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

You only need to glance at the screen every 40 seconds!

This is not true at all, I'm afraid. Day/weather bonuses do not affect duration of anything, only potency.

It's got to be the empy set that is doing this. Which is interesting, I thought it only worked on Rages.

How it works on Rages is this: Each piece of Empy adds 2-3% proc chance of Empy Blood Boon, up to a max of 10% with all five pieces. The Empy set bonus cannot proc on a normal blood boon, so if you have say Blood Boon +30 from gear, you aren't increasing your chances of the empy set proc. The empy set adds a different 2-10% chance of blood boon that will activate the set bonus 100% of the time. The damage gain on the BP varies based on the amount of MP saved.

I suspect it's the same with Wards, that their duration will increase anywhere from 50-100% based on MP savings. At any rate, this is great info because like I said I'm not aware of any testing as to whether the Empy set bonus affects Wards. (And it's possible it didn't until the reforge, or I think someone would've noticed by now.)

Considering how we received "official" and accurate timers only recently, I'm not sure we would've noticed it.

I am getting very similar result as verda. Also according to procs% of the few tests I did, looks like Sechs is right and it looks like the set bonus is a different blood boon than the trait one.

Hey guys, is the apogee set hard to get? I have no experience with escha monsters but I've spent a lot of money trying to augment helios. I heard apogee is not random like helios so I would rather try to get that with all of the money I'm sinking on random helios...

Yes, but which is more useful, the Apogee +1 or that Nirvana?

The only reason I ask is that it really is a question. For magical BPs, we have our Espiritus. The level upgrade is certainly a consideration, and I think that most times, it's the magic BPs that deal the high damage via MB (much like BrokenHelices.) Sure, you can get your way into an ilvl 120 Cait Sith or Carbuncle.... but I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have intentionally MB'd with either of those. (Carby. And I was using him as Erasega Prime, not as a DD, and figured why not. Cait, while adorable and my go-to for Reraising my party and standing around outside, is not a DD by any stretch of the imagination. Carby at least removes six status effects a pop.)

That said, the price consideration of obtaining a full set of Apogee +1 is easily close to most, if not all, of a Nirvana. As a user of 3/5 NQ pieces because screw Helios and I'm broke, I can't say I don't like it. (Vir'ava needs to cough up my body abjuration and I'd rather have feet crafted than buy them.)

Then we come to that set bonus. Apogee +1, in case readers are unaware, grants EVEN MORE BP dmg on top of the ton that you can get on it already, starting at +4, increasing by +2 to a total of +10 for a full set. I'm not certain that, plus the small adjustments from NQ to HQ, offsets a +40% damage increase on Rage.

Does anyone know the ratio for pet MAB to BP damage? I have yet to find it. This may determine whether or not I swap some crap around, so if anyone knows, that would be awesome.

I digress, though. Obviously, both are things to shoot for, and in the interim, especially if you have crafting friends/LS mates, I would personally go get an Espiritus or three, snag a Gridarvor and other basic gear, gather some abjurations for the easier to get pieces (feet/legs/hands), buy the NQ, and use other stuff while you worked toward that. And make your LS kill Douma Weapon and the Clawberry while your're at it, because GOD those are annoying and PUG don't tend to work out.

And use all that lovely stuff spamming salvage until your eyes turned black.

Disclaimer: I am not a pro SMN, I'm not even especially great at it. I just love to play it and these are my views.


TLDR: Seeks hates Helios random, get Espiritus and NQ until you can afford the good stuff, and idk which first. And some commentary. Excellent rundown of crafting costs, Verda, coming from a noncrafter here.

You want as much of both (obviously) since they make each other more valubale.

Non Varying pDIF / MDB / BaseDmg (avatar no weapon) Using the Flaming Crush dmg formula from wiki:

BP dmg is very slightly ahead when comparing 1 point for 1 point. But deciding between a +11 BP body and a +7 BP / +30 MAB one is a no brainer.

There is no real conflict right now in gear except if your only 2 options for body slot are Convo. Body (+1) and Shomonjijoe (+1)...

Apogee+1 >>>>>>>>> everything else.
Period.
Apogee ≈ Perfectly Aug'd Helios

You can cheat Nirvana *IF* your internet's latency if high enough... But depending on where you live, your bandwidth+shared connections, and your physical connectivity (eg fiber optic wires or just the shitty ones most places in America have), you may not be able to cheat that.
Basically: the worse your internet connection + the farther away from Japan, the more likely you'll be able to perform the Nirvana cheat.

