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

Occasionally, mainly on stuff where I know that I will mainly be using magical pacts on.
Like Pervy and Plouton.

Pervy lol.

And nice. I have about 2 months worth of various Mochi+1 foods stockpiled, but I was thinking about giving the Daifuku foods a try. As you mentioned, it would be pretty situational.

Not to nitpick, but the "U" is capitalized in "Summoning Skill". Just saying since the guide is awesome and shouldn't be marred by inconsistencies! :)

Thanks again for all the hard work. The guide is incredibly well done.

EDIT: I removed the screenshot since it would be moot keeping it once the typo was corrected.

Been a while since I've looked at the forums. I really like this, it looks really great! Thanks for the credit awarded.

The amount of refresh given by the favor build is incorrect.

Also, I think Mujin Obi is a valid alternative for Flaming Crush (in fact, I use it over Caller's). As well I think Sacrifice Torque is a valid alternative for both Crush and in particular other physical pacts. I use Eidolon+1 for Crush generally, but I use Sacrifice Torque over Caller's Pendant for physical most of the time.

Lots of people say Sac Torque sucks, but 99% of them equip it, /checkparam, laugh at the miniscule attack boost, and never even bother to actually try it. And of course you should have one anyway to wake up from sleep effects, so it's not like it's taking up inventory space, nor is it likely you actually need the 9 skill on your pacts unless you're fighting stuff with crazy evasion in which case you should be swapping a number of different pieces aside from just Caller's Pendant (such as Incarnation Sash).

I also use Ruby Earring with Pet:Atk+5 over Domesticator's for physical pacts. In fact I'm not using Domesticator's for anything anymore since Rimeice is better for melee and I'm not willing to give up Moonshade for 3 DA.

I suppose you might consider listing it as an alternative for perp sets though, as some people may have chosen the DD Moonshade (do people still do that?) in which case they'd probably use Rimeice + Domesticator's.

Aside from those minor things, I think these are some great example sets to get folks started. As Shiraiyuki alluded to, many of us veteran SMNs have set up some crazy swaps and so it's probably not practical to cover every possibility. I think this is a good compromise, only listing the basic sets with some limited alternatives rather than trying to cover everything under the sun.

P.S. Speaking of Sac Torque, has anyone set up Spellcast to automatically equip Sac Torque and cancel Stoneskin if you get slept with an avatar out? I'd like to do that but why reinvent the wheel if someone else has already done it?

Still doing that manually myself, but thanks for the idea, I'll start writing some later and see what I come up with.

Small error in the BP precast set blurb.
We don't know if the gift is BPII or if it's BPIII.
The only test I know of failed at the critical thing when testing variables: to only test one variable.
So all we could deduce from that test was that there is an overall cap of -30s.

To my knowledge no one ever went back and tested ONLY BPII.
So we can't say for certain until someone tests that out.

EDIT: Also, SC properties are more than single element, so it might be good to add more boxes for that. (Eg: Fragmentation is wind-thunder, so should have a green AND fuchsia box instead of just fuchsia.)

Pegatory:
- Totally agree with Sacrifice Torque on BP Physic. MIssing item on my set. I use that too for Physical BP. Set modified.
- Mujin Obi add on Alternative on BPMagic
- Add Set Baby Summoner on To-do List

FaeQueenCory:
- Adds element at skillchain

Testing has already been performed in that manner, -11 is the maximum available in gear right now.
Seraphicaller -5
Relic Body -2
Relic feet -1
Augmented Cape -3

People with the above gear have already tried and figured out that the gift caps us at 30 seconds, if it really was a BP Delay III or a flat BP delay reduction it would bypass the -15 seconds BP delay II cap and we would be looking at 29 seconds between Blood Pacts.
So I can say with quite a lot of certainty that the Gift is counted as BP delay II.


Um. You might want to add that to Physical/Hybrid. ^^;
Caller's is still good for magical pacts.

By the way,

I just discovered a mistake in your Ifrit Blood Pacts:
- Fire II Deals Water elemental Damage -> Fire
- Burning Strike weighs targets down -> Deals fire elemental damage. (By the way, this Lower level blood pact works with the same mechanic as Flaming Crush.)


Must admit, haven't started on this one yet.

Thanks for the acknowledgment! Nice to see that my tests were useful. Wish I could get back to the game to experiment more with smn. #bannedlife

-_-
On phone, otherwise would cut that.
Any reported tests other than the one I'm talking about I must have missed.
However, it no such records exist, then what you are describing didn't happen.
To my knowledge, what happened was that one person said it was BPII, showed their data, and everyone went along with that assumption.
However their test was terribly flawed because they used capped BP delay IN ADDITION to BPII.

And, to my knowledge, no one ever went back and looked at JUST BPII.

This is how science works.
You can't test more than one variable and get accurate results.
This is why one must test ONLY ONE THING.

Simply stating that people find the cap is 30s means nothing that wasn't already shown in the initial (and only documented) testing of the BP delay gift.

And I know you're going to take the above as a personal attack.
Because that's how you do things.
You dismiss people out of hand and cry personal attack instead of listening to others.
So I don't give any form of a ***.
Just because someone holds a differing opinion than you or Science tells us to not be sheeple and verify erroneous data, doesn't mean anyone is attacking you.
It just means you might be wrong. (Just like how you were 100% wrong about the Ward duration buff. How it happened EXACTLY like Favor's potency buff.)

What Shiraiyuki said! Mujin is useless for purely magical pacts, but is a very solid alternative for Flaming Crush.

up to date and very nice work.

I want to farm capacity points as smn, is there a good location to solo or is it better to farm in party?

ask someone you can afk in a cleaving bat party.

