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

Your helios will be always better than apogee for flaming crush no matter what augment you pick.

Path D is good for other physical blood pacts assuming you have the accuracy to land stuff.

Your enticer's will be better for all merit blood pacts as well.

Apogee slacks are not the best slot since other leg slots give so much more. Unless you get HQ for stacking set bonus I would use one of the other two pieces of gear you have.

I got a similar question.
Keraunos vs Espiritus

Keraunos
BP+8, DA/Crit+4, Mab+18 (total: BP+8, Macc+20, Mab+118, Crit/DA+4%)

Espiritus path C
MP+50, Pet: Mab+20, Pet: Macc+20 (total: BP+3, Macc+35, Mab+140)


Now I'm not sure why I'm even asking, pretty confident Espiritus is gonna win for magic BP (of course Keraunos is better for Physical), but regardless, putting here under my rough amount of BP and Mab from the rest of my gear (i.e. outside of weapon slot)

Total BP: ~61
Pet MAB: ~100

Judging from the fact atm I have a very low amount of Pet: Mab atm, this should reinforce even further the fact that Espiritus would win over Keraunos in my setup?
Is anybody able to calculate an estimate performance difference between Keraunos and Espiritus in my setup? Willing to see how big of a gap there is between the two.

I think you're probably right Sechs but I'll show the math.

You'll also have to factor in the avatar's native MAB of +40, as well as any merits and gifts you have. I'm assuming 10 more MAB from merits, and I'll do the math for max gifts (+36) to weight it slightly more in Keraunos favor since I think it's going to lose by a lot anyway. So that's 61 BPD, 186 MAB.

With Keraunos, you're looking at 69 BPD, 304 MAB.

1.69 * 4.04 = 6.8276

With Espiritus, you're looking at 64 BPD, 326 MAB.

1.64 * 4.26 = 6.9864

Looks like even with max gifts, the Espiritus should be doing about 2.3% more damage.

Thanks *a lot* for the path Pergatory.
Results are as expected but now I have a very precise estimation of the difference, way more than I could've asked for.

Thanks once more!

Finally got an Esper Earring form Legion today. That has to be the worst drop rate Ive seen on a SMN item in quite some time =(

Also, got Merlinic dastanas and crackows. What augments should I be looking to get on those with the BP dmg +10? Really not sure what the the stat caps on are that gear.

Currently have BP dmg +10, magic acc +10 and MAB +3 on hands. Feet Have BP dmg +8 and mab +14.

I don't see much talk of Grioavolr for a magical BP option. Is it actually not a good choice, or have people just not been talking about it much?

might just be cuz to compete with anything it would need perfect augments to beat out Espiritus, which is rather easy and cheap to obtain.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding formula here, but I feel like Grio should be murdering Espiritus with even moderate augments. Path A Espiritus offers 150 MAB and 3 BPD, but you can get up to 10 BPD with Grio, including extra MAB/macc and pet attributes.

Stat caps are hard on the gear because while it's not super uncommon to see BPD+10 or MAB+40, it's unheard of to see both in really high values. I think leaning more towards BPD than MAB is generally the right choice. So you're on the right track. ^^

And yes I agree with you about Grioavolr. I tried like 100 or so stones to get a good augment on it and eventually gave up without having gotten anything even *remotely* close to Espiritus. Ended up doing enhancing duration +10 for my WHM. I'd rather spend the stones on trying to get better Merlinic augments anyway.

*Edit:
Grio by default only has 115 MAB. A decent roll might be something like MAB+35, or BPD+10 MAB+10. So you're looking at either BPD+0 MAB+150 (worse than Espiritus path A) or BPD+10 MAB+125 (similar to a good Keraunos). You'd need a really crazy roll to beat the modern staves.

Since we are on the subject of Merlinic, How much weight should I be putting on other stats in the interim (while I'm on the road to bp dmg +10 and mab+ something decent). For instance, today I came across bp dmg+8, str+4, m.acc+12, acc+21 and mab+15 and had the chance to switch it out for bp dmg+9, str+4, m.acc+11, mab+13. My thought would be that the 2 mab and all the acc would be better served than the 1 bp dmg%, but I unfortunately can't take em out and test them both.

