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

Did you guys do Intense or Regular?

Was VD Intense with PD setup and was DNC BLU BLU GEO SMN WHM

I'm gonna try some of these non SP setups later tonight though.

Oh okay so it was a straight zerg seeing as you didn't use a tank. What was your clear time?

Was less than 60s after we used PD :D But prebuffing was about 1:30 so I guess about 2 mins, as others have said DNC can really put out some spike damage on that fight helps a lot, once they got off 3 crit ws from one climactic so was nice.

Because its POIDH, ill bite. But ive had this augment for quite a long time now. Having said that, the stone I used was leafdim. I would like go further and say that it is one of the more rare augments, and ive only seen 1-2 other ppl here with it.

Brynach's screenshot:

(removed, look above now)

Thanks Crevox. I was able to find and correct my mistake.

Yeah, I've dumped literally hundreds of stones into that (and now will probably do hundreds more)
There's no other viable staff options, a shitgimmick latent and a fight i have no current reasonable way of doing, and no club/shield combos.

You could try for a refresh +2 staff from darkmatter too, but if you wanna use a campaign on that or dump the gil is up to you.

The tumult curator is a very fun challenging fight that brings people together and releases euphoric levels of endorphins on your first win. I'd say put you and your group to the test and tackle it for fun if nothing else. The chances of landing a staff is pretty rare though but people do seem to get items from it more common than other coffers. I wish there was one with refresh and perp cost on it. Should've been something the devs considered for nirvana to be honest for the afterglow. I feel like they thought nirvana was too strong though and they've been offloading upgrades to lots of other slots lately. Strap, Satchet, rings... I can't really be mad the afterglow isn't great after that. But it is still probably the last thing I'm gonna afterglow ever and even something like a bit of refresh would've been nice. Hopefully after this master trial business I can get back to finishing my +1 set and working on fleshing out my smn more.

i need to get consistent +2 on at least 2 other slots atm, wasn't aware it could do it on weapon.

Excuse me for the potentially dumb question, but why do you want a staff with Refresh?

You can get about -7 perp from just accessories and the refresh/perp legs now, without a staff you'd need to use apogee feet something like that. It'd still be good just for idle without avatar out though, stacked refresh you can get 2 from job and the following in each slot:
2 1 0 0
2 0 0 1
4 2 1 1
1 1 2 2

with 5 a tic refresh with amalric coif +1, you can also get refresh to last over 5 mins on smn with duration gears.

Lots of this is really conditional, but in a situation you're backup healing or something or really low mana I can see the use for it.

Total refresh you could get would be 27 a tic in this case, and you'd have to be low mana, poisoned, and spend hundreds of millions on hq gear, and get a lucky dark matter augment but that's what is possible. Whether you think that's worth it is up to you. I think it has it's uses especially if using high mp cost pacts with our new reduced cooldowns while also backup healing, I tend to run oom and have to siphon, and if having to siphon at a critical time it can lead to deaths. Is it the #1 priority for every smn to get all this? absolutely not, but for enthusiasts that have nearly everything else like Frod does, I don't see any reason not to go after a refresh staff.

What boots give +2 refresh?

Besides that... I still am still not seeing how the staff would be useful.

The only case I can think of is: no avatar out, and under 50% MP for the Oneiros Grip to activate.

This is, of course, ignoring the Contemplator +1.

You can get Refresh +2 on all merlinic pieces. Most hardcore summoners (well really any mage job) turned in Merlinic Hands/Feet during Dark Matter campaign to get the 2 refresh.

Sadly, didn't play during that. :(

Well, that explains the boots at the very least.

Don't be sad Crevox! I participated in all of those campaigns doing 6x attempts every day and I don't have refresh+2 on any piece either! :D

For what it's worth I figured I would post my experience from Intense Ambuscade (Poroggo) yesterday. Did a run with PLD WHM GEO SMN SMN SMN, no SP abilities, and they were fairly smooth.

We used no buffs besides Reraise & food. Not even Avatar's Favor. PLD went in and face tanked the frog, everyone else stayed outside AOE range (~32') unless they had to. WHM would only run in to cure and then run back out again. GEO would only run in to Geo-Frailty, then run back out and Indi-Refresh. (However, you had to be careful standing in the refresh bubble and only do so if you need it, because if you run out of the refresh bubble and into AOE range before the refresh buff wears off, you could potentially get hammered. If I needed refresh, I'd move outside the bubble when my BP timer was around 10-12 seconds so the effect wears off before I step within 30'. If the GEO was running in to re-cast Frailty they would cancel Indi-Refresh before doing so in order to avoid getting one-shotted.) SMNs just ran in to Volt Strike and then ran back out again. /RDM advised so you have Convert as one more tool to recover MP if you get hit by the MP-draining AOE move which you will get hit by a couple times and it can make it hard to utilize Apogee.

Very simple fight, honestly, once you know what not to do. The frog can cast Death under 50%, so the PLD sometimes ate it from that, but we just kited the frog until PLD got up, and he was able to tank it weakened.

Overall the fights were taking about 7 minutes. It wasn't bad at all. I'd be spamming it if not for the campaigns going on right now.

