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

Thank you for this!

I had the Evokers ring before my SMN was even level 40 because it looked really great.

So the Empyrean set will be my goal + Assuidity Pants.

The one pieces in the Beckoners set that I am a little shaky on is the gloves, are those worth it or would I be better off with the Glyphic (Relic) gloves?


Again, thanks to everyone for all of these suggestions.

Glyphic, hands down.
Beconder's gloves are a macro piece, at best.

Go for Glyphic first, af3 hands are still just a mana cede macro piece.

Thank you for the quick responses!

Another random question.

Do Avatars TP often? If so, which SP BP should I master? I know that having 1 point in each is ideal but which one will I most likely be using more often.

I still keep my old opinion that picking 2 of them that don't conflict with one another and 5/5 them, is the stronger option for group 2. It's really rare to come across a mob that would resist both of those merit BPs and you'll be dropping a large chunk of damage potential just for those very rare occasions. It's more likely you'll come across a mob that resists your single 5/5 then you're left with your 1/5 BPs.

You won't always get a chance to build enough TP to make up for being 1/5 especially when you get closer to 30s BP recast.

It's usually nice to have a merit BP on an avatar you use a ward for frequently so you have the option of buffing then throwing out a bit of damage with the same avatar. For a while now I've had Wind blade and Thunderstorm maxed out (since shock squall came out) and at one point I had Grand Fall instead of Thunderstorm.

Which Favors are preferable these days?

Ifrit and Ramuhs seem really potent but I'm still extremely ignorant on end game and SMNS.

I will probably max out 2 with your advice then.

Really depends on the situation, melee love Ifrit and Ramuh, yes
In a mage party Leviathan's Favor or Shiva's are also quite helpful.

In idle moments I usually use Carby or Diabolos depending on party formation.

The others are quite negligeable.

do you even play smn to talk all these stupid shits about skirmish armors?, first only leafs stone is cheap the other are expensive. then even you only do one set type (bp macro) its still expensive when you start spamming dusk and snow. no one is saying the akirmish are hard to get, its the rng we have to deal with makes the pieces expensive. for priority af, relic and emp will come first before skirmish.

its called opportunity cost!, stone you dont sell its gil that you dont make. and please dont even make ***like dusk rain every yorcia run. same logic apply to vw run, but atleast you dont have to deal with rng like skirmish.

I don't see any reason for anyone to get hostile about a disagreement.

I am definitely going to take everyones advice and put it together to create a plan for myself.

I do think that aiming for a functional 109 set seems like a good idea. Seems like it will help clean up any mana problems while also giving me some support and some blood pact damage. After I get the i109 set I will probably aim for the Seraphicaller + Helios set. Apparently there is a skirmish event going on so I imagine it will make things easier to get.


I know I should get the Skirmish weapon but I don't really know what augments I should go for on it, but I can figure that out when I get there.

Really thank you everyone for your advice and help.

Seconding this, A well augmented Keraunos is a close second best to Nirvana and with the right augments even beats Nirvana on Magical Blood Pacts.

If you merit 1/5 all BP and only do one at 5/5 max Shiva's. Reason: If wind is resisted, Ice likely lands ok.. she's got MAB favor. (Avatars get their own favors). If you only do 2 Max, get Garuda for second. Reason: with apogee you can Garlands of Bliss > pref claws = light > wind blades MB. Since garuda has hastega, Eva favor, good phys and magic BP and a heal, she is a very well rounded avatar when out soloing.

In the end, it matters not much since you can use conflag or night terror quite reliably.

Unfortunately I must correct you here, avatars do not recieve their own favors. :(

As for the Merit BPs, personally I have 2 in all but Meteor strike at the moment.
As it is easy enough to get merits it is very easy to change around if a certain Element gets to be used a lot.

I unmerited Meteor Strike as Conflag Strike, despite its slightly lower damage, is in my opinion a better magic pact due to the pretty massive INT down and Burn DoT.
And the fact that it's a cheaper pact than even Flaming Crush.

Unfortunately they do not.

Edit: Beat me to the punch twice now on a post, Shirai D: I ran out to personally confirm it.

Not a pro SMN here, but after swapping around so much, I'm using the same setup as Shirai lately.
No Meteor Strike and everything else at 2/5

Well rats... I was always under the impression that they did ; ;

this is something i have been uncertain about for quite some time.
so i would welcome correction there if i am wrong.

for a magical BP, we'll have the DMG * MAB * BP dmg, correct?

so nirvana : DMG (at lv 121 avatar) * 2.6 (rounded up to 160 mab in armor) * 1.93 (those 93% BP dmg) which is 5.018 * DMG (lv121)

Keraunos : DMG (lv 119 avatar) * 3.8 (same thing and assumed +20 pet mab augment) * 1.63 (53% from gear + 10% from keraunos augment) which is 6.194 * DMG (lv119)

Frazil : DMG (lv 119) * 3.8 * 1.53 which is 5.814 * DMG (lv 119)

the less mab and other bp you have the bigger the difference between nirvana and the other staves.
My own dmg tends to confirm this.

are ppl really getting equals or better dmg out of nirvana than keraunos or frazil for pure magic BP?

