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

I have a question. On Apogee +1 pants, is path B or D better? I know D has double attack, but does the six extra BPD overcome the loss of the 30 attack?

It's not just double attack, but also the 15 STR. Volt Strike is modified by STR/INT, and loves double attack. There's no contest between B and D.

For Flaming Crush, what is better? (Without Nirvanna)
Gridarvor?
Espiritus?
Was+1? (I really don't wanna buy this, but, maybe.)
Or my Grio?

Was+1 is a waste of gil, you could fund a Nirvana with the money arguably necessary to buy a Was+1.

The best non-nirvana staff for Flaming Crush is probably Was though.
Still your Grio is pretty hot, wonder about that... but think Was should win.

That was my feeling on Was+1 since it would be for FC only, which I'm only using for easier content.... and as much as I'd like Nirvanna, there are other Mythics I'd build first, and I hate building anything but Aeonics so not really anywhere on my radar yet.

Think my Grio would beat NQ Was? At least

we are comparing 50m and 0 time to acquire, compared to hundred hours of pre reqs and 300m~ in gil. Its not really fair to compare to two in my eyes. I do agree its a waste of gil though, I also would say smn is a job i hate as its destroying any fun this game had.

Nirvana is better, obviously. Is it worth the extra time for conduit spamming? Not really... unless you love smn your fine w/o. Would a gria/grio combo be enough? ya we have cleared multiple aeonics runs with no nirvana just fine. I personally have seen next to no difference in dmg between jse and was+1, not meaning there is no difference, I am sure there is. But when you cap flamming crush on zerde anyhow with other staffs, then was+1 loses its value there and with volt spamming JSE staff is hard to beat, your looking at such a high DA rate and the acc... its hard to say which will win and one is nearly free, so go with free :D I am a cheap smn though, geared enough to be functional is all. If your a smn main, or love the job then why would you not go for the best is the real argument.

Yeah, there's a reason I said without Nirvanna, I do like SMN, but I like other jobs far more, it's not going to be on my planned builds for quite some time, if eve, IDK if you remember Azagarth but I cleared a few of those Aeonic runs with yours with my Gridarvor SMN >.>

But this is all besides the point, on Zerde we usually spam bursted meteor strikes for max damage with Grio, and on every other thing it's volt strike with Grid.

I was just really wondering my options between the 3 staves I already have which was best for FC on easier content, and left the door open for someone to really sell me on Was/Was+1.

I mean, Was+1 was(lol) a couple hundred mil, I don't even know what it goes for anymore, only a crazy person would get it...

If its down to a reasonable price, say the 50m you mention, then it's not bad. I don't know what the break point would be, but 50m would make it worth getting (give or take).

The thing is, shouts are NIRVANA ONRY, people don't understand that Grid/Was are good enough since SMN is so broken, so it's not really an option if you want in shouts. If you're in a shell that understands nirvana isn't make or break then sure.

And yeah, SMN is ruining any semblance of fun/balance/entertainment. And at this point, I guess it will continue to do so.

Oh sorry didn't notice the price went down so much!
Used to be 300m on my server, which is why I said what I said and I still stand by that for >250m price.

Don't think your Grio would beat Was for Flaming Crush only, but it's a pretty goddamn Grio.
If you ask me, I wouldn't bother with Was if I had a Grio such as yours, but I still think Was will likely be slightly better for Flaming Crush.

Need someone more expert with precise SMN math like Papesse or many other people in this thread.
I only gave my (biased) opinion, but real math might show different results, I dunno.

*Fixed*

Your Grio is perfect for Flaming Crush. Technically, no one should be using Nirvana anyway for magic BP's outside of FC. Given that your augments are wonderful, I'd say yours should deliver results.

Flaming Crush is a different beast altogether from your standard magical pact, Nirvana is absolutely the choice, if you have it, not only does it effectively benefit from the BPD twice (if I interpreted what I read correctly), it also benefits greatly from multiattack.

