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

I'm pretty sure it would just reset the job ability timer as programming what you said would take a lot more conditional logic and work and testing. It's an interesting idea but I expect they'll reset job ability timer.

Well at the very least, we'd be able to double magic burst or self skill chain only or close a chain and magic burst without the MP increase. Won't complain about that I guess.

We could already do that with Apogee as it currently is....

I don't think any of the programmers played Summoner..........

Seems im just dumb and missed the last part of his statement lol. He was saying we could do it without MP increase.

Updated Shattersoul weapon skill set:

ItemSet 343721

:3

Thanks Skjalf :D Unfortunately for me I'm usually doing Shattersoul in my physical ws set because I need the physical accuracy so I can chain Light off it with Ifrit on higher content ;-;

I'd hope some do :D They probably have to at least a little. It's just I think they're going w/ easier options more the time sorry for a bit of pessimism :(

I'm considering making a Nirvana, but I'd first like to know the main benefits of making one. Noob SMN here so not sure, but from what I've read, it loses to an Espiritus for magical BPs and a Gridarvor looks like a more attractive pet engaged staff. Would it end up just being for perpetuation cost, defensive pet stats and physical BPs?

In short, yes, but it excels at both of those jobs. There is no better physical staff, and no better idle staff. You are underestimating how much MP you can get back by loading your perp into one slot, allowing you to throw refresh into the other ones. Plus those extra two levels for physical attacks means you have that much more accuracy as well. Plus the weaponskill can further buff your avatar.

Not to mention it nearly doubles Flaming Crush damage.

Does it? I was under the impression it was mostly magical damage and thus fell into the category of BPs that favor Espiritus.

There have been several discussions for Flaming Crush, no conclusive tests, but it seems the magical part of Flaming Crush is in some way connected to the damage performed by the first (physical) hit.


Uh, Gridarvor is better?
I guess we can argue about the defensive stats Nirvana offers (through the levelup) but Avatars are kinda disposable compared to BST or PUP pets, defensive stats are cool but not as important as they are for those other jobs IMHO.

If only there were other refresh items for those slots.
If we rule out Serpentes feet (because because because, not ilevel hey!) and augmented Merlinic through Dark Matter, there are no refresh feet.
There's a pretty neat perp feet that offers -7 though. With Gridarvor that would leave you at 1-2 perp away, that you can get through several means in slots where you can't get refresh, leaving you free to equip a Refresh+3 body, refresh+2 legs and/or pet augmenting items for idling (granted that avatar white damage is usually pretty unrelevant)


Duh, Gridarvor offers pet accuracy +95 ^^'
That's way beyond the accuracy offered by the additional levels from Nirvana.
We could argue about the benefit coming from Aftermath which is very cool but not very practical to keep active at times when it matters.



Nirvana rules uncontested for physical BPs, Flaming Crush and arguably hybrid BPs as well but for everything else, while Nirvana remains a pretty solid option regardless, there are better options.

If you ask me they wasted their chance to give Nirvana the place it deserved during the recent Afterglow update.

I didn't see it double... maybe vs some mobs where you clear the magical resistance roof or something with the avatar levels so you don't get a half resist. It is the better staff for it though. Flaming Crush does work good with magical staves, really well. But the base damage of flaming crush is physical and then there is a magical component so it uses both sets of stats, and BP damage applies to the physical and magical portions even though it does less for the magical portion vs the amount of MAB other staves might have.

You can get by as a non mythic smn, even heard one used volt strike 1 hour to kill old shuck with enough support. What nirvana gives you outside what you and tarage listed is basically more options. Physical BP are traditionally something SMN was known for, Predator Claws for example is known even by non SMN players and is still a good pact especially with Nirvana. With all these huge MAB staves out though a non mythic summoner will find those physical pacts falling behind in damage compared to even non bursted nukes and if you consider magic bursts well there's no contest if flaming crush won't work which it very often won't especially on high level mobs.

One thing that really opened up for me in the difference between pre and post nirvana, was Ramuh. Volt Strike is a very good blood pact rage and it stuns for 15s unresisted, pair that with alternating shock squall and you can near stun lock things until stun resist builds it's very good to the point I have relegated Ifrit to only being brought out on mobs I know it works on well or have the support to make it shine. Without that 40% blood pact damage and tons of stats (which I somewhat go over for carby and cait a few pages back), your best staff can have about 10 bp damage, and some but not all of the stats you get and in lesser amounts.

