A Summoner's Gear Guide

Oh, i always thought it was the same as WS and only ones that with crit modifier could

You... DO realize that one says 9, not 10, right?

I might be remembering this wrong. That info was provided a really long time ago, but I think it was tested with af2 body and it was able to proc crit on all physical BPs. I guess it's easy to test, so I can try to do it later.

Yeah I believe that's correct, all physical pacts can crit. This was really easy to test in the Abyssea days when avatar stats were hard to increase, which made crits much more apparent and you could cap crit rate with atmas (along with increased crit damage) for a huge boost. There was no question, they can all crit. I believe that includes Flaming Crush.

These days, it just doesn't seem to do much. What Nariont said is correct to my understanding, crits now basically just help you reach the attack cap but won't increase damage beyond that. Avatars don't appear to have any crit damage trait.

It doesn't seem to have that big of an impact even when attack isn't capped. For example when I'm doing V25s on SMN (with no buffs whatsoever, just Dia III and Grape Daifuku), I don't see much variation in damage outside of obvious multi-attacks. For example when doing Arebati with Siren, her BPs tend to fall in the range of ~10k, ~13k, or ~17k which I assume are 3 hits, 4 hits, and 5 hits respectively. That's with Glyphic body so the crit rate should be respectable. If crits were doing much for me, I'd expect to see smoother damage ranges as crits caused BPs to land partway between those ranges (11k, 12k, 14k, etc) but I never do. It really seems like the only significant variation I see can be attributed to multi-attacks.

Idk if it still does, but Ramuh used to get 8% crit attack bonus:
https://www.bluegartr.com/threads/114636-Monster-Avatar-Pet-damage?p=6873716&viewfull=1#post6873716

From my experience Flaming Crush damage can spike all the way to 99k, when usually I average 50k hits. I'm confused how all this works but to me the only explanation for that is a critical somewhere, especially considering that DA/TA don't affect it too much.

They changed that about 2 years ago. BP pDIF caps at 4.0 and crits now push it to 5.0 Combined with the Critical Attack Bonus II trait that avatars possess, it results in a 35% damage increase. This can be easily verified with Crag Throw which deals fixed damage:
Non-Crit: 11463
Crit: 15476 (base dmg × 1.25 × 1.08)

Crits have an even more significant impact on BPs when attack isn't capped. The effect is especially noticeable with single-hit BPs like Spinning Dive, which can sometimes nearly double in damage.

Flaming Crush can indeed crit.

So it's the 2 base physical hits that can crit.
Do the additional damage performed by the Crit version of those two physical hits end up increasing the "core" damage of the magical hit, before Pet Mab/Mdmg is added to the formula?

It's good to know in general but realistically I feel this might not be particularly relevant not because of the potential of Crits but more because we don't exactly have a lot of relevant gear options to pick.
Would be nice if Avatar's Favor aura affected the Pet itself but alas we know it does not.

Assuming PC/VS have the same general anchor points of +10/20~/30~50 crit rate(or if they work at all), you could have a base of 40~ish rate with relic and Enticer's +650 TP bonus/+5 crit rate. Anything else seems like itd hurt more than help for multi-hit phys BPs.

While that's possible, it sounds more likely to be a magic accuracy issue, with a half resist on the magic hit.

No matter what I do with my Macc, the results are the same. 40-50k average damage, with spikes to 60-99k periodically. I can't imagine that being anything else besides critical. But trying to figure out Flaming Crush numbers is making me crazy so maybe I'm wrong.

From Papesse's post, it sounds like crits are unlikely to increase damage by more than about 1/3 unless your attack is woefully undercapped (which isn't likely if you're at 99k). Even if there's some weird hybrid double-counting shenanigans going on there, I can't see crits doubling your damage.

Another thing to consider is the nuke wall. If elemental damage was dealt recently before your Flaming Crush, the amount of magic accuracy needed for unresisted skyrockets.

Physical accuracy might be another explanation. Honestly it could be a lot of things.

Do you use af3 for your BPs? If yes, then how frequent are those spikes?

I've tried both AF3 and Relic 3. It seems spikes are definitely more frequent with Relic 3 but I'm still gathering evidence. Right now with 30 hits a piece on Locus Colibris I've got:

Relic +3
58.03k Damage AVG
2 Hits over 60-70k
5 Hits 70-80k
3 Hits 80-90k
3 Hits 90-100k

AF + 3
57.2k Damage AVG
2 Hits 60-70k
3 Hits 70-80k
1 Hit 80-90k
2 Hits 90-100k

Which makes me believe it's the critical damage doing most of the work. But I know it's still not enough evidence, I'm planning on getting 100 before I make any conclusions.

