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

Fine, 143 :

It almost doesn't look like a normal 143 fight (it's usually much more painful and bloody, 143 Incursion is the hardest challenge in the game atm) but you can see it is with the number of coffers at the end (21).
On the video, the lowest Night Terror did 5616 (no Puppet Roll yet and Gramk had Shell), highest did 9686 (and 15224 with Magic Burst), normal average was 7k with Puppet Roll (dropped to <6k during Astral Conduit because of the gradual reduction when you spam magic damage).
Once again I really don't see what would make this fight impossible to win with very good SMNs using Night Terror and more importantly, an experienced leader. It's no more crazy than soloing a Legion chamber, doing 99,999 damage in Delve or trio'ng a VD BC to me.

What would be the best use of limited resources for a fresh 99 in terms of which items to focus on first? Assuming I'm basically in sparks...trying to see what must have items are the highest priority initially so I can devote my time and money to that. Is it reforged relic or AF? Delve gear? Stuff on the AH?

Looking for some info to push me in the right direction. Thanks.

First of all spend sparks on an Eminent Satchet and Eminent Pole (Iirc the pole is the Pet: MAB one). After that, work your way into reforging your AF and AF2, and gridarvor.

Priority imho would be:
AF Body
AF Feet
AF2 Body
AF Head
AF Pants

The rest is as you wish.
AF2 Body
AF2 Feet
Should be your first pieces to +1 since they turn into BP timer II.

Empy +2 head and pants and gloves are still usefull in certain ways. And might be worth to do for upcoming empy reforge. Helios set is pretty much best thing ever for rage blood pacts if you get the right augs.

Good luck!

Just quick question.

Can we can get a BP damage augment on keruanos ? since OP say yes and BG no, pretty confuse before burn money.

And another one about recat BP ? can't go under 40s ?

thks in advance

Yes, Keraunos can get BP damage. The highest I have seen so far is +10.
I have +9 on my own Keraunos.



The known cap these days is 30 seconds.

Thks, so you get that with Duskorb ?

And i need to work a little on BP recast II gear so.

Thks ^^

Yes, Duskorbs, just keep in mind that it can take a lot of tries before you even see Blood Pact Damage.

yep for now i only get MP+63, since i use only keruanos (to don't lose TP by swaping), atm i have perp -6, MAB +15 MP+63.

could you show me your bp recast set too ^^

ItemSet 334028
The Conveyance cape can get BP delay II augmented up to -3.
All this together will bring your Blood pact delay down to 34 seconds (-26), to get it down to 30 you need to spend 100 Job points on Summoner because the GIFTS system behind the Job Points will take off another 5 seconds.
Earlier reports have mentioned BP recast not going below 30 seconds but I have no way to confirm this myself at the moment since I lack the PB delay Augment on my own cape at this moment.

2) In iLevel gear with regen gear / whm sub and Free Fenrir, I used to AFK in a spot where stuff spawns and aggro to me, then Fenrir would go and kill them. In ilvl gear I would dodge / not get hit for much that auto-regen would prevent me from dying. and just park myself there over night. Large inv, zone kill quest, crystal / seals spoils quests, kill / dmg quests... It's not the fastest... but can do while you sleep... >.>;

3) In most CP parties, I went as healer if the moonphase is right... (mostly on bats) Keeping hastega II, Crystal blessing, and Endrain (thus the moonphase) and Carby's favor... Only needed to do a few HRII and some odd Cure4 here and there... Mostly Carby's Favor + Endrian from fenrir would keep any melee topped. Cor's and rng's needed slightly more love. We don't do really well agaisnt mobs that are killed really fast... Even *IF* we can 1 shot them... we can only do so when the timer is up.

Personally when I take on an active support/healer role in CP parties I prefer using Ifrit's Favor, I've never had any trouble keeping up with healing and the +12~24% Double attack helps speed up the kills.

Endrain is all you really need, and maybe some cures. Carbuncle's regen is pretty weak and not worth the loss of double attack and a much better damage dealing avatar.

You also still want to be able to apply other buffs, and being strictly limited to Carbuncle prevents that.

When I've been SMN healer in my pts (bats pt only) I went there as SMN/RDM and I was keeping up

1) Hastega2 (or 1, depending on which buffs we were getting, if 2 is not needed 1 is an MP saver)
2) Crystal Blessing
3) Leviathan's BP (can't remember the name, the CurePot+ one)
4) Ifrit's Warcry

And then I was keeping Ifrit out with Favor up, occasionally using some BP Rage.
With this setup and my capped curepot + Leviathan's BP I could easily cap everybody's HP with a single Cure IV. Of course things could get nasty if people pulled over9000 bats at the same time and refused to lullaby them, but I always taught them to avoid that :P

If the moon-phase is right to use Fenrir's BP then it's even easier, even less healing to do, can probably drop Leviathan's BP.


To recover MP keep Refresh up, use Siphon in between avatars summoning, use convert if need be etc.
When you can't use Fenrir you'll most likely gonna need either Indi-Refresh or Ballads though, if you want to keep up.


If your party already has a healer, just do what I said I was doing minus the healing part. Keep Ifrit out, give Favor to everybody and do Rage BP whenever the timer is up.


To fulfill any of the strategies I talked about you're going to need decent gear though. You said you're using Sparks gear, that's the wrong way to play SMN I'm afraid, you might want to focus on getting at least some ilevel 109 SMN specific items (Reforged AF, Reforged Relic, even AF3+2 would be fine tbf) and create sets accordingly so you can swap gear.

