A Summoner's Gear Guide

A lot of Fern stones later, I am faced with these two pairs of Merlinic Dastanas.



Curious about peeps thoughts on their application, and how they compare to just Apogee Mitts+1 in any situaiton.

Im thinking the top one is the ideal Nuking/Hybrid hands, and the bottom one is a pretty solid phys hands.

Thoughts?

Apogee Mitts +1 aren't worth buying anymore. The only thing they were ever good at is debuffs on path D, and R15 Lamassu made them obsolete for that as well.

You have to remember that the base Merlinic piece has 5 BPD and 20 Attack/MAB on it so that top piece for example has 14 BPD and 35 MAB total. Apogee+1 can't compete on Rage BPs.

As far as the augs, the bottom one does look very nice for phys BP. Top one I'm not sure about, it's not bad for Flaming but not amazing either. And it's bad for purely magic BPs. Most likely if you keep trying for a better one for pure magic BPs, you'll also end up with a better one for Flaming Crush too. At least another 10-15 MAB would be ideal.

A surprising amount of utility, too. For example most people don't know about Punch > Rock Crusher to make Fusion for magic bursts in Omen. Plus Assault for job abilities, and swapping Apogee gear to drop your HP for 500 HP Cure objectives. SMN is an Omen objective machine. They can even do the 6step with Siren if they're willing to burn Conduit on it.

Here are my current weights I am using to judge the value for Flaming Crush augs:

Str:1
Int:1
Acc:1
Att:2
Macc:3
MAtt:4
BP:12

Based on that I am giving those top mitts a score of 190, and the bottom 206.

So I think the bottom mitts are also better for hybrid based on my weights there.

But Im still curious to know what precisely other people would really put the weights at, I mean,

Anyone know what exactly the formula, completely, would be for Flaming Crush dmg?

Blood pacts dont count towards objectives so, it wouldnt count.
Unless the skillchain for some reason still does and just not BP's i never tried actually. Even if it does idk what would survive it unless you were naked.

you can do skillchain objectives with pets. However it is the master which has to close it for it to count.

The job abilities do not count as weaponskills, but they do advance the skillchain.

i think a bit exagerated to say SMN is a omen objective machine.

Given there are 3 objectives related to WS (18 physical, 18 magical and 30 total), unless your SMN is extremelly geared to pull off all those WS in the floor 1 and 2 time limit. Even solo, i dont think the BRD trusts gonna cast march on you (could be wrong though). Even for a melee job is kinda very hard to meet the 30 WS in floor 1 or 2 solo.

JA is almost given for SMN, but easy enough for /DNC.

Big Magic Burst, or Big Nuke no burst seems to need god-like magic set unless im missing something about BP counting toward this. 18 magic bursts gonna be annoying as hell to do, and it always is

Crit hit is doable due Ramuh favor. 2000 dmg seems in a round seems... challenging. Big WS should be doable if you can already hit the nukes objective though.

10 cures and 6 enemies are the easiest but not just for SMN, but any job just a bit prepared for this.

Can't do the mb and non mb on smn. Trust will cast marches though (when they want) and you always have haste 2. With an am3 proc and ifrits enfire should be able to do 2k attack round. Never tried doing 30k ws on smn, maybe with malaise garland can hit that but idk, might need a pet to open a SC for it.

If you have GEO, then you can easily hit 30k ws on SMN (or rather WS+SC) with Maxentius Black Halo.

Good to know, never even thought about equip a weapon other than staff as smn lol. What set do you use for that? Anything special?

My assumption was solo. Duo, most of it can done if coordinate and real players. The GEO itself could do the WS dmg, its not specific to SMN.

If you're actually going in solo, you don't have to do 18 and 30. It's only 3 and 5, which is a complete joke to accomplish even with basic melee gear.

Besides, I was talking about in a group anyway. It can solo 12 job abilities, 18 spells, and 500 hp cure in a flash. It can buff the group and contribute quite well toward 18/30 weaponskills (I like to use Ifrit for double attack favor). It can do Fusions for Dia on 18 MB objectives, and for a mage to magic burst for 30k MB objective (as well as making other SC if needed like Distortion or whatever). It can use Ramuh's favor for crit objectives (and avatar crits do count as well). I didn't know about a player having to close the last step in the SC objective though... but I'm sure it could be done.

Basically the only objectives SMN can't contribute on are the 2k melee hit and the non-MB nuke. That's 11/13 objectives, at least 9 of which can be completed solo, maybe 10 if you can figure out how to close that 6-step.

Then throw in the fact that it can one-shot Sweetwaters with Thunderspark if Malaise is up, good buffs and crowd control, and I feel like it's one of the most useful jobs you can have in Omen.

For Flaming Crush, I'm almost certain the top ones are better, even though BPD is lower, just based on the much higher MAB value. I'm pretty sure the reason your score says otherwise is because you gave twice as much weight to phys attack as phys accuracy.