Oneiros grip is less than 75%. But yes, it's pretty much for no-av idle and keeping lockstyle staff.

Av out refresh needs nirvana anyway to max out perp and refreah together.

What meds do you suggest should a Summoner carry around?

Well, not gonna tell any other SMN what they should do, but here's what I carry around and why:
Echo Drops - Cuz silence makes it so you can't summon avatars, or use your magey subjob spells
Remedies - Cuz paralyze really destroys a SMN with their extremely long cooldowns on blood pacts.
Vile Elixrs - Because you're not always RDM sub and it allows you to keep on conduiting once your mana is low, and sometimes convert is too dangerous.
Panacea - Because why not, slow can hurt your ability to spam cure IV, and if you're not WHM sub your only option is Soothing Ruby or a Panacea. Sometimes you can't really afford the ward being used for Soothing Ruby, and if you panacea you can then reapply haste II with your next ward timer rather than using two wards to reapply haste. It's also great for really nasty def/mdef downs that just can't wait for summoning and using a ward.
Holy Water - To troll Pikohan, but actually because you have no native way to remove doom on SMN so keep these handy.
Antacid - As you'll see below, SMN has a lot of food options and sometimes changing food is a must if you change what you're fighting, strategy, or setup.
Dawn Muslim - I've never actually used one, but there's a lot of situations it can be more useful than resummoning your avatar, they don't stack however and disposable pets is what SMN does best, however something dying mid conduit can ruin the conduit so it's a good thing to have and use, it's just a bad habbit of mine that I don't.
Amrita - I rarely ever use this but tend to carry one around because I find them in floatsam in my mog garden, it's 5 regen and 5 refresh for 5 mins.

There are other MP meds too, but most of them will prevent doing anything for a time period afterwards, or even give medicated status, or have really long use times (like 10 seconds) so I tend to not use them unless they are temps in Escha. If you're not RDM sub, some kitron juice is a decent thing to carry too.

And somewhat related, foods:
Rolanberry Daifuku (+1) - Magic acc for you and your pet, my favorite.
Grape Daifuku (+1) - MAB for you and your pet, yummy.
Akamochi (+1) - Combined pet acc and pet attack as well as acc and attack for you, if using physical pacts on higher end content I usually use this.
Kusamochi (+1) - Straight Attack for you and your avatar, great for flaming crush, or anything you don't care about accuracy and doing physical pacts.
Shiromochi (+1) - For the most extreme of accuracy situations.
Miso Ramen (+1) - Sometimes you just need to live or evade debuffs.

Also, you gave Cait a cute halloween costume but your tagline needs reworked.

Less than 76% if you want to get technical :D

On belt and grip, I'm pretty sure they work off your base MP too, not after what is boosted on gear, which generally makes it a really low number it starts actually working. Their saving grace is they are there for you when you need them the most.

I think nitpicking is what started earlier arguments in the first place no?

I agree :D

Though, I haven't been a part of any arguments...

According to Braden, the poroggo is immune to debuff Geomancy spells.
If his tests are correct, then it means Frailty would have no effect.

Also the range is likely 30 yalms but there's something strange connected to it, likely server<>client lag.
I got hit at 31, 33 and lastly 42.8 yalms as well.
I'm pretty confident it's because I was at that distance on my client, but under 30 on the server (which is where calculations are performed) but thought I'd say it anyway.


Can use a PUP tank in place of PLD btw, immune to death.
Also with the right gear and Tank setup, I'm pretty confident PUP will never die, ensuring avatars will never die out of straight damage too (just from Hammer etc)

42.8? Holy cow, I dunno that would have to be some heavy lag. I got hit once at 30.7 but I was standing completely still at the time and had been for a while. Not sure where the tank was at the time, could be it's 30' centered on the target, or it could be it really is slightly larger than 30'.

Also that's funny about Frailty, but I believe it. Never saw a difference in damage when it was down.

Lots of viable strategies available now but for front-line DD/Melee set up, there's a new strategy for SMN for Intense VD involving a little... well, how shall I say... back up role (ie; save the day).

Since melee's have the potential to take hate from the tank and cause a wipe, what I've been doing in that strat is after buffing them with Hastega II and Crystal Blessing etc, I then move away to beyond 35 yalms and wait. If/when the group wipes for whatever reason, I come in and Conduit to finish off the Frog. I've actually lost count how many runs were saved as a result of this 'insurance' policy. A well-geared SMN using Conduit has the potential to kill the Frog on Intense VD from 50% HP to 0% - in most cases provided the attention of the NM is still directed to the tank. Those SMN's who have invested into a good -DT/-PDT Idle set will find their avatars surviving long enough to finish out Conduit.

Sometimes Conduit isn't even needed. A fresh Apogee can do the job just fine - and there might even be instances where the SMN and tank are last people standing and a little kiting is in order to slowly finish off the NM. Food for thought for those doing melee strat and bringing a SMN for buffs/assistance. Never underestimate the value of turning a wipe/wasted run into a successful one. It can make a lot of people happy. :)

:o



:O

So uh... is this a common thing?

Yeah during the campaign, I had gotten a few of that for my mule the +1 version.

Bah, thought I got super lucky.

Still, it's strange that they would allow Tumult gear to drop like this.