Edit : I read shirai's comment a bit fast since it was mostly for physical bp but the question still stands as i see the nirvana in the magic BP set instead of keraunos, in the guide. and i assume this was built on papess and other ppl that did testings.

I'm not that math savvy myself and base that claim on personal testing using several different gearsets.
In the end my Keraunos (DMG +9, MAB +20) won over Nirvana by a fair margin, a margin actually fairly close to the numbers posted by you.
What I can imagine is that Nirvana might win on high level content (135+) due to the higher amount of Magic Accuracy.

Apart from the Nirvana and the MAB Augmented earring my Magic pact set is identical to the one posted on the main page. (Although they could use some better augments.)

I have both a nirvana and the keraunos alluvion staff with a near perfect helios pet mab set. My keraunos staff does beat out my nirvana now but even so i still have to use both staffs during a nuke. By keeping on nirvana for 1 second after you activate your bloodpact and swapping to alluvion staff you keep your +2 level bonus for the avater adding extra damage to the nuke. Didnt see you guys mention this or maybe i missed it. So nirvana will always have a place in nukes even if it is outdone by a better staff. And its very easy to test just find mobs do a nuke few times record the damage and make sure you put away caller's pendant since that will change numbers of nukes because of avatar building tp before you nuke. My macro consists of swapping gear to get a -30 second recast while at the same time keeping on that nirvana for 1 second then i switch to my keraunos and pet mab helios set. Wish my account on ffxiah would update but even after going to the ls community profile website and updating my gear still does not change and it even shows that im wearing a sam head piece in leg slot armor lol. And grats to Shiraiyuki on getting a Nirvana im always happy to see a fellow smn get Nirvana.

I hope you are swapping your Helios in before you swap to the keraunos. That does seem lag error prone and missing out on Keraunos only isnt too much of a big deal, but missing out on keraunos and a full helios set would suck.


You don't want to see my Helios Band, I spent 9 stones on it total for all 3 augs. (BP+7, Crit+4, pet MAB+30)

I'm going to have to check this claim for myself if I have time to do this. RL will be incredibly busy the next 2 weeks thanks to an upcoming anime convention.

As far as I see though, my macro/gearsets setup is already set up for this so actually checking validity should take no more than replacing Nirvana for Keraunos in my BP delay set.

Sad face. :(
The only piece I actually have with +7 BP damage is my feet, the rest hovers at +5 or +6 and none of my pieces have +30 MAB at the moment.
Since my 'vana is done however, I can start spending gil on trying to perfect those.

The damage increase is not much but because of the +2 level difference it will help out resists rate as well. If you want numbers i'll log on right now and do some bloodpacts on mandies right outside of adoulin in ceizak battlegrounds.

Back and these are my numbers with heavenly strike.

Pet mab gear + Nirvana: 11,438

Pet mab gear + Keraunos: 11,824

Pet mab gear + nirvana on for 1 second followed by keraunos swap: 11,990 which is damage difference of 166.

Did multiple bloodpacts of each of these three categories to make sure numbers were consistant.

Forgive me for still being a tad sceptical and trying this myself later.
As it goes, if I am correct my setup should already be the same as yours.

I curious of each case swap setup. can you post how you setup your equipsets and GS timings for each case?

All right, testing time:

Buffs: Ionis
Day of the week: Watersday
Pet used: Diabolos
Blood Pact: Nether Blast (TP has no effect on this one)
Target: Blanched Mandragora

Macro setup:
/equipset (BP Delay)
/pet "Nether Blast" <t> <wait 1>
/equipset (Magic BP)

Setup 1:
BP Delay set with Nirvana, BP set with Nirvana.
1. 4350
2. 4350
3. 4350
4. 4350
5. 4350

Setup 2:
BP Delay set with Nirvana, BP set with Keraunos.
1. 4743
2. 4743
3. 4743
Gonna keep it at 3 per setup now, you get the gist.

Setup 3:
BP Delay set with Keraunos, BP set with Keraunos.
1. 4743
2. 4743
3. 4743

Not sure what setup you're using, but my Macro keeps Nirvana equiped until 0.25 second before the Blood pact fires and it makes no difference.