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

i hope someone can help me with my question. would Blood Boon work in a Bp recast down set or would it be waste?

I'd probably say that's a waste.
But then again, I don't know the procing conditions of Blood Boon, wether it's determined the moment you give the command or when the Blood pact fires.

What are the random things/proc that can greatly affect the damage of a Magical Blood Pact?


DA proc ==> no, doesn't proc on magical
Crit Proc ==> yes it can, but how much of a damage % increase is it?
AF3 proc ==> is it exactely double damage? Applied when? To the base damage? At the end of the formula after all Mab/BPdmg etc?
Quick Draw ==> if the right element is used and you use elemental BP right after, it could benefit from the damage boost given by Quick Draw
Gambit/Rayke ==> as above

Can't think of anything else.
The other day I hit for ~67k Wind Blade on Kirin V2 on my first Magic Burst.
My gear is nothing special and I only have 3/5 merits.
My other Wind Blades were something like uh I don't remember, 9/15k I think, maybe I should check the log.
Think I've seen a ~19k but that was probably a spike.


Sooo... what can possibly explain that 66k? Probably a mix of multiple procs at the same time? Crit proc + AF3 proc + Quick Draw + Gambit + hit first on MB?
Can't think of anything else.

I do get these random huge spikes I can't explain. Other day I was helping a friend with the Balamor + 3Dullahans SoA mission, did a Flaming Crush and it hit Balamor for over 70k
Tried again the next day with another friend and it was more like ~15k.
Duuuuh...

Thanks for the Info! Good to know it's working as intended, as mysterious as it may be.

Lol no problem, and that I can't answer in terms of an exact boost you'll receive. It should help magic BPs decently though. Honestly I would use the Grio over Espiritus with those augs. Those are pretty good augs.

Nope, magic BPs can't crit unless you count Flaming Crush.

It's based on the MP savings from Blood Boon, which works the same way as Conserve MP. It'll save you anywhere from 1/16 to 1/2 MP. If AF3 procs, it'll give you a boost of 50% plus the amount of MP saved. So it can be up to exactly double damage, or as low as just above a 50% bonus.

Correct

Kirin has very high magic evasion. Even with Languor up and really good gear, I still use Rolanberry Daifuku on that fight to help with resists. So it'd be hard to say how much of that is just resists. It's not hard to hit 99k on first form. Kouryu is another story, I think my highest on him is closer to 80-85k.

Probably AF3 proc plus unresisted if you're using AF3 gear in magic BPs. So without AF3 proc you should be able to hit at least 33k unresisted (half of 66k). You mentioned ~19k which was probably a 50% resist so I'm going to guess your unresisted would be closer to 38k. So a 73% boost from AF3 proc would get you to 66k, though that's not to say that's what happened.

It's really hard to draw further conclusions unless you were always the first person to hit the MB, otherwise the elemental resistance crap could be messing with the numbers too. It's possible that this wasn't even an AF3 bonus and you were just getting resisted a lot previously.

Flaming Crush will absolutely crit though, and 3 crits will make a huge difference in damage.

Blood Boon and Conserve MP are similar abilities and testing has shown conserve mp only works in the player midcast set, basically when your mana is taken. To my knowledge only bp delay gear works on bloodpact activation, and anything else will have to be equipped during your avatars midcast. A quick test shows that indeed your mana is consumed when your pet casts and not when you activate the bloodpact. To be 100% sure we'd have to do a large sample size and see how often gear was procing, as SMN has a native blood boon trait and it'd have to be weighed out in how often it happens rather than if it happens. It is pretty certain though that blood boon only works if equipped at the time your avatar uses the pact (roughly 1.5 seconds after use).


I think it is the hit first on MB personally. Outside of all the things pergatory went over there is also a mechanic with magic bursts that the first magic burst seems to have either a magic accuracy boost, or subsequent bursts to have a magic accuracy penalty. This is why BLM on high end targets cycle death rather than all burst off the same magic burst, and why if someone does a comet or something before the BLM bursts that BLM's death will often hit for far less. If you have enough magic accuracy then this penalty will not seem to often affect you, but if you are riding the line then it is very noticeable.

