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

The amount of skill gained from Caller's Pendant to Melic/Incanter's Torque is bleh. A whopping ONE summoning skill. Also I guess Fervor Ring has been dethroned.

The range change on blood pacts is brilliant!

I've done two things on Summoner today: Azi Dahaka and Gessho. On both I could trigger blood pacts out of range of every AoE - on Azi Dahaka in particular it felt very good avoiding his cluster *** of damage. 26'9 was the maximum distance I could trigger from. On Gessho I don't recall the exact distance but it was far enough that Mijin Gakure didn't hit me.

Thanks SE! This is a lovely change.

Seems like some decent stuff, now I just have to FIND it.

As for Lv. ? Holy, I do too use it!

(When I'm screwing around because kitty. Sometimes it deals amazing damage, most of the time it's poo and just gets Cait smashed.)

Not sure if the one skill from the torque is enough to offset the regain on Caller's. Yeah, it's a small amount, but it all adds up.

Slightly more relevant question/comment: What about Apogee gear?

I know it stacks disgusting amounts of BP damage, and as far as I can tell from messing with it that 1 BP dmg equals about 3-4 MAB for magical BP.

So, that said, is it better than, say, Enticer's? I don't have 5/5 pieces yet, but I've been using legs/hands since I managed to get them (that macc on hands :O!) have not had enough coffee my macc is from Espiritus not hands derp

By what? I glanced over the new items on BG but I must have overlooked the ring.

Speaker's Ring
incase you wanted to know ^^

Oh okay, thanks!

New buff timers seem to confirm that Altana's Favor will never wear off over time.

Apologies for a bit more of a basic question than what is normally posted in this thread...

What blood pacts should I be looking at using? I just started and reached 99 on my Summoner (after levelling BST and THF and not enjoying them) and want to work on Summoner now.

This guide is fantastic for long-term goals and gear, but I am looking for a more intermediate level guide I suppose - what is the entry level gear set, what abilities should I be using, how do I go about being as effective as possible in a group situation?

Sorry again, it's just difficult to find a guide for the level I am looking at which is not very out of date.

Our situations are likely similar, as I recently returned to the game after a lengthy absence which put me in the intermediate category.

Firstly, get seraphicaller. This is the single strongest upgrade you can get for this job (not counting the Mythic, obviously.) I worked on +1ing some AF, upgrading an accessory here or there, and then I got one of these. The difference was astronomical! In the meantime, you can and should use eminent sachet, which is bought with Sparks. It's not as good as Seraphicaller and the level difference is very noticable, but it's still a very solid immediate upgrade.

As for gear itself, the Wayfarer Sparks gear is unfortunately useless for Summoner except for providing magic resistance. This means you'll want to first prioritise upgrading some of your Artifact, Relic and Empyreans pieces. Which pieces you choose to do first shouldn't matter but you can take a look at the stats and decide which are potentially worth it and which are useless.

As a benchmark, here is the five I did, bear in mind that I quit the game just before Adoulin came out: Artifact Head, Relic Body, Empyrean Hands, Legs, Feet. These I took to i109 first, and I've since upgraded the head to i119. I won't make any wild claims about this being the best choice but I was very eager to strike a balance whilst maintaining minimum perpetuation rate. Remember, I had nothing that wasn't old gear so I looked at every piece and decided, with help from the item sets in this thread, which would be the best first choices.

That depends on what other jobs you have at your disposal, too. If you have a job that can burn through monsters, take advantage of the Gain Experience bonus RoE and you can farm the Sparks for all five pieces in an hour or two.

Blood Pacts wise, you'll be using Ifrit on pretty much everything. His Flaming Crush is the most potent blood pact under item level scaling, followed closely by Ramuh's Volt Strike. A few pages back, and a few weeks back, I fielded this same question and got a detailed reply with reasoning as to why this is the case.

