SMN Battle Mechanics

Hi all,

I know this may sound dumb so apologies in advance. My smn isn’t best geared but it’s definitely decent but I’m getting destroyed in Helm parses. My question is in situations when you are zerging a mob with AF/AC are you macroing a command to AF/AC attack and then just spamming your BP? With SB I don’t believe you can track bp damage or total bp that you land but I’m assuming I’m just slow with my actions compared to the other smns. And yes I use GS. I know nirvana rules but I shouldn’t get 11% of the parse and the others are doing 35% (assuming 2-3 other smns). I just can’t get the fight mechanics down.

For SMN burn i wrote a simple script that uses /equipset BP gear then repeat at the min inverval the BP command, just being aware when I should converte/use temps as some BP consume really high amount of MP that it wont last entire conduit duration, like Volt Strike.

Aside that, if you consider youre doing worst than you should, i would bet its some problem with accuracy. Keep in mind if youre zerging in ruaun that zone isnt very friendly to dragon spam so normally you wont have enhanced vorseal buffs unless you work that before fight. Check food and make some swaps to make sure your acc is on par with the HELM.

Yeah my gear is on par and I’m getting the same buffs as the other smns so I don’t think it’s acc I think it’s the bp spam knowing when to engage. The mobs I’m referring to are the helms in Reisenjima, WoC, Kouryu, etc.

How and where would you put that script?

You can put any script in the script folder (either windower or ashita) and call with some exec command.

Its not the best way but it is being sufficient to me so far. There is always the risk of losing a BP command nor reacting as fast as you could manually. Ive been reading a lot of people saying lua recently. Im not sure if that means a type of scripting or some addon but maybe you can get better results with this.

Well first off whether you use GS or not when you're AC burning is moot as you should be locked in your BP set for the duration (easy to set a rule to do so or can just disable GS and have an equipset macro for this purpose).

I do it in this order: Apogee, AF VSx2, AC, spam, convert, spam, insta revit, Apogee, vsx2, quite frankly it's usually dead before I get through the process, but that would be the full and I am usually on par with the rest of the parse, sometimes take it (even before mastered).

Which brings up a question: are you mastered? Or at least have the last acc gift?

The best way to Conduit isn't to spam, but to manually time your BP presses. You can do pretty well spamming, but never as good as if you manually time it.

The best way to learn is to watch your character's hands when you BP. Shortly after BPing, your character's hands will glow green midway through the animation. That's when you can hit your BP again during Conduit. Look for the green glow. (Should be about 1 BP every 1.25sec.)

A good Conduit should deplete at least about 2500 MP, if not considerably more. It depends on how many blood boon procs you get, but I've gone through a full pool, Lucid Elixir back to full, spent that whole pool, and had to use a second Elixir to finish my Conduit.

You say your not the best geared, and no nirvana. Id say thats pretty accurate in terms of dmg compared to Almost/BIS smn with nirvana. I think your underestimating AM3 and Master Smn.

When I didnt have a Nirvana but was almost BIS I would lose in parse by a significant chunk vs a Almost/BIS Nirvana.

for AFAC I unload Gearswap and equipset in my BP set (phys, magic, or flaming crush sets) put favor up, Then Mana cede before pop.

Astral Flow + Apogee VS x2, Astral Conduit VS spam (.5sec intervals). convert then continue. and if its not dead when conduit wears I hit my Super Revitalizer macro and apogee VS x2 again.

With alot of good smn in a pt, it really comes down to who gets on it first to make top parse.

No, all BPs except Shock Squall have a 1.25s ready time. It was longer (3s, I think), then they brought it down to 1 second, but people complained that /equipset couldn't be called fast enough to swap gear at 1 second so they extended it to 1.25s where it's been ever since.

In fact, the global JA cooldown is 1 sec, so you literally can't send more than one JA command every 1 second. You'll get a command error.

If you send after 1 second, but before 1.25s, you'll actually get denied because the BP is still readying, and be locked out by the global cooldown for another 1s. Meaning you'll have a minimum of 2s between BPs instead of the possible 1.25s.

That's why spamming macros will lead to worse results than an experienced player with good technique manually timing their BPs. Manually timing can prevent the lockout from happening. As long as you don't get locked out, even if your timing is on the slow side, 1.5s or 1.75s is still better than over 2s which is what you'll get if you lock yourself out while spamming.

Ultimately each person has to do what works best for them. Spamming won't hit the lockout EVERY time, so sometimes you'll have some really fast ones. It can do well enough to pass. Parse yourself, and count your BPs on fights where you finish your Conduit. Don't compare your parse to other players as much as against your own previous parses. Especially if I'm in the party. :) My LS gets mad when folks ask for SMN parses now because they're tired of boosting my ego. (Apparently it's big enough already.) Anyway sorry for tooting my own horn, but truly, try manual timing if you haven't, and don't give up right away because it takes practice. Look for the green glow on your hands. The key to remember is going late is better than going early. Only go before seeing the green glow if you're certain lag prevented the green glow from going off at the normal time.