Otherwise, Nirvana by itself will tend to win out due to the massive accuracies it gives.

As for MAB v BPdmg, BPdmg is always the better.
Because it's a hard % bonus.
MAB is a soft bonus, being dictated by MDB of the target (which relevant things have a lot of).
Mind you, Malaise IS a thing. So that's something to consider.
Mind you also that the "big gun" of SMN is Flaming Crush, whose magic hit is based on its physical, making Frailty more potent increase. (Though, that is only with regard to a single GEO. With two, no *** are given.)

Let us think with a simple example:
Say you must make a choice between 40MAB and 40BPdmg.
With 1MDB, they are both a 1.4x multiplier to magical damage.
But with just a paltry 5MDB, the MAB drops to a 1.33x.
With 10MDB that drops to 1.27x.
Meaning that against things with larger and larger MDBs, BPdmg will always win out, because its factor of multiplication isn't dependent on anything.

But such a comparison is only relevant to staves really.
Nirvana's Lv+2&40% vs Espiritus' 3%&140MAB
Which can be cheated to have both if your internet sucks enough (and you're using 3rd party macros, equipsets have a built-in latency delay which makes trying to use them for this impossible).
This is why Apogee+1 is greater than all other pieces: massive MAB AND massive BPdmg. (And that set bonus makes Apogee+1 almost like having a second Nirvana.)

The Nirvana lag doesn't give you the full benefit of Nirvana, just probably the +10 INT for the purposes of dINT base damage and WSC.
NQ Apogee seems to be one of the cheaper sets, if just NQ is what you're after. As far as NMs go, other than Palila, I trio'd T1/T2 with BST/BST/SMN + trusts (August can handle T2s during campaign boost), or BST/RNG/SMN for the caturae. Flaming Crush or the appropriate MB tears through most except Naphula (I found Volt Strike the best) and the grimoire (Predator Claws).

This is true, but not because:
MAB is a straight % bonus too. 100 MAB will exactly double your damage just like 100 BP damage will, no matter how much MDB the enemy has.

The reason BP damage is more valuable is because like Elizabet said, the two stats benefit each other. The more of one you have, the more valuable the other will be. Since MAB is much easier to get (can readily be found in quantities of 30+), that makes BP damage more sought after. The ideal ratio would be 1:1 but there just isn't enough BP dmg out there to get even close to that.

Here's the problem with your math: MAB & MDB do not directly affect each other. Take the MAB out of your example, and just have 40 BPdmg. With no MDB, the multiplier will be 1.4x. If the monster has 10 MDB, your net multiplier will be 1.4 * 100/110 = 1.27. MDB works whether you have MAB or not, and reduces the net multiplier by the same amount whether you have MAB or not. So you can't say the MDB is negatively affecting only the MAB. It's negatively affecting *everything*, BP dmg included.

Anyway, to answer Seek's question more directly, I think it depends how good the Helios you already have is. I think full Apogee+1 could be better than Nirvana when going from scratch. However, if you have even mediocre Helios gear, I'd say Nirvana is likely the better goal. The main reason is Flaming Crush. You say you find yourself using magic BPs a lot for magic bursts, and this is true these days, but the single most powerful tool in your arsenal is Flaming Crush, and Nirvana is king for it because Flaming Crush benefits from everything. Acc, Atk, MAcc, MAtk, BPdmg, all the attributes minus probably VIT/CHR, the whole package.

What in the nineteen hells is that armor (..and I ask only because I haven't slept more than an hour or so in two days and it sure LOOKS like some *** child of an Anhur Robe..)

Oh it's the ilvl baby of Anhur.

Even if you're using the old one, because if your luck is like mine, you have spent fruitless hours trying to farm base Marduk pieces because "oh I'm not going to gear summoner...not ME!"

Still damn impressive!

Praise the lord new fast cast set!!

Anyone know when the first page guide will get updated?

Hahahahahahaha....
Oh wait.
You're serious.
Let me laugh even harder!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
How magic damage works.
MDB of the target directly weakens your MAB.
They're a ratio.
It's literally third grade level math.
Do you not recall how denominators work?

BPdmg has no relevant stat like that.