If you do VD Puppets in Peril you will notice this with Ice magic bursts and heavenly strike as well. On top of that, magic damage is "evaded" i.e. resisted in stages. Here is the bg-wiki on that:
If you hit for about 67k, a half resist would hit for 33.5k, 3/4 resist for 16.75k and 7/8 resist for 8.375k. Additionally battle conditions could change (buff/debuffs falling off, bubbles down) but these seem somewhat close to your numbers.

These are what I could find on it on the wiki:
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Resist
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Magic_Damage#Resist

Avatar INT definitely effects magical blood pact damage, and there's not many places we can get it so ya it's relevant, testing has indicated it is like player magic damage in that it factors into the base damage of pacts (which is then multiplied by bp damage and pet mab), as well as should affect magic accuracy and how much damage your avatar receives from magic against them as well (both in terms of magic eva. and damage overall). It would take a large sample size but you could find beefy targets without level or job variation and use a merit pact on them. Then do the same thing but having applied conflag strike for -63 INT first (though oddly my test showed -61 INT maybe smn skill equipped at use effects? worth testing)...

does anyone know if skill effect blood ward potency ?

Summoning Magic Skill over cap will add 1 second for 1 skill to ward duration for buffs. For healing wards, only avatar max hp and tp seem to effect it. For debuff wards, it would effect magic accuracy/chance of resist but I was going to test if some wards it would effect duration (it probably doesn't however gonna test it anyway). More summoning magic skill to my knowledge however doesn't effect the actual potency (won't get more stats from fenrir or more mab from diabolos etc).

I was wondering for a while now how the accuracy mechanism of Flaming Crush works. I have problems getting high numbers on high lvl targets. Is that due to a lack of physical Acc or MAcc or both? That would effect the food to use (Shiromochi or Rolan. Daifuku) and buffs to choose from Geo and Cor.
Is Flaming Crush resisted in stages or do hits simply miss and thats why the damage is low? Actually even wonder if it can miss entirely.

thanks that answer the question is there anything that effect potency ?

It's hard to say exactly what the issue would be, but generally accuracy is the first thing I try to remedy if my Flaming Crush numbers are low. If accuracy isn't the problem, it could be magic accuracy but that's rare in my experience unless the mob is resistant to fire.

So if Shiromochi doesn't fix it or at least help, it's probably just that the enemy's defense or MDB is too high.

Flaming Crush is a 3-hit crit BP. Two hits are purely physical, the third hit is mixed physical+magical. The magic damage of the third hit is based on the physical damage of all 3 hits combined. So for example if the 3 physical hits do 8000 damage total, then that'll be the base damage of the magic hit which is then multiplied by MAB and the like. This is what allows Flaming Crush to get such high numbers.

It's possible for all 3 physical hits to miss. However, even if that happens, as Jopa recently discovered, if you have job points in avatar magic damage or blood pact damage you should still see a couple hundred damage from the magic hit of the BP rather than an outright miss. If you have no job points in those categories, you can indeed see a complete miss.

Another factor for variation is that the physical hits can all crit, and this makes a huge difference in damage. Non-crits are almost as bad as misses. This can lead to some significant variation in damage on harder content even if your accuracy is capped.

Here is a writeup on Flaming Crush mechanics we know of, it's a bit lengthy but I find I have to explain it a lot and hopefully can refer ppl to this post.