My personal preference is to have Ifrit's Meteor Strike at 5/5 and Leviathan's Grand Fall at 5/5 - this is for three reasons. Firstly and obviously, if something is resistant to Ifrit it stands to reason he won't like water. Tojil, for example, really does not like Grand Fall. The second reason is Leviathan has always been my favourite and therefore I am a little biased. ;) The third reason is that you can fulfill elemental procs without the merit blood pacts on the other avatars, despite what many people (notably, most who don't play Summoner) tell you. People told me I need Wind Blade to proc Yumcax but Aero IV was doing it just fine!

Ward blood pacts: well, this is down to scenarios and personal preference. I would encourage you to keep Warcry on Ifrit at all times as it will drastically increase the damage of his Flaming Crushes. Fleet Wind remains my favourite BP, especially due to its potency and duration at capped skill. Spring Water is still good for party scenarios. The use of the more defensive or curative blood pacts outside of group play is questionable though. If I'm soloing something I'd sooner resummon (if possible) than waste MP healing my pet.

And bottle of dawn mulsum is a very useful tool, but only beneficial in situations where your avatar absolutely must not die. Without pet damage taken minus gear, don't bother with them - they'll deplete your gil. In group situations you should never be using them, since if you'll get hate from your avatar dying in a party there's something very wrong indeed. They're a solo tool, but soloing old content can be a lot easier carrying a couple of these around with you especially when there's no room to kite and resummon.

I think that about covers it. You can work towards the better gear in the item sets a lot easier with a few upgrades here and there. Summoner, being a pet job, maintains a good standard of play with medium gear, and excels with the best gear.

Very solidly put.

But to give another piece of advice:
Spam some Reives or Wildskeepers until you get either a conveyance cape or 3 other JSE capes and trade those for one with the Taru inside the Adoulin library.

Invest in some refractive crystals and see if you can get some +BP damage or some Blood pact Time reduction on it.
Either will be majorly helpful, don't bother with another cape until you are sure you want to take Summoner to the next level.

Thank you both so much, amazingly helpful. At least I have a clue now...

One more question, for the Seraphicaller fight, what are people going to be expecting of me gear-wise to be able to participate?

So far I have gotten Relic +2 boots, glyphic bracers, and the first Empyrian upgrade for the head piece which grants it the refresh stat. I also got the neck pieces from an NM in Abyssea yesterday which was recommended.

I am working on completing the story lines for everything now as I see in the gear sets there are some rewards from completing them which are good.

It's a tricky position, really. The drop rate on the Seraphicaller is non-existent on Very Easy, very low on Easy, adequate on Normal... But to be effective in those fights on normal you need a Seraphicaller. Chicken and the egg.

I was fortunate in that people in my linkshell were happy to help me with the fight, even though my presence was essentially a cheer leading role. Without decent gear or a Seraphicaller it's difficult to be an effective participant on Normal battlefields. The eminent sachet will help you land some attacks, the merit ones in particular, but your avatar will unfortunately be very weak without one.

As it happens, we did several fights on Normal and it didn't drop, then we decided "*** it" and did Kam'lanaut on Easy and it dropped. Probably very fortunate, mind. Reported drop rates on easy is 10% which isn't much good as in your current position you'll need help even on the easy setting.

As for gear, you'll likely just need to keep plugging away until you can upgrade some to 109. The item level it gives your character (and trusts) makes a big difference, as well as the obvious boost to your summonings. There's another Sachet that puts your avatar to i117 that I forget the name of. This might be a good step up from Eminent and help you land hits in battlefields, and make it easier to get Seraphicaller. Depends entirely on how hard it is to get.

You mean the Idaraaja, which is a possible drop from Mirka, the monkey NM in Kamihr Drifts.
Not too hard, but you'll want to have a solid party for him regardless.
I'd say, nab an eminent sachet first.

Other then that, try and shout for a seraphicaller and see if someone's willing to part with it if one happens to drop from a BC they're doing.
You don't have to do the battlefield yourself to be able to get the drop.
I know a few people that do the high tier battlefields on a regular basis and items like these floor quite often.

Night Terror and Nether Blast don't benefit from any ring other than Speaker's, right? I made a separate set for them using Speaker's and Thurandaut (so as not to lose the -DT).

