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

Can solo warder of love on smn but requires bit of luck. I pop him on the clinoid island. When you pop him have trust tank get agro then head to the portal to have it reset. Come back in and you have like 3mins or so to do some buffs. Find it and get close but dont agro. Pop astral flow and use perfect defense so dont get killed by adds or aoe. Quickly summon ifrit and agro him. Then pop astral conduit on him and if ifrit does not die should be able to kill if you well geared. Wish when do astral conduit pets you summon have the effect as well. I used akamochi food. I do not use warcry as it uses valuable time of perfect defense. Make sure when use perfect defense have on your smn skill gear to get max possible time with your current gear. I think right now you need 600skill to get 1min worth of perfect defense.

Thank you so much ! That was just shorcuts add-on....

This post should be a thread, and stickied. +1 to you kind sir. too often, gems like this one are oft buried in the middle of the Guide thread between an outdated first post and too "last patch" stuff on the last 2-3 pages.

Let's make it more visible for newer summoners!

Any chance someone has had the time to update the most recent gear sets, or is the sets on page 1 still most beneficial? currently thinkin about HQ apogee, but dunno about blowin 200mil+

Do you have awesome Helios sets yet? HQ Apogee would blow out the water anything out there aside from a top notch helios set. Except with helios, your price tag could be lower.. but it can also be much higher. At least Apogee isn't random.

I'm literally like 1-2 MAB, 1 crit and 1 BP damage from cap on helios. just noticed there is new pieces and was wandering if someone had them mapped out yet on sets, maybe so i wouldnt have to waste anymore time farmin stones and getting augments uped xP

There's no comparison.
Apogee+1 is strictly, 100000000% BiS for damage.
Period.
When comparing without regard to the set bonus, sure.... It's not SO very much better than perfect augmented Helios..... (Except even then it is. That 1%BPdmg and 5MAB add up quickly.)
But throw in the set bonus, and you have a full 10% more IN ADDITION TO all the other higher stats.

Apogee+1 is the current (and likely ever) end-all-be-all when it comes to BPdmg.

ALL HQ set has 25 MAB, 17 BP damage over perfect helios. But it loses the 20% crit hit. If one doesnt even have Helios... there is no question where to put your savings. If one has near perfect helios... I'd wager the money is better used towards building Nirvana.

To me the question is more, when you get them.. which path... I wonder if going path C one everything, and D on legs is worth it since Flaming crush gets benefits from both the atk and the mab.

For ref:
A: MP+80, Pet Mab+35, BP DMG+8
B: MP+80, Pet Att+35, BP DMG+8
C: Pet Att+25, Pet Mab+25, BP DMG+8

Ok.. Was tryin to see if 1200 gift was ever figured out. Tried to read but kinda tiring and hard on a phone lol

NQ apogee is largely better to get than helios because it is so goddamn hard and expensive to get those perfect augments. You will be losing points in BPd or MAB/ATK or you'll be spending what will amount to an Apogee +1 piece or two.

It's much cheaper and easier to get apogee NQ head, hands and feet, the tier 1 and tier 2 NMs are largely easy to do, a proper AF/AC spam will ruin them, and they're fairly easy to get pops to do.

Legs you'll do fine using Enticer's for all pacts. it's one BPd less than a perfect helios, but makes up with the tp bonus and crit.

Apogee Body abjuration is a pain in the *** to get, don't waste it on a NQ. *** vir'ava forever, you will not be able to shout group him. You'll probably do best with convoker's +1 (it's a shame Glyphic has no BPd).



Crown you can find as low as 20m. Hands, legs and feet are around 40-60m, body as high as 75 to 90m. The HQ set is well worth the investment and should be considered the second step behind getting Nirvana. if you had infinite gil, 2x HQ head, legs hands. 3x body and feet (D path best in slot +skill). D path Feet, HQ or NQ, beat out *** Marduk +1 for skill, something that hasn't been usurped since pre-adoulin!

Only real questions left is if D path legs out perform path B for phys pacts or FC and if path C on all 5 HQ is better than stacking MAB for flaming crush.

I'd wager you get better result with the apoge there just based on BP dmg+ that you are missing on Helios. The crit% is not what I was hinting at since we know HQ set being better than Top helios...

My Question is: Is path A or path C better in general... (AKA my first piece should be what?)