Flaming Crush can miss entirely (log will just say (miss)), Flaming Crush is sort of a "bully" bloodpact in that it excels vs weak targets but has a hard time keeping up with alternatives on high end targets. This is because of its hybrid nature, to do big damage with flaming crush several conditions have to all be met:

• Ifrit must have an advantage in physical power, meaning fSTR (STR vs mob VIT), pDIF (attack vs mob defense) or have that fixed through debuffs (Dia 1-3, Tourbillion or Garland of Bliss or Angon or Acid bolts or any other debuff that would show up as the blue defense down icon (don't stack), Geo-Frailty, Box Step) or buffed with Beast Roll and/or Nirvana AM2

• Ifrit should be capped physical accuracy (accuracy vs mob evasion) or fixed through debuffs (Geo-Topor, Diamond Storm or Lunar Cry or Feint or Distract (don't stack), Quickstep) or buffed with Drachen Roll and/or Nirvana AM1

• Ifrit must be have capped magic accuracy, which is harder vs fire resistant mobs or have the mobs magic evasion reduced with debuffs (Rayke, Threnodies, Geo-Languor, Frazzle, Stutter Step) or buffed via Puppet's Roll

• Ifrit must not be vs mobs with much MDT or PDT (not much can fix this outside Tomahawk a bit or just overpowering it with raw damage potential, though dispelling Shell can help a lot if that is the source)

• Ifrit must have a lot of BP damage and MAB, and the mob must not have a lot of MDB or have it fixed through debuffs (Geo-Malaise, Tearing Gust or Shattersoul (don't stack), Gambit, Quickdraw boost) or buffed via Puppet's Roll

Knowing your target and debuffs/buffs can help you fix the stats needed to perform well with it, however by design it is hard to take care of ALL of these stats on higher end content, which is why most people start just magic bursting (only need magic evasion and magic defense lowered/magic acc and attack up) or using volt strike or pred claws (only need defense and evasions lowered/attack and accuracy up) on higher end content. As pergatory said, it is hard to tell what is going on because of all this but researching the mob you fight can help knowing where you need to debuff/buff most.

This is also why melee and magic don't mix on high end content well. For manaburn the SCH makes the skillchains to burst off of rather than DD of some kind, otherwise you have to worry about a whole other set of stats for the DD, and likewise mages just magic bursting in a DD party will be hitting far less hard so people mostly just mana burn now.

Hope that helps your question. This is why I call it a "bully" pact when explaining it, it excels at taking out weak stuff but doesn't do well when something strong comes along or having 2 parties worth of support... at which point you deal with hp scaling and you'd be better off replacing the duplicate supports with more SMN magic bursting or BLM, SCH etc. Because the stats on this stuff is so extreme basically, you only have enough support to go one path: melee or magic but flaming crush requires both sets of stats to do its big numbers.

You're more than welcome, for wards not that I know of. Summoning skill and AF3 horn for avatar's favor and for healing pacts avatar max hp and tp. Impact by Fenrir is a Rage pact that has been shown to debuff more based on summoning skill, but as far as I know no other pacts have been proven to work this way but some things merit testing to find out, especially wards that are debuffs. Things like Haste 2 won't give more haste though because of anything, earthen armor and earthen ward, noctoshield, aerial armor... none of them really are effected by anything other than duration through summoning skill. I did read that petmab had some effect on spikes and en- spells but I don't recall exactly what and it was buried on some obscure site so it'd take a while to find it. Iirc it changes it based on the pet MAB you have on rather than the pet MAB at time of casting though, that'd be an easy test. I wish they would give wards potency based off smn skill though as many of SMN's wards are very outdated to the point of almost useless on modern content.

Thx a lot! That was exactly the in depth explanation I was looking for (from both of you!) ~
There were quite some things about FC I didnt know yet. But it would explain y I had problems even on medium lvl content cause I focused only on MAcc and neglected Acc completely. Ill try to adjust.

I wonder if summoning magic skill affects the magic accuracy for additional effect physical BPs (like Chaotic/Volt Strike) as well as hybrid BPs. I get the feeling it doesn't, as I believe that was the case for physical blue magic until sometime last year (correct me if I'm wrong).

Also, this might be a dumb question but is it fair to assume that additional effects use the enfeeble's standard element rather than the avatar's? For instance, I've never seen Geocrush stun high-tier Ramuh or waktza-type NMs. Or maybe it take both elements into account? Not a BP, but the amnesia from Lightning Spear (unicorns) is consistently resisted by both Ifrit and Ramuh IIRC.