Are you on Bahamut?

If so, send me a tell and I'll see what I can do about getting you a Seraphicaller. It drops like candy from Nexus on N, from what I have seen, and the only thing I'd ask of you is Hastega II.

There's also the ACP final fight augmented rings, but they're really rare.

Guess I'll have to pass on that. Took long enough to get a MAB earring from ACP and it's only +1 (which I still use because 0/~40 on Esper Earring...).

Got the new speakers ring today. LS member killed it with his mule and trusts and then invited me to let me have it. He said that he killed one of the floating pots in starting area and then Warder of Temperance poped. Been a while since i been on forum only read about 2 pages back sorry if posted info you guys know already.

Sadly not, I am on Asura :( Thank you for the offer, though.

For anyone trying to "solo" Warder of Temperance:
Vertical bars = Piercing, so use Crescent Fang (very weak, but best piercing BP that we have... Other options are Poison Nails or Claw.)
Horizontal bars = Slashing, so use Predator claws.
No bars = Blunt, I preferred using Volt Strike.

Took me 15 kills or so to get my ring, so I'm not sure if its rare or it's just that my luck sucked (in that time I saw 5 pairs of Darraigner's Brais, 2 Carnal Torques, and 1 Speaker's Ring).

All in all it's not too bad of a fight with trusts, although it can take a while if he likes to spam his piercing mode.

Hello,

Since last update, i have errors with my gearswap, i can't use BP maccros, it seems miss a "<t>" after each BP maccro.

PS ; i use same GS file from 16th page of this guide

Anyone know where to get Kobo Obi?

BG Wiki says its a reward in Escha - Sky from Seiryu.

I knew i was right all along thanks for confirming this. Despite what some said like Frodnon. Numbers dont lie especially when i get them consistently. Dont think they will try and fix this since its small damage increase anyway.

That Lua has nothing anywhere that references commands to execute Blood Pacts. I'm guessing there's something wrong with your in-game macros?

Here is my guess, make sure the Shortcuts plugin is loaded and working.

@Verda, that's what I was doing last year. I'd typically do BR2 twice a day on days that I could double up or just run a single whenever I had spare time. I'd run in there with Ifrit, lucky if I got Ammo unlocked, but I'd use a Perp-5 Keraunos to smack mobs with and build TP to skillchain. Shattersoul, Flaming Crush for Fragmentation, ocasionally have Apogee available and even close a Light as well. I'd at least kill NMs on each floor, I never bothered farming the individual Alexandrite drops from Gears, then I'd head to doggies. I'd kill both to get a chance at two Linens. Runs typically ran between 30~40 mins. I really didn't have the patience to spend more time in there than I had to if I wanted to just make a quick run, average output varied due to occasionally getting multiple Cottons and on what the Linen and Cotton output was. Rarely did I make out with less than 80.

Most of my funding to BUY Alexandrite came from doing Skirmish runs for stones, Delves for Plasm to buy Relic Upgrade Items or Lixirs+2 and direct drops, selling junk with sparks either skill up pages or gear to NPC, selling upgrade items from Unity Wanted Battles, converting my Login Points into gil, converting Mog Pels into Gil, selling Voidwatch items, for a while the Surged Walk of Echoes were popular and I sold drops, I never did do much Dynamis or Limbus however (None) because I didn't have the patience for it. Aside from that, I was real frugal on what I bought for my SMN and I'd most likely sell things I wanted for other other jobs rather than keeping them. And with all the money I'd make from these events outside of Salvage, I'd buy my Alexandrite... So yeah.

I do Silver Sea Remnants and with and without Ammo on the first Lamp it takes 10-15/20-25 minutes respectively to rush through to the bosses and kill them both.

I took the liberty of creating a masterful treasure map to guide you on your quest:



Here's a step by step. Remember to use Fleet Wind as much as possible!

1) Skip floor one, you can unlock all of that later.

