The 6th Ministry's Secret: A Summoner's Guide

Hmmm.. need to do some conclusive testing when resources are updated but it looks like Flaming crush has met a new contestant.
Volt strike looks awfully potent from first impression.

Conflag strike, I can't say I'm too impressed by it at this point, but that might change when we learn more about it.
Same goes for Crag throw.

As for the buffs, we knew beforehand that they would be pretty nice, just need to figure out how high the TP bonus for Crystalline Blessing is.

Soothing Current
95 MP
Potency of "Cure" effect received +15% (fixed potency), 6:20 duration with 500 skill

Hastega II
248 MP
30%~ Haste, 6:20 duration with 500 skill

Crystal Blessing
201 MP
TP Bonus +300 +250 (fixed potency), 6:20 duration with 500 skill
The effect works on Heavenly Strike.

I can't get Carbuncle's new BP to work. It always says it has no effect.

Ifrit's BP seems to do about 2/3rds the damage of 5/5 Meteor Strike.

Ramuh's BP looks like it has potential but Windower is all sorts of broken right now so I haven't done much testing.

Titan's BP seemed to be pretty weak, but again broken Windower.

I'm anxious to play around with the new SMN goodies when I get home. Thanks for posting this.

My apologies, Crystal Blessing gives in fact TP Bonus +250, not 300.

Pacifying Ruby is an instant enmity reduction for the target.

Volt Strike seems to be purely physical, and it's stun duration and damage is about the same, or less than chaotic strike. I'm not seeing an upside to this BP. Tested Volt Strike -> Volt Strike in case it had a T3 SC property of light, but nothing happened.

Volt Strike SC properties:
T1 : Scission.
T2 : Fragmentation.

Crag Throw SC properties:
T1: Scission.
T2: Gravitation

Thanks for the info. I'll wait for further testing.

I dicked around with the avatars myself but I keep getting errors with windower macros.

Conflag Strike on Ifrit seemed to suck, but again, none of us know its secrets yet. It didn't use up TP even though it looks a lot like Meteor Strike. Was kind of disappointed still. :/

Conflag Strike does use pet tp

Then I am mistaken. ^

Conflag Strike
141 MP
30 HP/tick Burn (-63 INT) for 1 min, 600 dmg dot in total.
Magic dmg, does slighty less dmg than a 1/5 merit BP.

Crag Throw
124 MP
Not a true ranged attack just like Rock Throw and Megalith Throw.
30% Slow for 2 min.
I had hoped this BP could have an use on mobs that can teleport or with AoE debuff spam (like Sleep, Terror etc) but the damage are too low (1100~1300 on VD AATT with BP dmg+76%, Akamochi, Dia II...).

Volt Strike
229 MP
Even though it's not always noticeable (depending on the target) it's definitely stronger than Chaotic Strike. Does good dmg in VD BCs, 2500~3000 with 3500~4100 spikes on VD AATT, about the same as Predator Claw, I'm not sure which BP is the best yet.
Chaotic Strike > Volt Strike : Distortion

Wow. That's a lot of INT reduction.


At 0 TP it does that much? So, does that mean at maximum TP it beats it?


Seems to match Slowga? However, I'm going guess that the additional effect is MACC based, yet the attack is physical, which means it's going to need a funky gearset to work?


High MP cost. Good to get favor up quickly, at least in theory.

Good to hear it's similar to Predator Claws, I wonder if it beats it? Considering it has a stun it technically could/should, but it comes down to the damage.

Vs Wild Rabbit
0 TP Conflig Strike : 6796
0 TP 1/5 Grand Fall : 7026 (note : this is with the same equip but I can do even more damage by replacing Nirvana with Astralwatcher 1 sec before the BP land, the Lv+2 will still be present during BP although my avatar should be 119)
300 TP Conflag Strike : 9969
300 TP Grand Fall : 11316

Yes, Slowga only lasts 1:30 though.

I don't know if it beats Predator Claws but the first hit of Volt Strike seems to be a lot more stronger
Vs Wild Rabbit
Volt Strike first hit : 18000~19000 damage
Predator Claws first hit : 12000~13000 damage

I'm going from first impressions here too, from what I've seen Volt strike seems more potent than Predator claws.
Although it probably is not strong enough to justify its MP cost though.

That said, I am thinking of unmeriting Meteor strike now we do have a viable alternative for that.
Sure, it is less damage, but it's also cheaper and has a neat side effect.

Yeah I was thinking the same, about the viability of removing 1/5 in Meteor Strike and putting it into something else.


Do the new BPs have new animations too? Or just old ones?

Conflag looks like a boosted Meteor strike, Volt strike a more sparkly Chaotic and Crag throw looks like Megalith throw with some extra shiny.

