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

Well damn. Thanks for clarifying Byrth!

Edit: Found my issue

Volt Strike is about 15% STR/INT, so if you're making awesome Volt Strike Merlinic pieces, you should probably aim for Acc+30, STR+10, BPD+11% or Acc+30, STR+15, BPD+10%. STR is better than INT until you cap fSTR. That said, I'm sitting at Acc+30, INT+9, BPD+9%, so I'm going to just stick with that for a while.

With capped fSTR, adding 1 STR increased the blood pact's damage by about 0.06%, so it's hardly worth considering.

The Avatar: Lv119 on Sancus Sachet +1 gives the same Magic Damage and Magic Attack Bonus as Seraphicaller (Magic Damage +217 and Magic Attack Bonus +28).

The Avatar: Lv.+1 on a base Campestres's Cape gives Magic Damage +10 and Magic Attack Bonus +1, which is about half of Nirvana's Avatar: Lv+2 (Magic Damage +21 and Magic Attack Bonus +2) like you'd expect.

Just things to consider when determining MAB:BPD values.

I don't believe BPD can go up to 11%. At least I haven't seen it in tens of thousands of Fern stones. Then again this augment system is the devil, so I'm not positive.

Did a quick search of this thread and the BG augments thread and found no one getting higher than 9 with Pellucid/Taupe and no one getting higher than 10 with Fern.

Why yes, it's 3 am and i can't sleep, so i made a thing!


Updated chart to 7 tics (~21 seconds) i also think i had something minor off on the previous (spoilered) info, as 4 merit pacts with everything stacked comes out to 3010 TP.

I'm aware that counting crystal blessing pretty much only makes this viable for shiva. but it still shows promise. I wonder how apogee +1 parses vs enticer's with it all up, considering the 150/400 tp loss.

In a conduit situation, we lose 780/910 TP each pact, depending on if we get a tick in before pact or not.

I'm sure I'm reinventing the wheel here, but I went out to look at how much work it would be to make an avatar DT set today. I got a cactuar to use 1000 needles on myself and my avatar (500 physical damage base per target)


So, unlike Luopans, pet DT gear appears to apply in a separate term from the Avatar's 50% damage resistance (and likely Stout Servant.) It still offers up to a 50% reduction in damage, but not the 75% reduction that Geomancers get with 37.5% Pet DT.

I do see the potential to get 50% PDT, but I'm just not sure when it would be useful.

Dammit I just reached 88 PDT additive and figured I was capped too. I have 31 Pet:PDT from gear, so I guess the real total now then is 38 and 50 for 0.5*0.62=0.31 or 69% PDT. Still quite a ways short of the cap. :(

Enticers would get absolutely destroyed at 3000 TP. Even at 1600 TP, with no other bonuses, Apogee+1 beats Enticers by just a smidge. (Last time I tested, it was roughly 35 damage ahead on Wind Blade on a low-level enemy, so 1600 TP is just slightly above the breaking point with current top gear.)

I finally caved and bought a second pair of slacks+1. Been using them on my 5/5 merit BPs, Thunderspark, Night Terror, etc. I still use Enticers for 1/5 merit BP, Impact, Conflag Strike, etc.

As a side note, has anyone been able to get their Lua to recognize how much TP their pet has?

So never having followed the smn forum (nearly every other, yes). I came here to hopefully get an insight for a brand new 1 day old smn. Started reading the guide, made it back to page 68 and said F it....

Seriously have never seen a larger group of self-righteous players in all 15 yrs playing ffxi. It has honestly been amazing the amount of elitism in this forum. No other job forums have I ever seen this accepted treatment to the playerbase interested in actually playing a job. Oher job forums may get in little fights, but at the end of itm it was to help people. Thanks Sechs for being the only smn in 20 pages who has actually posted something beneficial to help the game and people be better.

Heads up, all jobs pay 1billion+ to be "top-end" most pay more. Your not special. All content can be cleared w/ or w/o smns. Your job isnt the only one with 20+ sets. Every job needs to aug gear. One weapon cannot have such an impact to change if your useful or not... ffs people.

secondly, not everyone has the desire to make a Nirvana, and thats fine. I don't and I would not expect me to match a smn who did, but the fact this forum has the arrogant tone of "if your not a niravana dont even post or play smn" is just strait crazy. Its good but its not that game changing, a smn w/o nirvana isnt doing 0 dmg.... and all of a sudden doing 99k with, but you guys sure as hell act like it does. A skilled non-nirvana smn can participate in any content in todays game, I have seen it and my ls even uses it on the hardest content.

So much for hoping to find something useful to become a better smn here. For all the new smn who are like me and trying to gear up and be better, keep at it! I've talked to 3 in one day who felt so shitty having read this forum like me and being lost on where to start still but to afraid to ask.

Couldn't agree more. People like Frod saying you need to spend a bil on just augments is both arrogant and misleading. For that reason I went on a tangent to prove that summoner does not cost nearly as much as a few on these forums say (couple pages back). Now that being said- there are valuable resources on this thread (perg, verda, Brixy, byrth and Ava to name a few). Ignore the arrogant "3-5bil spent" players.

I would like to add: if you are interested in being a serious summoner a nirvana to a summoner is like a ragnarock to a war. You can make due but you're going to wiff a ton.

idk why you're posting w/o a nirvana

Dunno what thread you are reading but my SMN is a few months old and like you I have no intention of building a Nirvana, and this thread helped me a ton to better understand the job. Just one thing off the top of my head there was a great discussion on BP math and the value of Double Attack. And 4 posts up is a nifty chart to help optimize merit nuke gear.

