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

Pretty disappointing that Empyrean Reforge gains nothing new like Artifact and Relic did. Some of the reforge upgrades are marginal and it feels like they put very little effort into the set. C'mon seriously!? Artifact gained Refresh on Horn, BP damage on body and feet, Perp reduction (kinda) on Boots. Relic gained Avatar: MAB and Perp reduction (kinda) on Horn, BP Delay II reduction on body and feet, Gloves gain Avatar: Haste. Empyrean gains nothing new... It doesn't even seem like it was the same dev team who put together the different reforge sets.

Any who, this looks like it's the only item outside of empyrean for SMN this update.
"Avatara Slops" DEF:108 HP+43 MP+69 STR+25 VIT+12 AGI+17 INT+34 MND+24 CHR+19 Evasion+27 Magic Evasion+107 "Magic Def. Bonus "+6 Haste+5% "Blood Boon "+9 Avatar: Enmity+4 "Blood Pact " damage +7"

.

Probably Vagary or whatever the new event is called.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh, it's nice for people that can't do Alluvion Yorcia I guess. >_______>

If that drops from Vagary it makes no sense, because people succeeding in Vagary certainly have no issues in doing Yorcia.

Yeah and that's because you use the Feet which have no skill.


Meeeh so much negativity :P
You have to consider the AF set was a stupid level 50-60 gearset. Empy set was a level 90 one which was already pretty good, as a matter of fact we still used some of those pieces despite no ilevel. What did you expect?
If they made them any better than what they did they would have become MUCH better than reforged AF and reforged Relic, and their goal was for reforged Empy to be more or less the same level as reforged AF/Relic.
Of course it's not like this for every job and every slot, but overall that was their intent.

Specifically for SMN it doesn't seem THAT BAD to me. What did you people expect to be so utterly disappointed, I wonder?
It's nothing stellar (pretty hard to surpass Helios :P) but there are good options.

My only real disappointment is in the body, was seriously hoping to get at least 12% damage on the 119 version :'(

I didn't find a +1 version of the AVATARA slops, guessing it's not a Unity item. Still haven't found any goodies for SMN outside of those stupid Helios Wanna-Be Pants in the dat minings. Guess the gil invested into Skirmishorb Stones is safe for another month. Helios set reigns supreme as overall best in slot if done right.

Oh yeah, what's the verdict on "The activation time of all blood pacts will be reduced." Quicker blood pact execution or what?

Aye, I'm silently hoping for a staff with a ton of skill to be released in the near future so that we can reach that tier in a set that also caps perpetuation.

That said, we are able to get PD to 59 seconds now (580+ skill).

Oh, well now SMN can Sidewinder along with MNK, WHM, BLM, SCH, and GEO... Now I'm wishing they'd a left Morion Tathlums with their original MP Drain properties. Welp, just need a bow to pair this up with, toss on a Rune Arrow and we're good to go.

Not sure I'm getting the purpose of that Staff, other than trolling...

Sorry Garota, I'ma steal that one for the OF...
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/46564-Hello-Dev-team-what-were-you-thinking...?p=545799#post545799

No apology required, I stole it from Facebook's FFXI Group. :D

Oh, right, this one.
Apparently unless you're a Gearswap user, Summoner has become unplayable because macros are too slow.

Aside from the Name, Staff icon, and jobs, the stats on that are the exact stats on the Ilvl unity E.Bow

I expect that much, as well as an incoming fix soon.
But until then we'll have some fun with it.

They reduced it to the point that the vanilla macro system can't swap your gear fast enough to do BP Recast Time > BP Damage.

MP Costs:
Impact: 222
Blindside: 147
Regal Gash: 118

Blindside -> Garland of Bliss = Reverberation
Garland of Bliss -> Blindside = Distortion
Regal Gash -> Garland of Bliss = Fusion
Regal Gash <-> Shattersoul = Darkness

BP readying time seems like a WS now.

Curious how long the Broken Bloodpact thing will last then. Somebody already started a thread in the official forums. I wonder if it'll go unnoticed or ignored.

Just tried out some blood pacts... The execution time is exceptionally quick, however, if I really want to knock out some damage or get max duration, I'd hafta live with a 50 sec BP delay... Also, Impact looks like Comet. Guess I'm just gonna put away my Nirvana for now and pick up my handbell instead to do any of the new content.

After update BP activation is jsut faster but my lua isnt doing it right there, any idea what values do i need to change to modify lua to the new BP activation timer?

Can anybody check the japanese text description for Pouwhenua? Maybe we can see the real stats there.

I made a (hopefully) temporary set of windower macros that do the whole BP delay > activation > wait > BP gear by itself using wait 0.6 and it seems to work, if that's any help.

Now regarding the Blood Pact delay thing;
My own gearswap thankfully still seems to work fine, in solo situations at least.
I do however fear that when I do group events lag can cause issues swapping gear on time.

I can imagine that the job has indeed become completely unplayable for macro users.

Uh... what?

^ my reaction.
Woot?
I can feel quite a strong misunderstanding going on here lol

Oh well, at least I got to have a little fun on smn for ~4 months ( after dropping 20 mil on gear/reforges). Sad though, I really enjoyed it. I suppose there's hope that SE will unfix their BP delay fix.

Off to the porter moogle I go.....

Matsui announced they're going to fix it soon, BP activation delay's going to be 2 seconds.
Apparently he loves Summoners more than Dragoons.

LOLDRG! I wonder how soon they'll fix it. I mean, instant Blood Pacts is awesome, but not if you can't get Skill/Attack/MAB/Etc Gear on in time after BP Delay Gear. I remember when emergency maintenances were frequent following an update for the next 2 to 3 days following an update to fix bugs like this.

I was hoping for a swift response like this, but honestly didn't expect it. They have been buffing smn almost every other update it seems, would be a shame to kill it by making gearswapping so difficult.

And we all know Dragoon is and always will be at the bottom of SEs totem pole. Of course they love Summoner more lol!

I really like the short ready time, it's almost worth the pain of setting up Gearswap (insert generic "I hate Lua" comment). Going back to 2 seconds means it's only 1 second faster than before, but it's still an improvement so I can't complain.

I may end up setting up Gearswap anyway since my brain got into that mode and started thinking of the possibilities, like being able to use Globidonta Ring instead of Zodiac Ring for light/dark elemental siphons where Zodiac doesn't work for whatever reason.