All this makes Nirvana more than 30% better for physical BPs and they are an important part of SMN. SMN gets to be a backline mage, that can avoid enmity by putting it on quick to resummon pets, and with some (ok a lot of) outdated support capabilities and a few nice debuffs and the ability to do physical damage with skillchains (with yourself!) or alternatively can magical burst. The benefit of physical bps is you can skillchain them for lots of extra damage, and they are physical so you can deal with magic resistant mobs. Basically before Nirvana I would bring ramuh out for his ward or merit pact only and had better damage options with less mana cost. Now he's in my most used avatars, maybe even top use now. If I'm going back to Zi'tah or something to fight easy NM's I often bring out Ifrit to kill stuff in one chain, but he just can't hold up without gobs of support on high level stuff.

It really did need a boost for 119 v3 though and it got none for the avatar, you can see my solo vid with no 1 hour of Belphagore on SMN, and it's really slow compared to what most DD do. You can do more than DD with your 1 hour but you get 30 seconds but if fights are long enough they will retake you. It's a huge very important 30s and amazing but being tied to resetting your 1 hour would be a horrible job to play. You can win, but your Volt Strikes don't do a ton more than CDC's, at least not to the point it can make up for your 30 second recast in most circumstances. So on things you can't do at least 3-4 times the damage as a DD in one bloodpact, you fall behind which on higher level stuff is almost everything because the only pact that could do that is flaming crush and it falls off pretty hard once you can't be king of both the melee and magic damage path at the same time.

If you never intend to use physical pacts or don't need a boost to flaming crush, it's probably not worth it to you at this time, but if your physical pacts aren't at least on the same level and sometimes better then magical then I feel you're missing a very big part of SMN and that is where nirvana comes in. Even the mythic WS itself helps with physical damage for your avatars applying a nice 12.5% def down that stacks with dia 2 and frailty and the after math can give your avatar a healthy dose of acc or attack as well (+100 attack so about the same as attack only food for free!). When you put it all together, it's a huge boost to physical pacts and that aspect of smn is one of it's stronger aspects properly geared. The quetz pet LS recently used pred claws on Teles along with BST using Razor Fang for example so it has very high tier uses too.

tl;dr if you don't want to hear all the details, basically physical pacts can be a very important part of SMN but you're pretty much right in what it helps the first time you posted about it Llewyn.

I agree with that for sure :(

I'd also like to add to what Verda said, regarding physical BPs. They used to be king, not so much these days but they still have their place. Not long ago I found myself more often magic bursting off the SCH skillchains than anything else (out of fear my physical pacts / Flaming Crush would interfere with their skillchain). It was frustrating especially when my timer was up and they weren't doing a skillchain so I was tempted to do a BP, but I knew as soon as I did they would start up a skillchain and I'd end up messing it up.

I've recently taken to instead extending the SCH skillchains. We MB fire or thunder on almost everything these days, so it's easy to get them to do Frag/Fusion instead of Impaction/Liquefication. From Frag, do Flaming Crush to make Light. From Fusion, do Volt Strike to make Light. We can close Darkness as well, using weaker avatars. Be aware that Flaming Crush doesn't have much accuracy so you may need to change to acc gear for higher content. Your damage will suffer but it'll be worth it.

I found that this doesn't always do more damage than your magic burst would've done (especially since you're unlikely to have Frailty when doing this most of the time, so sometimes the damage will be outright pathetic), but it helps the mages do more magic bursts and get less resisted since there's one less person doing magic, and it helps the SCHs with their stratagem timers.

The one big thing I can see to help this, is to make one for Wards and one for Rage.

I really want to see an adjustment to Thunderspark. It's the only AOE damage spell SMN has and a decent geared BLM can use a Stonega II and do twice the damage it puts out. BLU's and BLM's doing group kills in Escha are the thing right now. Would be nice if SMN could partake in that. Thunderspark just too week and a 30+ second recast.

Everytime they make small adjustments to the job to make it a little better, they adjust other jobs to leave it in the dust.

SMN seems to be one of those jobs that you need a Mog Wardrobe 3 and 4 for. ><

I'm glad they backed out on the Apogee change. Pretty sure it had to do with the timing of double magic bursts, or something similar. Having to use Apogee between BPs would be a major pain, I like how it works now where you can use it ahead of time and then just BP > BP. It's nice where any timing is a concern.

Can BLMs really do over 20k damage with Stonega II? Is that a thing? I feel like that's a bit exaggerated.

