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

For SMN specific purposes, the only stats on new gear so far for this update are Avatar: "Blood Pact" damage +7 on Inyan. Crackows +1 and All magic skills +18 on Inyan. Dastanas +1. Both which are underwhelming compared to other options available. Lamassu Mitts+1 have Smn Skill+21 which beats the new Dastanas and Helios, Apogee, and Merlinic boots all outclass the new Crackows.

All of that is true, but for a magic evasion set it'd be king. We've all had those times when something with amnesia or paralyze or petrify comes after us after a tank trust dies and our resummoned avatar doesn't have hate yet, or might not be able to get it at all and we gotta deal with it face to face. Living through that or not determines if you win the fight so I think it's a very valuable set, could also lend us survival if we want to solo Avatar fights etc too, AF has a huge range and just EA itself isn't enough to let you live on VD.

Just got done messing around with the healing pact adjustments.
Healing Ruby II was curing 1032 with next to no TP and 1302 with 3k TP. Whispering Wind was curing for 819 with and without TP. Levi didn't seem to fare much better @ 655HP cured with no TP.

EDIT: The adjustments seem nice but honestly doesn't feel useful unless you already have Carbuncle, Leviathan or Garuda out for something else anyway.

Those are nice heals, enough to keep those avatars out longer or make a difference in fights like teles when dia aura pops up. Were you using apogee gear when you used the pacts? Unless they changed this too, avatar max hp affects healing potency.

For those interested I made this last night, less than 60 second Old Shuck kill using SMN SMN GEO. GEO has idris, both SMN have mythic, and only one SMN used conduit. AM2 was put up at the start and akamochi food was used. Thank you tozi and jopa ~

Good job, dude. It's always nice to see SMN tearing into new ground much easier.

Thanks man :D

Ever since job points in rov and apogee/merlinic we are arguably the biggest source of spike damage from our two 1hr abilities, our only weaknesses are really amnesia and other hard counters like phys/mag shields.

My only complaint is storing merits to swap merit pacts...

This would be a great implementation.

For magic mobs maybe, but SMN still isn't the best spike damage in town. For physical BST and WAR 1 hours have us beat on most if not all, for starters both last 2 times as long and neither have mana requirements or the issue of dealing with running out of mana mid 1 hour.

To compare, BST is AoE and ours is single target and Astral Conduit lasts 30 seconds where unleash lasts 1 minute. Using Run Wild also gives them a huge boost in damage and they also boost their physical moves with TP, unlike Summoner. For WAR, Resolution Mighty Strikes with afterglow'd Rag has been reported to do 88k physical damage, and they can use a WS about every 3 seconds properly geared and if they can skillchain too it's absurd. To boot, WAR can probably kill it without 1 hour.

I'm not knocking SMN I love it, but it's important to stay accurate in what we say about it too. The only advantage we have over above is being able to 1 hour magic bursts well. BST can but not to the degree we can. I agree having to swap merit pacts all the time is a giant pain though especially since that is heavily tied to gil making these days.

I also have to comment that often for any significant damage at all we are tied to using our 1 hours, and that's not fun (my Belphagore solo video is over 10 mins long, where BLU can spam 2 min fights on it, essentially killing it 5x as much as us). By the time you reset, get back to Reisenjima or whatever a lot of groups can have killed 2 or 3 things in the time it takes waiting on you, so it's far from perfect or ideal but I shared because it's also good to let others know SMN can do some endgame pretty well, if you setup for it. It's slow or even sometime cannot be killed though with SMN without 1 hours and in those cases which is most the time, our support lacks and so does our dps, and as I've explained we're usually not even the best 1 hour choice, I push SMN because I love it and it's a fun job not because it's top of any lists, and I hope that mine and others contributions and testing on the job can help close the gap and get more people playing SMN.

Last I checked though, if there's double digits of SMN players online you're lucky, it usually hovers around 8 or less on Bahamut, even when over 1000 people online. Sure it's fun to gear up to the teeth, 1 hour and destroy something. But that's obviously not compelling enough to get people playing the job, you need consistency and to be an asset to a group all the time not every 45 minutes or after spending 5+ mins between fights zoning a ton for a reset. SMN can do a lot of things, it is versatile, but other than magic burst 1 hours, it's still not "best" at anything and without a definable niche that's useful all the way through endgame, coupled with the time investment to gear and even get the summons for the job I can't help but feel it will continue to be looked over. I can also with a GEO kill the tiger WKR in about 60 seconds, with Ifrit since it's lower level, maybe I'll make a vid of that too. My fear is people will think you can do that on anything... when it's incredibly situational (try even just doing that to Tojil for instance). SMN still needs looked at, we can do crazy stuff with 1 hours isn't a great job identity especially when other jobs can do it better.

No, I did not.

Pretty disappointed with the SMN stats on the Inyanga set.

If they wanted to give us half hearted stats. might as well give us -perp or - pet dt on head/hands or feet so I can retire one of my skirmish pieces and take advantage of the extra M.Eva =/

The Fast Cast body is probably the nicest thing for SMN as it is now BIS for casting pets and should help with pet swaps.

aug'd merlinic or warder of courage fast cast are also 13% fastcast, but ya this is really nice for people that don't have one of those (never even seen WoC one drop and max aug pretty rare).

