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

Ah so I was doing a lot of stuff wrong. This is in Reisenjima with Astral Flow and Akamochi +1
Here are the sets I have:

Helios Double Set:

This one has all BP7, DA 8, Attack 27+
~1783 after buffs?

My Standard Physical:

Apogee +1, Convoker's Body, Merlinic Hands (Str:10 Att 25)
~1863 after buffs?

Higher Accuracy Set:

Merlinic Hands (Dex:10 Acc 30), Convoker's Feet/Body, Apogee +1
~1953 after buffs?

If I am getting a 300 accuracy/evasion boost from Drachen/Torpor then I should be at cap for all but the Helios set right?

Can you post your Helios Set because you list convokers +3 in your normal physical set which makes we question how you are going about gearing in your Helios set.

Here's my Volt set for reference. I don't have a nirvana but I parse better then 95% of them I come across and the ones that do beat me are within 5% DPS. They would still have the exact same gear setup save acc vs att augments on the helios as I bought up before.
main={ name="Gridarvor", augments={'Pet: Accuracy+70','Pet: Attack+70','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+15',}},
sub="Elan Strap +1",
ammo="Sancus Sachet +1",
head={ name="Helios Band", augments={'Pet: Accuracy+30 Pet: Rng. Acc.+30','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+8','Blood Pact Dmg.+7',}},
body="Con. Doublet +3", --On trash mobs Helios would win but I don't know anyone gearing for trash tier mobs on SMN.
hands={ name="Helios Gloves", augments={'Pet: Accuracy+29 Pet: Rng. Acc.+29','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+8','Blood Pact Dmg.+7',}},
legs={ name="Apogee Slacks +1", augments={'Pet: STR+20','Blood Pact Dmg.+14','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+4',}}, --Helios here never!
feet={ name="Helios Boots", augments={'Pet: Attack+29 Pet: Rng.Atk.+29','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+8','Blood Pact Dmg.+7',}},
neck="Shulmanu Collar",
waist="Incarnation Sash",
left_ear="Gelos Earring",
right_ear="Lugalbanda Earring",
left_ring="Varar Ring",
right_ring="Varar Ring",
back={ name="Campestres's Cape", augments={'Pet: Acc.+20 Pet: R.Acc.+20 Pet: Atk.+20 Pet: R.Atk.+20','Pet: Accuracy+10 Pet: Rng. Acc.+10','Pet: Haste+10',}},

When you say that you beat 95% of the nirvana smns, is that on a zerg situation? or something like idk, an omen run where 90% of the time is flaming crush.

I use the same set but with nirvana, +1 rings and apogee on your helios slots and the times gridarvor smns parsed vs me, it was a real wash but in that situation, aftermath3 is taken into consideration.

Maybe 95% of asura smns suck?

Ive seen a lot of them, and 95% of the smns there are in response to the bandwagon, so, yeah, fair assessment

I don't hold any of my sets hard and fast, because I am constantly searching for what I feel is the best. I seem to do best with Helios over sustained fights where I can't keep up AM3. On a straight zerg with full buffs my standard has won out so far against everything I have mixed and matched. Accuracy will occasionally do better for me against Albumen than my standard which is what started me on all of this consideration for a lower accuracy set and including THF.

For Albumen, we usually have 10-11 people (5 SMN, RUN, GEO, BRD, WHM, 1/2 Leeches) and I will do between 625k and 725k. Those numbers typically fluctuate depending on how well the other SMNs do. Can typically end with a few seconds left on Conduit. I was originally doing 400k-500k with the same sets. I bought a new pc with M.3 SSD, 32 GB RAM and started running DG Voodoo. At that point, I was able to follow the suggestion that Pergatory gave me regarding how to spam. I now time my BPs instead of mash as fast as I can. It seems to speed up my use 15%. I went from getting off 12 BPs on average to about 16-18 BPs

