The 6th Ministry's Secret: A Summoner's Guide

You are missing:

Moonshade Earring (+1 refresh)
Serpentes (+1 refresh, but really hard to use without nirvana, would need -5 perp augmented hagondes boots/gloves).

I personally use Paguroidea Ring with the Sheltered Ring for more regen, and Kumbira Cape for regen. When it comes to those things, it's just preference of regen vs defense (I of course also have a defensive PDT set), so that's fine. I would also say both the earrings are kinda pointless, as the maximum HP/MP will just be lost upon swapping. I personally use a Sanare and Moonshade, but it's up to you.

If you were not using the body piece, you could be using a Hagondes body with -perp instead and use Serpentes to acquire the same refresh. Don't see any specific gains either path though, they're about the same regardless.


Globidonta and Vox are useless in this situation. Summoning skill only affects blood pact accuracy, not melee accuracy.

You have to understand that most people play more than just mage jobs, so pointing out the lack of a Refresh earring isn't terribly productive.

I have the TP bonus one, and as much as I love summoner that's not going to change!


Not sure I want to do that investment really, I am working towards a Nirvana right now and I'm not really looking to spend a lot of cash on an item that's going to be disposed of once I finish Nirvana.
Right now I'm pretty happy with the extra MAB on the ones I have now, they only set me back a 6 or 7 million gil worth in stones.
If I'm unlucky I'm looking at a similar investment for a second pair of each, something I'd rather invest in Alexandrites and more vital pieces of equipment.


Rings and cape are in the "need to get" stage.



Trust me, I am aware.
Just call it lack of a better alternative right now apart from one of the regen rings and later on the Thurandaut once I get off my lazy butt and do the Adoulin missions.

Noting places for optimization is fine. Yes, it's productive, because it's room for improvement if people see the set and want to know where to optimize it.

Either way, there's nothing wrong with stating it.


Well, I just use Oneiros Grip instead of Vox. :) I don't think there's really much better. Sticking with your idle set things is still better than using those.

And I don't have Thurandaut yet either... *sadness*

How did that sneaky Vox get in there?!

I'm trying to make a acc set so I can actually hit those bats in Woh Gates, anyone have recommendations?
This is what I'm shooting for so far, but I'm prob overlooking pieces.

ItemSet 332735

It maintains the -14 perp cost, and gives 5-6 refresh.

You should be 1-shotting bats with bloodpacts instead! :-)

If you're insistent on melee'ing, use sushi with that set and you'll have no trouble hitting them

You can exchange the head for an accuracy piece I guess, I can't think of a piece right off the top of my head but when Meleeing I don't think you need to worry about refresh that much.

Between AM3's you should be able to use Myrkr 1 or 2 times for MP upkeep.

given you don't bother meleeing with the avatars but only having them out for favor, here is what you can change :

head : espial cap
hands : glyphic +1
belt : osleni
strap : bloodrain
ammo : hasty pinion +1
ring1 : mars's ring
legs : bokwus path B
feet : battlecast gaiters

that keeps you at the 447-511 tier, nearly full haste, on par with 2H DD for high acc set.
MP is not an issue at this point since you can land your spirit takers or do myrk (ST would be better because you can do 1500+ with it and resplenish to full)

tried it in a 133 incursion with all the good melee songs, never ran out of mp, never really had an issue on hitting the mobs, was able to keep up as well as only a /sam would be expected to for ws frequency.

Noob questions about Favor, I'd apreciate if someone could sedate my doubts.
Old Favor used to be => Reduced perp cost, potency goes up with time, each time you use a Ward, a Rage or Avatar dies, potency reset to the basic value.
New Favor is => Increased perp cost, when avatar dies potency is reset. Each time you use a Ward or Rage BP potency goes up according to the MP cost of the BP.

• First question is: does potency still increase over time or ONLY with BP usage with the current new Favor?

• I know it's been discussed several times already, but I still don't get why we're not receiving an increased perp cost at all with Favor up. Can anybody explain it to me?

• The last known tier used to be at 512 SMN skill. I heard a couple of patches ago a new one was added? At which value does this new tier start? How big is the increase compared to the previously top tier?

