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

You pretty much nailed it as far as what to do for testing. Magic BP dmg never changes on your target unless you have TP, lower its MDB, target gains shell, etc. EDIT: Unless there is a day/weather proc or some sort of resist, but otherwise the dmg is always the same.

Hmm, I did a little testing and indeed it's not always 40. I did some testing on rabbits in West Ron. Since the avatar is generally Lv120 for magic BPs I started with that.

Naked with Sancus+1 and Campestres (no pet augs) Grand Fall did 3942. Adding Adad, damage went up to 4125 for an increase of 4.6% from 10 MAB. Same increase you were seeing but my math tells me that means it has 116 MAB naked at Lv120.

1.0464 = (110 + x)/(100 + x)
x = MAB naked

I have 10 from merits and 36 from gifts. That puts the native MAB at about 70 which is 30 higher than I expected.

I decided to test if level had any effect on it. Totally naked is 1852 damage. With Adad, 1952. That's a higher gain, 5.4% instead of 4.6%. That suggests only 86 MAB naked, which means 40 without gifts or merits.

So it seems that Avatar:Lv+ does indeed grant additional MAB. I'll try to test all the variations and update my calculator soon.

Edit: Here are the results of the ones I tested using Adad Amulet:

Lv99: MAB+40 - 1952:1852
Lv101: MAB+43 (Nirvana) - 3081:2926
Lv102: MAB+43 (Nirvana + Campestres) - 3285:3120
Lv113: MAB+58 (Dashavatara) - 2954:2816
Lv115: MAB+62 (Dashavatara + Nirvana) - 4327:4128
Lv115: MAB+62 (Eminent Sachet) - 3091:2949
Lv119: MAB+69 (Sancus+1) - 3860:3688
Lv120: MAB+70 (Sancus+1 + Campestres) - 4125:3942
Lv122: MAB+70 (Sancus+1 + Nirvana + Campestres) - 5432:5192

It's a little confusing. The Campestres doesn't really seem to add MAB except in one case. The Nirvana only seems to add any up until the avatar hits 119 or 120, at which point MAB seems to top out at +70.

By any chance are you forgetting Sancus has BP dmg on it?

The BP Dmg doesn't matter for that comparison, it's a separate multiplier. You can add as much as you want and it won't change the gains you get from Avatar:MAB.

The important thing is that both sets you're comparing have the same amount of BP Dmg, Pet:INT, and all that stuff. The only thing that's changing is Adad Amulet for 10 Avatar:MAB.

I think this is where i did my tests wrong as i didnt use that 100 inside the right term. That would make mab factor too high and the INT factor too low. Where does that 100 comes from?

Im also finishing my testing, i think the most important practical conclusion im getting is that 1 mab ~ 0,48 bp dmg. I also did some testing on pet: INT but the results arent that important as it affects bp dmg less than mab and i dont remember any gear where we need to choose between pet: int and pet: mab. Maybe some merlinic aug, but the hands are already full trying to get high pet: mab and bo dmg at same time. Probably useless but i will also gonna check the enticers tp bonus compared to apogee slacks, at least to check how weaker its.

The 100 is just the base 100% damage of the BP.

For example if you go from 0 MAB to 1 MAB, you're going from 100% to 101% damage. If I want to calculate the increase in damage for going up to 150 total MAB from only 120, then it's (100+150)/(100+120), which is 1.136 or 113.6% as much damage.

In this case I'm taking my damage with Adad (110+x) and dividing it by damage without (100+x). I measured that benefit as 104.64%, so I already know that side of the equation.

I thought it has been stated, based on the calculator, for some time that 1 MAB = ~.25 BPD, which is what I have been basing my sets on from the start. Yours is nearly double. That would definitely change up some of my equipment.

Can we get a confirmation on the change before I go hastily hanging sets?

I always assumed the ratio between Mab and BPD is not fixed but dynamic and changes according how much total of each you have.

At certain values it might as well been 1 : 0.25, but it's not a fixed ratio that applies to every possible combination/situation.
Which is exactely why the mab vs bpd calculator was released.

This was my knowledge at least, I apologize in advance if I'm wrong.

I totally understand this. You are right. My assumption though was the .25 from the calculator was with high end gear since Perg initially gave the numbers (.25mab, .55da, etc.) from a while back in the thread. I know we’ve gotten more gear since then but generally the gear has stayed the same so seeing .48~ threw me off as I didn’t think it would have changed that much...but then again maybe we have received much more MAB gear since then which would have lessened the value of MAB a bit.

I just need to use the calculator for myself instead of taking other people’s gear/calculations and applying them to my uses.