My gut feeling is that path C is going to be best for Crush, however, you'll be losing out on MAB when doing stuff like Heavenly Strike... Additionally, the extra MP on Path A, might get you 2-3 more Bloodpacts in Conduit.

I really hope that is the case, cause if anything... INV SPACE!!

i was comparing the cost/time of buying apogee pieces and eschalixirs +1/+2 (or farming it all) versus the sink to get perfect 7/30/4 helios. I'd definately still suggest getting head and hands done with Apogee over Helios due to the acc/macc on the apogee pieces. Helios pants might be better than apogee A due to their macc, And Apogee feet are better due to the extra BPd.


while enticers is a bit of a tradeoff in damage, i still suggest a perfect aug enticers for summoners, especially non nirvana summoners due to the extra macc and acc it has. The only thing better would be BPd/Macc helios, but i'm wary to suggest to anyone especially non billionaire 1%er smns to go down the aug route.


I've fought and struggled with clearing vir'ava a bunch, had my voodoo dalmy lined up for weeks before getting the abjuration.
Failed setups i've tried and why:
PLD, GEO, BST, BST, SMN, WHM. Geo couldn't land debuffs, bsts and i couldn't damage enough to take down before second charm attempt. any zerg rush with a pld holding thru 1-2 charms requires a strong line of DD and even stronger and consistent debuffers. without them the damage falls sharply.

Papesse's smn, rdm, geo, cor, thf, pld setup: Any halfassedness in the rdm, geo or cor absolutely drops damage from 30k to ~11k, making it impossible to kill. This includes rdms unable to land frazzle and silence, geos without capped strength bubbles and cors unable to quickdraw consistently. I cleared this once and lost 4 times, pickup groups just don't have consistency. the other issue is consistency in mewling lullaby rotation, it needs practice to set up when you should start it, and consistency in keeping it going as well as a 30 second recast. When i see people *** about his output, i see idiots who don't realize how much the entire setup is built around maximizing his potential.


The setup i won with consistently was BLM, GEO, SCH, WHM, and either blu, brd or rdm. Using august during the double exp campaign is practically a must since without it he does risk being oneshot completely. Sleepga is essential and BLM stands the best chance of survival when the pets spawn short of bringing a beefier meat shield to pop. I also believe the gimmick about him involves the boss eating one of the two purple pets since they blue proc him, they also hint at this with their poison aura.. If he eats a player though, it levels him up.

New nirvana ower reporting in! ^^ (Keep on talking)

Congratulations!!!

I don't use RDM in my setup for Vir'ava. As for Mewing Lullaby, have you tried to position yourself so Cait Sith will pop next to Vir'ava? It makes things slightly more practical without having to rely on the Assault command everytime but yeah, pickup groups are often horrible.

Another thing about Helios is if you do it right, you can end up with more than just the set you're working on.

I recommend starting with Snow stones. That way if you end up with, for example, high pet:macc instead of high pet:mab, you can set that piece aside for a debuff set. Then just purchase a new piece of Helios to start augmenting for pet:mab.

I also did this a few times when I got good pet:haste rolls on pieces I hadn't invested a lot of Snow stones into yet, I would set those aside as idle pieces and build new ones for blood pact damage.

So even if you spend 20 mil on a Helios set, you can often end up with a lot more than 5 useful pieces.

Any use for Evans Earring in -perp sets, or should I toss it? My Moonshade is TP Bonus/ATK and I don't have Nirvana.

If you have one, and your moonshade isnt refresh.. not much else you can wear as an idle / perp earring. It can open option for more pet acc / haste or pet dt in the idle.pet set if it lets you cap perp while openning another slot.

I don't know what your perp staff is, but for example, apogee feet nq is -8, evoker ring -1 gridarvor -5 is already all you need.

Is the 99 JSE staff worth getting or would it be best to hold out for augs on skirmish staff?

You mean Gridarvor?
It's still an excellent idle staff.
I'm confident you can get better things with Keraunos (given how you can cap perpetuance without the staff slot, meaning you could put haste and other stats on Keraunos) but it's kinda up to you wether you wanna spend the gil, time and patience to play roulette or not.

I went with Keraunos -6 Perp, BP dmg, and Pet: Mab on mine for 2 reasons: Less inv slots and less need to change staffs around means more TP I can use when soloing either for Myrkr or setting up SC...

With staff and boots and evokers ring, perp's capped. Opening gloves for Regimen Mittens / Artsieq Cuffs for melee / dt on pet... (or Asteria for refresh)