Master Level 36
Here is my gearset:

ItemSet 398505

It would be funny if DA from gear works differently for Flaming Crush than OAT from Nirvana XD

Ok well that's quite different from how I interpreted your post, that's a fairly even spread across the whole range between 50k-99k, not a hard split between some doing 50k and some doing 99k. So yeah, that doesn't sound like magic accuracy or the nuke wall. It sounds like it's probably a mix of undercapped attack, crits, and possibly even physical accuracy.

I bet if you tilt the attack/defense formula further you'll see more consistent damage. For example, make sure to use Crimson Howl to give Ifrit warcry, cast Dia II, eat Grape Daifuku, etc. I think all these things should give you more consistent damage.

If your pet has high enough attack and the monster isn't resistant to fire or something, Flaming Crush should do 99k every single time even without crits.

Yeah when the attack isn't capped the spread of possible pdif is pretty big.

For example for cratio 3.0, the final pdif is between 2.625 and 3.54375 and up to 4.54375 with crit. Add every random thing mentioned by Pergatory and it's normal for the final damage to have such a big spread.

Attack is not considering BP Damage right? So then I should be considering using my Apogee +Attack Gear instead of my MAB gear?

There is no simple answer for this. If you are not attack capped then every mab vs attack dilemma you have in every slot needs to be calculated and recalculated again if you change item in other slot.

Yes but Perg's calculator doesn't take into consideration the +1 level on Opashoro compared to Nirvana.
I don't think that's gonna beat Nirvana with AM3 up for that category of BPs but it's gonna make that gap even smaller.

So to give Kingsglaive an idea, for FTP replicating multihit BPs, Nirvana with AM3 up probably still beats Opashoro but the difference is gonna be very small.

For magical BPs Nirvana is already behind, Opashoro is better (especially with AM3 up) but still behind those other staves with lotsa mab.

For everything else Opashoro wins.
It goes without saying that for all those situations where you cannot realistically put AM3 up, Opashoro always wins compared to Nirvana.

Does anyone ever use the Glyphic Pigaches +3 for any of their Physical/Hybrid sets? +89 Attack seems like A LOT. But I'm not about to spend 6-7 million for a piece of equipment I won't use.

sadly, no. I did use it in my bp delay set before the job was mastered, but now I think even that is obsolete. while it looks really nice, it just can't compete with pure BP damage pieces like helios or even the empy feet

I use body for idle in several sets since it's perp- and DT. Hands and feet for macro pieces, and then I use legs + head in my Ward sets for that 2% chance at 14 min hastes!

I also use feet for my TP set just to get the perpetuation cost down a bit while swinging a staff.

ItemSet 383065

ItemSet 383066

If I've only got one piece of an apogee slot, which aug path should I go with? Not sure what BPs are really used the most to base it on that since I mostly just see smns in omen and HELMs where they're just doing volt strike or flaming crush.

that depends on a couple factors. do you already have the piece, if so which one is it? or is this more of a hypothetical "which is the best solo piece to get"

of the apogee set, you will want the +1 version when possible, and the legs are the undisputed best piece in the set, boasting bp damage +21 with the path D augment. only nirvana and the prime staff beats that value on a single item.

The formula that's generally accepted for what value of bp damage vs pet mab is 1 =2.5, so 14 bp damage will need at least 35 mab to equal it. By that math, path A and C are better for purely magical Bp's, A being the better of those, but since flaming crush is a hybrid, path C would be the "best".

some numbers for you
path A (15 bp + 35 mab = 72.5)
path C 15 bp + 25 mab = 62.5)
path D 21 bp = 52.5)
but again, if you're looking at only getting one piece, then you won't be disappointed with path D. it's not best for magical, but it's still extremely good, and there is some debate about whether it's best for physical with the addition of the double attack and the pet str, and the attack modifiers on blood pacts being lower than the mab mods. It's possible path B may be better though, I'm not sure how much testing has been done. Another factor to consider is whether you're using helios gear or what pieces in the other slits. Path D will add more DA, and if you're already stacking DA, that you'll likely see better results with that. if you're not, then it's possible you may see better results with path B

The math on the physical side is less known, but it's generally accepted that bp is much more valuable than flat attack
path D (21 bp, 4% DA, pet str 20) 6 extra bp damage is 6% damage
path C (15 bp, atk 25) 25 attack should add 1.98% damage
path B (15 bp, atk 35) 35 attack should add 2.75% damage

in conclusion, I personally feel that path D is the better choice since it will always improve your physical bp damage by a guaranteed 3.25% over any of the other augs, and while it won't help your purely magical pacts by as much as path A, your hybrids will still fully benefit on their physical hits, and the bp damage isn't lost on magical.