The 6th Ministry's Secret: A Summoner's Guide (v2)

Thanks for posting that Alistrianna, it also reminded me of another thing I've been meaning to mention on here as most people don't seem to know about it, which is that the Zodiac Ring works on Elemental Siphon for all elements except light & dark.

So for light/dark, I use Globidonta Ring, and with any other spirit I use Zodiac Ring.

...... Guess I should get around to doing that windurst questline at some point then lol.

The quest line is well worth doing, especially if you're into Summoner lore as it involves the most badass Summoner to ever live!

Jobs will undergo the following adjustments.

`Summoner
Ready's recast delay will be shortened.

Shorter BP recasts? Think we will be able to have 45s off the bat and now be able to go down to 15s recasts?

Someone over at BG says it should have been translated as Avatar's Favour recast is changing.

if you look at the OF post it says favor now, which .... i can't really imagine will affect Smn at all. Favor no longer carries any costs/penalties right? ... maybe if it got dispelled? when has this ever really been an issue lol?

I first thought it was BP recast, which would have been nice next to bsts 10 sec charges. /ohwell

Well, that *** sucks...

For the magic BP set, wouldn't hagondes boots with max augmented pet MAB be better than helios boots? Or does the BP damage increase on helios make up for the 20 more MAB that you would have gotten from hagondes?

I don't have perfect augments on either, but I tested this on wild rabbits in West Ron a while back. I stored away the Caller's Pendant. Avatars had 0 TP each BP.

My helios boots are: BP DMG+7, MAB+27
My hagondes sabots are: MAB+22 (plus these have an additional +25 MAB already on it)

Hagondes won consistently every time for magical BPs.

I tried the same test a while back (+7/+30 on Helios, +23 on Hagondes) and the Helios came out just a smidgeon ahead. However, I had a bit less total BP damage back then than I do now, so it's possible it's swung the other way now.

Prophecyy, what staff were you using for that test? And I'm assuming you had BP/MAB Helios on the rest of the slots?

I just tested this again myself. Used Thunderstorm on Firesday to avoid any elemental stuff. Target was Chapulis in Ceizak. All done with zero TP, 1/5 merit points.

With Hagondes (+23): 8858 damage
With Helios (+7/+30): 8918 damage

The damage is close enough that which one is better probably depends on the mix of BPDmg & MAB in your other gear. For reference, I'm using Keraunos with BP+9 and MAB+18 augments, which beats Nirvana by a good 800 damage with my setup. If you're using Nirvana for magic BPs, Hagondes Sabots will probably beat Helios, but you're also missing out on a lot of potential damage.

What *really* matters is not what you are using, but what you are fighting.

The moment a mob starts to have any decent amounts of MDB (read: NMs) MAB starts to depreciate in value. (Namely that is because MAB is a ratio buff, with no MDB, 20MAB is 1.2x magic damage, but with just "2" MDB, that drops down to 1.17x. And NMs tend to have varying degrees of not only MDB but also MDT.)

So ultimately, if we want to make super generalized statements about the two:

Hagondes will win out on worthless trash mobs. (eg: ones without MDB.)
Helios will win out on content that matters. (eg: NMs)

It's exactly the same as when they reforged the artifact shoes, only now it's more than just comparing MAB to BPdmg, it's MAB AND BPdmg v MAB.
Slightly different tune.
Same results: BPdmg is the better modifier for stuff that matters.
And now when you have gear that has both, that will be better than just MAB or just BPdmg. (Hence the latency cheating with Keraunos.)

BP Damage is a separate multiplier, similar to the MAB/MDB term. Things like avatar TP or enemy INT/MDB don't factor into how MAB and BP Damage are multiplied in.

For the purposes of comparing MAB to BP Damage, it can be simplified to this: Multiplier = MAB(of avatar) * BPDmg

I'll do the math for my specific build. My magic BP gear minus Keraunos offers BP+40 MAB+151. Avatar has native MAB+40, merits give MAB+10. I'm not going to math job points because it's not clear to me how the magic damage & blood pact damage ones work.

So we're looking at initially BP+40 MAB+201. Or a multiplier of 1.4 * 3.01 = 4.214.

