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

It is probably worth noting that using a blood pact while Avatar Favor is active will drop the effect of the buff down and it will need to build back up. BG wiki has it at a rage dropping it 5 tiers and wards 2 unless that has recently changed.

awesome!! thank you :)

My TP bonus and Avatar Magic attack bonus testing

I thought I'd throw this stuff out to give people new to SMN or those who aren't sure of the impact of Avatar TP and MAB an idea of their effects. Please note my SMN is 96 so results would be slightly different at 99, also these results won't be the same on higher level mobs that have increasing MDB and resistances, this is just to show the raw damage increase.

I have 5/5 Avatar magic attack merits and 5/5 Wind blade
I did each test several times to ensure consistency

Base damage (No gear or additional TP)


Base damage+40TP This is the increase in TP bonus you get per merit into a BP. I used caller's pendant to reach exactly 40tp and checked with <pettp> and Pettp plugin.

132 damage difference from 40tp.

Base damage+Shareeravadi +2 (+12 pet MAB)

+139 damage without reductions from MDB/Mobs magic resistance

40 avatar TP appears to be worth around 10 MAB in this instance, i'm not sure if the damage increase from TP is static or is affected by defences before the total reduction as of yet.

5/5 in a merit gives 160TP bonus
I used to assume for years that 5/5 in a BP gave 200TP bonus, I was thinking the first merit adds 40tp and that you needed an additional 100TP to cap.
Base damage+100TP AKA Mana Cede without AF3 hands.


Base damage+140TP This is the cap, 300% Avatar TP, you can no longer get a damage bonus from TP after this.

Caller's spats +2 give +50 TP so with them you only need 90 Avatar TP to cap.


Putting it all together+My conclusion/opinion
Capped TP, +17 Gear pet: MAB and AF3+2 body

My gearset is far from optimal right now considering I've been on a break from the game but I've managed to add almost 1000 damage to my BP via TP and gear. The biggest difference in these BPs damage is TP, so in my opinion having 2 maxed out merited BPs is far more valuable than spreading the category out to have several weaker BPs. Considering they have the same base damage you only need to worry about elemental resistance, which shouldn't be a problem provided you pick 2 that have a good elemental spread.

Nice Kuni. Many summoners won't notice for while that TP affects magic or how much TP affects the magic attacks. I can't really blame them considering it's the only case where TP equals more damage. It's a good example to show why you shouldn't spread your group two merits out either. Thanks.

:x on your set for illustrating all the BP recast delay - gear, you forgot the caller's earring. Just pointing that out so you can update!

Additionally, wouldn't you want Marduk's jubbah +1 in the body slot for spell interrupt - set? I know it's super-specialized for casting avatars/spirits... but eh?

Im surprised Aeyela hasnt been ranting about your perp section yet lol. Very good guide nice to see people taking the job seriously it was my first advance job back in the day.

Altius Mantle can get pet:MAB+2 which would be worth using over Tiresias' cape for merit BPs.

Ranting in a bad way!? I hope not.

I put the mantle in the MAB set. I always forget about those augment items. Mostly because I gave up on them so long ago. I hesitated to add them just because of how luck based the rewards can be. I also added in Rosa's suggestions.

Awesome! I have a fan! =D


I have no reason to do such a thing, your guide's excellent! He's just one of those people who can't let go of having a disagreement with somebody. It was weeks ago, too!

Aeyela was arguing that perp gear can take the cost to 0 instead of -1 then auto-refresh adds +2 mp a tick while the avatar is out.

Can have a read here: http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/34348/free-carbuncle-99#2091861

Been doing some playing with and without Mujin Obi lately to compare. My early conclusion is the boost it provides is providing a flat %age increase to physical blood pact damage rather than raising attack or something. With Mujin, the average blood pact (of so far 110) is about 10% higher than without.

More testing required, but it definitely seems like it might be worth using for Predator Claws and etc. I've tried it on a few MAB pacts and as you'd expect it doesn't seem to make a difference.

