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

No it's hard to say exactly, but fortunately in terms of Helios it's really just a question of Pet:Crit vs Pet:DA which makes it a no-brainer. I do think we can say BP damage beats crit rate point for point. That's been hashed out in the debates of Convoker's body versus Glyphic body, and Convoker's wins pretty reliably. It's possible that changes with all the BP damage augments we can get now, but I doubt it.

In regard to Flaming Crush and MAB, that one's harder. If I were to pin a number on it based on my experience, I would say 1% crit chance is probably roughly equal to 3 MAB. That is to say, I bet if you parsed Glyphic Doublet +1 versus Shomonjijoe+1 on Flaming Crush, I suspect Glyphic might come out ever so slightly ahead. (Might be a test worth doing sometime.) Again, complete wild guess though, and of course it's based on how much MAB and crit rate you have elsewhere, and the avatar's base crit rate against the enemy you're fighting.

In terms of what's really needed to cap pDif, I don't believe it can be done at all without a bolstered frailty. It takes a LOT to get there. In case you didn't know, a bolstered frailty from Idris GEO, plus Dia 2, equals -92% defense. Yes you read that correctly, -92%.

for anyone using Mote's GS files or has any general input, do you have it set up so Flaming Crush is its own stand alone set or do you just let it run off of sets.midcast.pet.xxxxxBloodPactRage?

Trying to figure out which of the two to truly optimize for FC or if I'm able to provide that Pact a set of its own. If you can make one set solely for FC in gearswap would it be sets.midcast.pet.FlamingCrush?

Any help would be appreciated. I'm horrible at making my own rules for LUA.

You'll want a separate one for FC since it's a hybrid of magical and physical.

sets.midcast.Pet['Flaming Crush']

I kinda wish Diabolos was the one getting Impact, I'm thinking SE will gimp our Impact by giving it to Fenrir and make it the opposite of Ecliptic Growl...

Also I wish we had a JA or spell that affects Fenrir and gives us his full moon potency, like SCH has -storm spells. I can't think of any other JA/spells that are that situational and are really only useful every 3-4 RL days.

Edit:

I will agree that being able to manipulate, at least in some way, the potency of Ecliptic Howl/Growl/Heavenward Howl and Dream Shroud would be very useful.

It sucks that our usefulness in parties (these are actually pretty good buffs) is largely based around factors we have no control over.

*** brackets.

Thanks! Kept trying different things and forgot about brackets for two word abilities.

Appreciate it!!

11 min clear Yorcia Delve run with SMN RUN GEO COR

Bolster wasn't even used.

I'm amazed by what (a good) SMN can do atm and not just with Ifrit in Delve... The other day we did VD HM in 15 min (PLD SMN GEO) and were very close to beat VD Kam'Lanaut (PLD SMN GEO COR). We could probably win most of these Battlefields with a similar setup. Hell, I even think 2 SMNs could do enough damage to defeat Lv 143 Vanquisher Gramk-Droog, too bad I can't clone myself.

I'm nowhere near being your clone, but I'll gladly join ya on Carbuncle for some SMN fun time. :D

Im confused now, after reading BG, i found Avatar's favor potency is lost depending on what you use, 5 if you use Rage and 2 if you use Ward but i think i read on Job adjustments everytime ppl use BPs they were going to increase potency instead of lose it

so anyone could confirm if you are losing potency with avatar's favor up or gaining please and how much should you gain/lost if BP is ward or rage, Ty

You can never lose potency with favor on anymore.

Whenever you use a blood pact, your favor's current potency increases depending how much MP you spent on the Blood Pact (more is better). In addition, there is no stat penalty on the avatar with favor up.

wow awesome i hope someone update Bg with this new info, ty very much

Already did after you posted! :)

within 45 min or within a decently reduced amoutn of time? like 15-20 min?
you were suggesting the smns as the only DD with other ppl to take care of sleeping/stunning? i'm curious. i see how it is at 133 and i wouldnt give much of a life time for avatars even with pdt sets at 143. not talking about acc and everything else.

Papesse have you actually done Lv143 incursion on SMN? I'm curious because I only got to try once (generally stuck on WHM for incursion) but once was enough.

Granted this was before alluvion armor so accuracy could be higher now, but I was using Shiromochi+1, 10/10 phys acc merits & job points, and using as much acc from gear as I could get even giving up blood pact damage but I still couldn't hit anything. Our GEOs were using eva down & magic eva down on the enemies, magic eva being for the stunners otherwise they couldn't stun TP moves. So there wasn't really room for frailty. We had a 3rd GEO but they were helping the melees, if SMN were your only DD then you might be able to drop a frailty too but accuracy was the main issue.

Even with a GEO reducing enemy evasion, I still couldn't hit them. I tried Pred Claws four times, only one of them was above 300 damage (and it was a little over 2k). Two missed completely. I believe the main gear I was using was Convoker+1 head/body/legs, Glyphic+1 hands, and Marduk+1 feet. Again, was going for accuracy.

After about 10 minutes of trying to land anything at all and failing, what I ultimately ended up doing was just popping Leviathan's Favor for our stunners and dropping a few Ultimate Terrors here and there. Alluvion armor should allow one to get quite a bit more accuracy, but I don't know... our SAMs with full acc gear/food plus songs and rolls still only managed ~50% accuracy on the parse. Lv143 is crazy evasive.

