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

Depends on what buffs you're usually getting.
Geo-Frailty is basically assumed, but BST roll you may or may not be always getting.

So with that in mind, if you get BST roll consistently, you'll average higher on path A. As you'll have a sizeably attack boost, depreciating Path C's.
However if you never get BST roll, Path C will boost you slightly more.

Though Path As are useable for pure magic BPs... so... less money on a third set that'a only used for two BPs.

I use pretty much the same setup as pergatory sechs (he said so when I posted my FC set 1-2 pages ago). And you'd want Adad, double attack doesn't do much for FC. And yes FC gains accuracy the way it's worded only physical accuracy probably. I wouldn't do the combined path personally. And ya attack 30 will do better than magic damage 30, the base damage for FC can be extremely high since (we think) it uses the 2 physical hits as the base damage for the magical part.

From my experience the physical portion is about 30% of the damage of the entire pact, so when you equip pet mab, you're getting a lot out of it. I've done 8k-22k with the two physical hits, for example I've killed fodder, it's one hit, and it does 8k. I've also done FC vs invincible targets and it does like 500 damage. Without the first two hits for the base to the magical damage portion, you only have +magic damage and gifts. Etc. The only thing I haven't found MAB better for than attack is the food. Grape seems to do a bit worse. I think because it gives a lot less MAB, and the attack food makes warcry even better. It can be hard to tell the diff even then though which just makes MAB seem even stronger in gear choices.

So basically, you need the physical damage portion to be good, and that is used as base for the magical damage portion which ends up being about 70% of the total damage, unless it's resisted, but languor or frazzle III or marcato fire threnody or rayke helps a lot with that.

The reason nirvana does so well isn't just that it has BP damage and that applies to both parts, it's that it has everything, and FC uses everything. The +2 levels affords it a lot of stats and most of them end up relevant to some degree. I think well aug'd grio is probably better for FC than Was +1 for reasons like this, but all the from my experience stories and educated guesses in the world can't beat out 30 mins of simple testing.

Well it probably won't do much because the properties won't carry over and hence the possible DA procs will be weak compared to the main hits, but it's still additional damage. I'm not sure how much we're talking here, I'd say at least 250 for each DA proc, up to a maximum of two. Not too bad?

But I was more thinking about the 20 attack vs 10 mab, which brings us back to the issue of how do we want to weight Mab vs Attack? 1:2?


Why? Pardon my naivety lol
Speaking from an inventory saving perspective the combined path (C?) is nice for both physical and magical pacts, while not excelling in any of it, it's still pretty good.
And for Hybrid BPs yes, it should be the best, unless you're attack-capped for the current target of course, but that is one sort of situation that might not be very common for many SMNs, so I think this should be kept in mind.

Thanks for the rest of your interesting considerations :)
Yes I agree a good augmented Grio (I'd dare to say a good augmented Keraunos as well) will probably be better than Ws for FC, in hindsight of all that's been said so far.
For the FTP-carrying BPs we already said it's Gridarvor, so we're left with "all the other Physical BPs". Here it makes sense that Wes would be the best but the thing is... is there any Physical BP that matters that's not one of the 6 FTP replicating ones?
Aside niche-situations I think you can probably live very well without them unless I'm missing something vital from my memory.

Just a hunch. 30 Mdmg is pretty worthless, considering the base damage for the magic hit is almost always over 10k. Avatar attack is nowhere near 10k, so relatively speaking, the attack bonus seems an order of magnitude more useful.

Probably more like 1:5 at best, maybe even 1:10.

THAT big? Woa woa woa, impressive :D

Yeah, attack can make a big difference on FC but you need a lot of it to do so. 10-20 attack isn't going to compare to 10 MAB, especially if Frailty is up.

1:10 is probably unrealistic though. I like the 1:5 number, that feels about right. If I had to pick between 25 attack and 5 MAB, it would be a hard choice.

So wait, is it possible that over a certain threshould of Pet: DA on other gear, the new staff will then become the better one for physical BPs?

We can get a lot from various sources now.

It's possible, especially if you have super low BPD. For example, if you removed all other BPD gear it'd be almost guaranteed that Was wins. However, I find it extremely unlikely that the best setup available to any competent smn would use it.

Was is behind nirvana, firmly so.