Yes it still increases over time as well.
The increase is 20% of your current perpetuation cost and takes into account gear. So with no perpetuation down armor it increases by 3 (15 * 0.2 = 3) but if you have perpetuation -14 then it has no effect (1 * 0.2 = 0.2 rounded down = 0).
That was a misrepresentation by the dev team. The next tier is, and has always been, 577 summoning skill. It's impossible to reach that tier currently, even with the best armor/augments available. What they did do is increase the overall potency of a few of the Favors. Namely Cait Sith's and Shiva's but possibly others that we can't easily measure (Leviathan, etc.)

Edit: Gah, beaten lol.

Potency does still climb over time, the BP's just give it a boost.

The next tier is 577 (new tier every 65 levels), which isn't really feasible atm for us without sacrificing Nirvana/perp cost/refresh gear. (I don't even think its even possible atm either, highest I can get is 566 (but my luck in Inc is horrible...))

As for the Perp cost, I don't remember the math right now, I'll have to look for it again, but I know if you are capped -perp then you won't see a change in perp cost.

Thanks guys, was fixing my idle sets. In my "Favor" one I currently have too much SMN skill, so I can swap out a few slots.

You can already reach 577 btw. It's not practically viable of course, I'm talking about just a testing-scenario to test the increased potency tier.
Currently the max SMN skill you can reach is 581, and for that you will need a lot of luck with augments:

1) +12 on Kirin's Pole
2) +10 on Conveyance Cape (total of +18)

You can easily guess the other items. But it's totally not viable of course. You'd have no perp, you'd be sacrificing Caller's Horn +2 etc.
I honestly don't see 577 to ever become realistic unless they add SMN skill gifts/JobPoints or something like that.

Dec. 4th, they posted about it:

In regards to the required summoning skill (575 or above) being too high, the development team intentionally set it to this level so that there will be a buffer when they decide to make further adjustments to the summoning skill, so please wait for an update on this.

Additionally, the devs. are considering to apply an item level on the Caller’s Horn +2.

But I do hope a Favor/skill boost is one of the gifts or JPs (along with MAB) coming in this update.

They say it was intentional, but I say they're just full of ***.

ItemSet 331787

This set gives Summoning magic skill +141 with perfect augments on Kirin's Pole and Conveyance Cape.

417 + 16 + 141 = 574

Am I missing something?

Nope, that's all there is at the moment.
574 is the max you can get right now, with capped skill merits.

There's no skill in Job poits or Gifts (yet).

141 is correct. I made a mistake in the skill calculation.
417 base instead of 424. It's just A, I was sure it were 424.
That's 7 skills difference, 581-7=574
I apologize for my miscalculation...

Is it really possible to get +6~10 smn skill augment on Conveyance Cape? http://wiki.ffo.jp/html/29166.html reports +5 as highest value and this confirms what I have seen so far.

BG table reports +10, altough it seems a very high range to me to go from 2 to 10.
Can't rule it out but it kinda looks strange.

I can't confirm anything, I was just going by what it said on BG-Wiki. Incursion hates me so I have yet to get any augmented Conveyance.

Browsing through the JSE cape Augments thread on here I'm starting to believe the JP wiki is correct.
While it's a really small sample size, none of the capes in there exceed +5 Skill.

The +10 on BG wiki may have been written down under the assumption that the magic skill augments on the other capes do cap at +10.

As for the best cape I have gotten so far, +2 Blood pact Damage.

Pretty sure I have a Lifestream Cape (GEO) with +8 Geomancy Skill.
Can check later when I get home if you want.
It's a GEO one though, not a SMN one.
Nobody says every mage cape has to follow the same pattern. (as a matter of fact, the GEO one has +5 base skill on the cape, whereas the SMN one has +8)


My Conveyance Cape is pretty lame btw. Don't even remember the exact augment, it's +2 skill, +3 BP damage and... Pet Enmity+5 I think?
Could be worse I guess.


Know what makes me mad about these capes? Well there are several things that make me mad, but the thing I hate the most is how it creates stress on your inventory.
On DNC I have to use THREE different capes because of the different augments (good ones) are spread around 3 different capes.
One for WS Damage, one for Dualwield+, one for Reverse Flourish...
The same could happen to me with SMN as well.
One for -BP, one for skill, one for BPdamage.
I mean wtf is this?
I hate randomness in general, I hate random augments.
We're talking about random chance on getting the amount of stat you want on a random chance to get the type of stat you want on a random chance to get the cape you want from a Coffer that might or might not drop a cape at all.
How HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE is that?