I have to say, I'm pretty doubtful of that claim as well.
Keep in mind that the level difference compared to Delve II is quite considerable and I'd dare say that even with HQ Food and the +2 levels from Nirvana accuracy will be hurting, even if you manage to bring several Idris Geomancers with you.

You may be able to solve the accuracy problem by kitting a Helios BPset with Pet: ACC, but that will sacrfice a lot of Flaming Crush damage as both MAB as well as Pet: ACC/RACC share the same stone slot.

But pease, do feel free to prove me wrong.

Incursion at high levels is just Geomancers and other buffing jobs rotating 1 hour abilities to fix the massive stat discrepancies.

It may be possible, it may not, but either way, the content is now pointless to do. The equipment is easily obtainable at low difficulties and the capes are common/augmentable outside.

Yes, I did every Incursion lvl on SMN. I confirm the statement about rotating 1 hour abilities being one of the keys to win and that it is indeed pointless to rely on physical BPs at 143. Night Terror however can't miss/resist and now does 7000-9700 damage on Lv 143 Gramk with Keraunos/Helios set/Grape Daifuku and should likely break 10k with Puppet Roll/Malaise. 20k dmg/min in other words or 600k dmg over a period of 30 min for one SMN and I'm not even counting Apogee, Astral Conduit, Odin, GEO JAs, Wild Card...
Also, with SMNs as the only source of damage it shouldn't be necessary to bring so many buffer jobs or to Stun. Based on my experience, if there is no Martial Adherent, Gramk can't fire a single TP move/Battle Trance with Mewing Lullaby despite the Regain trait.
Of course I'm not suggesting (yet) that it will be the "best" method to win and a Koga SAM does way more damage than SMN on Gramk, during the first 10 minutes at least.

idk if this helps but

thanks for the answers. it was definitively out of theory. unless perg and i can talk the others into trying it, we'll stay on melee/whm jobs for this. and 133 only for entertainment until the update.

I did and win a couple of 143 (or was it 144? whatever the cap is, I was with Apollymi's group) on different jobs and I'm higly skeptic of the viability and reliability of SMN setups over other setups, even with the best possible gear.

I'm willing to give it a shot if we Asuran SMN wanna try it!

You know I'm game to try! Unfortunately, I don't think Apollymi has gone since he tried to upgrade 143 to 144 and lost all his KIs. So we'd have to sac our way to Gramk unless someone knows another person with 143...

That's interesting about Night Terror. That's one of the BPs I tried in 143 because I know it has high magic acc, and it did something like 900 damage at the time (with bolstered magic evasion down). Using Helios and other modern gear would've made that maybe 1500, but nowhere near 10k. Puppet's Roll won't make that kind of difference, nor will Grape Daifuku. Can malaise really be that strong?

900 damage? That can't be possible in Incursion unless a Furtive Adherent is present or you BP with the wrong gear. Before Helios it was doing 4000-5000 damage on Gramk.

4000-5000 before Helios on level 143 Incursion Gramk with Diabolos... with which buffs exactely?

None, do you know how Night Terror works? The BP cannot be resisted no matter the target's MEVA/Lvl, just like Nether Blast.

Im curious how Diabolos new blood pact will be if night terror is doing decent work.

Furtive wouldn't account for it, because I even tried Night Terror on normal mobs in there and it never broke 2k damage. I had pretty close to perfect gear at the time, minus 5 MAB (1 from weapon, 2 from head, 2 from boots augment). You must've had some kind of buffs/debuffs that were giving you a massive damage increase.

Edit: My money is on malaise. I suspect as level scales up, MDB is added to the monsters and bolstered malaise probably negates a lot of that, giving you damage closer to what you'd expect at Lv123 (where I've seen numbers well above 5k before Helios). This would imply malaise works like frailty, reducing MDB by a percentage rather than a fixed amount. Sheer speculation of course.

There hasn't been any Malaise in our runs. (Let's ignore the fact that I could have deployed it as the 8th bubble.)

As far as GEO bubbles are concerned: Precision/Torpor, Frailty/Wilt, Focus/Languor, Haste/ominous-eighth-bubble. The GEO with Precision/Torpor had Entrust-DEX out, whenever possible. The eighth bubble was another Languor that was deployed at the "right" time to minimise the odds of not having Languor up at all.

I don't even know if Papesse even got any rolls, tbh. I was busy staring at Gramk and camping his Balotelli impression. But then, I don't know about her damage output to begin with...

/edit: If you're enough of a masochist, you can try and "find" some Night Terrors for 5k-ish in here (Gramk starts at 05:06):



Admittedly, CL 135 onry I don't think things change much, if at all, for CL 143. The only relevant buff I could see is Puppet Roll, applied at some time around 06:30, iirc. I think I was the only GEOs, so Haste/Frailty and Focus/Torpor onry.

Oh they change a lot, believe me. I've done SMN burns as high as 135 and it wasn't bad at all (albeit slow). Even physical pacts worked pretty well. 143 was a whole different ballgame, I felt useless on SMN.

I buy 5k at 135 even pre-Helios and without malaise. 9k at 143 is harder to swallow. I want to believe, I really do.

If Night Terror mechanics work like Nether Blast, I mean.

Assuming that base damage doesn't change etc. blabla (you know Nether Blast better than I do), the bump from 5k to 9k isn't that steep with Malaise. But my SMN is at subjob level, so I'm outta here. \o/

I just dropped in to clarify buffs/debuffs we used for our Gramks.