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

For conduit burn you need a solid BP dmg set. After all you wont have any chance to swap while spamming buttons. Problem will be if your conduit isnt enough to finish, then you will see your avatar sucking your mp (lack of idle set) and with long BP recast (lack of BP delay-).

And tbf, the hardest set to get is actually the BP dmg. Any other set is very easy to get you can get one piece here and there. Your biggest work will be getting your JP.

problem solved， tyty ^^；

So BP Damage, Idle, and get JP and I'll be fine? Is that Phys/Hybrid/Magic or just one of those sets I need?

Flaming crush is wonderful and if mob isnt resistant/absorb fire dmg, that provides the fastest kill. If he has high mdb,meva or resist/absorb fire, your alternative is volt strike. Im not a player that goes with BiS in every slot, but till today, after done a couple of astral burns NMs (all escha up to kirin, plus meeble and frog ambuscade VD), ive been doing fine with apogee head/legs/feet, smn body and merlinic hands. When i need to use flaming crush i pay 3000 silts and add magic bonus on my apogee pieces. Body is the same for both BP and accessories there arent that many option to chooose anyway.

TBF the biggest factor in BP high numbers is the geo magic. If using flaming crush, make sure to bolster malaise and have frailty on indi, or if 2 geos, bolster in both, languor and torpor just to make sure. If volt strike, bolster on frailty and indi torpor.

Is it much more common to use magical BPs rather than physical? I see a lot of gear posts, but can anyone give a quick rundown on what BPs you typically use for common events?

Don't SMN much, and more will give a better understanding once they see this post, but from what I see:

1. Physical (Volt Strike, and to a much lesser extend Predator Claws) on most Aeonic NMs and anything else that takes good physical damage.

2. Hybrid (Flaming Crush) - Recent Ambuscade, NMs weak to magic, NMs weak to Fire.

Again, that's all I see in the events I do but a veteran summoner hopefully will chime in and give you a more detailed rundown.

Magic Bloodpacts are mainly used for SC/MB or against mobs with shadows. Most merits Bloodpacts completely ignore blinks/utsusemi. Only mob I can think of that I use Conduit / Magic Pact spam is Zerde.

So basically it's used in very few situations because physical pacts can just overpower things much more easily.

Hi.

Is there any set for when im using Nirvanas AM3 (Volt Strike)? I supose the extra DA wont matter much so wondering if Enticer or Helios could pull ahead of apogee D. My last fight (WoC) was quite rough on me, winning after AC was over, just because WoC was very forgiven on me, so I feel like starting now i will need to rely on AM3 more often, and that i gnona need every chunk of improvement i can get.

Plus, next month i will start working on Omen bosses to get those accessories. Till then what would be the second best neck piece for Volt Strike?

Thanks in advance.

I think Apogee Slacks are probably best no matter what unless your pet's attack isn't capped against the target. As far as we know for avatars, crits don't raise cRatio. They just give the pet a massive attack boost. If it wasn't for that Crit Attack Bonus trait that avatars have, we wouldn't even see higher dmg on crits against targets where attack was capped. In those situations, Enticer's is just forcing more crits to activate that extra 8% dmg per crit, whereas Apogee just have 7+ more BP dmg period and still get that extra 8% dmg on any hit that crits.

Think you meant to specify doesn't raise the caps but yeah the crit thing is basically all pets as far as we know. Kind of sucks since basically once you pdif capped crits do hardly anything. Thanks for giving autos mighty strikes SE.

While Apogee Slacks are pretty much a given, there are changes you can make for AM3. For example, I change Helios head/feet to Apogee+1 path B when AM3 is up. I think I might also change Incarnation Sash to Regal Belt.

As to your other question, next best neck for Volt Strike after the omen piece is Empath Necklace.

Starting to gear up summoner again. I can afford to buy the Apogee +1 set is it worth the money? Or is there certain pieces I should get?

Apogee Head and Legs
AF+3 Body
Merlinic Hands
Feet can be either Apogee or AF+3

Partially correct.

Hands can be AF+3 (10 DA is 5.5%~) or near perfect augmented Merlinic (15 BPD is ~ 5.25%).
Apogee feet are the better slot to keep over AF+3, so that you can keep set bonus with apogee legs.