Don't get too discouraged on Grioavlr, just spam Fern stones for better chances at that high level of BP damage and hope you get a good magic acc and mab aug with it. I only used about 300 stones and got bp dmg +6, Pet: INT +4, Magic Acc +15, and MAB +28. When I calculated it for my gear, it beat out espiritus. The other thing you have to realize is 35 magic acc base with a chance to aug 40 more onto it and have that bp damage and mab is very needed on high level content, it takes an investment of time and/or gil but it is the best magic pact staff in the game for sure.

Oragel: You'll want to do something like this I just did for myself assuming as Pergatory said above a base of 86 with traits, gifts and merits.
Pet MAB:
base: 86
head: 35
neck: 7
body: 30
hands: 45
ring1: 6
feet: 35
staff: 143

total mab: 387

BP Damage:
head: 10
ear1: 5
ear2: 3
body: 7
hands: 14
back: 4
legs: 19
feet: 12
staff: 6

total bp dmg: 80

387 * 80 = 30960

Espiritus (or can do diff augs you get and add subtract accordingly), replace staff 143 mab and 6 bp dmg with 150 mab and 3 bp dmg:

(387 + 7) * (80 - 3)
394 * 77 = 30338

Now when you factor in I have 15 magic accuracy on the Espiritus, and 50 magic accuracy on Grioavlr it's not even a contest especially on higher level content, factor in again that my griovalr has a lot of room to grow aug wise and yes you should try for Grioavlr. bg-wiki states you have a 3% chance of a max aug in the fern stone category of augs, and you aren't guaranteed it will be bp damage, far from it. Still, getting a decent staff like this took me only 300 stones and you can farm them fairly easily or buy them.

Edit: I didn't represent this as % and just used the raw numbers but it is still accurate for comparison purposes.

To be able to eye bp damage, vs mab while auging, take your above numbers and do this:
Pet MAB / BP Damage = how many points of pet mab is equivalent to how many points of BP damage.

So in my example above:
387 / 80 = 4.8375
So I know 1 BP damage is worth about 4.8 Pet MAB and can use that when judging my augments. Of course, the second you change any gear the ratio changes but it's good for guessing without doing the math every time. So if I got BP damage +5 on my staff instead of +6, I would know that I would need about 5 more pet mab (so 33 instead of 28) on it to make up for missing that 1 bp damage.

Hope this helps.

Also, I tried the gear stated on the last page, kusamochi, and even using +1 in place of a few pieces, dia 2, am2, and both 1 hours and I still didn't get 22k pred claws, 20k at best and often less, on grasshoppers at #3 so either we're not on the same page at all or he remembered wrong or something, because it still wouldn't consistently 1 shot every time hah. Maybe the melee update will help here is hopin.

Had a few more questions.

How does Scintillating cape stack up against BP dmg +5 on Conveyance?

Are Enticer's pants good for any other Blood pacts aside from merit ones?

in my example above Scintillating would need 5 * 4.8375 = 24.1875 pet mab to beat out 5 bp damage for magic pacts that number will change based on gear, but unless you are lacking a lot of pet mab or have a ton of bp dmg from something usually conveyance wins. Scintillating has attack and crit chance on it too though so it's sort of harder to answer for flaming crush.

Enticer's are good for merit and impact, depending on how much TP your avatar has, and how many merits you have in your merit pact. Merit pacts get 400 TP bonus per merit level according to the wiki, and you can't break 3k tp with tp bonus according to tests done. This means if your avatar has over 1k tp, and you're using a 5/5 merit pact, tp bonus pants will do nothing for you, and at 350 TP for your avatar, you start wasting some of that 650 tp bonus for enticers so it's your call on the line to switch to say, apogee path D. If your avatar is meleeing, and can actually hit the mob, or you have companions roll on then you prob won't want to use enticer's with 5/5 pact, and trust me on hard stuff you want 5/5. For impact, enticer's get more mileage since there's no merits to give you 2k base tp. If you're spamming magic burst with conduit is one big time that enticer's can come into play, as you'll be at or near 0 pet tp almost the entire time. It should be noted those lines are even lower if you're using crystal blessing on Shiva, only 100 pet tp before enticer's starts being less useful and 750 pet tp before the tp bonus is doing nothing on a 5/5 pact.