Personally I think Thunderspark is great, and it *is* strong enough to be used in AOE burns. I can one-shot Zitah mobs with it if I have some TP stored up, otherwise it'll only do about 9500 and leave them with a sliver of life left. Takes two to kill Reisen pulls, so I need Apogee to solo a Reisen pull but if there's a second person doing AOE then it's no problem.

The 30s timer usually isn't too limiting in an AOE burn because it takes that long to gather another pull. Shock Squall is fantastic crowd control for such pulls, too. SMN is a great contributor to AOE burns, it's just most people don't realize it so you don't see people shouting for it.

That said, I do wish they'd increase the AOE for Thunderspark, it's way smaller than any other AOE. You need everything bunched up extremely tight.

I use Thunderspark to molest the Quet's Sibilus adds in Domain Invasion too. When I finally decide to finish my Ambuscade cape for magic, I'll probably one shot them. They usually have a sliver of life left, as Perg said. The aoe range sucks cuz its centered on Ramuh.

The cape for magic damage actually really helps thunderspark too since it is a low base damage pact. I remember before the two job point categories were maxed the best I could do was like 3k thundersparks and after I could do over 8k. Now I can break into 9-10.5k+ range without support in escha. I have two very big issues with thunderspark however: 1) As others have said the range and that it's centered on ramuh and getting an avatar to move when you have aggro on you can be very time consuming. 2) We get one reliable AoE... and it's one element. When you fight stuff strong to thunder like gears in salvage it really screws SMN over.

I really wish Level ? Holy would be reworked to allow it to always hit, if they did that it'd be a great pact. We still could not compete with BLU or BLM for AoE even then due to recast but it'd be an incredibly welcome change. It is so hard to aoe on SMN, and slow. Usually by the time I'm done trying to compact things tight enough to make thunderspark work on all the adds, the BLU or BLM with me killed most if not all of them anyway. Our 1 hour ones are great! They do a ton of damage but leave you super vulernable with no MP left. I get to use it in Einherhar and that's like the only time I've ever actually used it in the game if I wasn't just playing around or in one of the old astral burn parties which are entirely defunct now.... :(

Yes, exaggerated. Thank you for point that out.
*Actually* let me rephrase this answer. Given the amount of times a BLM can cast Stonega before Thundersparks 30+ second recast is up, you've done well more than twice the damage. Especially since my 6k damage only doubles at 12k. The point is you don't even need Escha gear to get it up that high. You can nuke in a full set of Hagondes and still break the damage. You guys are talking 10k + thunder sparks? I currently nuke in Helios with anywhere from 14 to 25% MAB accross the whole set, the Ambuscade cape with +14 and a Keranous with 14. The most I can muster is 6k? Am I asking for SMN to be a BLM or a BLU (who can spam huge damage AOE's with mediocre gear)? No! I'm just saying, if you can't find a BLU or BLM, give people a reason to want a SMN too at lower gear levels. Not a Mastered one with the best gear options possible just to barely keep up.


I apparently don't have the gear setup you do as I'm only getting 6k tops out of it.


Are you referring to the one from Ambuscade? I have it, but it's only aug up to MAB +14. I have a full set of Helios, but I haven't been very lucky with the Augs yet. Not much Gil to spend on orbs. I haven't even been able to delve into new content yet. Still have some time for that.

Honestly I don't even consider that a viable option for AOE damage just based off that alone. Yeah, it's nics to see that 28k AOE once in every 10 casts. But it misses far too often. Been spending a lot of time doing Adoulin missions these last few weeks and I've had a chance to fight a lot of Umbrill's. I've died too many times relying on that uselss pact. Cait Sith in a whole is pretty useless imo. Other than reraise. Regal Claws isn't very impressive at all. And ??? Holy isn't worth the roulette wheel. That Avatar needs a complete overhaul.

In level 126 incursion you can taste what it's like for it to always land and it's awesome (fodder is 120, 120 is divisible by all rolls), and I used to have someone continually pull and just alternate mewing lullaby and level ? holy and it worked well just not as fast as other options. You can also use it on Packecet's pugil adds they are 120, and sometimes I'll just use it because yah, I've done 39k holy without any support to reisenjima mobs. I mathed out hit rates before too, worst is 1/6 for prime numbers, best is 6/6 for numbers divisible by 60, and most fall in around at least 2/6 - 4/6. Which only becomes viable if you spam huge aoe groups :( It does have the advantage of not waking up things sleeping it misses though so there's that.

