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

Things I've tried so far to see if Volt Strike is special:
Used it from behind an enemy - no damage increase
Used it while charged with enthunder and shock spikes - no damage increase
Used it while maxed out on pet TP - no damage increase

This pact costs almost as much as Pavor Nocturnus and Level ? Holy; there has to be some trick to it. Anyone have any other ideas on what to test?

I don't think there is a gimick to this one, just one hell of an overpriced Chaotic strike with some extra bling.

What you can do is Apogee and see if it skillchains with Chaotic strike, just for the lulz.

It does
Chaotic Strike -> Volt Strike is Fragmentation

Probably has higher acc, crot rate or magic acc on the stun.

It seems to me like just a stronger chaotic strike from my testing. if anything, we should be more disappointed in the other rages since they're weaker than what we've have for the past decade or so

Safe to say the wards outshined the rages, but they were more in-need of updates imho.

Granted that my sets are far from ideal, but Meteor Strike 1/5 was always topping Conflag Strike, no matter the TP, be it low or 3000.
Sometimes the difference was actually pretty big, almost 2x the damage of Conflag Strike.

You guys sure about those early test that showed Conflag very close to Meteor, actually better at low TP?
I dunno if it's a Nirvana thing, but out of the 30 attempts I did, Conflag was always below.

Does the -INT of Conflag make the following Meteor Strikes do more damage? Wondering if it would be beneficial for Conflag Strike rotation during a SMN-burn event. (IE: Shiva2 with 5-6 smns)

Assuming avatar magic dmg is calculated in a similar way to player magic dmg, it looks like it would.

I was noticing this trend too. Though I can't speak for others, perhaps they were factoring the burn DoT in addition to the initial damage?
I also noticed a weird thing about Volt Strike:
Volt Strike deals MASSIVE damage against fodder mobs (highest I've seen was a 18k)... But when I was doing the Bibiki Bay UWNM for more skins (29/50 for refresh+2 pants!!) yesterday I noticed that Volt Strike suddenly was sucking, while Chaotic Strike was dealing its steady ~5k damage.
So... Since I couldn't find anything about efts resisting lightning damage... Perhaps the UWNM does. If so, then that could be the difference: that Volt Strike deals lightning damage while Chaotic deals blunt.

However when I tested to see if MAB affected it... I got results that would indicate that it does not...
So... If it does deal lightning damage... Will have to go to abyssea to see if a lightning Maff atma boosts its damage.

Are you suggesting Volt Strike is a mixed thing similar to Flaming Crush?

And regarding my previous question: I might have used Conflag Strike first, with the dot making the successive Meteor Strike stronger. I need to test again making sure I use the opposite order.

I've found Flaming Crush to be consistently higher damage over Volt Strike on fodder. (ie: Bastok T1 VW) Talking like ~15-25k Flaming and ~10-18k Volt Strike. Obviously this is eyeballing, so take it as you will.


Edit:

I think I use my BP:Physical setup on Volt Strike, and BP:Hybrid setup for Flaming Crush. That could be what the kicker is, I think my next step is to see if putting Volt Strike under my hybrid build would net me more damage.

Pretty similar experiences with Volt here, it's decent on fodder but outclassed by Flaming Crush and I have noticed that Volt Strike gets considerably weaker the higher the content becomes.
It needs a lot of testing, but first impressions when using my Flaming Crush set on Volt didn't yield anything higher either.

So unless there's a specific gimick SE's not telling us I won't be using it very often.

Volt Strike doesn't seems to have a magical part, it doesn't heal Melo Melo inside his shell and can almost one shot Ramuh Prime in Waking the Beast while Flaming Crush does 500~ damage on Ifrit Prime (or 7000~ if the first hit kill it). In my eyes this BP is mainly suited for situations where Flaming Crush isn't efficient (magic resistant mobs, Hard Mode Mission battles, Incursion MB etc...)

In those situations I'd rather switch to Predator Claws, Spinning Dive or even Chaotic strike.

Volt Strike needs a damage increase of at least 35%, preferably 40% to justify the MP cost.

I haven't tested if it deals lightning elemental damage yet, but as I said and others have corroborated: MAB doesn't boost the damage making it not a hybrid BP like Flaming Crush.

But it could be lightning element. It would be unprecedented for it to be "physical" lightning... Since all elemental WSs are magic damage...
But coding wise, it's very plausible and possible.

My testing was on differing mobs. Eg: 1 fodder eats a Meteor Strike, the next eats a Conflag Strike.
There might be a bit of discrepancy between the individual mobs, but with so many (~60 or so, small but enough for a trend) you normalize any thing like that bunny is one level higher than the other two.

Papesse's testing pretty much confirmed that there's no elemental damage on Volt strike.
So that's one more thing we can forget about.

I was wrong, Conflig Strike is breath damage. This is our third breath based attack but unlike Nether Blast and Zantetsuken, Conflig Strike can be resisted and takes into account the target's INT.

That sounds... strange. I'm curious how you came to this conclusion.

I personally have not had enough time in game to test them extensively enough myself.

I noticed Conflig Strike was doing normal damage on mobs with Shell and decided to check in Ballista with MDT and BDT pieces. I made another verification in the Puppet in Peril BC, the Lancelord is particularly weak to magic but also very resistant to breath damage (mainly because the devs didn't wanted players to rely on Formless Strikes to win).

I've gotten Blood Pacts down to 33s recast time with severely over-gearing blood pact delay equipment...is that cap or is anyone beating that?

As long as you have Glyphic Body, Boots, 3 second JSE cape, Seraphicaller, and 15 seconds worth of normal BP delay from somewhere else, you've done all you can.

Yeah, using that and plenty more. Guess I'm at cap...

Very stupid question, please bear with me.
Considering the new Avatar's Favor doesn't reduce the Avatar's stats anymore and that, if you have capped -perp, it doesn't increase the cost either, is there any reason for not keeping it up all the time even when you don't particularly need those weak AoE auras?

Hello.

15 seconds is cap from gear. BP Delay II has no cap, but the gear for that is limited to what I've stated there.


(I'm sorry.) (Cimmerian Sash) (That's too bad.)

There is no reason not to. The only negative you can come up with is that while Avatar's Favor is on, you should probably be idling in your Caller's Horn +2 instead of your Convoker's Horn, which while both have the same Refresh, Caller's Horn +2 doesn't have the defensive stats that Convoker's provides.

Beyond that, if you wanted to maximize the favor effect, you would need to idle in some summoning skill gear (which will hurt your defense, refresh, and pet stats), but as long as your gear is good, your idle set should be hovering around the tier before last anyways (which is not that much of a loss in potency).


Hi.

http://www.ffxiah.com/item/27589

The running speed one is great and all, but yeah, it's just running speed. If you want that, that's totally fine and your choice, but many deem it not that important.

A refresh ring is nice and it's refresh, but as a Summoner totally geared out, you can have upwards of like +13 refresh with an avatar out. Adding 1 more refresh is nice, and again, totally fine if you want that, but not a huge game changer.

Cure potency is an option, nothing wrong with that, but you should look into capping your normal Cure Potency before getting it.

There are many options for Magic Accuracy.

The fastcast/quickcast ring remains an extremely powerful choice, with no other rings coming close to the amount it provides in single slot, for both stats. This is also great for every other caster.

It's totally up to you. The Thurandaut Ring is the strong boost to your pet, and technically the best choice. However, if you play other jobs, or you want any of the other options, that's OK! Pick whichever you want. They're all great rings.