Helios:
main="Nirvana",
sub="Elan Strap +1",
ammo="Sancus Sachet +1",
head={ name="Helios Band", augments={'Pet: Attack+30 Pet: Rng.Atk.+30','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+8','Blood Pact Dmg.+7',}},
body={ name="Helios Jacket", augments={'Pet: Attack+30 Pet: Rng.Atk.+30','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+8','Blood Pact Dmg.+7',}},
hands={ name="Helios Gloves", augments={'Pet: Attack+28 Pet: Rng.Atk.+28','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+8','Blood Pact Dmg.+7',}},
legs={ name="Apogee Slacks +1", augments={'Pet: STR+20','Blood Pact Dmg.+14','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+4',}},
feet={ name="Helios Boots", augments={'Pet: Attack+29 Pet: Rng.Atk.+29','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+8','Blood Pact Dmg.+7',}},
neck="Shulmanu Collar",
waist="Incarnation Sash",
left_ear="Gelos Earring",
right_ear="Lugalbanda Earring",
left_ring="Varar Ring +1",
right_ring="Varar Ring +1",
back={ name="Campestres's Cape", augments={'Pet: Acc.+20 Pet: R.Acc.+20 Pet: Atk.+20 Pet: R.Atk.+20','Pet: Attack+10 Pet: Rng.Atk.+10','Pet: Haste+10',}},

Standard:
main="Nirvana",
sub="Elan Strap +1",
ammo="Sancus Sachet +1",
head={ name="Apogee Crown +1", augments={'MP+80','Pet: Attack+35','Blood Pact Dmg.+8',}},
body="Con. Doublet +3",
hands={ name="Merlinic Dastanas", augments={'Pet: Attack+25 Pet: Rng.Atk.+25','Blood Pact Dmg.+10','Pet: STR+10','Pet: Mag. Acc.+1',}},
legs={ name="Apogee Slacks +1", augments={'Pet: STR+20','Blood Pact Dmg.+14','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+4',}},
feet={ name="Apogee Pumps +1", augments={'MP+80','Pet: Attack+35','Blood Pact Dmg.+8',}},
neck="Shulmanu Collar",
waist="Incarnation Sash",
left_ear="Gelos Earring",
right_ear="Lugalbanda Earring",
left_ring="Varar Ring +1",
right_ring="Varar Ring +1",
back={ name="Campestres's Cape", augments={'Pet: Acc.+20 Pet: R.Acc.+20 Pet: Atk.+20 Pet: R.Atk.+20','Pet: Attack+10 Pet: Rng.Atk.+10','Pet: Haste+10',}},

Accuracy:
main="Nirvana",
sub="Elan Strap +1",
ammo="Sancus Sachet +1",
head={ name="Apogee Crown +1", augments={'MP+80','Pet: Attack+35','Blood Pact Dmg.+8',}},
body="Con. Doublet +3",
hands={ name="Merlinic Dastanas", augments={'Pet: Accuracy+30 Pet: Rng. Acc.+30','Blood Pact Dmg.+10','Pet: DEX+10','Pet: Mag. Acc.+12',}},
legs={ name="Apogee Slacks +1", augments={'Pet: STR+20','Blood Pact Dmg.+14','Pet: "Dbl. Atk."+4',}},
feet="Convo. Pigaches +3",
neck="Shulmanu Collar",
waist="Incarnation Sash",
left_ear="Gelos Earring",
right_ear="Lugalbanda Earring",
left_ring="Varar Ring +1",
right_ring="Varar Ring +1",
back={ name="Campestres's Cape", augments={'Pet: Acc.+20 Pet: R.Acc.+20 Pet: Atk.+20 Pet: R.Atk.+20','Pet: Attack+10 Pet: Rng.Atk.+10','Pet: Haste+10',}},

In my personal opinion...it is silly to call anyone trash when it comes to how they play SMN. My philosophy with SMN is that we typically all converge to the same sets...it's not like anyone is coming up with something groundbreaking. This is why I never give anyone a hard time about numbers because once the gear is there it almost always has to be about framerate and lag.

Close, but call it 100% and you're accurate.

And whats the sugestion?

Im way below the max bp i can possibly do during astral conduit. So far things worked somehow but sometimes it is very close call (albumen just dropped in the first bp after astral dropped).

Currently i do apogee 2xbps > astral conduit > Bps > lucid elixir ii > bps > lucid ether iii > bps. Normally its 2 bps before astral 13 during and 1 right after. Ive been trying to reduce the waits in my script but a tad lower than my current (wait 1.6 on an Ashita script) and i start to lose commands.

That's Albumen for you. You don't need to kill him before Conduit ends. You don't even need to kill him before the second set of adds pop, the BRD should have a Super Revit for that. You just need to kill him before the third set pops. Use Wild Cards, Random Deals, etc. if you need to.

13 during Conduit is way low. The scripts are your problem. Ditch the scripts, play the job. That's my 2 cents.

You're asking a question nobody knows the answer to. We don't even know how much accuracy you gain from summoning skill over the cap. It only works on BPs, so it won't show up in /checkparam. However much accuracy you think your avatar has, it has more during BP, and we're not quite sure how much.