Head can be Apogee crown + or perfect augmented Helios (7 bpd, 8 da).

AF+3 feet are more an acc piece and lag a little bit behind apogee +1, to keep apogee set bonus and to get decent acc, use apogee crown +1 and legs +1, convoker's +3 feet, body and hands.

Which path should I take for Apogee Head/Legs/Feet +1?

EDIT: Also when using avatar favor if I use the beckoner's horn +1 when activating it does it automatically take it to tier 3 regardless of smn skill?

Is ifrit BP set the same as above?

Head/Feet, probably path A for magic BP and Flaming Crush. (Helios can beat them for physical.) If you have Nirvana, or don't have Helios, you may want a second pair of these with path B for physical BPs, which you would use when AM3 is up (or all the time if you don't have Helios).

Legs, path D for physical BP and Flaming Crush. (Enticers can beat it for magical.) Path A legs+1 can be nice for Flaming Crush, and can beat the Enticers in some situations, but in both cases it's a pretty marginal upgrade compared to what you get from path D pants for your physical pacts.

No, actually Beckoner's Horn +1 is updated live, meaning you don't need to equip it when you use Avatar's Favor. You just need to equip it when you want the effect of the extra tiers and your favor level will update accordingly, which is to say, you want it in your BP timer gear primarily.

It's very similar to magic BP gear. The main differences are AF+3 body instead of Apogee, and physical Campestres instead of magical.

Thanks for the Info :)!I have much to learn about smn it seems.

There's no reason at all to use Regal belt for fTP physical pacts. both get 15 acc and i don't believe 20 atk will ever be more useful than 4 da.

Yup sorry, I was confusing two sets. It was my non-fTP-carrying pacts that I was thinking of using Regal Belt on. Spinning Dive and the like.

Ok given the new head we have the current comparison vs Apogee+1

1) 25 Mab vs 10 BPD
2) 25 Mab vs 12 BPD
3) 35 Mab vs 10 BPD
4) 35 Mab vs 12 BPD

1) and 2) are with Path A Apogee, 3 and 4 with Path C
1) and 3) are considering 3 pieces of HQ Apogee, 2) and 4) only two.

Sooo... what is your take in these 4 scenarios? Which is gonna win and where?

Physical and Hybrid probably has relic+3 winning just with that much pet attack alone.

And magical probably has relic+3 winning too thats a shitload of pet MAB

I was thinking just about magical BP but you got a point for Hybrid and Physical, granted I'm a bit more skeptic.
The point to point ratio comparison between BPD and Attack is quite different compared to the BPD vs Mab one.

For Hybrid you would be comparing vs path C onry, for Physical against path B or C.
You also lose Accuracy though.
Honestly I don't see Glyphic winning for Physical, not sure about Flaming Crush.

For Magical I'm way more uncertain, that's a lot of Mab.

Does the avatar have some inate mab on it? And how much, just for the sake of checking what gear should i use in my magic bp set?

60 mab puts it at about the same as apogee +1, though wouldn't the shot of mab skew it so that bpd is favorable?
60 attack to me won't replace apogee +1 for physical.
For flaming crush, you'd still want BPD over anything else, so apogee +1.

Avatars have MAB+40 natively.

As for whether it beats Apogee+1 path A for magic BP, it does not, but it's close enough to be considered a wash.

Using the calculator on my Pastebin, I get 11.8548 total multiplier with current gear and master, and with the new horn it would be 11.8508. That's a 0.03% loss in damage.

Yeah, unless we get a piece elsewhere with a large shot of bpd, this piece is just a harder to get, more expensive alternative.

Talking about my scenarios I described before, I'm totally confident that Glyphic+3 wasn't winning in #3
I'm still not confident about #1, #2 and #4.

Still, doesn't seem a big improvement regardless, I'd rather spend the gil in other stuff I guess.

Can you share some methods of testing bp magic dmg? I took yesterday and today just to test it, using thunderstorm (tp0) naked and hitting reive roots then slowly adding small amounts of pet: mab. The increase in dmg made it seems like pet was at 172mab (smn mastered, doing 1086 naked and 1130 with deimos collar, an increase of 4%).