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

Bleh! I wanna get an Espiritus, but I wouldn't know what path to follow for it. So far, my other notable staves are Nirvana, Kirin's Pole with Summoning+12, Keraunos with Elemental Siphon+25 BP Damage+8 Pet: MAcc+18.

So either I keep the Keraunos with Pet: MAcc+38 as is or get Espiritus with Summoning+15 and Pet: MAcc+30. I could also re-purpose my Kirin's Pole with this choice, or just toss it.

Another choice is to keep Kirin's Pole as is and augment the Espiritus to have a grand total of Pet: MAB+150 but lose out on significant BP Damage. Or I could aim for augmenting the extra Pet: MAB+25, DA & Crit +4%, BP Damage+10 on Keraunos and miss out on my current Siphon+25. (Or get a 2nd Keraunos)

And then there's the other choices to go after Espiritus adding Pet: MAcc+20 MAB+20 or Pet: STR+15 Atk+25 DA+4 to the already base stats of Pet: MAcc+15 MAB+120 BP Delay II-2 BP Dmg+3.

I need adult supervision!!!

Go the skill route on the first one (if you decide to get more).
The skill path not only lets you toss Kirin and helps Alexander, but also is the best staff for Impact.
So you'd only be gaining from trading out the Kirin.

I figured Impact was like the other magical bps, I don't remember seeing otherwise. It's affected by skill as well?

Also I haven't seen much talk about using a SMN in Sinister Reign.
My group uses a Nin and Smn as the only DDs, and goes extremely well. The Nin just spams self darks, and I MB Impact every time its up. The only nms that I have a real issue with are the 2 Arciela's and Teodor since they're magic resistant, but with the 2nd Arciela you can stun 4/6 of the Naakuals (all but Yumcax and Hurkan).

Just figured I'd throw that out there, since all I see are BST and RNG burns.

You can do Sinister Reign with a lot of setups, people just do BST and RNG because it's safe with pugs.

BST will also completely out damage SMN unless you're doing magic bursts, which requires, again, coordination you won't often see inside a pug.

The Impact statss down is affected by Summoning magic skill, Papesse posted about that, I believe it is in the older thread.

Aside from saving yourself an inventory slot! Mine are separate too, but I wish they weren't.

This is true, but it's a necessary evil. :) I carry around 3 myself, because getting the dream 5 SMN skill 5 BP dmg is rough.

The only bad part is that when you put your conveyance capes in your sack (to full time a CP cape), you have to reset your equip macros to each use the correct cape once you put them back in your inventory, because the game forgets which specific conveyance cape to use for each equipset. I really wish SE would fix it so that the equipsets would remember which specifically augmented piece goes in each slot if you decide to move them around in your sack/satchel/case/wardrobe, then back into your inventory.

Got my Espiritus and chose to go with path C: which is mp+50, pet mab +20 and pet macc +20. My alluvion staff has +17 pet mab and +8% bp damage and i have spent over 30mill trying to get either higher bp damage or more pet mab but have had no luck. The path i chose on Espi gave me +15 more pet macc and +23 more pet mab but lose 5% bp damage. I wanted to see my numbers on avatar nukes with this path first since i could always switch over to the path that has +30 pet mab if i wanted to by paying some silt. These were numbers with some of my bp's on mandies in ceizak just to compare with my current alluvion staff.

Heavenly Strike: 13,316 Keraunos
13,347 Espiritus

Impact: 12,120 Keraunos
12,324 Espiritus

Night Terror: 8,826 Keraunos
8,949 Espiritus

Judging from these tests a fully augmented keraunos staff would probably beat out a path C Espiritus. For me right now its a very slight boost in damage since i dont have a fully augmented keraunos. I could get an extra 10 pet mab by going with path A but i kinda dont want to lose the 15 pet macc. Also on path C the 50mp along with the 88mp already on weapon is nice for astral conduit use giving total of 138 extra mp and for some people depending on their current setup for astral counduit this might give them an extra bp before running out of mp and having to pop convert.

i am Revisting/rewriting my lua and noticed my logic is outdated. which lead to a few questions.

do you account for astral conduit? if so how?

im assuming gs is fast enough to put BP gearsets during the spell spam, especially for each BP since there is animation lock. (which i read there a trick to get past)

my logic has a list of TP affected BPs with a set as well a few others. so i figured id restructure it.

here is what i have


an else will acount for the physical spells, i just might have to add them.
if anyone can explain/ correct any mistakes with what has changed id appreciate it. im looking at the guide and there is no set for each of these types of bps.