That said, I don't have it, so wasn't sure which of the other options would pull out ahead on that specific pact, but yeah, on other magical pacts, like Meteor Strike for example, that Grio is much better than Nirv.

I stand corrected. I was reading Flaming Crush but thinking Wind Blade for some reason. For FC, yeah Nirvana is better, but he should make use of that Grio for the other magic BP's for sure.

Well it's a hybrid so yeah that's how they work for players. Almost a shame smn didn't get more or for that matter players don't

I did some testing a long, long time ago that suggested BPD is indeed double counted on Flaming Crush's magic hit (which is most of the damage). The testing was not conclusive, just spot-checking.

Even so, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Grio beats Was+1 on Flaming. In the above example you're comparing 145 MAB against a mere 17 BPD. The MAB is an order of magnitude better. Even with MAB being worth less than BPD in general, and with BPD being double counted on FC, I wouldn't be surprised if Grio still pulls ahead.

Having a Nirvana, I've never been inclined to test Was vs. Grioavolr, but I'd be interested to see how they do on Flaming Crush. I'm generally of the opinion that Was is a complete waste of gil, but I could be wrong.

I wasn't sure, but I haven't really delved into the math on it, but I'm very hopeful you're right, was just hoping someone had gone into enough depth to be pretty conclusive about it, but no worries if noone has.

I certainly hope you're right, as I would love to have no reason to even have the inventory-1 of the NQ, don't think i'd ever buy the HQ just to clear non-difficult mobs faster.

Should note that doubled up for hybrids doesn't mean *2 it means multiplying for the physical and then doing so again for magical so it's closer to ^2 though not sure how exactly that works with multi hits

any easy to use up to date smn lua, the one i've been using i noticed doesn't prescast bp gear so it's not giving me my 22 sec recast on things like volt strike. the one posted in smn forums is very over zealous for what i need. please help me out.

If it wasn't precasting BP gear you would be longer than 30 seconds. Are you sure you just don't have Favor on and as much and as much Summoning skill as you can get in your precast set and the Beckoner's Horn?

Update:
i figured out what was causing the bp recast gear to not fire

The operator?

✔

Does this also fix the issue of midcast BP rage gear missing?

What's the updated value of BPrecastI and BPrecastII you need at 2100 job points to reach the lowest value possible? (which I think is still 30, when you factor out the further reduction you get from Favor, right?)

Should be a total of BP-20, which I can obtain with any combination of BPI and BPII, correct? Not sure if I'm right on this part.

JP BPdelay counts as BPIII (technically) so it can count as either, as you stated.

I wasn't aware of us exceeding -21 BP recast - and that's measuring straight from the menu when excluding latency, congestion etc.

Has something new been discovered?

Either you misread or, more likely, I used a bad choice of words for my sentences.

BP recast by default is 60 seconds.
Then you have -BPrecastI which caps at 15
Then you have -BPrecastII which also caps at 15

Those two together lower your BP as low as 30 seconds recast. (as I said before, I'm leaving the reduction from Favor outside, for the moment).
Of these 30 seconds total reduction, we also have to consider 10 seconds we get from gifts, which means I'm left at -20 seconds I have to get somewhere, in any combination of BPrecastI or BPrecastII


In other words when you're @ 2100 JP you only need Convoker's Doublet +3 and Sancus Sachet +1 to cap on BP reduction.
Just wanted someone to confirm this but Tyalangan seems to have just done that!

That's correct. If you're just now getting to that point of meeting the criteria then you'll be able to free up other slots for more useful pieces.

I thought you had Nirvana, but I guess not after checking out your profile.

Nah, I just upgraded body to +3 yesterday and noticed I had a load of old crappy Relic+1 items I was still using in my BP precast set, and wanted to free up some inventory space by putting all 3 of them on slips :D :D

Think that precast set had stayed the same from when I was @ zero JP (which is a looooong time ago lol)