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

Conflag Strike definitely benefits from TP. Got most of my JP from soloing Calcined Umbrils with Ifrit and Mana Cede was the difference between a 2HKO and a 1HKO (though I started off 2HKOing them with 5/5 merit, then with Night Terror for no resists, then 1HKOing them with merit, then 1HKOing them with Conflag).

Just to make sure I wasn't going crazy and remembering things that didn't happen, I did some tests naked (except for 600 and 2600 where I had Empy. pants on) vs Tiny Mandies:

0 TP: 1768
50 TP: 1783
100 TP: 1798
250 TP: 1846
500 TP: 1926
600 TP: 1958
750 TP: 2014
1000 TP: 2085
1025 TP: 2092
1250 TP: 2165
1500 TP: 2245
1525 TP: 2252
1750 TP: 2323
1775 TP: 2330
2000 TP: 2403
2250 TP: 2483
2500 TP: 2561
2600 TP: 2592
2750 TP: 2641
3000 TP: 2721

In my current avatar nuke set (not taking Nirvana Lag into account), Enticer's beats NQ Apogee until somewhere between 2365 and 2370 TP. For comparison's sake, Impact does better with Enticer's until somewhere between 2425 and 2430 TP.

I see Verda already made a post about Conflag, but I was in the middle of typing this out earlier and figured I'd post it anyway.

Since NQ Apogee has less stats than HQ Apogee, the outcome does seem pretty obvious. HQ Apogee could barely hold its ground against Enticer's in Frod's testing, how do you reckon NQ Apogee will do just as well? It has 4 less BP Damage and 5 less MAB.

For one thing, Helios doesn't have less stats than NQ Apogee in fact Helios is better. Same BP Dmg, same MAB, more MAcc. Gear has changed a lot since those Helios tests were done too. It will take more BPD and more MAB to compete at the same level with Enticer's now as back then. I think that's why you're confused, the Helios testing from back then is simply no longer relevant in terms of comparing gear.

Jopa's testing reveals this is true for his set, I know it's true for mine because mine is similar to Frod's, and I suspect it's true for yours too.

Was that a typo? Did you mean to say Impact is better with Enticer's until somewhere between 2425 and 2430 TP?

Yeah I meant NQ Apogee starts beating Enticer's somewhere in that range, my bad.

I retested Night Terror, and Holy Mist and Conflag strike at zero TP using my set VS NQ Apogee cuz I'm tired of talking about it.

Night Terror 0 TP:
Apogee D: 12507
Apogee A: 12838
Enticer: 12653

Conflag 0 TP:
Apogee D: 13143
Apogee A: 13491
Enticer: 13880

Holy Mist 0 TP:
Apogee D: 12159
Apogee A: 12481
Enticer: 12161

Fire IV 0 TP:
Apogee D: 11103
Apogee A: 11396
Enticer: 11734

Impact 0 TP:
Apogee D: 15812
Apogee A: 16228
Enticer: 16890

Here's what is surprising to me, Path D is doing less despite prior advice and discussions here that D would do better even on magic pacts due to how little BP damage we get. The scale seems to have tipped since then. The other surprise is Tier IV nukes being so TP friendly.

Here's my set:
My grioavlr is missing quite a bit of MAB but has a lot of magic acc and INT, which with how I use SMN bursts on high level stuff to me was a good trade off till I can get something more perfect, so that could explain some of it for the D. With the huge boosts to MAB and stats in Escha we'd need another set of testing for escha. And I guess every gear upgrade we need testing which is just exhausting. Blood Pact damage calculation is such a system of pulleys and weights that unless we nail down solid formulas it seems we'll have to continually test everything. Since I was doing ifrit I could've used Fervor Ring but I wanted a sample that translates to other avatars as well.

So basically the conclusion is NQ apogee wins on some magical pacts, if Path A at 0 TP and possibly D if you have enough MAB. Conflag Strike, Impact and Merit Pacts and it appears also tier IV nukes also get extremely big boost from TP so using enticers with those is a much more solid yes answer vs NQ apogee.

Separate question with the upcoming dark matter aug campaign, is anyone else going to use a spare griovalr or two to try to win the lottery for the best magical pact staff in the game? I'm thinking of spending all my rolls for it. Theoretical limit would be 15 BP damage and 60 MAB 60 Magic Acc and somewhere around 20 INT.

There's also something else I wish to know, the magical pact equation on the prior page is obviously wrong, as the TP damage diff on conflag strike zero TP vs 3k tp with gear is almost 4k and with Jopa doing it naked it is less than 1k. Obviously it isn't a static bonus and is amplified by more than just BP damage. If it was a static bonus the exponential nature of multiplying MAB and BP damage would eventually make it insignificant so something else is going on that we never documented, or nailed down.

This is all I saw from your post.

All I can say is holy crap if that's a legitimate augment cap.

My eyes are up here. :P It would be equivalent to winning the lottery to get something even 80% that good but since those are the caps and dark matter raises caps 50% that we've seen, ya.

I haven't yet seen a 40 magic acc or 40 mab aug on staff, so if the natural limit is 30 then it'd be 45 mab/macc but still amazing. I didn't see mab 40 on merlinic for a long long time though.