Seriously as much as randomness suck I can sorta accept it if it's about generic stats (which is mostly the case for Skirmish gear), but here we're talking about useful, powerful, job-changing JOB SPECIFIC ENHANCEMENTs. Precious stuff normally relegated to JS armour.
And now you have to sacrifice souls and kittens and your firstborns to the gods of RNGs to get what you want.
This is so wrong in so many ways...


[/rant mode OFF]

I have gotten like 5 summoner capes. All of them have had +1 BP damage (or 0). Best skill I've gotten is +4 I believe.

I meant the Conveyance cape specifically, perhaps I should have clarified that. :)
(I have a whm cape with +9 enhancing and +7 healing myself so yes, I believe you. I have gotten GEO capes with higher numbers as well. I just don't play GEO)


I completely agree.

Off Topic:
doubt it will matter because unless it comes from JP players and it's supported by a large number of them, feedback gets normally ignored by the devs.
Still, there's that tiny tiny tiny hope that it might produce an internal and productive debate among devs, so I opened a thread on the official forum.

It's HERE.

If you feel you agree with what I wrote there, or feel like you can contribute with constructive criticism or anything else, please do it.
Make the thread as visible as possible and maybe they might decide to do something along those lines in the future.

I hope SMNs get some kind of buff soon or something. I'm really just kinda tired of being 2nd rate.

Was doing Incursion, Delve, and High-Tier Battlefields, and no matter which way I looked at it, it was far better for me to come as Geomancer. Geomancer resulted in faster runs, because the buffs are that much stronger, on top of everything else it brings.

Even if I was doing semi-decent damage on Ifrit, and maintained buffs as I was, just playing Geomancer ends up being so much easier for myself and the entire run. Things die faster, and doing something like Flaming Crushes usually just interrupts the OP double darkness Rudras combos or Fudo. Even if I skillchain them, and it ends up being like 10k+ damage, it's still meh, especially because of the damage that would've happened from the DDs skillchaining if I hadn't. Then there's the huge randomness of damage, and the fact that some things just take garbage damage from Flaming Crush (or SMN in general), and either way, we generally parse pretty low.

It's kinda depressing, but I guess that speaks more to the power of Geomancer than the flaws of Summoner? I dunno. You'd think Nirvana would make it better than GEO, but it's generally not. I'm just tired of looking at my completely geared out, almost perfectly geared SMN and still thinking "if I came GEO to this event, it would be going much better."

Outside of abusing Flaming Crush's dumb properties and scaling it to absurd damage, SMN remains kinda meh, its buffs being semi useful but still nowhere as good as a buffing job, and its damage being subpar. I don't expect us to match DDs, but I still don't feel our damage output and buffs weigh up to just having another buffer job instead of us. Our buffs just aren't that strong. Hastega II, Crimson Howl, TP Bonus... and that's about it. We have the favors too (which are as difficult and clunky to use as ever), if it's a fullish moon we give some accuracy, sometimes, and the en effects are kinda okay, but all of that together, I dunno, meh. Using more buffs just hurts your favor uptime generally.

I still just wish I could be proud about bringing my Summoner to any group, but I always have that lingering feeling that I could be assisting so much more on another job, which just shouldn't be the case. I dunno, maybe it's just me, maybe I'm alone on these opinions, but I'm just feeling kinda down on it recently.

In other news, as we know, Crimson Howl and Earthen Ward scale with level; do these scale with the avatar level (119/121) or the player level?

Is our Warcry/Stoneskin stronger than it was at just 99? I guess I should just Crimson Howl with the Seraphicaller and without.

EDIT: Seems like no. Attack stat remains the same, so it scales with player level. Come on SE, where is that update you said where you would make our buffs scale with summoning skill/avatar level. :/

Yeah, the same with healing Blood Pacts, they only heal for the lv99 amount.

And yes, I agree about SMN being meh. It's my favorite job and my best geared job but I almost never bring it for high level content. Unless your group is specialized for boosting your Avatar's effectiveness, pretty much any other job will be more useful.

Dunno, we've been using SMN pretty much lately as a weak alternative to GEO (when we didn't have a GEO :P) in place of COR.
For some things it's good.
Hastega2, TP Bonus, 11% Attack, 24% attack when you can afford to keep the avatar alive, and some damage here and there with debuffs too.

It sure seems to be in a much better place today than it was 1 year ago, or ever maybe.
Are we at the goal yet? Absolutely not, but I kinda like the direction this is going towards :)