A Summoner's Gear Guide

I specifically said favor, not idle set. You should always have favor on.

is the ilvl nirvana staff at the 300 beitetsu stage the same bp damage as the 10k beitetsu stage? Is it needed to use 10k beitetsu's for this?

Afaik all the pet stats stay the same, what you get for taking Nirvana past 119 is more base damage, magic damage, staff skill, parry skill and magic accuracy skill, none of them affect your avatar so the upgrade makes only sense if you plan to melee alongside your pet or want to showboat the afterglow.

Odyssey and Sortie gear made meleeing a little more tempting on SMN cause it opened better options to boost ACC while also incorporating -DT, but imho SMNs low health pool, in particular with the apogee gear swaps, but also on it's own, will keep those occasions very niche.

You are forgetting the augment stage that adds the following:

Avatar: Accuracy +30 Magic Accuracy +30

So no, there is a valid reason to go beyond the 300 beitetsu stage.

just to further break it down

-10 from gifts, (base delay is now 50 seconds)
-20 from gear, any combination of no more than 15 per bp delay and bp delay 2 (base delay is now 30 seconds)
up to -10 from favor (base delay is now 20 seconds), using bps on cooldown grants you only -9 at max favor and skill, so your actual bp recast when using them regularly will be 21 seconds

True, I also forgot to mention the garland of bliss damage bonus.
However I'd highly recommend to build your SMN sets on all other fronts first and see if you have accuracy issues befor you consider that upgrade cause I haven't had the impression avatars to be ACC starved in a while.

AG and augment stage def not required for most (any?) things... that being said, a lot of the newer stuff is not required either... if you have nothing else to upgrade, why not? But for most, there are likely other things you could do to improve your character... even if it is level another job to be more flexible in sortie/ody fights, which could then help buff up smn.

That being said, I would miss the glow... though I also spent 10k beitetsu on mnk mythic for the lockstyle... so don't do what I do... lol

anyone have a current idle/perp/dt set suggestions? just planning ahead while i collect gear for the job and it seems like there are plenty of refresh options as well as bunzi/nyame/empyrean for defense, just trying to find a good balance.

Here's a couple of mine. SMN can usually stay out of harm's way pretty easily so I lean hard on refresh to keep me in the fight.

Main refresh set, I'm using this one 90% of the time:
ItemSet 250406
The Dalmatica is path D but you can get by with just a path A one if you only want to make 1 of them. The path A is more important than path D. Merlinic hands are Refresh+2, if you don't have that then you can use Asteria+1 instead. Some other good alternatives are Gridarvor, Convoker's Horn +3, Shomonjijoe +1, Evans Earring, etc.

DT set:
ItemSet 349304
The Inyanga choice may seem a little dated, but I'm trying to keep my refresh up. Stuff like Nyame/Bunzi just isn't any help there, and Inyanga actually has comparable magic evasion. I go back and forth on the hands between Merlinic & Inyanga, I probably ought to just change it back because magic evasion is life.

Edit:
Here's a link to my Lua if you're curious about some of my other idle sets: https://pastebin.com/Fa5PtueC

thank you, i was unsure how much refresh was enough, this gives me something to work with.

Part of that depends on your BP recast, but it's not hard to get it down to the 20-22 second range and you'll chew through MP fast doing that. Especially if you mix in ward pacts as well.

For example a Volt Strike every 20 seconds is 11.45 MP per second. A tick of refresh takes 3 seconds, so you'd need 34~35 refresh just to break even in a long fight. And that's not accounting for wards, cures, etc.

Granted there's other sources of MP like Refresh, Elemental Siphon, Convert, Ballads, etc. And most fights don't last 30 minutes or whatever so you don't need to break even you just need to reduce it to a slow trickle. Still, you can see how the refresh would be nice!

Seconding the above. Having enough MP is vital, especially if you can't siphon due to needing to have the avatar tank or due to magic aggro. Plus with Siren a lot of the time you can keep her at full health so it is beneficial not to resummon her.

I have several sub-sets that trigger if my hp or mp go low, and then ease off if I have, say, over 75. It is very easy to add such case checks.

am I overlooking anything on espiritus A vs. grioavolor? grio gets 7 more bpd but slightly less avatar mab, and according to the first page 1bpd ~= 2.5mab. so espiritus would be 120 + 30 + ~7.5 = 157.5 and grio would be 115 + ~25 + ~25 = 165.

if its really that close and considering how much I loathe oseem, tempting just to stick with espiritus.

to beat a espiritus you need over...
5 bpd and 30 mab
6 bpd and 27.5 mab
7 bpd and 25 mab
8 bpd and 22.5 mab
9 bpd and 20 mab
10 bpd and 17.5 mab
augmented on grio.

grio also has a shitload of macc.

thanks, can you get macc mab and bpd all in one roll with grio? that would be a huge difference.

Yes.

I like this as a go to idle set.
pdt-35 (50 with ear-5 and back-10)
smn skill 645+ML (M25 for lv13 favor; subtract gifts if not mastered)
perp-18 (19 weather)
refresh+12 (13 with grip latent)

ItemSet 385021

Why are you idling in smn skill for favor?