Add my Keraunos which is BP+9 MAB+118, and you get a multiplier of 1.49 * 4.19 = 6.2431

Add Nibiru and you get 1.4 * 4.36 = 6.104

So in my case, Keraunos should be about 2% better and that's with a Keraunos that could still use some work. Again that's not accounting for job points but I doubt it will change all that much.

By the way, BP damage works the same on physical BPs. It's a straight multiplier.

Coincidentally, I had mulled over which path to take myself when I got my Nibiru Staff last week. As a career SMN, I wanted to see if Nibiru might be better than my Keraunos for magic BP's. It wasn't.

Nibiru is best as a nuking staff for BLM or SCH.

That's actually a common misunderstanding. MAB's bonus is not affected by the enemy you're fighting. It's a straight bonus, just like BP damage, even though it's frequently placed in the same term as MDB because it looks nicer.

MDB can effectively "negate" some of your MAB, but if you don't have that MAB, the MDB will still reduce your damage by the same amount.

Let's say you have a 1000 damage BP, and you have 200 MAB. So against a mob with no MDB, your MAB/MDB term looks like (1+2)/(1+0) = 3/1 = 3.0, boosting you from 1000 damage to 3000 damage.

Now let's say you nuke a target with 20 MDB. Your MAB/MDB term becomes (1+2)/(1+0.2) = 3/1.2 = 2.5. So now you'll only deal 2500 damage.

However, if you had no MAB, the MDB would still reduce the damage. The MAB/MDB term would now be (1+0)/(1+0.2) or 0.833. So you would deal 833 damage.

So the MAB takes you from 1000 damage to 3000 (a 200% increase) or it takes you from 833 damage to 2500 (also a 200% increase). Whether the enemy has MDB or not, you're gaining the same relative bonus.

This may sound silly, but doesn't your precast blood pact set only take the cooldown down to 31 secs (15 from "Blood Pact" ability delay II and only 14 from "Blood Pact" ability delay).

This is cool! I hope you share it once you've gotten it working the way you want it to. I may even translate it to BST depending on how it was put together.

I just wish there was something similar for BST that would show your pets' HP/MP/TP (shown in bar form, along with numerical values and percentages), status effects/ailments, ready points available and recast timer all in one gump.

Would it still be worth it for me to start working on a Nirvana? i have been toying with the idea for awhile but haven't had the time to really start it up... here's the issue though, i have to start from 0 (I only have done nyzul floors on the char i'd make it on)... .

I really kinda wonna try X.x but i fear that if this game ends soon it'll be for nothing

Its worth it if you want it. The game ends when you stop playing.

You can get 15 from both sources. The set shown on the first page of the thread is missing Glyphic Spats +1. Or alternately, Caller's Earring would also work. In fact, many of those sets are slightly incorrect.

Do it! I know someone who's been working on Nirvana for as long as I've known her, which is now about 2 or maybe even 3 years. Goals don't have to be short-term, even if the game is drawing to a close. It's not like they're shutting the servers down once the last content is released, I suspect they'll be up for some time.

Not sure if it'll be worth it, if you have the inventory space to spare and don mind full-timing one staff for all other things you can consider it.

Otherwise I say, put the money into a Nirvana fund if you want to make one and just invest in a good Elemental Siphon set if you haven't yet. (Leaforbs on Telchine for up to +35 per piece.)

Did they ever change the Blood Pact Damage job point category? Is it still just +3 damage per point (10000 -> 10003 damage) or is it a more substantial increase?

How about the magic damage category? Is it just the "magic damage" stat like we get on gear?

What are the skillchain properties of Blindside and Regal Gash?

Omg someone cast arise on Crevox! :O

Slowly getting back into the swing of things. :) Logged on for the first time in a while two days ago, spending a lot of time fixing my Gearswap, which got deleted... (sigh)

So, here I am asking the fun questions again. Probably also going to take a little bit of time to update the BG-Wiki with some of the new changes.

Ah, I'm just referencing this from the June 25 update notes under Resolved Issues:


http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/47481-Jun-25-2015-%28JST%29-Version-Update


I remember reading something about our damage being lower than usual, glad it got fixed.


Thanks. :) Hopefully will be around for a while again.