The 6th Ministry's Secret: A Summoner's Guide

I think so too -.-.

If you think the role of SMN is to have a hefty DoT, you're sorely mistaken.

SMN has a variety of uses, but heavy dd is not one. All players that play smn know this. And the mythic summoners would beg to differ which in that case I agree.

Its a damn shame that SE have already stated that Smn skill over the cap increases the accuracy of Blood pacts and lengthens the duration of wards. Now to start with I highly doubt that it will show up in /checkparam especially when just idling I wish people like you would actually read old patch notes before opening their mouths.

Hey... no need to become aggressive or offensive, especially against a respected and long-time player like Ajirha.
We all make mistakes, nobody's perfect.

Who? and that was neither aggressive or offensive.

Question: Is there a cap on Blood Pact Damage+ gears?

119 Nirvana gives +40% and 119 AF Body/Feet gives +18% combined. Definitely more gears that could potentially put you in the +70% range so I'm wondering where (if it exists) the limit is?

The avatar perpetuation -5 is a waste of an augment slot on this weapon since you can already get that on Gridarvor, Uffrat +2 or the magian staves. As for the pet: MAB, higher has already been reported or you can just pick up a Balsam Staff instead for cheap.

I think Elemental Syphon is the best augment for this staff and if pet: MAB can get 21 or higher, that would beat out Astralwatcher.

Based on current information the optimal Keraunos has high Elemental Siphon on it. Leafslit+2 can bring it up to 25.
The other stat depends on the enemy you're normally fighting and the rest of your set. Either high Pet:MAB or Pet:MAcc. Personally I would go with Pet:MAcc as the Pet:MAB one wouldn't differ too much from Tumafyrig Path B while Pet:MAcc would be unique for Debuffs.

That might change though if we get more information on the augments caps.

[Edit]: In most situation Balsam/Astralwatcher is already surpassed by Tumafyrig.

Currently not known/reached to my knowledge.

It should be noted that this staff has 20 Magic accuracy, and on most content worth a darn that 20 magic accuracy will beat out a 5 MAB difference.

Also, I'd like to hope pet Macc/Matk follows the same rules as regular weapons where a +2 stone has a chance to roll both Accuracy and Attack augments... meaning this staff could theoretically get Macc+20/Matk+20 pet Augments, making it Macc+40 Matk+120 for pets, which I think would a sound trade over Balsam/Astral.

... Aywho, I have to agree on the Elemental Siphon bit, but I'd also like to say that you can get

Pet: Critical Hit Rate
Pet: Haste
Pet: Double Attack

And such with an orb, so who knows maybe that'd be nice for something.

Please list the variety of uses that your dreaming off?,

Good burst damage to aid from rages
Can aid with healing and removal of debuffs
Buffs and debuffs!
Shock Squall is an amazing stun
Alexander

Just a brief example

1. good burst damage every 40 seconds?, you are joking right?
2. come back to me when you can replace whm/rdm/sch on that department.
3. only if you don't have to wait for the buff to build up, even if you don't, brd/cor/geo or even rdm does it way better.
4. too *** bad you have a long recast.
5. only a tiny amount of content actually need it.
There is a reason people don't invite smn even though it can do many different things but it ONLY doing a half *** job on each category.

Well then that's down to who you're playing with, Smns here come along to quite a bit for the reasons I stated

I think the current BP Delay for SMNs is... -23 seconds? so more accurately "37 seconds" lol... It has its uses.

Once SMN gets access to Hastega II, honestly? I think they could replace a RDM depending on the event, or at least having them be interchangeable. Until then though...

SMN is a pretty bad buffer until they rework the outdated 75-era caps on Stoneskin and Phalanx and such. (Wait, did they?)

Shock Squall was nice on ADL Q_Q

Agreed.

....... If i may add more? A SMN can be good for real short burst damage with their secondary 2hr, throwing out 7-8-9 or so BPs in about 30 seconds can add up to a really good burst of damage especially for a well geared SMNS. Still, I'm not saying that justifying a spot, just its a bit better?

Further, I know a lot of people lululuulululuulul at the idea, but SMN can Melee with their pets for decent combined DPS, and with the right gear its not even so bad, miles behind a real DD? YAWP, but I mean... Not turrible. Okay kinda terrible, barely worth bringing up... but a Nirvana SMN can do pretty sweetness.

Anyway. SMN is in a pretty sorry spot right now, I think the only time I use it is in WKR

Perfect Defense + Zerg scenarios
Kiting mobs, holding mobs
Buffing(aoe haste, stoneskin, phalanx, refresh, regen, etc) + Debuffing
Does great dmg if you exploit any enemies weakness, Wopket/Yumdix and Wind dmg (lots of other examples too)
Avatar's Favor

^ this.
Even more than Acc for physical since for that you can just eat food and there's no pet macc food atm.
Tumafyring can get Mab +115 and macc ~21 with just 6 airlixirs, and also has more cool stuff like +148 MP.
Need to keep that in mind.

Imho this is the perfect staff to craft into a Magical BP staff, while Tumafyring is nice for Physical BPs.
Of course I'm taking Nirvana out of the scenario here...


I wonder about that too...
We need to make a distinction though.
The Acc/Racc and Att/Ratt augment are a SINGLE slot.
The real "double" augment are those like Acc/Att or Macc/Mab.
We've seen those for Player buffs.
I've never seen a double stat for Pet: ones, but I guess it should in theory be possible? I wonder...


They're all pretty cool but for the same reason above they seem useless on this staff (which should obviously become a Magical BP one).

I guess getting perp-5 and haste+6 would be a nice (better?) alternative to Gridarvor, but honestly it sounds a bit like a waste for a staff like this.