I've told several people who asked me about it that it's basically a really really shitty excuse for not doing nirvana.

Keep up, Was is behind Gridarvor too.

Gridarvor however, can be ahead of nirvana if acc falls sufficiently low.

Yes DA becomes devalued as you get more every stat works that way. We should be clear though in saying DA only helps ftp carry physical bps to any degree worth mentioning which while usually the most damage, are also a small subset of physical bps and have only existed since 2 patches ago.


It's 21 Acc difference and 11 attack but none of those come from attributes which also help end damage. If you're really hurting that much for acc, AM1 lasts 4.5 mins and gives up to 49 acc, and getting tact roll is worth it on nirvana over companions especially in a pdif capped situation where crit chance has no impact on damage whatsoever. Even using apogee mitts instead of merlinc would more than make up the difference and nirvana would still be ahead. It's a good staff for Volt Strike especially for starting smn. The problem I have is asking for tact would only help me in a party with non mythic smn, so I don't get to do it much.

For avatar's favor, does summoning skill gear need to stay equipped? I understand beckoner's need to stay on but what about skill gear?

It may be time to re-examine the value of Domesticator's Earring for certain BPs.

I just did some quick napkin math with my current BP set, and theoretically Domesticator's should provide a higher overall damage output than Gelos for Volt Strike if you don't have AM3 up.

Mathy bits:

Current Volt Strike build has BP Dmg +156 and DA +13 excluding 2nd earring slot.

Gelos Earring = 161 BPD, 13 DA
2.61 * 1.13 = 2.9493

Domesticators = 156 BPD, 16 DA
2.56 * 1.16 = 2.9696

Even with 80 less BP Damage it still comes out in Domesticator's favor, so I think this may ring true even without Nirvana and HQ gear.

I plan to start using Domesticator's to see how it fares.

Edit:
An attempt at napkin math with AM3 up. Should be something like:
Gelos: 2.61 * (1 + 0.53 + (0.2*2)) = 5.0373
Domesticator's: 2.56 * (1 + 0.56 + (0.2*2)) = 5.0176

Edit: Fixed Domesticator's DA.

No, it does not need to stay equipped. I don't think Beckoner's Horn does either but there's no reason to wear anything else in idle until you get Convoker's Horn +3.

cant multiply directly if we're still going with 2 da chances per bp, since volt has 3 hits

This is 100000% wrong.
You do need to have both skill and Horn equipped to remain at that tier of Favor.

Just retested Titan's Favor, 5 DEF/tier.
With 512+4: 1005 defense.
Removing Beckoner's brings the tier to 512+1 (and should result in 93+15+(15*1.5) DEF loss): 875 defense.
1005 - 875 = 130 = 93+15+22
Dropping skill below 512 also reduced DEF by 5. (It just is messier as that's also a lot of DEF from gear and VIT to mathematically account for.)

Skill and Horn *must* be worn for maximum Favor effect.
They do *not* need to be worn during a BP to reduce the timer. Just at the activation.


That being said...
Idling in the current max tier (575+4) is dumber than dumb, as it requires you to sacrifice things like refresh and haste; severely gimping your use.
The second highest tier (512+4) is easily obtainable and has ample room for haste and refresh pieces and whatnot.
Most likely we'll see 575+8 being the final cap with the +2/3 relic and empy pieces giving appropriate skill to be able to hit 575 without sacrificing other stats (much as 512 is now).

I haven't seen any testing to show that you cannot get a DA on every single hit? Is there reason to believe that is true?

Ah sorry I misread the original question as pertaining to BP timer.

Domesticator's is Double Attack 3%, not 5.

Argh sorry, thank you. I guess that's what happens when I try to do math in the morning. I'll edit.

Looks like Domesticator's barely wins with top gear and no AM3, and no longer wins with AM3. I knew something felt off about that, thanks for the correction.

As for the max of 2 DA proc instead of 3, I think that would pretty much ruin Domesticator's. I know someone did some testing with AM3 recently but I can't remember if they got any 6-hits and can't find that post anymore.

If mythic AM3 works on Blood Pacts like it does on Weaponskills, doesnt it only get once chance to proc period?

Darn, if that's how it behaves on weaponskills then we probably can't trust AM3 as a test for Pet:DA's behavior. That makes it complicated. Time to augment some Pet:DA Helios for proper testing.