I did a bit of testing of my own on some Chapulis in Adoulin. Grivoavolr was beating out a Path A Espiritus by 423 damage with 0 extra TP and 5/5 merits in Heavenly Strike. At 3000TP with both staffs, Griv was still ahead by 468 damage.

That would take a lot of sample sizes but something I'd like to know too.

I've noticed it too on the debuffs seem to correspond to the debuff rather than the element of your avatar, things with magic accuracy are really hard to test because they take so many sample sizes to know for sure, and in the case of avatars we don't even get a message if it landed or not for the additional effect. From just observations like you mentioned tho I think you are right.

I did testing on Rolling Thunder, summoning skill at least effects the potency of it, so that other site I mentioned was either mistaken or it changed. With my full ward set enthunder was dealing 80 a hit. With my full pet mab set 65 a hit. It stayed at what was cast in rather than changed versus what I had equipped. So there's at least one ward that summoning skill effects potency.

Conflag Strike works the same but that's the only other one I know about.

Geocrush is indeed an earth-based stun. However, most thunder-based NMs are explicitly immune to stun effects.

I have been able to stun some things with it that are normally immune to thunder-based stuns. I believe King Behemoth is one such example. Pretty sure thunder-based stuns can't stun him, but Geocrush will. It's been a long time since I tested any of that, so I hope I'm not giving you outdated info.

Also I don't believe this is the case 100% of the time. For example I'm almost positive Shiva's Sleepga is dark-based not ice-based.

Would anyone mind posting updated gear sets?

These will give you some idea the direction to go, it's far from all the sets or all the variations but it's some. I'll write a guide either here or on a blog within the next few weeks so that can be more thorough, I don't want to release it till it's in a good state but these should be good for those who just need to know what direction to shoot for.

Magical Blood Pact
ItemSet 342188
Legs path D, rest path A, BP damage and Pet MAB augs for Griovalr and Merlinic hands, I usually favor accuracy if the damage slot wouldn't add much, but there are times when caller's sash would be better. Flaming crush uses scintillating cape, fervor ring, Thurandaut ring and Nirvana instead. If accuracy isn't a concern, speaker's ring is good for both.

Physical Blood Pact
ItemSet 342189
Path B except for Legs path D. Body could be Apogee +1 depending if you want attack or 2 bp damage. Same applies for attack vs accuracy mujin obi is 10 attack, so you can go either way depending on your needs.

Ward Pact
ItemSet 342190
Convoker's Horn is 2 more smn skill, Apogee +1 body is more summoning skill, but with this you stand a chance to have very long ward durations (like 16 min sometimes) due to empy set bonus so I set it up like this. Some like to replace hands too for more chance of that but this is my personal choice.

Fast Cast
ItemSet 342187

If redmage sub can replace back with perimede cape to be one short of capping quickmagic.

Perp with Refresh and Horn and Summoning Magic Skill for Favor, basically your idle and avatar out set
ItemSet 342192

I can show more in a guide like cure sets, stoneskin, different ward types and the whole shebang. Hope this helps in mean time. Note that 4 sets can't hope to cover summoner and that even for the sets posted there's variations based on accuracy requirements.

That's great, thanks Verda.

Do you happen to have Non-Apogee SMN alternatives, or would using the NQ Apogee be just as fine? Because I know there are some better alternatives to NQ Abjuration Gear for other jobs, so I'm pretty sure some pieces could replace NQ Apogee as well.