Unless they changed this recently, (which I doubt) 5/5 in a pact gives 1600tp, 1/5 doesn't have a 400 bonus to it.

You're right on that, I tested it this morning on the level 100 mandies outside adoulin. I also verified that enticer's pants are indeed 650 tp bonus and that crystal blessing does apply to merit pacts. So that would make the lines 500 pet tp with crystal blessing before enticer's starts being less useful and 1150 before the tp bonus has no use at all, with it being 750 without shiva's crystal blessing on herself, and 1400 before it isn't useful thanks for pointing that out.

A slight correction to your math, you're not adding the initial 100% to both terms. For example 80 BPD means 1.8x damage, and 387 MAB means 4.87x damage, so it should actually be 487 * 180 instead of 387 * 80. ^^

Doing this math we get:
487 * 180 = 87660

494 * 177 = 87438

Similar results but the gap is smaller. And yes this can actually change the results sometimes if they're close enough! Which is the only reason I bothered to say anything because otherwise it's spot on.

This also results in the Scintillating Cape being a much more respectable cape, too.

If we take this one:
487 * 180 = 87660

Let's add 1 BPD so we compare perfect Conveyance (5 BPD)
487 * 181 = 88147

Now do Scintillating
503 * 176 = 88528

So for the set you actually mathed out, Scintillating is superior for magic BPs.

Can you explain the reasoning to adding 100 to both terms? I saw you did that above, and obviously if doing percentage stuff you don't want to make 87 mab mean a reduction is damage (.87) but have it add to damage (1.87), but it seems wrong to me to just add 100 to both terms as the formula listed on wikia is:

Assuming the base MAB is 1 and default MDB is 1 we'd have no need to add 100 to these terms, say you had 10 MAB and 5 MDB on the mob, that would give you double the base damage for your spell (assuming no resistances and mdt). Adding 100 to that would mean you'd want to add 100 to MDB too, 110 MAB vs 105 MDB though is not double the damage it is a 4.67% increase in damage, and I think the first is closer to how the game considers mab. BP damage isn't listed but I remember some saying it was another term multiplied and that's why we do this math in the first place, in which case 1 bp damage could be easily represented in the equation as 1.01 for a 1% increase in damage, and the MAB / MDB would be a 2 for a 200% increase in damage, or just be left as 10 and have the 10 * 1.01 divided by the 5 mdb after since the result is the same. I think something is still wrong, but I'd rather know what it is than be proven right as that's how you get better. I saw you did add above in your example the base 1, but my thought process is as I've just described. I'd like to know if it's right since I was thinking of making a javascript web based calculator to make this less manual calculations. Thank you for your feedback.

This is incorrect. At least for head and hands.
Apogee are best there for FC due to their acc native to them, which Helios lacks.

Literally the only Helios that aren't replaced by Apogee NQ are the feet and body.
Everything else is garbage compared to Apogee+1 and inferior to Apogee pieces. (Same MAB, same BPdmg, more acc/Macc)

The pants are a little wonky, you can get better/the same damage from magic from SR pants... But Apogee there are strictly better than Helios.
Depending on your other stuff, the SR pants can wind up being better than both.
Though for Burning Strike and Flaming Crush, assuming you're hitting your acc without them, Apogee will still be better than Helios.

EDIT: And I forgot the base BPdmg on the feet. So nope. Apogee is, again, strictly better than Helios there too.

So it's JUST the bodies in the NQ that can compare. Everything else of Helios is inferior to Apogee.
And Apogee+1 rules pretty much almost everything.

The "MAB/MDB" term in that formula is actually shortened/simplified.

Look here:
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Magic_Damage#MAB.2FMDB:_Magic_Attack_Bonus_.2F_Magic_Defense_Bonus

cMAB = 1 + (caster Magic Attack Bonus ÷ 100)

tMDB = 1 + (target Magic Defense Bonus ÷ 100)

MAB/MDB = cMAB ÷ tMDB

So yes if you have 10 MAB, and a target has 5 MDB, then the MAB/MDB term will be 1.1/1.05 = 4.76% increase over base damage.

While I'm not going to outright disagree, I will say you're completely ignoring the crit rate bonus on Helios. Going from Helios to Apogee, you're basically trading crit rate for accuracy. I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but I don't think it's a cut and dry "Apogee is superior" for Flaming Crush.