Don't underestimate the magic evasion it's the most valuable thing in the piece, most magic evasion of any 5 pieces in the game. For comparison idris vex + attune is 250 magic evasion (macc down and meva up) and is used in a ton of endgame fights to not only grossly reduce damage but avoid status affects even landing. This set has 575 magic evasion where our empy set has 365, that's 210 more magic evasion. So you're basically walking around one set away from a free vex/attune vs a reforged set if you include the high amounts of INT and MND too (122 INT/MND vs 184 INT and 179 MND adding up to 62 more magic evasion). Ambu gear is meant to be niche use and help returning players, it's not just a niche use, it's an amazing niche use that you should always pack with you. Wearing it you'll rarely have status effects land on you at all even from high tier mobs.

Recommended to have Fenrir's favor out at the same time and run around laughing maniacally that they can't touch you.

This made my day.
{Yes, please.}

It should be aparent now to everyone that these sets are all high-acc pieces with two single buffs and a drawback. (Respectively: Sulevia's DT&DDstat for haste, Hizamaru Evasion&DDstat for attack, and Inyanga Meva/MDB/MDT&magic stat for slightly lower than normal haste and no MAB. Skadi will probably be like Inyanga but with PDT. Morrigan will be a nuke set, dunno what kind of drawback though.)
Mainly useful for people who just returned or are new, as Abjuratory and Reisenjima gear tends to be better. (Though there's always the exceptional piece like the WSdmg pieces and Inyanga's head, body and pants for the jobs that makes use of those effects.)

I mean, Inyanga Crackows are really good until you get some Helios and then Apogee/+1. 1% more BPdmg over the RF1+1 shoes.
It's really good...
Just not for any of us who already are on Apogee.

I just wish they had kept the shoes to have idle buff (Acc/Atk and haste). Would have been more universal and more worthwhile as the noob can use it, as well as the veteran. (Makes me think the new Skadi hands will have TP bonus instead of pet haste. We'll see.)

Tbf yeah, I'm kinda disappointed they didn't keep the Haste/attack on the feet =/

Helios reeeeally shouldn't be considered viable anymore. The random aug gamut is shittier to do now since the gearsets largely lost their usefulness, most newer summoners can just get in at apogee and merlinic from the t1s and work up from there.

I was thinking of making some Helios for Avatar auto attacking at least. Haven't done much Familiar augmenting on Merlinic, though, so I don't know if it can surpass Helios for that purpose. 30 Acc, 8 DA and 6% Haste on a single piece looks hard to beat, however.

It is good a bit better than the AA MR gloves, you would find the situation you wanna do that with 5 pieces rare though, especially if you can use AM3. The problem with auto attack sets for SMN and going full out on them is you have both perp to worry about and very high mp cost for many pacts so if you're idling in a set to help the avatar auto attack better, past a certain point you'll run yourself out of mana.

There is solutions to that of course but, the pay off is maybe 200-300 dps w/ am3 up on something your avatar can hit, and for that me and a few other SMN have tested that making a melee set for the master has better payoff. It does have some use though, dangerous NMs you don't wanna get close to, or if you want to build up your avatars TP quickly between Rages/Wards for either a magical damage pact which gets boosts from pet tp, or for a healing ward which also does. At some point this falls off too though, unless you get torpor and drachen roll.

I've been meaning to make a pair of helios gloves so I can cap pet haste (with am3 and garuda haste 2 herself and a bean daifuku she can get crazy, still can't get delay cap on an avatar tho). So ya it's something worth doing but it's also something not many do. The pets stats for merlinic augs aren't well recorded yet, they very well could surpass helios and I'd be surprised if they couldn't, but helios has the advantage of being less random.

The problem with getting pets stats on merlinic is that crit rate, double attack, haste, perp cost, BP delay and BP dmg all share the same slot, so you can't any combination of the two on the same piece.
I've seen DA and crit values go as high as +5. I know ive seen pet haste +5% before as well.

If you want DA haste and acc on the same piece though, you are pretty much forced to use Helios.

Hmm ya that's a good point. The only thing you could gain is DEX or STR so maybe a very high acc piece with pet DEX and Pet Acc both then either haste or double attack.

I've been getting a few Apogee abjurations lately... How many pieces of the Apogee set(+1) are still best in slot/good to use?

I'm at 4/5 Apogee+1 and use all 4 pieces. The only piece I'm missing (and actively trying to make) are the Mitts+1. That being said, I still use my Merlinic hands with BP DMG+10 and other augmented stats. With perfect augments, I'm pretty sure the Merlinic may beat out the full BP DMG set bonus from having all 5 Apogee+1 pieces.

I'm OCD though and will still make the full set anyway.

Yeah Apogee Mitts +1 will never beat Merlinic. About all they'd be good for is debuff BPs, minus Impact and Conflag Strike. For the latter two, I'd probably still use Lamassu for the skill.

Other 4 pieces are all very useful, though.

Is that including the native 5 BP damage or +10 from just the augment? Most I've seen is 7 in a few hundred stones.

Yeah, the +10 is from the augment not the base stats. So 5 + 10 + other stats. I use Fern stones mostly for this.

I'm actually still not done to be honest. My stats are good but not perfect.

The story of everyone's Reisen gear. Lol.

Thanks for the clarification.

Sure, you bet!

I think BP DMG+10 is the highest possible for Merlinic hands, if anyone can confirm this.

Yes i have got BP +10

Yep confirming as well. I've got BPD+10 Pet:MAB+29 on my hands currently, for a total of BPD+15 Pet:MAB+49.