Re: TP, with the Caller's Pendant equipped between blood pacts your avatar only needs to land four physical attacks before they reach the 90 TP (including the regained TP) to reach the maximum TP bonus on the merit blood pacts.


Indeed. I was not accounting for the 1 MP from the legs. Easy mistake to make. Leave it out of this thread, that was a few weeks ago now!

Edit: Actually, nearly two months. Get over it you sad act, lol.

Im not the one going on about it lmao.

You brought it up in a thread 7 weeks later that has nothing to do with the topic. It has nothing to do with this thread, you're simply bringing it up... Well, why are you exactly? You're not really contributing to this thread otherwise.

Anyways. If you post something worth replying to relating to Paulu's guide (rather than useless trolling) I will reply to you, otherwise as you were. ;)

Also, can we get some kind of PSA going on about NOT WEARING SELF MAB GEAR ON SMN????? i'm constantly seeing people wear moldavites, witchstones etc when they have no benefit to smn at all apart from Garland of Bliss and lol/schdarkartsnuking.

To be honest the Auto-refresh one vs. perp vs. auto-refresh two thing can be confusing. I doubt I explained it very clear in the guide, although I tried to. If anyone didn't understand it you can always experiment with your own gear till you get the results you want. The most important thing I hope people do understand is the importantance of the BP Delay set. I see so many smn never blink and it makes me sad.

edit: @ kuni: I put it in big bold. I hope it stands out enough. I'll go move it so it stands out more actually!

I can see where they're coming from, though. Somebody in my linkshell used to use MAB gear because atma carry over to their avatar. They assumed that this meant SE had changed the way inherent buffs work and that their avatar would gain from the stats.

Not such a silly train of thought, but it's quite easy to test with the merit blood pacts since they often deal the same amount of damage everytime.


I like the magian staffs for this. I'm working on a Leviathan one now to make my Colorless Soul farming easier. The -12 means you just need to use Summoner Bracers (even NQ!) to cap the delay. Of course it's not such a big deal swapping other pieces but it's a lot easier to prevent 100s of MP being drained when @ max when you use a blood pact.

Something you can do to improve the guide: suggest for each gearset the next best options. It's good to have the ideal shown so people know what to aim for, but more casual players may have trouble attaining everything and be clueless about swaps.

Wow so a perp topic has nothing to do with the perp section in this thread... ok. Anyway that 1 line was a small part to my original post which was in all a small jest that you have now blown out of proportion.

Mujin Obi's effect isnt just for phycial blood pacts but for melee damage as well its just more noticale with the BPs.

That's very true, although I know a lot of people idle in the Haste waist piece and switch to Mujin for blood pacts.

Well thats obvious the haste from the belt will provide more of a benefit to melee damage than the att+ from mujin will especially when combined with ASA head and the haste+2 feet. How you worded it in your post makes it sound like its physical BP damage+%. Im glad SE are making more more pet:haste gear for smn since pets are kinda brushed to one side they need to up avatars natural att as well.

Yes, I was thinking about this as well. My priority was help people figure out how to approach the gear rather than showing ideal sets. It sorta just evolved in that direction though. I was also was concerned with the number of item sets I'd have to make and the clutter that would be on my account. I'm thinking of adding some spoilered sections under the ideal sets offering alternatives

At this point I just want to ask how Carbuncle's cuffs would compare for the Fast Cast set, though again it's really super-specialized and repartie gloves are probably more useful overall with pretty much anything but whipping out avatars.

Sadly, inventory space has become in itself an important factor in this game :x limited gobbiebag causes us to only have so much situational stuff.

I love these kind of guides.
Not only are they wonderfully informative and helpful regarding playstyle and gear choices, but they also throw in a sprinkle of lore to make the class all the more interesting and fun to play when you have that knowledge and mindset while playing it.

So thank you OP and anyone else that has made these kind of guides.

Since no one else has done it yet, I'll be the one to respectfully disagree with your conclusion here, although I appreciate the testing.