Only skill above a certain threshold is believed to convert into macc/acc no?
And everybody always assumed a 1:0,9 rate or at best 1:1.
But yeah, no solid data was ever performed, it's kinda a very annoying test to perform, truth be said.

Think there was some very limited test done by... Papesse? Eons ago, with the sleep rate of Shiva on Worms in Woh Gates (early in Adoulin's life) showing that additional Skill was indeed improving the land rate of sleep noticeably.

That test kinda demonstrated that yes, Skill converts into Macc, but of course it didn't demonstrate at which rate.

Well that's bad then, dont really need to study quantum physics to play SMN, just understand what bp do, gear correctly and work you way thru content learning how to play the job.

If they cant do that, they deserve to pay 150m per aeonic.

Correct, just skill above the cap. Assuming 16 from merits, 36 from gifts, and probably something like 0.9-1 acc per skill, it's likely in the territory of 50 acc. "Likely" being the key word there. No one knows except SE.

A lot of the bandwagon SMN hopped on board after learning a job, gearing correctly, working thru content, until hitting a wall that was not feasibly overcome without SMN. Not because the fights are impossible with other setups, but because SMN is viewed as the EZMode job atm and no one else can compete with the overwhelming killspeed. If I could have finished my aeonic with any of my 4x mastered/geared jobs, I would not have joined the bandwagon with my main.

Can't be 100%. We have Frod. He's been SMN since before it was cool. 99.9% at worst.

1) Both, obviously don't use that set for FC though. When I wrote that I was talking about HELMs but the same can be said for Ambu too.

2) They do....

I'm not sure if this was in response to saying trash a few times in my post but I meant "trash mobs" every time I said. If you have the room to gear for them then go for it!

And I'd take any of the active people looking for advice in gearing and how to play better over you to an event with that attitude. Some of us are great at figuring out whats BiS or decent at least others are not. Same goes when and were to use certian abilities and such.

Some try to get advice to become better and others are walking around in weird *** sets that make 0 sense and they probably have a few pieces of gear already that are better but they don't even realize it. This holds true for any job in the game not just SMN like you're trying to make it out to be.

This whole convo between him and I started because he was using the eva formula to figure out what kind of acc was needed but was overlooking some things. I'm glad you instinctively know what sets to use for everything though.

So what if they are only use it for Conduits yea they're not going to know how to be a good all around SMN then but they can still be good or even great in that one aspect which is what most SMNs are doing as you even stated.

Also WTF are you looking at this forum then? Just for the lolz?

If there are any player that "instinctively" good at their job without ever reading forum nor seek advice I'd like to meet them. Even if they do exist they are probably only 0.1% of playerbase anyways, certainly not a norm.

As someone who love to parse against other people on COR, Word can't describe amount of work that I went through every time I parse against another player. Gear sets were tweaked and tweaked with math, spreadsheets and parse results. Macro/JA rotation/DPS strategy got reorganized and redo over and over for that specific fight until the most suitable playstyle are found. Sometimes I have to record videos for one specific fight to figure out exactly what went wrong with my playstyle by watching other players in action. Safe to say that behind every winning parse, I probably lose 10 times until I figure out how to min/max DPS against that particular target, 99% of playstyle ideas came from other people anyways.

Exactly what does "qualified to give others advice" means, anyways. As long as an advice is useful, anyone is qualified to give advice. It doesn't matter if it's someone that always top parse or a returning player just got back to the game.

Personally, I value advice from new player as much as career player because it's the advice itself that matters.

Just my 2 cents.

You can be amazing @ XX job and still come to the forums to check, more often than not people overlook some situations where XX gear might be better and stuff like that, no one holds the "im the best in this job badge" other than 2 trolls that think they do, for the rest is basically test/compare/share and play lol.

edit: for example, ill retest again my helios gear on smn with ramuh and garuda and see how it goes.

Who's the other troll?

Then its 3 trolls! lol

Anyone care to share their avatar engaged sets?

Non AC/AF

ItemSet 350862

is my set when my avatar is engaged but I'm not.

ETA: This is the best combination of perp cost (caps at 14) and refresh that I know of. Body is Path D. Cape is Eva./M.Eva, Pet: Acc./Atk., and either Pet: Regen or Pet: Haste depending on what you're fighting and/or personal preference. Enmerkar Earring is probably better than Rimeice, I just don't have it yet.