Today I learned that being undergeared is "playing the wrong way." :P

If the party has a dedicated healer, I take out the old whiffle bat, food up and start smacking mobs around myself as well.
Spirit taker makes sure I have unlimited MP and all I have to do is watch the timers.

Using AF, Relic and AF3 and other items is undergeared in my book.
Using Sparks Gear, I'm afraid, is just "doing it wrong".

It's just my opinion on the matter of course, not the absolute truth.
Also saying "sparks gear" is pretty generic, I was thinking about the Wayfarer set. Are there any other Sparks-bought sets that SMN can equip other than that, maybe?

The Espial set, I use the headpiece of that set for melee purposes.
That said, neither set really offers anything useful for Summoner specifically.

You're indeed better off working on the Artifact, Relic and Empyrian sets for that.

When someone just hits 99 (he just hit 99), they often don't have those items. Even if they have the non-item level versions, the 3 refresh on the Wayfarer set is actually decent compared to non-item level perp choices, in addition to providing that huge amount of defensive/caster stats that are extremely useful.

I know when I hit 99, I was using the sparks gear. The gear is pretty bad compared to af/relic/empy, yeah, but when you don't have those yet, you use what you can get.

Why not? I was talking about the original versions of course, not the reforged ones (granted that 109 is not really that hard to obtain either)
Maybe it's just me, but I think a SMN who uses a smart arrange of original AF, Relic and AF3 (well AF not so much tbf lol) would probably be doing it more "right" than by perma-equipping Wayfarer for a Refresh+3 effect.

Not like the ilevel on those 5 slots does anything for our pets, directly.

Dunno, I don't see any reason for doing that, unless maybe if SMN if the first job you bring to 99? I guess.
But that clearly isn't Verda's situation.

Speaking of SoE gear, the Eminent Pole is an excellent magic BP starting staff instead.

Don't forget the Sachet either, it's a nice placeholder until you can get a Seraphicaller.

Absolutely, both are excellent pieces to start out. Rest of the sparks would be probably be better spent to buy stuff and get 109 AF/Relic, if you ask me :P

Don't know if this test can help people who farm salvage, but i tested yesterday AR farm with SMN/SCH (on my dual).

First try i've made was on the 4 rampart floor, first i try to pop all the gear then aggro with garuda to astral flow (apogee up) but was a totally fail since gear aggro me even with pet release.
So next try was to kill all the gear rampart per rampart.

For that i've used Ramuh, shock spike armor up, and when gear pop, alternate thunderspark (around 1500 dmg on each) and stunga to keep ramuh alive, and its work well, so a full farming of 4 rampart + 2 boss, take me around 40-45 min, not so bad.

You can Astral Flow, just takes a bit of getting used to.



I usually just send Garuda around with assaults to pick them up, and then just Astral Flow them all at once. A pet DT set helps this, or Whispering Wind, but neither are necessary. I tried Thunderspark in the past but they were way too resistant. Might be better now with all the new gear and Nirvana.

Usually my salvage runs take around 35 minutes, for reference. I can probably push it lower, but there's some boredom/half afk/talking to people/etc. I run Bhaflau Remnants, not Arrapago.

Yep, friend who show me this is running BR too, just wanna try AR because i do AR with my RDM/BLM in 30 min, and i know this zone very well ^^.

Hey guys i need some help please

this is my current gearswap rule for Blood pacts

function job_get_spell_map(spell)
if spell.type == 'BloodPactRage' then
if magicalRagePacts:contains(spell.english) then
return 'MagicalBloodPactRage'
else
return 'PhysicalBloodPactRage'
end
elseif spell.type == 'BloodPactWard' and spell.target.type == 'MONSTER' then
return 'DebuffBloodPactWard'
end
end

i'd like to add flaming crush rule since BP is doing with magic BP set and nowi did build a pet crit hit rate + MAB with helios and i dont know how to change rule to get it done.

please help

You need add this: ifritRagePacts = S{'Flaming Crush'}
after magicalRagePacts

and function:

function job_get_spell_map(spell)
if spell.type == 'BloodPactRage' then
if magicalRagePacts:contains(spell.english) then
return 'MagicalBloodPactRage'
elseif ifritRagePacts:contains(spell.english) then
return 'IfritBloodPactRage'
else
return 'PhysicalBloodPactRage'
end
elseif spell.type == 'BloodPactWard' and spell.target.type == 'MONSTER' then
return 'DebuffBloodPactWard'
end
end

something isnt working :( gear not swaping for ifrit

OMG i was having a couple mistakes with extra "s" thanks for the help dude,

i have another problem with this lua, i will try explain what is happening here and see if someone can undertand me.

first this lua get a couple commands to use BPs

for example

gs c pact [PactType]
Attempts to use the indicated pact type for the current avatar.
PactType can be one of:
cure
curaga
buffOffense
buffDefense
buffSpecial
debuff1
debuff2
sleep
nuke2
nuke4
bp70
bp75 (merits and lvl 75-80 pacts)
astralflow

so to use bp 70 i need to macro this way:
/console gs c pact bp70 so all Bp listed on that area should be used
pacts.bp70 = {['Ifrit']='Flaming Crush', ['Shiva']='Rush', ['Garuda']='Predator Claws', ['Titan']='Mountain Buster',
['Ramuh']='Chaotic Strike', ['Leviathan']='Spinning Dive', ['Carbuncle']='Meteorite', ['Fenrir']='Eclipse Bite',
['Diabolos']='Nether Blast',['Cait Sith']='Regal Scratch'}

however after this last update or 2 i think commands arent working, right after spellcast died and i keep gettng this

>>/pet "Predator Claws"
...A command error ocurred