He's probably refering to idle with avatar out and favor active.
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Avatar%27s_Favor
It's a bit convoluted but from what I understand idling in SMN skill + favor gear increases the tier cap for favors and/or it starts at a higher tier the higher your SMN skill is.

Also the higher your current Avatar's favor potency tier is, at the time of using a bloodpact, the higher the bloodpact delay reduction is that you get as a bonus from Avatar's favor till you reach the cap of -10 seconds.

What I wonder is what happens if you switch your idling set and your SMN skill drops? does the Avatar's favor potency tier drop too or does it stay/keep on tocking from the point it was befor the gearswap?

Speaking of that page. Could someone verify the perpetuation adjustment on that page is correct. I seem to recall 15/tick as base perpetuation +25% for favor active making the number to hit 18, not 12.
I am not sub'd at present.
most avatars, i know carby/cait/fenrir/siren have lower perp costs.

I thought so too but iirc last time I checked nirvana (8) combined with Beckoner's Pigaches +2 (-8 perpetuation cost) or even Convoker's Pigaches +3 (-6 perpetuation cost) was enough to put me in the positive refresh zone due to SMNs auto refresh II trait.

I think the key explanation is the floor function here mentioned on the wiki.

Correct, favor's perp increase is applied after your reductions to perp cost. So with perp-14, your cost is reduced to the minimum of 1. Favor increases to 1.25 which is rounded right back down to 1.

You only gain the benefit of whatever tier your current smn skill puts you at, but the game continues tracking what your max favor tier could be based on how long the avatar's been out and whatnot. If you change into higher skill, your favor tier will immediately jump up correspondingly.

That's why people stack smn skill in their BP timer set. It boosts up the favor effect to reduce the timer further. You don't need to idle in smn skill the whole time to gain that benefit.

The only reason to idle in smn skill is if you want to increase the favor effect you're giving to your party.

Yeah it's a very common mistake but you do NOT need to idle in skill to get the 20 bloodpact recast. I highly recommend using one of the existing idle sets, as they have pretty much been fine tuned to be the most optimal.

For me my dream idle set for avatar's out on my SMN mule is this:
ItemSet 394723
pet: MDT -10% and regen+10 on cape

With the intention to have both master and avatar as safe as possible inside aoe range + get decent Avatar's favor and refresh. For me though, problem is that this mule is not getting anything higher than R20 Nyame anytime soon.

except in my case it's actually not a mistake. I actually want it for the +1 or 2 point increase in the favor buff for party members.

Okay, so it's wrong about it being 12, but formula is correct. it's just the 3 or less getting dropped is erroneous; likely from a prior edit. Instead being anything less than 1 gets dropped. yes?

edit: now I understand, it's not referring to perpetuation cost being free, but the addition of favor on top being free.

Unless I am mistaken, whatever favor buff you think you're going to get would either be outstripped by having an actual buffer, like a bard or cor, or would be outstripped by the mp gain from refresh to do more damage. Remember, it takes a while for favor to cap and avatars die frequently. I don't think you're thinking this through. Which favor are you trying to buff and to what level?

Here we go again...

Do we ask for optimal strategy for something? Stop with this stupid answers that we should switch job, because it can get the job done better. I want to implement SMN into my gameplay and IDGAF if something can give me some same buffs.

For me I want SMN in Sortie, because I really like the idea of Perfect Defense on some bosses. I can also Haste II which free up song slot, I can Crystal Blessing, which is a really strong buff for Prime weapons. I can stun lock some bosses (or close to that). I can give magic phalanx to everyone. I can mewing and I can do several more things. While doing all that I could also give people a favor aura, because why not. It could be crit rate while I'm using Ramuh for stun or it could be double attack from Ifrit or SBII from Siren on something like D and B bosses. For me it's also important for my Avatar not to die, so I can keep stunning, mewing or whatever with built up favor for shortest cooldown.

You are preaching to the choir. I am a SMN main, and it's pretty much my only job. I was not in any way suggesting to not play SMN. I was only questioning why you would want 1-2 higher levels of favor when refresh or -dt is so much more important and useful. I am questioning why anyone would prioritize favor in an idle set.

Also I am incredibly envious you are allowed to take SMN into sortie. I wish I could find a group that would let me do that.

Im not saying you should prioritize it. Chimera's set was pretty balanced with everything, including Favor. My set was not even favor focused, but mostly master and pet DT focused, but atm I use pretty much what Chmiera shown, because I dont have access to high rank Nyame. All those summoning skill pieces that are required for higher Favor are also awesome for other things. Feet are highest refresh, very high meva and provide some regen for avatar. Legs has highest meva, MDB and DT for master, hands have high meva and regen for avatar. Body has again highest DT for master, close to highest meva/MDB and -perp cost. Horn has highest refresh and meva. Rings have refresh. Most of those pieces you would like in idle set anyway.



After whole my static stopped playing, I started boxing (I'm from EU, having kids, day job and a wife, who I think should be diagnosed with obsessive cleaning syndrome, so I have 0 chances to find other static), so it's not really a problem to be allowed to do whatever I want XD