Or actually participate in a standard bat party.

Summoner can get an use in Vagary CP parties.
Before Vagary was released I had no issues being SMN in Bats parties. Granted that I had to make my own PTs of course =/
I'm not a fantastic player, but I really got very nice results in there.
I've been playing SMN in bats pts with the following roles:

1) Buffer
Just give buffs to PT. Mainly Hastega2, Crystal Blessing and Ifrit's warcry. Then keep Ifrit out and give >24% Double Attack to your party thanks to Favor and use BP Rage at will.

2) Healer
This setup requires you to have some sort of refresh (from GEO, ballads from a BRD etc). Well it's not required, but it's a bit stressing without.
Keep Hastega2, Crystal Blessing, Leviathan's CurePot+ BP, Ifrit's Warcry + Favor and if the moon phase is right Heavenward Howl. This last one makes a huge difference, you won't even have to heal much if the moon phase is right.
Then spend the rest of the time casting Cure IV on pt members. As long as they don't fight 2000 targets at the same time (lack of Curaga, altough technically you could go /WHM if you really wanted) SMN is a fantastic healer. I'm of course considering that you do have capped Cure Pot gear of course.

I've been smn in Sechs' Bat party a couple times and AFAIK if you play your cards right, in either roles Sechs has described. You will not be slowing your party down. You'll be capped by bats spawns anyways. People just want what they are more used to, as they always have.

Side note: A Gearswap section to point towards a collections of you veteran smn's GS setup if you would be so kind as to share it would be great!

Put together a dd set for smn and pull out ifrit and put those dd to shame.

^ what Elizabet said.
Just need a smart SMN who knows what you're doing.
WHM or SCH are fine for Bats PTs but it's a bit of an overkill honestly.
I've mainhealed on bats as BRD, GEO and SMN and all 3 jobs are perfectly viable.
Of all three I think actually SMN was the best (but needed some form of refresh to pull out its full potential)

Spirit taker is a powerful tool, abuse it maliciously. (Yes, melee!)

I think it might be a matter of skills, playstyle, limitations, quality of your party members etc, I dunno.
Tipically the quality of players I was getting through PUGs wasn't particularly high, with some unexpected surprise every now and then.

Aside from the fact I do not have a melee set on SMN, I found it very distracting to engage and melee stuff.
Having to keep an eye on the PT's health, keeping an eye on the plethora of buffs I was giving the pt, giving instructions (people have a tendency to walk outside of the Favor range) was really giving me a full time job.

In addition to that monsters weren't particularly durable. Sometimes by the time I managed to engage the monster was already at 1% Health lol.


[/lazy]

True, I too usually have the luxury of partying exclusively with friends and linkshell mates.


I must admit that meleeing does tend to distract so it indeed depends on who you party with, yet all you need is 1000 TP.
Considering it's really easy for us to cap cure potency without changing weapons you can full time your main weapon and sit on that TP until you need MP.
Apart from that, I almost forgot about Elemental Siphon.

As for the buffs and Favor thing, not my problem if they run too far!
I will announce when I will be reapplying buffs, if you're too far out you'll miss it.


Enough to get a whack in!

As for one more buff recommendation: Heavenward Howl when the Moon phase is right, especially on non-dancer fast hitters the endrain is incredibly helpful.

Yeah I mentioned it earlier.
With Heavenward Howl during the right moon phase I hardly had to heal people, it's insane.

People need to stop to shout for WHM ONRY for BATs pts, it's an overkill to bring a WHM there, absolutely not necessary at all.


Things are different for other camps though, I guess.

Only thing that really is different for other camps is that they have moves that have annoying effects that generally need to be -na'd.

But even then, while WHM is >>>> to SMN for -na spam, for CP can easily get away with RDM or SCH in place of WHM.
I think it's just that people are lazy/closeminded when it comes to things like WHM or buffer party slots.

^ this, absolutely.
But it's not the only aspect.
It changes from camp to camp, but some camp has mobs with dangerous TP moves or in general do more damage than the bats do.
Mobs with spells, mobs with dangerous AoE TP moves etc.

Bats go down fast, use only single target moves and their damage is averagely very low anyway.

When you put all these aspects together, a single Cure IV from subjob doesn't cut it, might need stronger cures and AoE ones.
SCH and RDM/SCH (or /WHM) are perfectly fine for those camps, in addition to WHM of course.

SMN, GEO and BRD healers might be viable but it would certainly be more of a struggle. It would require a nice setup, whereas at bats you have the freedom and luxury of being able to invite loljobs, or taking the risk of inviting random pugs, even if they're below average the overall XP/CP rate will hardly get *** up beyond repair.

Can you say the same about most of the other camps? Alas, no.
Which is exactely the reason why Bats camp is so nice, imho. For the freedom it gives you when you're assembling a party.

I'm just hoping some decent CP can be farmed in Zi'Tah post update.
Bats are great, but it's just a single camp with room for a single party.
Vagary is great too but too reliant on a certain setup for the best results.

Exactly. (Though I would have to disagree, a -80% cast time +50% potency C4 is what is standard on WHM and relatively easy enough to get on other mage jobs, aside from Solace's effect, C5 and C6 are almost never needed ever... Unless you're not doing things right and your C4s on WHM don't cure for little less than 1k... Which is harder to pull off on, say, SMN but not impossible... It's really the cureskin that makes WHM more needed in those other zones.)
But alas, even though that's how it is in function, the playerbase is still jobist as hell.
Thank god I have a LS who listened to me and then we like "yeah that's really good". (It's been especially funny in stuff like DM2 or some such where I parse high for damage but have the absolute max for acc... That always amuses me on a karmic level... What with having played SMN for years.)