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

As a suggestion I think it would behoove summoners to have certain abilities and features of avatars broken down so they a bit of fore knowledge what to use in certain situations

ie

Nether Blast: Ranged Single target that is very good for resistant mobs you cannot nuke very well with merit bps

Night Terror: Same features of Nether blast but not ranged, but hits harder than Nether

Somnolence: The only ward ability that does damage and heals it slightly(but it's lol and could only recommend if the other ward abilities aren't going to work and you have to keep diabolos out)


I can do a breakdown of avatars and by their abilities if you'd like and you can edit it as necessary later on but the problem because of how this job was written by a scatterbrained dev is that useful tidbits like these get lost in translation unless someone has used it and doesn't share, forgets, and/or quit.

An interesting tidbit to know also that there is a 6 second charge time for all abilities except shocksquall which is half a second.

Hi,
Don't know about anyone else but I think that would extremely helpful for beginners like me who can easily overlook some really useful BP's. There doesn't seem to be a lot of "situational use" info at the wikis either, so yeah. Spread the knowledge please! :)

I haven't read too much of this guide myself so forgive me if anything I post here has been repeated elsewhere. This stuff is probably stuff any SMN should learn about the job.

Physical pacts seems to have a ridiculous high accuracy floor against targets. Kegsay's testing from years ago showed physical Blood Pacts have a minimum of 70% accuracy against mobs.

Predator Claws: Best multihit physical BP - its 3 hits and has chance to critical

Spinning Dive: Best single target physical BP - Single hit, chance to crit

Flaming Crush: seems to be a hybrid 3 hit physical and magic attack attack. This attack usually deals high dmg to mobs weak vs fire, such as bombs.

Lunar Roar: aoe dispel, can snag to effects on target and doesn't miss iirc. If it says it had no effect, mob had nothing to dispel but there is never a message in the log saying what was dispelled. (This could be how I have my filters set up though)

Chaotic Strike: 3 hit attack with a chance to proc stun on every hit, the effect of stun is cumulative but gets overwritten by pretty much any other form of stun out there. Was useful before Shock Squall was in existence.

Heavenly Strike - Ignores utsusemi and blink, although this might be the case for all Lv75 merit Blood Pacts.

Geocrush - Can stun mobs in addition to its magic dmg.

I just wanted to let you know guys know I am currently working on an avatar breakdown thanks to Gimp's suggestion.

I've been a bit busy and forgot myself I'll submit mine too only it'll be a special theme. Stay tuned!

Avatar section started. Still a bunch of stuff to add though. I'm pretty much filling it during the slow times at work!

Thanks again for the amazing guide, it gave me goals to work towards and got me testing different stuff that I may have thought little of earlier.

I was wondering about food stuff though, is there anything useful for a SMN out there. I've been mostly buying Coffee Muffins but perhaps there's better stuff out there? I tried searching the interwebs but came out with nothing, would be glad to get some input on this!

Food for mages has always been pretty weird. Muffins are a good choice. You can either focus on max MP or cookies for HMP. If I plan on doing some Shattersouling I'll bust out Curry or Sushi depending on what I fight. I've even used a Taco when doing kite fighting before.

tl;dr Muffins are always safe :)

Not sure if Balsam/Astralwatcher better than fully augmented Yaskomo. Isn't +20 M.Acc on the avater better than an extra 3 or 4 MAB?

Guide broken? I've tried opening the spoiler tags in 3 different browsers and nothing is happening.

I had the same problem. The sets are still there if you view page source, but the spoiler tag script seems broken. :/

Weird the spoilers work properly in preview but not when I post. I'll try to see what else I can do.

I put all the information in a node. I'm not sure why the spoilers stopped working but its a giant block of words now. Sorry about that but at least the information is there.

Anyone tried yet the Avatar lv.113 item yet? Your comments:

It's a really great item. No reason for Esper Stone anymore. If you're going to play SMN make sure you get the Dashavatara Sash(Ammo) A.S.A.P.

How do you get a Dashavatara Sash? :D

You can buy it for 30,000 Menace Plasm after getting the Semi-Pure Celadon Yggzi Key Item from either the Wamoura(Tax'et) or the Gnat(Mastop) in Ceizak Battlegrounds as a Field monster spawn or in a Cirdas_U fracture from Ceizak Battlegrounds.

Edit: Wrong zone ><

I also did some testing on Blanched Mandragoras using Diabolos with and without the Dashavatara Sash (should be sachet but w/e):

Diabolos' nether blast on a blanched mandragora did 600dmg off, but with it equipped it dealt about 1k dmg, so i'm assuming the sash gave it the equivalent of +30~40 MAB?

Also Diabolos took regular hits of 30 and crits of 80 with a low evasion rate, but with it equipped his evasion was around 85% and only took 15 dmg regular hits and a max of 40 dmg from a crit but i've only seen a crit once every 5-6 minutes or so. With noctoshield up the lowest Diabolos took was a 4 and highest was a 25 crit.

Also increases Diabolos' regular hits from a 30~40 to a 90 with an increased crit rate, which dealt 180dmg. Also accuracy rose from roughly 40% to 85% at summoning skill 350 base (400 with gear + merits)

Summary: Get it asap, it's like a semi-alternator for your avatar ^_^b

Does the avatar's level increase or do its stats increase to ~that of a 113 version of itself?

I'm curious if it increases warcry from ~11.3% to ~12.9% or the damage from enfire.

Did Hurkan today. I have 113 ammo slot, circlet, yaskomo's (level 5),all the bells and whistles. Heavenly strike was hitting for minimum 4400, with a max of over 5800! Other smns in my party were hitting for about half that with their heavenly strikes. The gear is VERY worth it, IMO. :)

I watched a smn in delve hitting for 4k at first I was like what the hell is a smn doing in delve wasn't to bad must have been friends with the guy forming the CB group lol.

Any chance you can put a lower end set for the Blood Pacts? Mostly for people who cant do Delve, Legion, and there aren't many VW groups anymore.

Something like this? Really not much gear outside of most events lol.

ItemSet 308116

I wouldn't include the Arch-Ultima feet, seeing as literally no one ever does Arch-Ultima, I'm a career SMN and have all the best SMN stuff *minus* that because it's impossible to find people to do it. My linkshell isn't interested, and no one responds to shouts for it. Which is a shame, because Arch-Ultima has a lot of great unique stuff that is best in slot for some mages (best stoneskin pants, for example)

Your situation doesn't means/reflects everyone's else situation, specially on all servers.

Yea something like that. What is the next step below the boots though? Relic Boots +2?

They were asking for a low end set for people who can't do event X, Y, and Z. What makes you think they'd be able to do Arch-Ultima? Those feet are definitely part of a "high-end" setup.

Relic+2 boots for physical pacts and Caller's+2 for magical, unless you want the +5% magical critical hit rate which I personally don't think is worth it (I prefer the magic accuracy from caller's+2 feet, plus extra piece for set proc if you're still using other empy+2 pieces)

Supposing Dashavatara Sash gives big amounts of Accuracy and M.Accuracy to the Avatar, similar to how Alternator does that for Automatons, I was wondering to swap my 5/5 Avatar Macc merits into 5/5 Avatar Attack merits.

Opinions?