It's hard to weight those because you either have enough phys acc or you don't. If you don't, then more phys acc will trump any other stat you can get. If you do, then it's useless unless it frees up other slots. You can't just say this much acc = this much attack, it doesn't work like that.

My advice is just give phys acc & phys atk equal weight. In fact, probably give magic acc the same weight as them too. BPD and MAB are your main focus for this slot. Other stats are gravy. I could be wrong tho, I'm just speaking from experience, nobody knows how Flaming Crush works.

Edit:
To be fair I've always dreamed of the kind of piece you seem to be aiming for, something like BPD+10 Pet: STR+15 Attack+25 MAB+40. That's the dream. Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible. MAB+25 or maybe +30 is the max on a single roll, the MAB+40 comes from two MAB rolls combined (25+15). I'm pretty sure I've never seen a phys roll (phys acc or phys atk) on a piece with two MAB rolls. I don't think you can get it. I think if you get two MAB rolls, all you can get with them are magic accuracy. So I'm pretty sure the best Flaming Crush piece you can practically make is just the best magic BP piece you can make. That's BPD+10 Pet: MAcc+40 MAB+40. If you try to make a hybrid piece, I think you may find yourself limited to 25 or maybe even just the 15 you saw.

I'm new to smn (dreadfully new) and have been taking it to my shells wave2 dyna farms to build rp on neck and have seen some incredible variance in bloodpact dmg being as low as 3k and upwards of 35k+ sometimes. This is with flaming crush as well as volt strike. Those are the only two I've tried enough to see that sort of dmg variance

I was wondering what could be accounting for that variance and what I should be working towards in my gear or food options to help out my dmg. More acc, magic acc, etc etc?

thank you, and again totally new to smn so sorry for the noobfest of questions!

Thats against NMs?

BP are subjected to nerfing with repeated uses.

If thats not the cause, surely is an acc/macc issue.

EDIT: also, check the current mobs weakeness.

Flaming Crush wont be destroying if the current mob nerf physical or magical dmg. Volt strike obviously gonna be nerfed if mob is strong against physical

EDIT2: depending how your party do mobs, you can consider cleaving with thunderspark. Its not superawesome but it can speed things up provided all mobs are locked on a tank.

Bad idea if youre just sleeping them though

The real value of SMN in dyna is not it's dmg but unrivaled CC. Sure, in some of the zones (namely Jeuno) you are still able to crank out really good dmg, but as was mentioned earlier some eyes will spawn mobs that it's difficult to get good dmg on. Even a 50k blood pact every 20 seconds is basically nothing in the grand scheme of dyna, unless you use it to one shot an annoying mob that is.

The real benefit of SMN is shock squall. It lasts a ludicrous amount of time, the first time you hit a mob with it it lasts almost as long as its cooldown. On top of that you also have a single target stun on a different cooldown, or AoE damage + strong para (can be nice with some aeolian edge setups). This can completely emasculate an individual mob or a pack, often with them dying before they can even perform an action or stopping them from killing some people. When I do wave 3 I like to pull from both sides of the fetter at once, a SMN can stun both packs which makes it very easy to make sure I / tanks can get hate on everything and mobs can be tagged with debuffs etc without them moving around and making it annoying. Often times if using an AoE strat all the NQ mobs are dead before the NMs stun even wears off.

Personally SMN is a mandatory inclusion to me for dyna, especially if doing wave 3, and this is the reason why.

Has anything changed really in the world of SMN when it comes to gear sets? ive followed this pretty much as close as i could. Idk i just not finding myself impressed on any content that isnt pretty much fodder. Whether its omen bosses, some escha bosses, even Vagary. i still seem to lack consistency, which im not sure if its due to acc, my sets in general or just /random. Some of my issue is currently(there are some up and coming) for most events i may be the only summoner so I dont have anyone to compare to, and buffs are not usually geared towards pets so maybe thats whats missing? idk long story short finding the whole experience lackluster lol and im not sure if its something im doing wrong or if im expecting too much and things are working fine haha.

Tonight for example we ran someone through Vagary clears and on Plouton my FC's ranged 4k to 40k, with most of them in the 4-15k range. I think i only had 2-3 that spiked above 20k, out of 12-14 BPs. pretty much all Omen bosses most of the time average maybe 10-15k on VS's at the same time still hitting 1k-4k sometimes with random spikes into 20k+ range. Kei doing MBs with 5/5 thunderstorm usually average in the 20k range, but still hit lots less than 10k with a few that spike into 40k+.

lol again maybe im complaining about nothing and things are fine( expecting smn burn numbers being the lone unbuffed smn). But still something feels off. Anyway thats my rant lol sorry.

