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

I believe my original point was comparing the raw Avatar Attack potential on Helios boots to that of Psycloth boots Path C. BP damage isn't a factor unless you're BP'ing, which doesn't apply here.

How much more possible Attack does Crit+4 add?

Psycloth shoes could be situationally useful for the Acc+, but definitely not for the measly +15 attack.

Edit: But then what use would +15 attack give that would warrant dropping either BP damage +7% OR up to 5% haste?

On a side note:

Has anyone experimented with Dark Magic Skill with regards to dark-based BP's?

EDIT: Nvm, that wouldn't have anything to do with BP's.

I'm looking at maximum damage potential for Night Terror since I use that for several Escha T3's.

Random question:

Which JP Category(s) should I focus on first?

I started with Avatar Accuracy, Magic Accuracy, Elemental Siphon, Conduit, Astral Flow then everything else.

Question regarding some of the gearsets on the front page (which is very helpful btw).

I notice pretty much everything has either Pet: MAB or Pet: ATT. Now, I don't know crap about SMN, gonna get that out of the way, but I'm trying to help a friend get geared up on SMN to do lowman stuff with me. For Lv135ish content I know that if I try to use MAB over MACC, or ATT over ACC, I won't hit a single thing, even with shiromochi +1 and rolls. Do SMN BP not suffer from similar issues?

I've read about Diabolos BP basically being unresistable, which is cool, but what about everything else? Is Pet: ACC ever a concern on higher end content? Torpor usually won't be available for the SMN because BST has Run Wild which means it's better to use Frailty, the only EVA down option SMN would have access to would be Languor if I wanted to use magic ready on whatever NM.

Thanks!

A lot of your questions can be answered quite simply actually. Basically, disregarding any super resistance gimmicks, your main dmg pact is Flaming Crush, this pact is quite peculiar in the sense that it is a 3 hit hybrid phys / magical pact. It contains two physical hits and one magical. The magic portion of the dmg depends on the physical hits dmg, then scaled with MAB... BUT it's accuracy is based off the physical part. That means there isn't a resistance check (since its acc is physical), you get the dmg if the hits land. Now, the reason why you don't see a lot of pet: acc gear on SMN is because Avatars have really good ACC from the get go at i119 (121 with Nirv). So basically, Flaming crush has high ACC, and can double dip from Frailty + Malaise, and doesn't need Torpor much.

The next part is that if there is a gimmick resistance, or that for some weird reason Ifrit's crushes arent good enough (More likely due to the physical part lacking atk to push pdif / the monster have too much def, etc... to push the magical part in good scaling). Then you swap to full magical BP. Usually a 5/5 merit BP will be stronger, but if you are on things stupidly hard enough to not get decent numbers on Flaming Crush, likely the MDB / INT on the monster are likely super huge as well. Thus, we switch to Night Terror which basically ignore MDB and cannot miss / be resisted.

You and I have talked quite a bit on BG so I know the kinds of NM's you're fighting.

That said, don't bother using Flaming Crush or any other physical BP on these T3's. It's just not worth the wasted effort. You may get a lucky hit in every once in a while but it will be for crap damage. Your best bet is to use magic-based BP's on these monsters.

Case in point. We did Urmhallulu last night and Flaming Crush wouldn't land. And that's with Nirvana, 550 Gifts and superior gear. Night Terror does unresisted damage but it wasn't until I switched to Titan's Geocrush did the big numbers start rolling in (on this particular NM anyway).

For your friend, have him take a look at the new guide here as a point of reference. But he should work on getting BP DMG+, Pet: Magic Attack and Crit Hit+4% on his Helios sets. Grape Daifuku+1 will boost the Avatars MAB damage. Magic accuracy should be one of the first Job Point categories he completes if he plans on doing a lot of Escha-Zitah with you.

I don't have a lot of experience with the other T3 Escha NMs but I second the Geocrush part on Urmhallulu.
If you time it right and exploit its gimick you can get some ridiculous numbers on him.

Thank you both for your responses!

Avalon is right that I'm basically taking my friend from non-ilvl gear straight into Escha T3 as quickly as possible, so that was the info I was really looking for. Interesting that Geocrush did so much damage, but I guess it makes sense from what we know about the others (monkey takes a lot of damage from water, etc).

This will let me switch things up a bit on my end for some fights, which will be nice. I've really wanted to try using Bubble Shower / Venom build on Monkey for a while, but other BST partner doesn't have anywhere near as good of a MACC set as I do, so I've just stayed with the physical setup.

Will just have to have him make a MAB set of helios sooner than I had planned. Thanks!

Up till now, I've been doing Fleetstalker with the Night Terror strat, but I'm curious to see how Leviathan does instead due to the weakness to water. I'll post the results later tonight.

[EDIT] Hmm... not to get off subject but in discussing exploiting elemental weaknesses, I started thinking about Pazuzu (since I need his freaking neck piece). I know he's dark-based and really resistant to magic damage, but someone on BG posted that his team defeated him throwing a bunch of SMN's at him.