NQ abjuration or well augmented helios. You could also augment merlinic, but outside hands I feel it's not as good, (Edit: though you can get BP dmg 10 and 30-40 pet mab and pet magic acc or attack and accuracy for example along with either STR or INT, so even without the base gloves bonus they could perform very well if you got max augments). Personally I recommend just using NQ apogee to start out for now and if you wanna get serious with merlinic augs it is an option that would be cheaper than apogee+1. I want to put 3-4 different stages of gearsets for each set in my guide to be a more useful resource and get in depth on the best choices for them. I don't have all +1 myself (making body legs and hands for myself) but the hands are mostly used in high accuracy sets. I'd make use of the current abjuration campaign, and as far as cost, most the NQ apogee is sold below the cost to even craft it because people end up with tons of them trying to make +1, so their cost is pretty small even compared to helios or merlinic. I'm currently selling any NQ I make at about 300k each, and even giving some away, if you were on bahamut I'd dbox you it lol though I'm out of bodies atm.

NQ apogee should be cheaper than helios since most NQ are 300-500k plus the cost of eschalixirs. Helios can be quite expensive unless duskorb/snoworb/leaforb prices on your server are really cheap.

Helios are far easier to get initially though. I haven't done Escha NMs in ages though, can the Apogee NMs be done with a party of 6 or do they need an alliance?

That's very true as is what Alistrianna said of cost.

The more you take the more HP scaling factors in, over 6 at least, which most the time makes the fight harder rather than easier. I'd recommend sticking to 6 man teams. As for the NMs:

Creature Level 119
Khon and Ruea: These have damage shields that randomly switch between types. A summoner with trusts can probably solo these in reforged gear but it might be tough. Flaming Crush does work though, and friends or a pickup group can only make it easier. They die quick to a well geared summoner but if you're going for abjurations that may not describe you. Basic setup is 1 ranger trust, 1 tank trust with slashing, 1 thf trust with piercing, (obviously a whm trust but not for shields) and if you melee with a staff and use ifrit you can cover the remaining three damage types (h2h, magic, and blunt). Just watch the log if they shield and which trust or ability does damage will let you know. Flaming crush first two hits are h2h, and 3rd is magical. If you have no job points in magic or bp damage tho it could do zero for the magic portion so you could test that with a quick nuke from your subjob or fire IV/meteor strike from ifrit. Conflag strike is breath damage and I've never seen that work vs the shield. Luzaf is also a good option if you have him as he spams quickdraw and it always damages the shield. Some of them have nasty abilities, like doom gaze, terror gaze, draw in and doom aura and they can get the best of you so be prepared. SMN can do all but ranged damage for this:
Piercing: Fenrir Crescent Fang, not much damage but it's piercing
Slashing: Garuda Predator Claws
H2H: Ifrit Flaming Crush
Blunt: Ramuh Volt Strike
Magic: any T4 nuke or merit pact

CL 125
In general you want at least small parties for these, as well as to farm the UNM pop items for them. Magic burst strats work great, unless you are with nirvana and a good physical bp set then some work better with physical or flaming crush.

Kammavaca: Summons 4 adds killed in the right order they will stop spawning. CLMA = Clinoid > Limule > Murex > Amoeba I remember it because it almost spells CLAM but not quite. The fight is straight forward, the book doesn't move and stops using draw in after the adds are gone. There is a trick if you have a sch buddy too. Have them pop and have the entire party stand at max range. The sch then will self chain helix on at max range and nuke at max range, adds never pop and is pretty boring fight it can't do anything. Otherwise just use typical trust setup, it seems weakest to slashing and fire. Can use pred claws or magic burst conflag strike/meteor strike.

Palila: Geocrush merit'd fully works well if you magic burst this. Flaming crush works ok, great if you have right support. Volt strike works pretty well too and Ramuh doesn't take much damage from his thunder based moves. The adds are probably the worst part, while I have solo'd or duo'd this on SMN it's not something I'd recommend (even duoing I was tanking 8 birds at one point, 4-5 of which spawned at once near end in my DT set). Get a SCH to skillchain and burst with, and magic burst geocrush is the safest option. Having a real tank and whm couldn't hurt either, as whoever pops the adds, the adds that spawn will target them. This will be a challenging fight for someone going for the abjuration, but players in reisenjima gear etc prob can solo him on many jobs, because some of the gear out there is nuts, but pick up groups can and do handle him.

