Forefront Scepter - Is It Worth It?

I'm nearly at 30k bayld and looking to buy a reive weapon for one of my pet jobs, mostly so I can farm bayld more readily in future.

As the title suggests, is the Forefront Scepter worth it? Or should I use my bayld on something else?

reive weapons suck in general. They are only for if you cant get better weapons. get into delve and go for it.

Forefront scepter actually isn't bad. SMN is mostly used in Reives, so you'll be getting an avatar MAB/MACC increase that's superior to the base plasm weapon.

Delve is a bit out of my reach for now. All of the delve parties I've seen only want people that already have delve weapons/gear.

It seems that the only way I'll get into one of those parties is on my SCH, but I've still got a long way to go on gearing myself for stunning/healing/whatever delve parties want a SCH to do.

All I'm doing right now is trying to build bayld for buying gear that I'll need later.

Disregard everything ^ says. The forefront/bayld weapons are good go-betweens if your strapped for cash and dont really wanna sink gil into a weapon if it will become useless when u do get your Plasm weapon.

to answer your question is it worth getting yes if your looking to improve your damage in reives.

Thanks for the advice.

One more question, even though I'm pretty sure I know the answer. In the Reive section of FFXIclopedia.com, it states that pet actions are not counted during Reive evaluations. Are they or aren't they?

Based on my experiences doing Reives, I think they do count - but I really can't be 100% certain since the evaluations seem to be based on so many variables. I doubt SE would add weapons that enhance pet actions during reives if pet actions don't count, but then again, it is SE...

Whoever wrote that was an idiot.

They were probably a butthurt idiot. I remember a whine storm when SoA came out because SMN were getting evaluations based on their BP hitting EVERYONE (similar to brd when campaign came out).

That's what I was thinking. I tend to take most things on FFXIclopedia with a grain of salt anyway - especially since there seems to be so little SoA information available.

Since Reive evaluations seem to be based on DoT and HP healed, I would think that any pet actions that deal damage, heal HP, and enhance your ability to deal damage over time, ultimately do affect your evaluations.

If you want a SMN based item, get the Convocaller before the scepter, it's much more effective on your Avatar.

By far the most effective way to gain points in a reive, if possible, is to hit a lot of people with an AoE heal. I mostly just do WKs on SMN, so I usually try to cap out my bayld that way before/while damaging the Naakual itself. Unfortunately I think magic damage might have some sort penalty, which is why just BPing or QDing the boss tends to yield particularly poor bayld return. Despite this, the second really good way to get a lot of bayld from a reive is to try and Astral Flow a lot of monsters.

I already have one, but I appreciate the suggestion. Right now I'm just trying to build on my avatar's magic damage output, since my merited BP's seem to be doing the most damage to the roots.


I haven't done any WKR's yet, I've only recently upgraded to SoA and am still in the Ceizak kiddie-pool if you know what I mean. So far I haven't had much luck curing for bayld, since most people doing Ceizak reives rarely take damage. Hopefully I'll be able to advance to bigger and better reives before long.

I had this superdouche cussing my pup, saying my pet hitting the root in yorc caused him to aggro lol.

I think you're better off going for an Uffrat +1. The base Uffrat is very easy to get, and the +1 is basically a Forefront that works outside reives as well. Then of course there's Balsam which is even better. I'm averaging just shy of 7k damage with Heavenly Strike in Marjami reives using Balsam.

screw all the r/e staves. save up the 3-4 mil and get a basalm staff synthed. Rockfin Tooth is between 1-2 mil across all servers.

edit- only reason to go after a r/e is for uffrat+1's -perp, which i'd do after spending the stones to get -perp on hag body.

You can get -perp on the bagondes coat? I've used a couple dozen normal stones on it and never seen that.

You can get -perp on all the Hagondes armor... *IF* you're lucky with augments, and the level of stone used is +1/2, your chances are higher.

Supposedly the cap for -perp is -5 on all pieces, so it's possible to get -5 uffrat, -5 body, and -5 hands. then wear +2 horn, nares pants, and herald's gaiters. for a combined -15 perp on top of +9 refresh and 12% runspeed.

2 body
2 horn
1 legs
1 grip
1 earring
2 natural tic

Ehhh... refresh isn't the end-all be-all that it used to be on SMN. I can't remember the last time I ran out of MP.

I'd say this continues to be ideal for idle:

Magian Staff or Nirvana 99
Oneiros Grip
Caller's Horn +2
Caller's Pendant
Moonshade Earring (refresh+1)
Ruby Earring (ACP7)
Summoner's Doublet +2
Adhara Gages
Evoker's Ring
Angel's/Spinel Ring (ACP11)
Rugged Mantle (MKE14)
Moepapa Stone
Nares Trews
Caller's Pigaches +1

Perp-16, Refresh+7, Avatar:Haste+7, Avatar:CritRate+6%, Avatar:Attack/Accuracy depending on augments

Note: You can use Herald's Gaiters if you want in this build, but it'd put you 1 perp under the cap. If you really need Gaiters with an avatar out (pretty rare situation) then a Hagondes Body with Perp-4 or Perp-5 might be a decent option.

Aside from that the only slot where you could swap in a Hagondes perp down piece without giving up either refresh, avatar attack, avatar haste, or avatar crit rate, would be feet. Unfortunately, Hagondes Sabots are much better suited for an Avatar:MAB+ augment than a Perp Down augment. So even if it's true that you can get up to Perp-5 from those pieces, I honestly don't see any of them being particularly useful in that regard. Maybe body if for some reason you need MP badly enough that you'll give up 6% crit rate for it, or if you need to wear Gaiters.

EDIT: Upon second look, I did find one possible way to make it work. You could swap Adhara Gages & Caller's Pigaches +1 for Hagondes Cuffs & Marduk's Crackows +1. This would transfer the Avatar:Haste from hands to feet, without increasing perp cost, and adding some item level bonuses to the Summoner themselves which I guess might increase survivability if they're taking hits. Still a pretty minimal gain.

Working on Gaiters however for perp set I have...

-5 Uffrats
-5 Hagondes body
-4 Hangondes cuffs
-1 from ring

for -15 total.

my refresh total
1 Oneiros (<76%mp)
2 Hagondes body
2 Callers horn
1 Moonshade earring
1 Nares trews
1 Serpentes sabots (day only)
1 tic auto-refresh

7 consistent up to 9 conditionally.

edit: just received Nares