Correct at least from my reading of this thread we are in, from the people who have done quite a bit of testing on Avatars. It's not a static comparison. If you over stack one or the other of BPD or MAB you get diminishing returns. Generally we can get higher quantities of MAB in gear so BPD stays more valuable.

My conclusion are the one hastily as that ratio was found almost naked so it should be not the same when fully geared.

Shubb nailed it, you can't do the comparison naked because we can get more Pet:MAB from gear than we can get BPD.

With my current gear, accounting for the 70 native MAB instead of 40, I currently see a 0.18% increase from one point of MAB and 0.45% increase from one BPD.

So 1 BPD = 2.5 MAB for me.

Good! Which is what I’ve been going off since I started! I wrote .25 above but meant 2.5 per.

Now we need to compare Pet: INT with BP dmg lol.

I just got a grioavolr with BP dmg+7, pet MAB 15 and pet INT 19. Just for the MAB and BP dmg it seems inferior to Espiritus. Im not sure if the Pet: INT can pull this one ahead of Espiritus.

Btw what stones you guys are getting better results when augmenting merlinic/grioavolr for SMN?

You're kinda shoehorned into ferns for smn.

While all stones have a chance at BP+ (the most important stat) significantly higher chance using fern.

You /can/ get a fantastic aug using a pellucid. Pretty unlikely.

Iirc into was just a 30% dmg mod for magic pacts. It shouldn't be to hard to figure out how that would affect damage of magic pacts. Was the magic pact damage formula on the wiki somewhere?

I did some testing a while back and posted it here, I'm having trouble finding it now but if I remember correctly, the takeaway is that it helps but it's hard to get a meaningful amount of it.

I think I calculated something like +2 base damage per point of INT on a merit BP, which is somewhere in the territory of +0.1% damage.

It has to be MAB, or it wouldn't skew the benefit gained by adding 10 points of MAB from Adad. MAB is a separate multiplier from everything else, nothing affects it except other sources of MAB.

There was a typo in my post, into was supposed to be INT.

You're getting 9m 49s you need 720 to hit 10 minutes.
For 1, 2, and 3 minute duration BPs, every 1 Skill over 300 grants an additional second of duration.

180s + 409s = 589s
589/60 = (9 R49 or 9 49/60)

I got BPD +6 Pet:M.Acc +11 Acc/r.acc+8 MaB+20 is that decent? It took me 70+ stones for even that. Got a couple of BPD +10 but nothing else came with that aug.

Also can anyone point me to a swap I could use?

Looking at the cap of the hands, youre 40% below the cap of bp dmg and 50% of the cap of mab, let alone no stats. So your hands just got around 50% of its max potential. I definitively would spend more stones to at least get 70% of the max.

Technically speaking it can still make small differences due to flooring between steps. Shouldn't be more than 1 or 2 but it does happen. Wont be a huge deal on rough estimates like above but trying to nail down specific values it might factor in. Incidentally that's how we figured out the order some calculations like regular magic dmg are done in

PS2 limitations strikes again!

Hi.

How many BPs are you guys smashing during conduit duration?

Thanks in advance.

The theoretical limit is 22, but I'm pretty sure it's impossible due to lag.

These days due to the lag, I feel like 18 is a more realistic goal.

Any less than 16 and you have room for a bit of improvement.

Basically I shoot for 2 full MP pools worth of BPs. I've had to use temps before because I ran out on my 2nd pool with Conduit still up but that's very rare.

The job guide on BG says Keraunos is the best Physical/Hybrid staff outside of Nirvana? Is there any truth to this?

Mine Has BPD+8 ACC/Racc +16 DA/Crit +3%

So,

I have been doing events lately, and my SMN still feels quite weak. I have pretty decent gear.

When does SMN start becoming strong exactly? I have a bit over 500 JP, so far with maxed blood pact damage, and physical and magic strength are at 19/20.

I am getting very.. frustrated in that I feel so, so weak compared to what it seems like I should be doing. Does the later JP's really yield that much of an increase?

Buffs!

I dont know what gear your using but most of the dmg comes from BP dmg, add pet mab if using magical BP or flaming crush. Also I personally rely most on Volt strike for most mobs and Flaming Crush for everything thats not resistant to fire. FC is too strong when well geared i would eyeball it has twice potential of volt strike and probably your BP if you just want to see big numbers.

Unfortunally you will notice that the turning point in SMN career will be indeed Nirvana as 40% BP is very hard to beat for a BP like Volt Strike that will be your main one when tackling the last tier content even more with AM3 up.

But i can garantee to you, since i got my gear covered on main parts i never feel my dmg was low.

I would say debuffs.