2) Depending on whether you get HP or MP on the first lamp you'll need to kill a particular Fomor to get what you're missing. If you got MP, you need to kill a Thief, and if you got HP, you need to kill a Paladin or Black Mage. Following the route I drew the first Rampart will spawn Thief x3, the second Paladin x3, or if you manage to link the Ramparts, one of those sets will be Black Mage x3. Either way, Thiefs drop HP, Paladins and Black Mages MP.

What I do here, as you're still likely quite weak (unless you got Ammo on the first lamp) is Summoner pull whichever Rampart I need: First for HP, second for MP. If going for the second try linking the first as it'll spawn Black Mages and they're much squishier. Stick Ifrit on the monster you need, blood pact him because why not, then run to a safe distance and dismiss and resummon. Stick Ifrit on the Fomor, the Rampart will take ages to get to you anyway. Fight them in the middle or in the corridor, prioritise getting the Fomor down as the rampart is weak, even on your ungeared character. When that's done down the rampart. You can run further up the corridor the way you came to fight if you like and this will potentially deaggro the rampart. Meleeing with an i119 Staff will drastically speed this up but take care to watch your HP If you got MP on the first floor!

Summon Garuda, Fleet Wind, Sneak up, and run up to the next floor. Skipping monsters on this floor will aggro a bunch of Ramparts and whatever monsters they spawn. That's fine, you run much faster with Fleet Wind and can easily open the doors and go up the teleporter before any catch up to you. I've never come close to dying yet!

3) Skip all the way to where I drew the gears on the map. In the corners of this room there will be Ramparts. Aggroing one will spawn three Gears and one Gear. The Gear drops Ammo so pull him first. I stick Ifrit on the gear I want, run back to the room behind me and dismiss him, resummmoning in time for the Gear to get there. The Rampart deaggroes almost every time (in 20 something runs he only came once.)

If you got ammo at the start pull him anyway, as he'll also unlock gear slots.

Kill the gear (this might be a struggle, but meleeing helps, again keep your HP up!) and then you get Ammo and a load of gear slots too. Yay! Now it's going to be much easier. Go back to the room, pull the first gear, kill it to get the item slots you're missing and then go up the portal. You can summoner pull one on its own again if you're not comfortable having three bashing on Ifrit with only 600 HP.

Cast Fleet Wind before you go up, as time is of the essence on this floor.

4) Run all the way to where I've drawn Dvergr with Sneak up. There's a lot of Ramparts on the way, avoid them all. There will be one in the large horizontal room going backwards and forwards in front of you, but he's never aggroed me, ever, whereas deviating to the sides to try and avoid him has always aggroed the ones on the sides. If you do aggro, keep running all the way to the Dvergr room to unlock the door, as allegedly his being there is determined by how quickly you reach the door. Running through with a pet is a good idea as the pet will auto attack the Rampart if it aggroes, getting hate on it and all the monsters that spawn as a result. You can then dismiss him and just kill the Rampart, or let it deaggro. Just be mindful that any other monsters otw will link with the Rampart.

Dvergr is very easy. Use Ifrit. Don't melee, he has nasty AoEs. Some fights Ifrit dies, others he doesn't - seems to be random. Be mindful of this by watching his HP, I prefer to run up the corridor north (leading to boss floor) and resummon rather than use mulsums especially as Dvergr will stop to cast spells and give me so much damn time to resummon! When Dvergr is dead (4/21 on Linens here) head up to the boss floor.

5) Just run to the boss and repeat the process on Dvergr. He seems to be even easier, weirdly. I blow Astral Conduit on this guy if it's ready because it's fun watching Ifrit shred the guy who gave my Salvage 2 group a torrid time back in the day. ;)

--

Sorry, I was a bit more elaborate than I planned there. It might seem long winded but once you do this for yourself you'll see it's very straight forward. Without Ammo runs take me 20-25 minutes with very bad gear. With much better gear I don't see why it shouldn't take you 20 minutes at the most, possibly half that if you unlock Ammo. Fleet Wind really speeds this up, especially as we can skip most of it!

So 10-25 minutes for 99-198 Alexandrite (plus the occasional ones from Gears) - I'll take it!