I wonder if light damage would be decent on him. I mean, Holy Mist isn't the greatest, but it would be worth trying at least once.

Why can't we get Alexander's storyline TP moves?!

Beautiful guide. I just reactivated a couple weeks ago and this was a major help!

A couple new gloves for us from Unity, both drop off Asure-toothed Clawberry in The Temple of Uggalepih.

Asteria mitts +1
DEF:82 HP+18 MP+44 STR+6 DEX+28 VIT+24 AGI+5 INT+19 MND+33 CHR+20
Evasion+22 Magic Evasion+43 "Magic Def. Bonus" +3 Haste +3%
Carbuncle: Halves Perpetuation Cost
Lv.+1
Avatar: "Magic Atk. Bonus"+26
Unity Ranking: "Refresh"+1~2
Lv.99 SMN

Lamassu mitts +1
DEF:82 HP+18 MP+44 STR+6 DEX+28 VIT+24 AGI+5 INT+19 MND+33 CHR+20
Evasion+22 Magic Evasion+43 "Magic Def. Bonus" +3 Haste +3%
Summoning magic skill +22
Cait Sith: Lv.+1
Avatar: Magic Accuracy+26
Unity Ranking: MP+10~50
Lv.99 SMN


NQ gloves don't get the lv boosts, and Carby mitts only gets +1 refresh. Not looking forward to farming 100 coats lol.

Edit: Forgot to add the SMN skill to Lamassu... Which if my late night math is right, brings us to 595 max SMN skill. So close...

Are Asteria Mitts SMN only?

Yeah, they're both SMN only.

F yeah, finally a good replacement for Serpentes cuffs!

Finally joined team Nirvana :)

Azure-toothed Clawberry : You can survive the triple Searing Light np with EA and Scherzo (no Shell). This NM is very squishy and can die before Astral Flow. Elementals seems immune / very to resistant to sleep but can be stunned (Shock Squall), they have a strange hate, sometimes. Dispel after Sigh TP move (eva boost).

So I just saw this;

I know its still not 3%, since they removed BSTs 3% boost from spur. Hopefully its better than just straight +3 dmg though.

I've heard reports of a (possibly unintended) magic BP nerf. True? Haven't had a chance to see myself, and I don't have anything i remember my exact old dmg numbers on anyway.

iirc, when asked about the BP dmg jp category, SE replied that they planned on adjusting the way some BP dmg was calculated. It wasn't in the notes per se, but could they have ninja'd it?

It's intended, this was taken from the notes:

The issue wherein the effects of the summoner job point category Blood Pact Damage were incorrect.

According to testing at least the measureable pacts (magical) have taken a 10% damage hit.
Wether this was intended we do not yet know.

My understanding is that bp jps were always calculated as +3 not +3%, but the in game text was wrong, and that note was about the text being fixed. Idk why they would ninja nerf it like that tho. Unless they thought diablos based strats would become a major game breaking thing

Wanted to post a strat for the new unity nm that drops the carby and cait sith mitts. Tried doing what papesse said and it went horribly wrong. First time i tried with just 1 pt of 6 people i had both earthern armor which i casted and bard from our ls cast scherzo. The first 2 times all three elementals did astral flow most of us took no damage. But shortly after people started to get ko'd. You either take almost no damage or you die instantly. Its good to cast earthern armor and sherzo but its not full proof you will have many people dying. So im going to list better strat and more info about the fight. He usually summons 2 elementals at the start followed by a third one shortly after. These elementals will all astral flow at the same time if left alone however if you kill them they will not use astral flow. The tonberry nm will resummon them but you have a decent amount of time to dd him down before he summons more. Usually around 20~25% of his health he will summon 3 carbuncles and they will do astral flow instead of the elementals doing it. Killed him many times and we never had any astral flows go off except for when he summons the three carbuncles. Only on one occasion did he not summon all three carbuncles but not sure why this was. So just bring couple of mages to nuke down the elementals and have the other dd focus on the NM. I would keep up earthern armor and help kill the elementals then deal damage to the NM when no elementals were up. Near the 20~25% mark you can have all but the tank back up away from the NM and wait for him to do his carby astral flow. While waiting for the carby astral flow to go off if he summons more elementals just have 1 person pick them off and take them to the group waiting in back for astral to go off. It is possible to sleep the elementals so you could try this also but i just went ahead and killed them.

Hey guys anyone can help me with rule for cait sith mitts please

mine is

sets.perp.Cait Sith = {
hands="Lamassu mitts +1"}


but i got an error saying something about syntax

I don't think you can have a space in a method.

It's the space indeed, I will edit my Cait Sith rules into this post once I get to my work PC.

[edit]
The cait Sith part goes under the following if you use Mote's:

For the gloves you can use the following: