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

I understand all of that...which is the reason i asked this question. 30 mab is a lot. But so is extra bp squared. Got a gut call here?

Well, I personally used Slacks+1 path D for Flaming Crush for a long time before I bought a second pair of +1 to make path A. I honestly never gave NQ slacks much of a chance, although I did try a pair of Helios Spats with 7BPD/30MAB for a while to see how they compared. Should've been more or less identical to NQ[A] (actually a little bit better due to the Pet:MAcc), and they always failed to impress. I always ended up going back to the path D slacks. Hell, even when I got HQ[A], I still went back and forth a bit, and ultimately just went with my gut and used HQ[A].

My gut tells me HQ[A] > HQ[D] > Helios[7/30] > NQ[A] > NQ[D] for Flaming.

Perg is wise

Is there a place for appogge body +1 anymore? Seems like people use af+3 body for all BP and BPD sets. I kinda did a joke bid last night for 40m and it sold. Deciding if it's worth uncursing or not.

Apogee +1 body is still best in slot idle refresh as well as best in slot BP rage magic.

Verda's gearswap has that Astral Conduit and Apogee lockout in the code. The only problem I've run into is when pet is killed with either of these buffs up you also don't swap into Fast cast set. It is set on by default in the lua and does have a toggle to switch Conduit lock off and back on. Many people don't like how complicated his lua is but I'm sure you could just extract this function from it and put it into your own.

You could also Try Enticer's Pants for magical Blood pacts... the tp bonus is very hard to beat. And They work great for flaming crush as well. I really see no difference in Apogee+1(D) and enticers for flaming crush they are almost identical when I tested. I do use Apogee +1(D) For other pact sets tho. So they're not a waste. Helios Head and Feet are hard to beat without aftermath up and when you are using just the JSE staff they really make the DA proc rate alot higher for volt strike spamming.

Enticer's are inferior for Flaming Crush. The TP bonus is for accuracy, and it can't crit. So the only valid stats are BP+12 and DA+3. They are worse than NQ Apogee D (19/3, plus some Pet:STR) let alone the HQ.

Have you ever tried Enticer's pants for magical blood pacts? and you do know flaming crush's 3rd hit is magical yeah?

Do you know the reason Enticer's are good for Magical Pacts? It's because the merit Pacts scale with TP, and the Enticer's give a TP Bonus.

Please, enlighten poor clueless me, how this is applicable for Flaming Crush.

i was def under the impression all bps crit, you've mentioned before sid flaming crush doesn't. think this set was discussed already, sid here
http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/45010/best-flaming-crush-gearset/

All BP's do not crit, Fro. Just the one's that state it in the description like Volt Strike and Predator Claws.

That is a pretty old thread. I do see a few posts in it by people who do state they gear for crit in their Flaming Crush. Two of those people are Sechs and Avalon, and I am confident that if they see this now they will say that it does not (along with other non crit BPs).

At least back in the day, any physical BP including Flaming Crush could critical

My general rule of thumb is when I think I am right, try to prove myself wrong. So I decided to play in Ronfaire with Flaming Crush and Volt Strike...I was assuming I would see some Volt Strike crits and none for Flaming. For the test, I swapped in Enticers for both just to increase the changes of seeing a crit, in both cases, if they could. Assuming it was like mele, where even at capped pdif you can see the difference in the crit. It's not as wide of a difference as at lower pdif, but still stronger and noticaeble. My DRG mele crits in Ronfaire are ~40% more than my non crits. Below are the results of 25 of each. I understand its not the biggest sample size, but its all the time I had for now. I also included the difference between the next closest BP (smaller numbers to the right of the damage) was to try and identify if there were crits and where they started. What I found was extremely interesting.

What the heck? It doesn't even look like Volt Crits. Or are they both critting? BG says the random multiple is between 1 and 1.05, and they both have results more than 5% greater than their minimum values.

So I tried some Ramuh Mele. Non crits 625,646,643,627,621,643,643,626,616,626. Crits 665 and 668.

So the Avatar can crit, but it has barely any crit damage? Maybe unlike mele there is no delta in the pdif max between a crit and non crit?

I am pretty confused, and can't even tell if I proved or disproved my initial premise.

Thoughts?

Just from experience, I feel like Flaming Crush crits as I do get spikes in damage well above normal allowing me to one shot T1 NM without the SC damage

I have always felt Flaming Crush's big spikes are due to a Double Attack. Since the magical hit is based on the sum of all of the physical damage, it has far more impact than, say a DA going off on Volt Strike which would be a 33% increase.

That's a good point. However I gear my Crush for MAB and not DA. Now I wonder.

All physical Blood Pacts can critical including Burning Strike and Flaming Crush but the difference in damage is almost imperceptible when pdif is capped and in areas where the lvl correction isn't present (Adoulin, Escha etc). You can see a difference in HTB, Unity fights or while fighting a foe possessing high physical defense or in Abyssea with critical hit dmg+ atmas. I think Byrth had also found that the avatars have Critical Attack Bonus II trait.

I tested Flaming Crush for a while after the last BP update on various targets with AM3 and using <pettp> command to check TP return. DA adds almost nothing to FC damage.

hooray, we solved it!

Also, in a level 1 zone the only difference between criticals and non-criticals is going to be the Critical Attack Bonus trait that avatars have (+8% damage)

So decided to play again since there is a free campaign going on. Any items that have been added since Omen that I should be trying to get for Summoner?

Not really.

There's Tali'ah +2 gear. So you know, if you're trying to do melee objectives in Omen or something, that can be useful.

There's also the Glyphic +2/+3 gear (only feet are released so far) but it's pretty underwhelming.

I think SMN is heading into an era of getting the BLU treatment: nerf it by not giving it any new gear. Altana knows we don't need new gear, it would just be even more reason for them to nerf SMN if we got even stronger.

Full baayami over beckoner for buffs?

Yes. Max smn skills for party buffs.

Its not really that we are getting the blu treatment, its just that relic set is complete ***. Bp timer gear has been irrelevant since jps, the only thing they can add is a new bp timer tier, more skill on the hands and possibly a longer af duration boost.

tbf the only endgame gear "added" since omen has been upgrading ambuscade sets which if they sucked before still will and now dynamis stuff. A lot of people haven't gotten much to write home about since omen

anyone ever have the problem where you release your pet and it doesn't release and you're locked out of doing anything? What causes it and how do I fix it?

Working on some physical pact hands until I can get Convoker's gages +2/3. Would Helios hands be better or would a strong pair of merlinic with BP dmg 9/10 and attack or acc augments be better for now?

Isn't merl just BiS?

Yes. Can make 2 variants too. One for physical with acc or attack and if lucky both stats, another with m.acc and m.attk. Both with +10 BP damage as base.

For some reason I thought Convokers had BP dmg on them. Just gonna stick with merlinic.