I also learned about summoning skill in bp precast for better and faster favor bonuses.

People tend to exagerrate in forums. Everyone knows you can be a good SMN sans Nirvana....especially with how solid the jse is.

Don't let it get to you. There is some great info in this thread.

Hey! Frod is nice enough.... unlike others I could name drop but won't.

I have standards to uphold after all.
(No offense to you, ocean dearie.... All the offense to the ones who think I'm talking about them. Because I probably am.)

The problem with certain posters here is that they have very high opinions of themselves because they have Nirvanas.
Which is indeed a mark of dedication... it does not make you an authority in any regard.
Especially when your science is flawed.
But I'll let you in a little secret.... the biggest egos here... had their Nirvanas handed to them with minimal effort on their own.
Yet we're supposed to default to their opinions?
Because they were handed a mythic because of the human disease known as friendship?
Don't make me laugh.

I've been in PUGs with "Look at how good my SMN is, I have a Nirvana my friend gave me" and let me tell you.... not even being able to exceed 5k in VD Ambuscade... (Again, no names! Because I'm classy.)
Yeah. Having a Mythic means jack ***when you don't know how to use it.

Which is why I try to foster discussion when I can... But as the saying goes.... "*** measuring is all boys think about".
A price to pay for a forum, as it will inevitably fall into such pissing contests from those with an over-inflated sense of self worth or a childish need to be praised.



Finally: Byrth and Papesse are the best contributors, so much math we wouldn't have without them. *kisses*


All my love, dearie. <3

~Faerie Queen Out!

>Human disease known as friendship
>Don't make me laugh

Are we at the final boss fight or something?

Let's not get back to that argument. We wouldn't want this to turn into the DRK thread.


Since the GEO adjustments, how much have you found yourselves in need of macc on your BPs? I've been thinking about halting my hunt for HQ Apogee in favor of high macc/MAB Merlinic, but I haven't done magic setups on SMN in a bit, so I'm not sure if it's really needed.

You'll have to play around with it but I use multiple Convoker+3 pieces along with Regal Belt, Helios and Merlinic for content/NM's that require a little extra Pet Accuracy or Magic Accuracy (ie: specific T4's, etc)

And don't forget food. Using the appropriate food for the appropriate situation is also vital. Yes, the ***is expensive (especially on our server) but it's worth every BP in general.

Super late but not really reinventing the wheel but rediscovering how it was broke. While not gearing precisely people did used to use Atma of the Ducal Guard to achieve -100% pdt for avatars. So SE killed that and made it factor separately from other dts. Could still hit -100% pet dt in abyssea though (took 3 atmas and gearing) and bsts were pretty easily getting -100% pet pdt so update or 2 later they lower the pet dt cap. That kind of took away the need for the innate pdt change but they seem reluctant to revisit that despite giving large innate full dts to wyverns and loupons

Please keep this as discussion about SMN job and not the SMNs themselves. Thanks.

With job master, idris geo, and +5 cor, i have no macc issues for landing nukes (debuffs are usually another matter). Gear is 4x apogee +1, merlinic hands, grio, etc.

Nuke resist issues crop up on t4s without a geo or cor, but are issues more on the party composition or tactics than gear. I've done Kei without a Geo, wasn't exactly fun, but had no resist issues.

going off this data from a few pages back.
Was is a 7.69% increase in damage on melee pacts
Gridarvor is a 8.77% increase
Was+1 is 9.61%.
Nirvana without 3k TP aftermath is 15.384%
Nirvana with 3k TP DA adds an additional 23.39% damage on top of the 15.38% (assuming a 40% DA from aftermath).

This all doesn't take into account the atk, acc or +2 levels (any and all secondary stats. this is based only on DA and BPD).

This data is average damage over multiple pacts due to the way DA works.

Is it possible that avatars actually have damage type penalties to piercing/ranged/blunt/H2H/slashing and that's why it's a separate term? Has anyone ever tried using Requiescat on an avatar in PvP? EDIT: Wait, that wouldn't really tell us anything because Req. ignores PDT, too.

So still new to SMN, was scrolling back a few pages as well as front page, not really any recent updated GearSet except comparing SMN cost to other jobs and in depth math for smn, and currently viewing through phone. SO just curious to see what GearSet i should be aiming for Avatar.Engage and BP.Delay/PreCast set. So i get a general idea what to aim for. Main goal is just gearing SMN for aeonic clearing. But was wondering what avatar.melee set to aim for, since it's already been argue'd/stated in most recent pages what B.Pact Rage set is ideal.

Thanks in advance.

bp recast is job master, sancus sachet, and convoker's doublet +3.

avatar melee white damage is excessively pointless in highend nm fighting. go for a capped perp set with refresh stuffed everywhere.

other gearsets include a bp ward set, a capped siphon set, fastcast, etc.

If you're doing smn just for af/ac spam to do aeonics, you don't need anything but a BP rage set.

Is there a reasonable alternative to Thurandaut Ring for phys BPs? My Smn got less used lately, mainly cause I didnt update my gear properly and lack JPs I guess.

So right now Im tempted to change from Thurandaut Ring to Vocane Ring for my Run. I know Vocane is not absolutely necessary for Run but I feel like Im using it more atm. Just wondering if changing would hurt my Smn a great deal.

Varar Rings might be better than Thurandaut Rings anyway.

Thx~ good to know that the ring is not crucial so less of a bad conscience when I trade rings.

Ah I see, thanks for the response. Just assume I would need a melee engage due to higher pet.tp for more BPdmg. Thanks for clarifying that.

Is there data regarding the fTP scaling for any of the blood pacts?