I don't agree cait is worthless though, for Reisenjima 2 SMN alternating mewing lullaby on Yakshi makes it a much easier and faster fight, and on Erinys is the only known working strategy to kill him. Eerie eye does have uses, and the amnesia resistance doesn't build but makes it hard to reapply since no wear off message. Raise II/Reraise II/Altana's Favor are amazing though I wish it was Raise III/Reraise III SCH gets access to that I don't see why SMN shouldn't especially since we have 30 second recasts. mewing lullaby is one of our best sleeps too and even though it is short duration (lasts longer than 30s so can be reapplied after it wears but it's no 7 min 20s BRD lullaby), it is a light based sleep.

I don't know what to do with Cait's physical moves, they seem so weak no matter what I do on the one hand it's kinda funny but on the other, ;-; I feel she is missing about 2-3 pacts to have as many pacts as other avatar too but I don't know if they will add them to be honest.

Yes the ambuscade cape, for thunderspark/magical pacts put the following:
Pet: Magic Accuracy
Pet: Magic Damage

For the other two sets of stats, it's up to you. Some want regen to keep pet living longer, others say haste to build tp on avatar for stronger nukes or you could aug for yourself with mab. Personally I have 2 so far, 1 for pet acc/att, player acc/att and pet haste and one for pet macc/mdmg, player macc/mdmg and pet haste. Do what works for you but for thunderspark ya the macc/mdmg on pet with the 5 bp dmg and +1 level do help thunderspark a lot especially if you lack job points yet.

And then when you're finally ready to Thunderspark, you hit it and they kill your target while it's readying and you lose your BP for another 30 seconds... ARGH

Speaking of things they need to fix for SMN, they need to make it so if a BP doesn't go off for *any* reason, we get refunded the BP timer just like if the mob was too far away.

Sounds like it's useful as long as you know the montster levels beforehand. I'll have to do my homework. Thanks for the info on that.


Right now I'm at +17. Had to take a break from Ambuscade for a minute for Gil Farming and FoV missions. New LS needs me to have access asap.

Could it be worth reviving good old Smn burn for CP in Incursion by entering 126, pulling a lot of fodder and 1-shooting (edit: well might need more than one...) them with Cait Sith? Dont know how high the exp in there is...you do get party penalty in there right?

Rolls of 1 don't 1 shot most the time, maybe if I finish my +1 set. They are level 120, not as tightly compacted or as high level as sky or reisenjima (especially at night) where you get vorseal bonuses and silt for killing too. The only real benefits it has over escha cleaving is that you won't face competition if you're in the instance, it's slower if CP burn is your only goal. You do get coffers out of it though so if you want a cp cape it'd be a good way to go. A BLU can still one shot every time though or cast several vollies in the time SMN can do one. That's why I don't think it'd be a huge balance change at all to give SMN one good AoE, as is even my THF cleaves better just because aeolian edge and evasion bonuses, and my RNG can do it too, and PLD can clear entire zones with aeolian edge, and I hear WAR fell cleave isn't bad either. I'd rate all those better than SMN AoE and if they did fix Level ? Holy then we'd still be sub par in some situations due to recast. The nice thing about it in incursion is if you're going for bosses, all the fodder is dead while other people focus the boss. This makes it pretty easy to focus the bosses and do an entire clear in one run with even just 3 people.


Not sure you could do top tier stuff with helios... it's what you should use to get Apogee or merlinic stuff, it's older gear and definitely missing power from the other two. MAB, crit rate and bp dmg were what we used back then, at least for flaming crush and magic set combined.

That's actually another good idea for an Apogee adjustment. Just make it so the next pact ignores the recast timer at the cost of double the MP to use it. So you can basically use it as many times as you want as long as your MP holds out. Instead of just using it once for 2 bp's every 3 minutes. Because the recast timer is really what kills this job in comparison to DD's, BLU's, BLM's and even WHM's. Mob AOE Paralyzed the party, you use Soothing Ruby, mob does another move that gives another potent status effect, you now have 30 seconds to clear it. Same with say a MB party. You use your BP, get a good MB, but the killing is going good, but you can't do anything because you have another 30sec to recast? Where as a BLM and BLU can just keep trucking along. Dame with DD's, no DD is going to Store TP long enough to wait for that next BP. So, pop Apogee, use your next pact at double the MP cost while ignoring the timer. With good Refresh support it could be useful.