And like Elizabeth said: there's no need to choose, because most slots have gear that has large values of both.
There really isn't much of a situation wherein a person has to pick between 40MAB and 40BPdmg.
My arbitrary example, which seemed to you to be real one, was just showing how MDB works with MAB.
The game is almost old enough for High School, it knows that MAB isn't a hard % increase but a soft one. As does most of the playerbase.

To REALLY answer Seeker's question:
Make Nirvana.
If your Helios pieces aren't perfect, get Apogee pieces to hold you over. (They're 200~300k on Odin, which is DEFINITELY cheaper than playing the augment game with Helios if you haven't done so already.)
Then, after you made Nirvana, save up for the +1 pieces.
The full +1 set is simply the best there likely ever will be.

Player Magic Defence Bonus Base starts at 1.0
Any Magic attack done to said player is say 1000 damage base / 1.0 = 1k damage. Players have no INATE Magic Defence Bonus, or at least so people thought (Anyone who was a HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE and didn't work it out before GEO when BLU had means to disprove this as *** at least).

The Minimum Magic Defence Value is 0.5 but all targets in the game start off with it as 1.0, there used to be no method in game (75 days) that reduced Magic Defence bonus on targets, only methods to increases i.e. PLD and BLU with Saline. Benthic Typhoon used to drop Magic Defence by 10%, which by it's very definition suggest that its either used for Targets that buff their own value above 1.0 (None do btw outside of an activated buff which btw would make more sense to just dispel) or how about how the GEO MAGIC DEFENCE DOWN BUFF WORKS nearly double Magic damage done to a target by it self (Yes its far more valuable than MAB buff from a GEO.).

That said, there's no need to be an *** about pointing out a mistake. But people who don't actually know how something works, shouldn't post and state something as fact either.

I mean it doesn't bother me because ya know, I managed my GCSE maths in year 6 at PRIMARY SCHOOL (Thats a Highschool diploma equiv btw) so I could work it out in my sleep after trying it on day 1 of getting the spell............... Sanguine blade was a perfect test for it.

The only RELEVANT question at this point is, "is MAB better than Macc?" but thats a situational discussion and has literally 0 relevance. MAB only outweighs MACC once you hit around 96% Acc on the spells (Resist rates fix the rest)

I use two pieces of Helios that I very rarely toss stones at, usually random crap found here or there. I was working on a body until I hit 3% pet crit and a brick wall that kept giving me junk.

The hat has 7% DA and a couple of other useful stats. The pants got a lucky first time augment of 23 MAB, with nothing else that jumps out at me over the Apogee pants.

Meh, I'm pretty sure that my craptastic FCs are the result of trying to hit ilvl 130+ mobs without benefit of GEO, Gambit, and the like. When my FC hit right they do deal excellent damage, but honestly I prefer Ramuh or Shiva.

Oddly, when I tell people that the first mythic that I intend to make is NOT Nirvana (though I want one) they're shocked. (Then they get confused because I'm not saying which one it is.)

Send me some of that cheap Bewitched gear, then I won't have to part with the Ceheuetzi Pelt and can use it to pop for my t3 abjuration (...again....up yours sideways, Vir'ava....)

Thank you, guys, I appreciate the advice and willingness to eyeball my ramblings.

Honestly, IMHO the best person to ask about SMN is Avalon on Cerberus.

He does have excellent advice, and in fact encouraged me to actually work on SMN even though at the time I had about 61 skill and no gear.

Thank you.

Hey guys if I'm trying to one shot the IT acuexes/umbrils, should I level the magic dmg and bp dmg gifts at the same time? I've been working on bp and just noticed there is an mdmg category.

Verda, are you referring to targets with MDB being higher than the base 1? because 200/1 = 200 meaning it loses no value on those targets.

Add a GEO into the mix and the MDB value drops to 0.5 potentially and is then say ~ 200/0.5 = 400, making it more potent.

I'm not aware of BP Damage being affected by this buff from a GEO/BLU options.

This is a rather Basic look at the value, but if this is the case, MAB would be a better set for instances where you have a GEO, and granted you could gear for both instances.

The Mythic question ~ Who wouldn't want a complete set of Mythics before the pull the server plugs!

Just got a blurred staff +1 :)

Ty... Don't have the JPs yet to use it (19/100, just started farming them this week)... But soon enough!