CL 135
When they came out these were considered incredibly hard, with current gear choices or having the gear already dropped by them, they are considered easy for small teams to farm, for a returning player or someone getting gear though, these can be very challenging and I wouldn't trust most pick up groups with them especially since the pop items are expensive. Convoker's +1 can last you a long while though while you go about getting this.

Vir'ava: I got my first one with just a well geared sch and pld helping me out, and having august tank the main NM, the paladin pops and moves the adds away from the main NM. This is because Vir'ava can charm, and also consume the adds to become super strong. If you make her eat a purple add however she gets debuffed but I have never tried winning this way. She is easily the hardest t3 mob. I would only tank with a trust on the main guy and player tank on the adds. You can also have a PUP tank the main NM. I have also heard some just sleep the adds and have a pld on the main NM, but this risks her buffing herself by eatting one of her adds so I don't recommend it as the buffs can be very substantial and make the run fail. If you have the sch setup 2-3 magic bursts for you within 30 seconds, and have a geo languor and malaise, you can conduit meteor strike and the fight a lot faster (in really good gear this kills it), then reset 1 hours in lower jeuno moblin maze mongers. BLM can also burst fire well, and sch helix bursts always help. She's either really easy or a pain depending on how well you pull off a strategy. I've seen even well geared parties almost wipe to her taking too many people and not really paying attention. I've also seen sch pld duo it, and have done it a lot myself with sch geo smn pld. One strat that Papesse uses is to switch between mewing lullaby and meteor strike. This will make it so a tank can never fear being charmed and the adds will never pop as no tp move is ever used. Magic burst not needed if you go this route, and you need to make sure you don't have any sources of tp feeding. I believe the setup for this is smn cor pld whm geo, though since things get easier with more gear, you could do with less now. It's hard to gauge how hard this is for people, as it will really depend on so much, not only the people you run with if you do but how much time you invested in escha to get vorseals, current blessings, and current gear.

Hope that helps.

Are you 100% sure about that?
Because back during the time when Helios gear came out I came in here and say "lolno, crit and DA can't happen on magic BPs!" and someone else (Crevox for sure, but there were at least 2 more people) said they did some tests and then proceeded to post them, hinting at the fact that magic BPs could indeed proc a Crit, but no DA of course.

So... were those tests moot? Are we 100% sure?
Can physical BPs proc both crit and DA?


Thanks for the rest of your math, and yeah I was using the macc food. Guess I've just been lucky with AF proc + first on MB for some reason.
(was my first Kirin on SMN! I'm usually on RUN or SCH or GEO)

hey thanks for the info helps a lot.

You're welcome :)

Some quick feedback on the sets Verda posted:

• For Magic BP, I use Caller's Sash.

• For Physical BP, I use Mujin Obi. SE has recently declared that summoning skill does not enhance the accuracy of BPs. Whether they're lying this time, or were lying before, who knows but Mujin Obi is the known quantity here.

• For Wards: No point going past 500 skill. Go for the Beckoner's set bonus. You should be able to equip at least 4 pieces without any difficulty.

• For Perp: I highly advise making an idle build specifically for when you care about favor's potency, because most of the time you won't. Rest of the time you can do stuff like Telchine Pigaches for pet:haste/pet:acc (these can cap perp down with Nirvana and Assiduity), belt for Moepapa Stone or Fucho-no-Obi, Andoaa for Rimeice, rings for Thurandaut and something else like Diverter's, cape for Penetrating Cape. That'll give your avatar +17% haste. In fact I'd say there's really no reason at all to make a summoning skill Apogee Pumps.

Yes, 100% sure. I don't recall seeing the posts you mentioned, but I'd wager they were probably seeing resists, or Beckoner's set bonus doubling their damage and thinking it was a crit.

Edit: OR possibly they were using Glyphic Pigaches, which CAN make merit BPs crit for a little additional damage.