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

That guide must be pretty old. That might make a decent hybrid staff until you can get a nice Grioavolr augment, but for multi-hit physical BPs like Volt Strike you'll want to use Gridarvor. Its +15% double attack more than makes up for the loss of BPD, and it has boatloads of acc/atk.

For Volt Strike it goes something like:

Nirvana > Gridarvor > Was +1 > Was > Keraunos/Grioavolr > Espiritus > Bahamut's Staff

This is SMN in a nutshell. You'll feel very weak until you hit that critical threshold of enough gear / job points / vorseals / food / knowledge of the job. For example SMN probably benefits more from HQ gear than any other job in the game, just because of the way the job works. You can hit good numbers with low job points if you have the right gear and other stuff working in your favor, but it's not easy. The correct COR & GEO buffs also make a huge difference.

Here's a little background: It used to be that SMNs could not strengthen their avatars at all really. We had no blood pact damage, pet:acc, pet:atk, etc. We could get like +10 through merits, and "good" gear was stuff like Sacrifice Torque (avatar:attack+3) which is pathetic by melee standards. So Blood Pacts were designed with huge multipliers to get around the problem of avatars having bad stats. This is also why SMN damage goes down less on really strong enemies, blood pacts were designed to work when the target's stats far outclass the avatar's.

Now fast forward to Adoulin era, they suddenly decided to start letting SMNs buff their avatars. Because the BPs were designed to still do good damage even with bad stats, when you start actually adding real stats to your avatar the damage skyrockets. This is why SMN starts out feeling ridiculously weak, and ramps up very slowly until you hit a certain point where it takes off and each bonus makes a huge difference.

It also kinda sounds like you might be focusing on the wrong categories. The blood pact damage category isn't the same as blood pact damage you get on gear, it's a bonus to base damage. So +3 blood pact damage means literally +3 damage, not +3% damage. Common mistake to make because it's poorly worded. It's the same with the avatar magic damage category, it isn't terribly good. I'd focus more on avatar acc/atk/macc. If you Conduit a lot, the Astral Flow and Conduit categories are great too, particularly the Astral Flow one. And, like you guessed, the gifts you get further on help too.

Gotcha,

Thanks for the tips. The content in question I was doing was Walk of Echoes # 4 against the Khimaria. I would BP, and i barely break 10k.. meanwhile friend is slamming 12k resolutions every 2 seconds with zero regard.

I have 600+Jp, He has like.. 150.

If you try to compare DPS against a melee in a casual situation, you're generally going to be disappointed unless you can one-shot it and laugh because he only had time to use 1 weaponskill before it died. Outside our 1hr, SMN will never be able to compete with the frequency with which melees can pump out weaponskills.

The benefit of SMN is that you don't have to deal with AOE or generally go anywhere near the mob. If your avatar dies or gets debuffed, just resummon it. It's a job for the patient chess player, not the aggressive checkers player. That, plus Conduit.

That said, I think you should be able to hit at least 20k without much trouble in that flux. Maybe it's an issue with your gear?

Would you be able to pop on sometime and maybe work with me ingame. We both appear to be Asura.

thanks for the guide, thinking about coming back and playing :) I got a lot of catching up to do lol

might just be lack of attack. Pet do require almost twice as much attack as a player to hit maximum damage. EDIT: This is also the main reason why GEO and COR boost damage so much.

Er, what? They do need a bit more (which is compounded by gear attack and attack buffs for pets being in much shorter supply), but it's not even 25% more, a far cry from "almost twice".

Sure no problem, you can send me a tell any time I'm in town

Pretty sure it was determined a long time ago that pet attack caps around 4x targets def where players only needed about 2.25x. That is almost double what a player needs. Seems you are right. I was not aware that pDIF was increased agains for players at some point.

Thank you very much, I will try to find you this weekend. Really appreciate the help :)

My pleasure, always love to talk SMN with folks :) Or any job I'm passionate about, really.

You should! Having a lot of catching up to do is part of the joy of coming back! It can feel overwhelming but just take it slow, enjoy the journey, yada yada...

Hi.

Against Reisen HELM most people i talk just says to go ramuh/volt strike on everything. I personally think the highest potential is ifrit/flaming crush so wondering if there is HELMs that can be done with flaming crush or if that option is prefered over ramuh/volt strike.

Thanks in advance.

Don't really want to piss on this beehive, but.. what is the barebones minimum required for "bandwagoning" ACburns? <,<

I would love to actually take SMN seriously but simply don't have the inventory space to do things right on my main, BUT I am sick and tired of being stuck at nearly the exact same point in getting my first aeonic since ~3mon after they were added to the game. On the other hand, I KNOW that I could wrap it up if I had SMN available rather than BST/BLM/BLU/THF/GEO..

I also have a SMN alt who I could use real gear advice for as well. XD Definitely entry level, but decent amount of UNM stuff and a few NQ ABJ pieces already, but I haven't been able to figure out stat priorities, which BP to use when, etc yet, so no idea if I've got right augs and whatnot. Frontpage guide here is quite out of date, so somewhat lost...

What's the best plan for JPing this job btw? I'm assuming I should get ~100 under my belt (like most jobs) before inflicting my noobness on others, is that incorrect?

I think the sets for smn are very clearly defined with sets given by pergatory and alistriana few pages ago. General rule is bp/da/acc for volt strike your more important bp against last tier, and bp/mab and anything you can get after those 2. Then add a bp delay- set in case you dont happen to finish during conduit, and a smn skill set if you want.

Edit: i forgot to mention a solid idle set too for jping. A good idle set and you dont need refresh buffs.