Couple notes : SMN +2 collar is out of my price range currently, and still hoping for Cait's crown one day.(EDIT: Just got it 5min ago haha)

ItemSet 376724
Apogee: path A
Merlinic : Blood Pact Dmg.+10','Pet: Mag. Acc.+15','Pet: "Mag.Atk.Bns."+14'

ItemSet 240637
Gear same as above.
Grio : Blood Pact Dmg.+8','Pet: INT+12','Pet: "Mag.Atk.Bns."+24','DMG:+8',

ItemSet 240636
Legs : Path D
Head/Feet: Pet: Accuracy+29 Pet: Rng. Acc.+29','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+8','Blood Pact Dmg.+7'
Hands: Pet: Attack+29 Pet: Rng.Atk.+29','Blood Pact Dmg.+10','Pet: DEX+1','Pet: Mag. Acc.+14','Pet: "Mag.Atk.Bns."+2',

For Flaming Crush your set looks good, but I would use the Convoker's body +3 instead of the Apogee +1 with mab on it. It will give you a lot of extra acc/macc which will help with Flaming crushes consistency. Sounds like your group just favors Melee setups and the buffs aren't geared towards smn. Smn's are like anything else when they aren't buffed, they wont hit anywhere near the same numbers. Also use food if you aren't already, and the type of dmg the blood pact is can factor a lot on how much dmg you will do depending on the mobs weakness/resistances.

Make sure your gearswaps work, was one of my problems anyway

Omen, Vagary and Dynamis has wierd latency issues for me, where sometimes gearswap works to fast or to slow for midcast sets. If you Thunderspark set is around 4k dmg, thats gs problem, if you always hit 9-11k it's working.

Missing buffs is probably the big thing. Without SMN buffs your damage will suffer. For Volt Strike, you may have had Frailty since most setups use that, but I'm guessing you didn't have Beast/Drachen Rolls from a COR, or Torpor, or whatnot.

Sounds like an accuracy issue to me. Lacking Torpor & Drachen Roll will hurt, but Vagary doesn't require a ton of accuracy so it shouldn't have been a big issue. Did you eat food? Grape Daifuku is pretty much the best all-around SMN food now.

What about job points, are you mastered?

Somewhere it seems like accuracy is wrong, and your gear sets seem fine so it must be elsewhere. Maybe it's just a swapping issue like others alluded to?

Even without proper buffs, if you have food and Frailty/Dia on an Omen boss then you should be able to hit at least 20k consistently with Volt Strike.

With the above sets with the example of thunderspark, its usually 2-6k with the odd 9-11k during omen on, havent taken smn to dynamis often and was about the same in vagary for Rancibus.


Definitely mastered. I've had concerns or suspicions about my gearswaps in the past. I've used showswaps to make sure the proper gear swaps are going through and everything is showing that its swapping as it should, but whether its landing when it should. not really sure what id do to fix something like that if thats my issue of if i can.

ItemSet 376728

ItemSet 376729
Path B staff

heres a shot of my showswaps for physical bp(not sure how to post a screenshot here lol)
https://imgur.com/a/fqUbZDt

It looks like you might be in your Perp/Idle set when the BP goes off (aftercast shows you swapping to Perp, pet_midcast shows swapping to BP).

This is in my aftercast


And then in pet_aftercast you want to equip your perp set

I really like this idle set. Hands\legs R15, body path D. Need to upgrade feet as well. I also thought about changing the neck but I like the regain.

ItemSet 376153

Ugh this is where i wish i had a bit more grasp on the functionality sections of luas not just creating sets and inputting things. Some luas are more simple than others and ive been able to modify things but some not so much. I've always wondered why it goes precast -> aftercast -> midcast when ive looked at the show swaps but i figured it was the delay for pet actions. the precast is for the player doing the JA, so its goes back to aftercast, but then midcast is for the pet and the pact landing. One of my ls mates tested on his BST and it showed the same using pet attacks.

but long story short i wouldnt know where to add that string in or modify my current one haha

The aftercast triggers when the client sees you use the JA, and the pet_midcast triggers when the client sees your pet readying a BP. The two should generally happen around the same time.

Here's an example of how I avoid landing BPs in my idle gear:


The second catch will stop it from happening on aftercast of the BP itself. I do it because I'm not positive pet_midaction() will always return true then.

The first catch is for other spells/abilities, like if you use another JA while the BP is still readying you don't want it to swap you out of BP gear.

Is the favor bp reduction only active in the 10 yalm range?
Should explain my timer ..

How do you cancel the favor effect btw?

The BP recast bonus from Favor isnt distance based.
And zone or death will remove Favor status, I know of no other way to remove it ;x Edit: I was wrong! post below has the solution..

You can cancel it by highlighting the buff (hit numpad + twice) and hitting confirm, it can also be removed if a mob dispels you.

Im almost 100% certain that wasnt a thing before c.c but I just tested it and yes you're right..