Thanks for all the insight. My smn is mastered and I’ll post my VS gear currently. Hoping to have it be good for Woc/Kirin and Reisenjima nms. Don’t have Super revitalize because I didn’t cp enough in Reisen I guess. Wish I could check how many I need.

ItemSet 365489

The hands have BP +8, pet macc +9 and mab +24(assuming I need to make new ones with pet att and acc with the BP +). Have no second earring and I’m assuming the waist sucks too.

Temps addon in windower. //temps buy "Super Revitalizer"

your welcome.

also, its 20,000 mob kills for Revit and you can check how many mobs you've killed at the book next to the npc in all 3 zones though irrelevant if you use the 1st method.

in the long list of cheats/bots in this game. this hardly counts as a "cheat". Call it an advance on temp items. At least it isnt free, it still costs 3k silt per.

Blatantly bypassing a restriction they implemented doesn't count as a cheat? lol

I said hardly.
But please keep pretending to be a stickler

Definitely thank you! No one ever told me about that!

Waist is fine till you get the Incarnation Sash from vagary.
Yea you want a acc/att BPD+ set of merlinic hands for phys BP's
2nd earring you'll wanna shoot for Lugalbanda Earring.
But 1st, Should upgrade ammo to +1.

assuming head is Path B and pants are Path D for VS/phys BP

Does the ammo add that much? Meaning priority level.

5 bpd 5 acc/racc/macc and 1 extra BP delay II is an amazing deal for 5.5mil. For where your at gear wise atm, That'll be the next cheapest/best option to upgrade

Ok thank you. Which stones do people normally use on merlinic hands for BP and Att and ***?

Unload gearswap and put on BP gear and hit the macro called volt strike, and hit it many times.

Fern if you want BPD +10 can take awhile to get good acc/att augs with it tho

Interesting. So I guess I need to invest in some Helios. Is that a consensus? I have very little double attack besides apogee +1 slacks which I recently changed from A to D. Why is double attack so great for volt strike and is this true for Flaming Crush as well?

Also having a terrible time getting bp +10 and any dbl attack or att on merl pants. Can I just use perfect Enticer pants for Flaming crush or is apogee +1 D pants sufficient for non nirvana users? Thanks in advance

No, it's not true for Flaming as well. Only for Volt Strike & Predator Claws, really. The reason is because fTP carries across multiple hits on those pacts, much like most multi-hit weaponskills. They can land up to two additional hits on top of the base 3 hits, for a lot of extra damage. This is why Gridarvor does so well for Volt Strike, it has no BP Damage but it does have +15% DA.

As for pants, yes just use path D pants for Flaming Crush for now. The only thing that beats it is path A pants, especially for non-Nirvana users. Don't use Enticers for Flaming, TP doesn't really benefit it very much (it just gives some extra accuracy).

BP+ and Dbl Atk share the same slot for Oseems augments, so outside of DM it's impossible to get.

I apologize in advance for necroing this thread but this has been the best advice i'ver seen for SMN. I started my SMN from zero and no knowledge at all about the job like a month and a half ago. Now i've taken it to various mid tier events like ambu VD and Ou and have beaten some nirvana summoners with the set posted below due to the timing advice on bloodpact spam.
ItemSet 368022

I think it is a VERY important piece of information that every smn has to know because it can make or break a run.

Can you guys give any good NMs or mobs to practice on for AF/AC? I’ve finally upgraded my SMN to 119 Nirvana and I’m 95% BIS. I was doing Vir’ava with a Geo, PLD and another similar heated Nirvana SMN and get beat me in the parse 70% to my 30%. I looked for the green animation but don’t get what I was doing wrong. We were using Ifrit and I Apogee, AF/AC and then spammed FC. Another weird thing is that I couldn’t even see my avatar once the pld popped the NM but I seen my avatar hp meter so I believe it was following my commands. Maybe my order wad screwed up, idk

Define "95% bis," and just do a normal BP, you'll see your hands glow, but as for something to give it a whirl on (almost anything you'd want a tank to hold it still), HTBF fights would be easy enough, or some T1-2 Escha fights. If it died really fast it may just be all about timing, who got to it first once bubs were up, etc. I know many who don't even bother to time it and just lock in the set and spam it (I'd recommend locking the set anyway).

Below is my set, but yeah I’m trying to figure out how many bp I should get off within the 30 seconds and what should be my typical BP damage per BP for flaming crush. I think I filtered out his damage so I couldn’t see if he was doing way more BP than me or was hitting way harder.

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