Nirvana is the final step and an impressive boost. Ive been parsing with non nirvana friend and with am3 ive been doing almost twice than him with volt strike.

About bp, your main one is volt strike and when you can flaming crush.

For jping, i think foolish not joining a party just because you dont have jp. Ask a friend then start with people that you know. One hand washes the other you know. And im not saying leeching but smn can help at any point. At start you can be suportive role, using diabolos mab boost/favor for refresh and suport mage setup, or hastega/crystal blessing/crinsom howl for melees. With proper bp set you will be below 30 secs so you can even work on opening/closing skillchain with bp, or with a good mab set, bursting also. Dmg is very good even without magic bursts trait.

SMN is a beast bursting, build a good set for that before physical.

For example, my alt has this so far:
Phys:
ItemSet 356808

Magic:
ItemSet 356811
BP recast -15/7, enough perpcost- in refresh set for free avatars w/o favor up. Was planning on getting her an Espiritus, but she's stuck with sparks staff atm since I have to do alllllll of COP on her now in order to unlock reforges, and have been busy testing Ambuscade. ^^;;

Main would be similar but also already has maxed Espiritus, Enticer's (still workable, right?) as well as gear that's shareable with BST (mastered, geared).. If I am not looking at HQ apogee, what else should I be aiming for? What paths should I be going w/ on Apogee/Espiritus?


I don't think I've ever encountered a single piece of gear specifically for pet MBD.. Do you mean just pet MAB/MAcc/INT? Will it be used in the majority of SMNburns? <,<;; I'm estimating 2x-3x gearsets before I actually have to start dropping things, like augmented Reisenjima gear..

Quick improvement would be do the quest for Gelus earring. Depending if you have a group for Kei or not, wuold be even consider esper earring if you dont do omen often or dont have plans to do.

I think merlinic hands wouold be the single piece with more potential to improve your set.

Recently i also changed my head and feet for physical to helios acc/bp/da and it seems a good improvement. Plus i think less frustrating augmenting skirmish gear than reisenjima.

Aside that i think its really unlocking oboro and monisette pieces for gridarvor, af body etc.

i would kick your alt if it tried to join my pt with that gear, that said....

gelos earring, merlinic hands, sancus sachet, elan strap, ambuscade cape are some good low hanging fruit


edit: you can skirt by with just this gearset and absolutely nothing else for 99% of content in game(conduit burn)
ItemSet 356813

Yes, pet mab gear, beware you need macc aswell on apex mobs.

Merit heavenly strike and you can do very good.

I would expect to get kicked if I tried to join a party on my alt. XD She is basically just how I planned to learn how to play SMN properly. I've got the macros and gearsets down, now time to actually start playing the job a bit. ^^

Thank you. That is exactly what I'm looking for. lol Can make almost make my own Was, can make Elan Strap, have merlinic dastanas, have some of the rest from BST already. Just need JP to be able to equip the sachet/Was now I guess. XD

Main's set atm, will work on Omen stuff, make a cape, and have to trade in BST for SMN earring:
ItemSet 356814
Enticer's = maxed
dastanas = BPD+8 Pet: INT+8 MAB+12 (Oseem hates me. This much took ~200x rocks..)

Should I throw a Grid together? I can make everything with mats on-hand.. Hmm, guess I'll make one just in case. It does look rather nice for phys stuff. XD

Hi.

Ive been struggling on the last 2 HELMs in reisenjima, Zerde and Albumen. While most of my wipes are more due to failed stun/failed sleep/bad luck/slow resction, against Albumen in particular i feel it is also a dps problem. Last 2 decent runs i had (thats when i managed to finish my conduit timer and not wiping at start) albumen dropped to a bit below 30% by the time astral conduit wore off.

Given i made some mistakes more likely (like not waiting perfect rolls, or having lost AM3 before engaging) my question is if albumen is particularly sturdier than the others helms or simply more evasive? Ive been using akamochi/fighting during day, just wondering if i should keep with akamochi or change to shiromochi plus drop my helios feet for af+2 for the extra acc. Volt strikes were varying between 12k 20k and 40k (this run in particular one smn took longer to get am3 while the others 2 lost their am3 during pop. Maybe the 40k was for the am3ed smn and 12k for the others? Is that the real difference between am3 and not am3?)

Thanks in advance.

Albumen is a MNK, it has Guard. 90% of the fails I see are due to all 3 Ramuh being in the exact same position, and all being guarded.

While SMN is the "easy button" strat, there still is (some) ability involved. The amount of "mistakes" as you put it, when doing conduit burns have to be minimized.

Thanks for answering.

This run in particular i made the smn standing in 3 dif positions and made sure that he didnt turn (started with valiance then elemental sforzo and didnt notice he turning during conduit)

20-25k should be your base dmg with a decent smn. With no guard procs. If your hitting 12k you are missing. Shiromochi should be your main food for helms. Change to more acc as well. Hope your using Grid and not Was.

Also AM3 lasts 3 min. Do your runs in the zone, not at 9. Pull a mob when your ready to pop. Smn's activate aftermath before the fight.

Wanted to take a moment to thank Pergatory. Finally was able to get together in game and he gave me a lot of advice, and helped me get a few pieces of gear that made a big difference with his LS friend Fumar.

Absolutely great guys, and I owe them!

Ty for the kind words!

@pantafernando. I would switch out helios feet to af3 for albumen. Hows your other gear looking like?

If you're not using Shiromochi, I'd use that before trying AF+3 feet. Those feet have good accuracy but they give up a lot for it.