I still think unlocking all six merit BPs is ideal. The reason is because in terms of damage, physical BPs will almost always win if you have decent gear and capped skill. The times when the merit BPs can pull ahead, a enemy is generally much weaker to a specific element so only 1 or 2 merit BPs will work effectively on a given enemy. That's why I think versatility is more important than potency when it comes to the merit BPs. Most of the time, you should be using physical BPs anyway, so in the cases where you do want merit BPs, being able to exploit elemental weakness should benefit much more than extra TP.

90% of the time when I find myself wanting a merit BP, for some reason Heavenly Strike seems to be one of the ones that almost always works well. Ice seems to just generally be a good element to use in FFXI. That's why I went with 5/5 Heavenly Strike, and 1/5 in the rest. Four times out of five when I use a merit BP, it's Heavenly Strike, and I wouldn't use another BP even if it was also 5/5. The other times, it ranges from Meteor Strike, Geocrush, Thunderstorm, or Grand Fall. Wind Blade is pretty much the only one I can't recall ever using (except against Armed Gears). I'm not sure why that is.

TL;DR - When targeting elemental weaknesses, versatility beats potency. You shouldn't be using merit BPs that often, anyway.

You're overlooking the fact that having a merit BP @ 5/5 means your avatar only needs 90 TP to cap its TP bonus. This means you only need them to land five successful melee hits in the 45 seconds you're waiting for the timer if idling in the Caller's Pendant.

The increase in damage from 1->5 is quite dramatic, too, especially when you have a good MAB set. Versatility is not really an issue because the use of elemental blood pacts is limited to particular monsters: ironically, the exact reasons you say we shouldn't be using them, are the reasons I would say we should be.

Let's look at an example to demonstrate my point: If you go to solo Brulo you'll want to use Grand Fall over Spinning Dive. Grand Fall consistently (99/100) deals 3000+ damage with a decent MAB build and Ultimate atma equipped. Spinning Dive, even with Razed Ruins or Gnarled Horn on, will never reach these levels of consistency and will average less than the near-guaranteed 3000+ damage.

Brulo is one example of many. For anything where physical blood pacts are consistently inconsistent (as opposed to weirdly inconsistent) the magical blood pacts are useful. The way the elemental resistances work, you only need two of them. If a monster is a wind based monster you won't use Wind Blade. You don't need Heavenly Strike for this monster: you just need anything that isn't Geocrush. Heavenly Strike, Meteor Strike, Thunderstorm or Grand Fall will all deal the same damage @5/5 (though to be pedantic, Grand Fall is marginally the best because of Leviathan's MAB trait.)

Meaning, to cover all elemental resistances, you only need two elements that are neither strong nor weak to each other. In this manner, having 1 @ 5/5 and 5 @ 1/5 is a waste considering the gulf in damage and accuracy (owing to the dramatic difference in TP bonus between 1->5.)

And as for never using merit BPs I can only conclude you don't solo much. There's some things SMN just could not kill without them.

If anything you lose versatility by meriting that way, if you have say, 5/5 heavenly strike and 5/5 thunderstorm you'd be hard pressed to find a mob that resists both in the times where magical BPs are preferable. The significant drop in overall damage by choosing 1/5, (We're talking a consistent 500+ damage difference outside of mana cede) lessens the value of using the magic BP when you really need it.


All celestials are BLM with the same MAB traits.

Grand Fall is the best because Leviathan looks awesome.

They must have changed their traits since god knows how long ago I looked, as I'm fairly sure once upon a time he was the only one with added MAB. Either way, that tiny error aside, the point stands!

He also makes the sound of a submarine when he does it!

I'm so glad I disclaimed the Merits section, but I largely agree with Aeyela. The main point about the elemental weaknesses is that you aren't limited to using only their weakness on them.

For example, lets say you are fighting a Thunder Elemental. Earth damage would be ideal but any element that isn't thunder or water would deal the same amount of damage as earth. Most of the time this is the case so a good distribution of merit choices would cover almost all your scenarios.

As for Physical doing more than magic. I find that with a good MAB set the magic BP are consistently more effective. This is entirely based on the target you are fighting though. Knowing when to use which is part of the job :P