AM3 can proc only once on BPs.
I have never got a triple DA proc on Rush with 48% DA equip.

Have you tested with AM3 up in that set to see if you can get 3 extra hits? If it works like a WS does then you could get a triple attack on 1 hit + a single DA on another.


Edit: The only real issue with testing that might be the 48% DA checks before AM3 on the first hit, making it alot harder to get a TA/DA.

Ok well it seems Domesticator's is out.

What about Helios Band instead of Apogee Crown +1?

Potentially you'd be giving up 3 BP Dmg, 5 Pet:Acc, and 35 Pet:Atk in order to gain 8 Pet:DA. That seems like a much better tradeoff.

If I'm starting at 13% DA then that should give:
0 DA: 75.69%
1 DA: 22.62%
2 DA: 1.69%
Total increase to Volt Strike: (3/3 * 0.7569) + (4/3 * 0.2262) + (5/3 * 0.0169) = 1.08666667 or ~8.67%

With 21% that would be:
0 DA: 62.41%
1 DA: 33.18%
2 DA: 4.41%
Total increase to Volt Strike: (3/3 * 0.6241) + (4/3 * 0.3318) + (5/3 * 0.0441) = 1.14 or 14%

So now I can do the math:
Apogee+1 = 2.61 * 1.0866667 = 2.8362
Helios = 2.58 * 1.14 = 2.9412

Again this ignores the impact of 5 acc & 35 atk, but Helios looks to be about 3.7% ahead.

If I need the acc from Apogee Crown +1, then I could swap the feet instead for a theoretical gain of about 2.9% instead of 3.7%. I can't swap both though or I'd lose the set bonus and I'm pretty sure that would be bad.

Yes, I made a post 2 pages ago.
Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure DA proc is checked before AM3 like WSs.

I somehow missed that post.

Added in from the JP Wiki and freshly picked Vana'diel the info on Pacifying Ruby: https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Pacifying_Ruby

Seems a 22s recast Collaborator if you want to spam it. I tested it a few times, like a set of runs on Hidhaegg where the BLU was pulling hate and dying a lot since Hidhaegg tends to terror and eat anyone that isn't a tank and the tanks also get long terror so can't use enmity control abilities a lot. I wasnt' able to totally prevent the BLU from getting to the top of the enmity list but I was able to delay it 2-3 mins spamming Pacifying Ruby which considering the tank will be terrorized for 30+ seconds at a time I think is pretty good.

Over a 2 min period this would result in a reduction of about 48.7% of the players enmity if you used it every 30s assuming an even gain in enmity.

.75 * .25 = .1875
.75 * (.25 + .1875) = .328125
.75 * (.25 + .328125) = .43359375
.75 * (.25 + .43359375) = .51269

Where as with no reduction:
.25 + .25 + .25 + .25 = 100%

So, underused and underrated imo.

I been using it in Omen a lot lately. It prevents our BLU from getting randomly one shotted from Glassy Gorger and stops them from grabbing attention on the final bosses. Dying with no warning from Quadratic Continuum use to be a common thing that would happen before I started using Carbuncle. Occasionally I'll burn an apogee on double Pacifying Ruby if I feel they are getting close to pulling hate off the tank.

Carbuncle is extremely good at supporting when you already have all your buffs up and nothing to spend wards on. I consider him as my yagrush avatar lol

I've been using it on Kin to make hate change when he uses Target (preventing him from accessing his 2 strongest abilities), and sometimes on Kyou to make hate go to the avatars for Unfaltering Bravado. It's pretty useful in Omen!

Speaking of Carbuncle, Shining Ruby is also undervalued by a lot of SMN. It gives a nice little 10% defense bonus for 8 minutes. However, it can't be canceled/overwritten so I tend not to use it in Omen until after we find out which Glassy pops. Don't want to give it to Gorger.

Whoo, 80 hver over the weekend and +3 body last night (after a disgraceful glassy wipe), according to the list i'm second after papesse on it.

My next goal is +3 head and saving towards stikini +1, 85/90 hver and more fern stone spam. Fu needs to drop my neck and i'll be 3/5 the drops i want, leaving earring and body.


I think my next for fun set may be a spirit mab/macc nuke set, would be interesting to compare it to blm but i know it will fall short.