Thank you kindly for the calculation breakdown. That helps significantly!

I had just come back to say I got it, so thank you pergatory, glad to have someone double check my math.

On a related note, at least for me a lot of magic burst, well most these days is done in escha, so we'd want to add 22 MAB to the base there making the above for escha with 11/11 MAB vorseals to be:

(4.87 + .22) * 1.81 = 9.2129
4.99 * 1.81 = 9.2129
and Scintillating
5.15 * 1.76 = 9.064

So that would be why my testing in escha seemed to confirm what I thought, so depending on gear and vorseals you could end up with better optimal sets both inside and outside of escha >.> Pain. Also you're more than welcome Oragel :)

For eyeing augs this changes in the example set
4.87 / 1.80 = 2.672 mab needed to replace 1 bp damage in the example set outside escha and
4.99 / 1.80 = 2.772 mab needed to replace 1 bp damage inside escha (with 11 mab vorseal)

Is Fenrir's Impact special dmg? It goes through Magic Shield when Anymone used it (Hydra)

Oh I never even thought about vorseals... good point!

u wot m8?

This is news to me!

Impact is definitely darkness damage, so it should count as magical. I know merit BPs are weird in some ways (like bypassing shadows) but this seems very strange and requires further testing.

Yeah, I thought it was odd myself. Try it out on Anymone in Escha-Ru'an unless his shield is somehow different (other spells had the typical Resist!)

Actually edit here is the wiki on magic shield which he puts up with polar bulwark:

Also he is really weak to dark magic it seemed to me I remember doing a 32k impact without magic burst before.

The Magic Shield isn't like a stoneskin its a duration and blocks all spells. Wasn't aware of BPs bypassing it so that probably explains it.

There's a few things that work like that, such as dolores and seiryu hate mechanics too, where even though it's magic damage it bypasses things. Conflag strike too, if you're doing AA GK, and doing a magic setup will totally bypass his MDT since it's considered breath damage and that made that fight way easier for the group I was with, though I have also beat it with a melee setup. A few other examples are the dvergr in sky is really weak to pred claws and volt strike, and old shuck and belph in reisenjima take volt strike really well, and for Caturae t1 you can do every damage type but ranged, so you only need a ranger trust and you are set (assuming you aren't doing a sc and they dead already). You might've known all that, but it would be nice if more people considered summoner's versatility as a strength in party setups because it is not uncommon for summoner to have an answer where a strict dd or mage only setup might fail, though you play BLU so I'm sure you understand how versatility can really help. Come to think of it, I wonder if BLU spells also bypass magic shield?

Just got done spamming Bashmu for LS event. Impact definitely gives 0 f*cks about Magic Shield. Was nice damage as well.

Btw, if anyone cares I dualboxed wrathare with the following setup:

* Sparks Gear GEO, capped magic skill but not gear obviously, Bolster Geo-Languor and Indi-Malaise
* Gessho, for blink tanking since the rabbit has endeath
* Luzaf, who quickdraws the element the mob is weak to (thunder)
* Iroha II who will do a self skillchain and always procs despite acc requirements, if you build her tp up a bit beforehand. Will have one for both Lightning and Light during one Conduit.
* Yoran-Oran for single target heals and -na's.

Prebuff with hastega II, earthen armor, frost armor, aerial armor, enthunder, and ecliptic howl and ecliptic growl

Use rolanberry food. Let npcs prebuff on fodder.

Pop and immediately run back, cast bolster, geo-languor and indi-malaise and run into range with geo

Astral flow, apogee, and shock squall. If iroha 2 still hasn't done her self chain when that wears, shock volt strike, it will stun, when that wears if she still hasn't self chained shock squall again. if you built tp right she should have self chained by now when you see her start her own multi-step chain, conduit thunderstorm over and over. Midway through use one shocksquall again to lock the bunny in place and prevent him leaving the bubbles. By the time conduit wears you should have killed it.

Went 1/3 with first two tries on other setups. Happy hunting. It's much easier with others but was a fun thing to do. I know SCH can solo it so I might try that sometime w/o GEO and timing stuns on his carrot.

Yeah I knew those things with the exception of Conflag on GK, I found that out today and was pretty impressed.