the first 5seconds
*22second delay
Apogee >bpactx2 @27~32seconds
*22second delay
bpact @54 seconds
*22second delay
bpact @76seconds

6 pacts each SMN when ~23+/- are needed? even a 4second buffer to put frailty down.

Also, you said a proper geared DD is more expensive than a SMN...
okay???

Skill, ok if you want to argue that...fine lol but its harder to find people who can even pop JA's in proper order anymore on this server.

I have augmented my Grio for Magical BPs at:

BP Dmg + 5
Mag Acc +12
Mab +19

Do you guys think I should keep going, or let it lie? I was hoping form som Pet: Int, but this seems pretty solid.

JUNK!!

Apogee > BP 2x > super revit > apogee > BP 2x.


I've smn burned Schah by doing adds. Worked just fine.

Hi, I know the above post is months ago but I want to bring SMN to Kin. Appreciate some details. Does it mean that Volt Strike > Mewing > Volt Strike > etc will lock Kin down without Kin doing any TP moves except target?

Thanks for any reply.

Yes if nobody is feeding it too much TP but it probably won't work for Eleventh Dimension. There is not much point in using this strategy unless you plan to dd with only avatars, you can Pacifying Ruby the person who received Target to help with the hate shift instead.
If you really have trouble with Kin you can ask your melees to turn > pop EA/BoG or Bolster Frailty > Mewing Lullaby Kin once > AF/AC Volt Strike. A well geared SMN can remove over 40% with Conduit, just make sure to stop Volt Strike few seconds when Target happens.

Thanks for your advice. I will try the conduit part just for fun, lol.

The whole conduit nerf thing is just BS. We have had conduit for quite some time and people are only now crying about it? It was not conduit that made us strong but the recent gear options and buffs we have received that amplified it as well as how good we pair with COR's and GEO's especially. But I digress.

So there are a FEW mobs that GOOD SMNS can conduit effectively with the right support. SMN is not wanted for everything and not everything is conduit-able to the extent Schah/Verde etc are. You are looking at what SMN excels at and not what it doesn't excel at.

So you've seen a SMN or group of SMN's like myself/frod/papesse and others who have played SMN religiously since the days of yor and have invested at the very least 4-5 billion gil and have broken down every aspect of SMN so we can play it to its full extent succeed at something and thus the job must be over powered? Other jobs are just as capable and thus brings me to the point of my post.

Instead of crying about a job being overpowered try to raise awareness of other jobs that SE has seemingly forgotten. No one wants WAR/NIN/DRG/SAM/RDM/ etc anymore. Why not buff them? Or just nerf Abyssea's Super Revitalizer.

Where does the "3-5 billion" keep coming from?

1 billion for gear, 2 billion for high end reisinjima augments.

My rough cost breakdown of smn gear based on recent prices and slots puts a high end smn useful for the core aspects of phys and magic bps, capped bp timer, capped +skill and a refresh idle set. ~1 bil will give you a very solid complete smn. Beyond that prices escalate quick for niche ***.


2x apogee +1 head, body, legs,
3x feet
1x hands (probably dont need anymore, af 119-3 maybe)

Nirvana costs. (Unfairly counting 119III here)

Sancus and elan hq.
Af +3 mats for head body
Stikini +1
Empy 119
Skill build
Fastcast build

Heli has his cost inflated due to sets no sane person uses like melee and ws sets. *** still uses merc pole.

It barely adds up to a bil, even with your useless afterglow and 2nd dalm and slacks (wtf? lol). Smn can be pricey, yes, but throwing out numbers like that are flat out stupid lies.

Edit: for those of you reading the smn thread that might be intimated by the cost. HQ smn gear is in the same cost range as any HQ geared job. Blu, thf, war, blm ect will cost a player roughly the same

SMN is much cheaper than maxing BLU or THF, if we're being honest here. They only need one RMEA, apogee is dirt cheap compared to jinxed pieces, and they need less reisenjima augments than most jobs.

I'm sorry Brixy, but you are dead to me. ; ;

you spent 2bil on reis augments?

Make sure you include the gil cost for warping to hp crystals to unlock all the avatars!

I can't stop laughing at 2 billion in augments. SMN is not nearly as expensive as you want to make it seem. You can buy the entire apogee +1 for around the same price of a single Amalric +1 body on most servers. So unless you plan on buying all the Amalric +1 set for Garland of Bliss you are nowhere near 3-5 bil.

What Reisenjima augments does a well geared SMN need? Merlinic hands?

Merlinic hands definitely covers both physical and magic BP's with the proper augments, but if you had perfect augments on the entire set then Merlinic would probably out perform Apogee+1 - at least with certain pieces (Head, Body etc).

But with the new Convokers+3 set and how the newly released set bonus works, some testing will have to be done. At first glance it seems SE is trying to make Apogee+1 obsolete in certain slots.

I believe its only two pairs of Merl hands Byrth.

Other slots are filled with Convoker's, Apogee, Enticer's or Lamussu.