Ugh I had totally forgotten about that, too. Should only tilt the favor further toward Enticer's, though.

I think there's a balance to be struck. Testing every single scenario, and then retesting them all every time you get a new piece of equipment, just isn't practical. I'm happy to just assume Enticer's will continue to excel as MAB/BPD values go higher and higher, until the day when we get another slot with TP Bonus on it then it becomes a whole different ball of wax. In any event, the difference between Enticer's and BPD/MAB options isn't very big in any of our tests.

Looks like Night Terror and Holy Mist in particular get very little benefit from TP. I'll have to test Thunderspark tonight if someone doesn't beat me to it, that's the other one I'm curious about.

As for trying to get a good BP piece with Dark Matters, good luck! I only saw a couple of rolls in the entire campaign last time that had more than 1 pet roll on them. I never saw a single BP Damage roll.

In fact, can anyone confirm for certain that BP Damage is even a possible roll from Dark Matter?

I know a few people that confirm it popping up on Herculean gear during the last dark matter campaign.

All i've got to throw at it really is griovalr, there's two targets for this really, That and a refresh +1-2 weapon.

Had a chance to test Thunderspark at 0 TP.

Enticer's: 10814
Helios (7/30): 11167

Should be identical to NQ Apogee, so it looks like Thunderspark is similar to Night Terror & Holy Mist. Doesn't benefit a lot from TP.

What's so hard about doing 4 rolls?

Most parties aren't willing to put up with the party swapping mainly. It's entirely possible though yes, but it's hard to justify bugging up to 3 people every 9.5 mins for one set of buffs for one player in another party :( As usually I will be in an off party, since really SMN only benefits from malaise and languor, storms, acumen and focus won't do anything for SMN so when you mix BLM and SMN it usually makes more sense to have the SMN in another party and people who would benefit from those buffs in a mage party. Now if you are low on mage jobs, you can combine, do dream shroud, haste 2, and even crystal blessing for mykyr but that in my experience is a rarity :/ When it does happen though the COR is nice enough to do it for me usually.

COR can help out SMN a lot though and not just with rolls SMN damage comes from JA and COR is the only JA reset job in the game, RD -> Revit RD -> WC -> RD to reset apogee and rage is like a mini Astral Conduit (if it gets apogee every time, 10 rage pacts, 12 if smn uses their own revit too).

My smn isn't really geared any more, but I have a bunch of highly augmented helios(BPD+7, critrate+4, mab+28-30 on all 5 pieces). Is any of that still best in slot, or is it safe to toss? If I were to use it again, I'd be getting HQ apogee and highly augmented merlinic.

Its a damn good way to start but it will all be replaced by apogee +1 or merlinic. Nq apogee is slightly worse. You should consider converting them to tp pieces or telchine into siphon pieces. You can also get a decent 30macc, 8 skill on each piece as well.

Agree except the part about NQ apogee is slightly worse, NQ Apogee is better than absolute perfect augs for everything but arguably helios pants, because it has 15 magic acc attached and that's if your set has enough bp damage in it to make path D not a superior choice in magic pacts, though damage stats are tied for most pieces other than feet. The only pact that would benefit from crit rate is flaming crush, and most slots have something you'd rather use for pure physical BPs, plus getting the perfect 30 is costly and he doesn't have perfect mab on all so it would win just by that.

Anybody got the meaning of the Patch notes line about Favor reducing the cooldown on Ward/Rage?

No. Thought I might check here also . I guess timers will drop aligned with favour skill tier. Question is how much

And if it breaks caps and if it does if it's with gear or with just the favor tier. Can't wait to find out.

Someone says it caps at -5 BP recast, didn't say if it goes beyond 30sec cap or not. Would be neat if it does, granted in a scenario where you are constantly swapping avatars it would hardly make a difference though because of no time to build up the max favor etc.

Confirmed to go beyond cap.
I have max -BP delay, so I am at 30 seconds without.

After having Shiva out for 2 minutes, I capped at 23 seconds. I currently have no job points in Avatar's Favor category.

Hope more people can do some testing with +skill and maybe even more tiers of favor?

Favor does increase in tiers faster when you use a pact. So maybe that will help? Overall, I'm really happy to finally be under 30 seconds - even if it is only 7 seconds less.

I got 23 secs but other smn were getting 20 secs.

I'm thinking once you're at 30 sec delay cap with gear, focus on smn skill to try to achieve higher tiers.
It would be awesome if this broke 20 seconds. 8D

Hope the cap is 10 seconds.
9 is such a bad odd number, makes the OCD in me tingle.

I was actually just playing around with it unequipping and re-equipping different things and it seems that in order to push it down to 20 you would need every BP II item. My timer is at 24 and I'm missing hq body, hq feet, and 1 point on cape. Also, timers says my timer is 23 but the actual pet ability says 24.
(I have 2100 JP and over 600 skill in delay set)

22 seconds when over 600 skill and full delay timers. I was watching the job ability menu for it and not relying on Timers. So unless someone can hit somewhere in the 630s and maintain full delay I would be willing to say the cap is 22 seconds on a recast. 2100 JP etc etc etc.

Gearset:

Do those new magic skill rings help you out with hitting a higher teir?