Arcon, the mantainer of Timers plugin, is in the process of updating it.
I want to help him by providing him updated data so that the tracking of the SMN Wards can be accurate.

Something changed a few patches ago, not sure if the "SMN skill > Duration bonus" formula changed, or if they just raised the previous cap on such bonus, but something clearly changed.


Can anybody more informed than me post the old situation and the current one, so that I can inform Arcon and have him update Timers for all of us?
Thanks ;)

All they did was remove the summoning skill cap of 500 for affecting ward duration.

Summoning skill will continue to affect duration past 500, and a new cap is not known/accessible.

If you would like specific details on this, you can review the wiki page:

https://www.bg-wiki.com/index.php?title=Blood_Pact:_Ward

Thanks, will pass on the information!

I also went with Path C.

So the duration also grows beyond the 600 skill tier?
(According to my knowledge we should be able to surpass that amount now.)

I have not verified personally, but I also have not heard otherwise.

I actually am not sure of my current total of summoning skill. I've been running around getting tons of gear upgrades and haven't checked in a while. :|

I'm still quite a distance from the coveted 1200 JP's myself so I can't confirm it either right now, sorry.
None the less, I am still interested if people have the answer to that.

Just saw an Apogee Dalmatica +1: Path D at rank 15.
Summoning Skill +20
Enmity -6
Pet: Damage Taken -4%

We need another Gobbie Bag quest and/or increase in Mog Wardrobe. I'm actually in desperate need of MORE than 80 inventory spaces for SMN.

It's crazy.

thanks for the reply.
i forgot to mention i dont use Motenen's includes or templates. so i couldnt really follow that path with copy/paste. however seems we are in the same boat in terms of logic. im not sure either and i figured i asked since im not a main smn or experience smn.

i also would like to know what you come to for both astral sets/rules.

i think i didnt really explain myself in my last post, maybe it was the 12 hour of lua coding start at 12am. so i think ill just simplify the question. lol

ive concluded that we dont need a BP TP sets anymore as they arent in the guide as gear stats are a *** better than they ever have. is this accurate?

Liked and replied.

"Like" spree. Lets do this!

@Verda
Thanks for the updated timers.
I have my own version of custom timers in my SMN lua but I temporarily disabled it (except for PD) when Timers started tracking BPs.
Arcon said that should be "fixed" in the upcoming Timers update.



On another note now. Yesterday I had a very polite discussion with a competent friend. I told him my reasons, but now I'm starting to wonder if I could possibly have been wrong and fed him wrong information.
I was under the impression that when it comes to Nirvana vs perf aug Keraunos it was something like that (possibly changing according to buffs/debuffs, but I'm just talking in general)
Physical BPs = Nirvana > Keraunos
Magical BPs = Keraunos > Nirvana
Flaming Crush = Nirvana > Keraunos (difference being smaller than for Physical)

We kinda agreed on the first 2 points, but on the third point we didn't.
Was I mistaken? He claims he has seen Papesse and others suggest Keraunos for Flaming Crush, I remember quite the other way around but maybe I'm just wrong this time.

No, Nirvana for Flaming Crush.

Nirvana is also better for Magical BPs if you need the magic accuracy that Nirvana grants. Keraunos/Espiritus will do more damage, but you are trading off the accuracy.

I was right then.
But what is the mathematical explanation for this though?
When he asked me for a rightful explanation I could only say "I seem to remember reading about it" but I could explain why.

With the additional 2 levels. Which is quite the difference.
Of course of course! I wasn't talking about those specific situations of course ;)

Just a reminder that although Keraunos>Nirvana for magical bp's nirvana is still kept on for 1 second before being swapped out to Keraunos for the +2 level bonus and slight extra damage. I just cant confirm if still get the macc for it.

What I did for now is increase the value to 300, works the same essentially but caps the duration at 600 skill.
Personally I'll keep it at that until confirmations start coming that the cap goes beyond 600 and then I'll increase it to 350 or something.