The only reason I can imagine not to remove MS is the MP usage for a quick favor charge.

I had a chance to play around with the new BP's/Wards last night and I must say - I'm not overly impressed with Conflag Strike. It's nice to have and all but, I dunno, perhaps more testing needs to be done.

Volt Strike on the other hand I was pretty happy with.

There has to be some justifiable reason for Volt Strike's mp cost. Is it possible that the first strong hit of this BP is perfectly accurate, or that all 3 strikes have bonus accuracy? This might explain its good damage in the D/VD battles (I haven't tested this in any battlefields, I'm just using the info that others have posted). Since Ramuh represents thunder, and that's tied with accuracy, I don't think it would be too unreasonable to think that this is possible.

Has anyone seen Volt Strike whiff completely?

No whiffing thus far. I noticed that the stun effect on a Velkk in Foret de Hennetiel lasted a long time (the ones that didn't get outright one-shot anyway).

I'm going to test on higher level mobs when I get off work.

Is it just me or does the 250 tp bonus from shiva feel very underwhelming ? I was honestly expecting something along the lines of 500. I know it's nitpicking, but this is just an example of a chance to give is a really differentiated and unique buff, but the potency is so low it's more of a "nice to have" gimmick

This is pretty much a lot of Summoner buffs in general. We can apply many "nice to have" buffs that aren't very strong, but they add up.

I'm not saying it's good balance, but it fits right in with the current theme.

Yep, on a level 131 Gramk-Droog last night.
Apart from that, the stun effect wasn't always landing either even when Volt strike (presumably) fully landed. (Based on the damage dealt by the Blood Pact)

I was in abyssea last night grabbing a few of the ele belts i was missing, fought ... hejedet, nm gob in grauberg, and the cactuar in altep. I swapped back and forth between ramuh and ifrit a lot so i could get a feel for volt vs FC. Volt seemed to do either 3.5k~ or 8.5K~, and not much in between. idk if its first hit missing or just not getting crit, but i would say i only got the 8.5k 35% of the time. FC was doing its typical random 5k-18k. So for damage volt seems weaker and more expensive than FC. However between volt and squall, you can throw some heavy stunning while still doing ok dmg if thats whats needed.

Does the stun from volt seem to land more than the stun from chaotic or about the same you guys think? I realize it'd be hard to test but just wondering what opinions are. I'm still kinda new to smn and never did use chaotic much.

Sorry, I'm going to dig back into FC set discussions...

Has anyone thoroughly tested a pimped out hagondes set vs an only +bp dmg set? Here's what I mean if you're confused:

Hands: hagondes w/ pet mab
Legs: hagondes w/ pet mab
Feet: hagondes w/ pet mab
Back: argochampsa mantle

Vs

Hands: spurrina/auspex gages +5/4 bp dmg
Legs: ngen seraweels +5 bp dmg
Feet: convokers pigaches +1 +6 bp dmg
Back: conveyance cape ~1-5 bp dmg

Papesse, have you found the best medium between the two?

I've done quite a bit of testing in this regard, you can see my notes on this thread: http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/45010/best-flaming-crush-gearset/

Short version: BP damage is pretty much always better than even a perfect hagondes roll. Boots are the exception, obviously. In terms of Conveyance vs Argo, I've found that Conveyance starts to look superior with as little as BP Damage +2.

12-11-2014 02:33 PM [source]

Grekumah Community Rep

Apologies, there was an error in the EN version of the update notes. Quote: In the last patch this note was added: New food that increases both player and familiar accuracy has been added. This information is incorrect, and this update detail has been edited to reflect the correct information. The correct information should have been: • New foods that increase the effects for both players and familiars have been added. While it might be hard to see the effect, these new food items all have new effects. The Rolanberry Daifuku increases pet magic accuracy, the Grape Daifuku increases pet magic attack, and the Bean Daifuku increases pet haste. Additionally, although quite minor, both Rolanberry Daifuku and Grape Daifuku increase the master’s magic accuracy and magic attack, respectively.

So, with all these sources of pet haste now available (of which, there is a ton) I think it's come time to test haste caps?

We need to figure out if there's a gear cap, magic haste cap, total cap, etc/anything for avatars. We have over 25% haste available from gear now, and with Garuda's Hastega II + this food, we're really pushing haste all together.

I have spent hours testing Flaming Crush with Pet MAB and BP DMG gear with no conclusive results but I tend to think that BP DMG is indeed superior.
My set
ItemSet 331532

On a side note, my Astral Conduit Flaming Crush does enough damage to kill 2-3 ADL clones, making this fight almost impossible to lose now.

Thanks Papesse! No Mujin Obi for you?

Caller's Sash is better than Mujin Obi for Flaming Crush.

noted, thanks! :-)