Not to mention expensive and unlikely to happen, yay augments.

I've got two Keruanos right now, one with MACC+17 (total +37) and one with MATK+18 (easily beats balsam, -2 matk for +20 macc).

I've seen some reports of a refresh augment, I wonder if it comes on snow and you could combo it with avatar perp... but that's a stretch.

Beyond that, I've heard reports of crit and DA coming together rarely, that could be useful combo'd with a good accuracy or ATK (if accuracy isn't needed) augment. Probably possible to roll like 6% DA optimally, which could be nice for auto attacks at the cost of a lot of perp, which you could get on like Hagondes somewhere (gloves). Again, it's all a stretch, and probably quite expensive, for not much in return. Really pushing our limit as SMNs here. x_x


Isn't Tumafyrig just +115 MAB +15 MACC? I'd probably just go path A and make it a phys BP staff. +30 ATK/+15 ACC seems good, don't think anything beats that outside of Nirvana?

Also has native Summoning Magic Skill +7 which he added to MAcc.

Yes, Skill +7 is roughly 6.3 macc, supposing it follows the same pattern as all other skill>acc conversions in game. (which might not be the case, I just assumed it)

And yes, Path A is exactely why I said Tumafyring is likely the best Physical BP staff atm, pretty awesome for hybrid BPs as well (like Flaming Crush) because of the +100 mab as well.

Forgot about the SMN magic skill, right. Testing I've seen in the past led to believe that SMN magic skill was 2 for 1 accuracy on BP's, but it's old and just one random guy testing it. Really hard to test stuff like that in general. z_z


As a side note, what is the formula/calculation for skill -> magic acc? I always thought it was 1:1, but based on what you said, that seems to not be the case.


Is Flaming Crush not the only hybrid BP? What kind of weight do you put on ATK/MAB when it comes to Flaming Crush? Is that +30 ATK better than +20 MAB?

It's never been 1:1 afair.
I think there *might* be a "stage" wherein skill>>>Macc generates 1:1... But I honestly can't recall.

But basically, skill>>>acc conversions are tiered.
eg: say the tiers work at 100 spans, skill over 200 gives 0.8acc, over 300 gives 0.9acc, over 400 gives 0.8acc, etc
Those are not the numbers, but that is the pattern for how it works.

Seems like Sechs is using my rule of thumb to make an estimate of what +skill will contribute to your Macc: 1skill:0.9Macc
It's not exactly accurate... Cause it's likely that you're gonna gear with a bit of extra Macc... But I would rather floor resist and have a bit of extra Macc than have multiple resists with too little Macc from calculating it as a 1:1.

And I dunno what other peoples are using in their rebuff sets, but mine has ~511 skill in it with ~25Macc or so...
And I never get resists...
So it very well may be that summoning skill over cap is 1:1... SMN already does everything else different than other jobs... Why not skill to Macc too.
(Remember... Our element-2/4s aren't the spell... They're "magical WSs" that cost MP.)

I think the only other hybrid BP is Burning Strike.

It's 1:1 up to a certain threshold of skill which I forgot (was it 200?) and it's 1:0,9 past that.
I wasn't aware of the diminished returns mentioned by FaeQueenCory and it's the first time I heard about that for pure Skill (different thing for dStats). I might be wrong though, but really it's the first time I read about this for skill>acc conversion.

In the end the macc we get from SMN skill could be a completely different thing of course but, in that case, it would be the only exception so far in game that I'm aware of, so I kinda assumed the same conversion rate we get for everything else.

Kinda realistically impossible to test it =/


Why are you asking me all these questions like I'm some SMN god! I'm a noob! There are other people more competent to reply to your doubts lol
Flaming Crash is not the only hybrid BP afair, but it's the most notable one?
I should look at my spell mapping on SMN, I seem to recall there were at least another or two more hybrid BPs.
But yeah, hard it matters for anything aside from Flaming Crush, realistically.
At least for now!
From october onwards (or whenever they decide to give us the promised and reworked BPs) we'll see according to changes of course.

The question you ask in the end is very valid though.
Would the +30 att compensate for the lack of 20 mab? I'm not really sure, in the end probably not =/
Since My Keuranos is not ready yet and my Tumafyrig is rank 0, I'm still using my Eminent Pole atm (yes, I sold my Balsam Staff when they added Eminent 'cause I was expecting a huge price drop)

Also, +1 Stone gave me Pet: Regen+2, I wonder how high that goes?

Flaming Crush is the only notable one that does decent damage the rest are all Physical or Magical and Blazing strike is pretty much a 1 hit version but not worth using.

Garuda: 3 hit physical.
Titan: 1 hit physical.
Leviathan: 1 hit physical.
Shiva: 5? hit physical.
Ramuh: 3 hit physical.
Fenrir: 3 hit physical.
Ifrit: 2 hit physical 1 hit magical.

Those are the 70 BPs which out of the physical BPs for each avatar are the only ones worth using. attack+30 for avatars will never make up for the loss of 20 MAB the MAB just adds too much damage to the last hit of flaming crush. Obviously for other physical BPs use the attack since the mab wont do anything.

Dumb question, but have to ask. Any of you tested Odin on any high-level battlefields? ,ie: AAs, Gessho, Tenzen, etc. (I know, I know smn never gets invited, etc etc but any chance Odin is broken again?)

He did fine when on VD when AA was still new, not sure if you're referring to a more recent patch breaking him

I'm just wondering if since September update his damage is still weak on high-level stuff or maybe better? Haven't used him since before AA's were released

I believe he was doing around 7k but that was with 119 ammo.