I will put myself against hate squadron and it's commander Jdove and I will actually ask "noob" questions :)

Short backstory:
I have always played only melee jobs on my main. I quit around SoA era. I came back in November 2017 with intention to try things I haven't tried before and get items I haven't got before. That would include playing SMN and getting mythic, so I started SMN and Nirvana. I don't want to play only as AC machine (I haven't even knew about AC zergs till January :P), but also play do other things as SMN. That being said SMN will probably be my job for LS events and to help friends, so it needs to be geared toward stronger mobs too.

The general question would be what's the best investment of my gils and in what order.
More specific:
1. Apogee crown +1 - Should I get both att and mab or should I get Helios instead. Is Helios mainly for spikes or it's also good for avg damage?
2. Apogee Dalmatica +1 - Is it only good for idle? I think Convoker is considered better for everything (maybe beside low lvl mobs).
3. Apogee Slacks +1 - I see the pop up in physical sets and I'm a little surprised because I was under impression that they might be bette with mab for magical BP but othwerwise Enticer's should be better for both physical and hybrid, but I haven't seen Enticer's at all in some sets posted here in last page. Is it because those sets are suppose to work with full buffs and as far as I know with capped pdif avatars do almost as much damage with normal and critical hits.
4. Apogee pumps +1 - Should I get them for magic BP? I understand af+3 and Helios can be equally good or better for physical BP but Pumps are better for hybrid and magic? So best would be to get MAB pumps for hybrid and magic and af+3 and helios for physical.
5. Baayami set. I don't think I will have enough gils to justify buying any hq piece, but should I buy some nq pieces for buffing and Alexander? If we are at this topic, how was Alexander nerf exactly?


Like I mentioned I would also like to know in what order I should invest my gils and if I can save something going the helios road?

I understand my questions might be hard to answer, because it's probably not an easy task to compare Apogee+1 and Helios, but I hope someone will be able to help me a little here.

Chances are, Helios will be more expensive in the long run because of the random augments, assuming you buy the stones (I know it was for me). As far as Apogee buy order, I would recommend feet + head first, then legs, then body last. IMHO, working on Nirvana would be the best bang for your gil in the long run.

1. Helios is better for things like Volt Strike and Predator Claws, so if you're interested in BIS gear then go that route (same for feet). Otherwise, Path B Apogee +1 is more than adequate. Path A is BIS for Magical pacts as long as you use feet to activate the set bonus (which you should).

2. I use Path D body in my idle set for the extra skill. I also prefer Path A for Magical Pacts, but I know that position is getting less popular.

3. There was a post here a long time ago talking about a TP threshold where, once you went over it, Apogee +1 would beat Enticer's for magical pacts. It also had something to do with how many merits you had, iirc, but I can't remember that now. I still use Enticer's on all magical pacts, but Path A Apogee +1 is perfectly acceptable. Path D is BIS for physical pacts all day long.

4. Yes, yes, and yes.

5. Even NQ Baayami will have higher summoning skill values than anything else in the slot. I would definitely recommend 5/5 for all your buff pacts, including Alexander. I don't know anything about the Alexander nerf, though.

OK, so:
Helios Head|Feet|Hands with BP|DA|ATT for physical BPs
Apogee +1 Head|Feet path A for hybrid|magical BPs
Apogee +1 Legs path A or Enticer's for hybrid|magical BPs
Baayami NQ 5/5 for buffs
Convoker's Body +3 for all BPs
EDIT: Apogee +1 Legs path D for physical BPs
optional: Apogee +1 Body for (mainly) idle

Should I use Convoker's Feet +2|3 till I reach some level of JPs?

When Alexander was introduced, PD functioned the same way in that it removed AF status, but it lasted for 90 seconds. PD was 90 seconds even if smn skill was 1 as long as you had a certain amount of mp.

The nerf to PD changed the timer so that duration = 30 seconds + (smn skill / 20). Now the max duration is only 60 seconds. PD still takes all of a SMN's mp. PD's effect is based on the amount of mp you have when you use it. I think 1200 mp is the max needed to get full potency.

Is this what you were asking?

I completely agree with Helios head and feet, but I am not absolutely sure about the hands. I am partial to the Merlinic hands with bpdmg +19, stat+ att or acc +. In my physical set I do use helios head and feet (for the multi-hit bps) with bpdmg 7, DA 8 and att 30, but I have merlinic hands with bpdmg 10, dex 6 att/ratt 20 (another set with bpdmg 10, acc/racc 27 for a level of accuracy).

Hmmm I only have Merlinic gloves with BP+10, dex+7, macc+14, Mab+10
I assume they are good for magical|hybrid BP. Should I get another one with att or acc for physical BP then?