A Summoner's Gear Guide

Given how easy it is to make a Mythic these days and how butt savaging making a Prime weapon is, I can't envision a world in which it would ever be considered "easier" to make Opashoro than it is to make Nirvana. I would highly recommend just getting a Nirvana.

Prime might be easier in the sense that it could be a carry over from BLM or SCH, where it will be the optimal nuking staff. I am kind of in that boat where I have a Stage IV Prime from BLM and SCH, and made a SMN for fun.

Long story short - Grio is significantly better than all other options for magic based blood pacts including Stage V Prime with AM3. For physical blood packs, using a calculator I found that Stage V Prime was about 8-10% worse than Nirvana with AM3. I am not too sure how hybrid pacts like Flaming Crush would fall, although Flaming Crush - Oshala - Flaming Crush is a fun combo. Oshala - Flaming Crush - Flaming Crush also nice if Apogee is up.

Ultimately, any serious SMN would make Nirvana as it is still BiS for physical pacts, and by a decent margin.

Decided to revisit the calculator to compare Opashoro III, IV, V and Was +1 to Nirvana for physical 3 hit blood pacts (Volt Strike, Hysteric Assault etc.)

Full credit to Pergatory who made the calculator. My base gear has:

BP105 with no weapon, DA44

Here are the results:

-- Nirvana AM3 - 3.3943
-- Opashoro V - 3.2980
-- Opashoro IV - 3.1687
-- Nirvana - 3.1687
-- Opashoro III- 3.0393
-- Was +1 - 2.9747

I was actually wrong in my last post - the 8-10% difference between Nirvana AM3 and Opashoro is for Stage IV. Stage V cuts that difference in about half. Opashoro III will beat out Was +1, but it can be quite an investment for minor increase unless you want to take it further or use it for other jobs. Ultimately, Nirvana still comes out steadily on top.

Your math doesn't account for the other differences.

Nirvana has the effect of garland of bliss, a 12.5% def down effect

Opa has the additional +level of stats.

Bear with me since I do not have many reps on SMN.


Is there anything precluding Opashoro from applying Garland of Bliss aswell? Would be a wash there. Opashoro AM3 does nothing for physical blood pacts so it can apply any weaponskill for a desired effect. Heck, if physical accuracy is not an issue it can even go for Shell Crusher for -25%.


For sure, good point and definitely can close the gap between Opashoro and Nirvana. Will need to do some research how this is quantified. Any idea?

What is the point of diminishing returns for DA when having Nirvana AM3 up (for multi-hit BP)? I know this has been discussed to death, but my anecdotal evidence seems to be strongly different then what has been discussed.

Right now I'm using Relic +3 + Helios Gloves DA +7, + all the standard DA accessories. The difference between Relic +3 and AF +3 under AM3 seems huge. I am consistently spiking damage with AM3 and Relic3, where if I have AF3, sure the spike damage is a little higher, but its seems much rarer to spike.

I was under the assumption from the discussions that under AM3, you want to go with less DA and more BP Damage, but I don't understand why that would be. Wouldn't you want to have the highest chance of DA/TA for your Avatar? That way you can DA on each hit, rather then DA sporadically?

This is cause of the Multi-Attack priority, adding more DA and TA lower the chance of a AM3 proc.


I'm assuming you're talking the body here, it can depend on what BP you're using, for example if you were using a BP like Volt Strike or Predator Claws during this test you were also adding a lot of Crit to your BP via the Relic +3 body. So you may see more consistent DMG from the AF3 body, but higher spikes from Relic due to extra Crit/DA proc.

If we're talking about AFAC stuff, you rarely Garland on the actual target (i.e. Aeonics), so that's kinda a moot benefit.

If the BST forum testing with ilvl applies to avatars then Opashoro is like a hybrid/MEVA set for melee jobs but for avatars. Little less max dmg but can resist enfeebles/be tankier, which is especially nice for AFAC purposes.

That being said, I wouldn't recommend building Opashoro on SMN over other more useful jobs/primes. If you're already building it for BLM/SCH, then by all means, get the benefits.

I'm slightly confused on this. Does this mean if the Double Attack Proc happens on the first hit then the triple attack proc can not happen on the other two hits? Or because the double attack proc'd once the triple attack cannot happen on that same hit?

It feels like either way that the extremely high chance of double attack with Relic + AM3 is worth sacrificing getting a 20% of triple attack on it. 80% x 2 or 20% x 3? Not to mention there's actually a 20% of critical with the relic. Or maybe I'm wrong on that? I guess the numbers have been ran and proven otherwise.

AM3 OaT only rolls once on the 1st hit, and is near the bottom of priority. So if you load up on avatar DA, thats a attacks thrice that is potentially blocked.

Regular DA/TA/QA will roll on the 1st 2 hits

Criticals on pets also got a boost a few yrs back and idk if any comparison was done after that happened

But it's a single 20% chance that is being blocked? Doesn't seem worth it to remove the DA chance on the second hit too then. Not to mention the 20% critical chance.

Bit of a strange way to look at it, TBH. I'd say more like:

20 critical chance vs 16 BPD (or whatever other body you use)
15% chance to DA, but that is diminished by the fact that you already had a ~50% chance to either TA (better than the DA) or DA anyways (from the AM3).

When you look at it this way, the "15% chance to DA" is a whole lot less than 15 percentage points.

I'm a bit confused (unless I misread) about people claiming Nirvana AM3 up trumps Opashoro V for Flaming Crush, wut?
First of all AM3 shouldn't have a huge relevance on Flaming Crush as it doesn't have TP transfer, the biggest contributors to Flaming Crush should be BPD first and pet stats second, both of which Opashoro V has more than Nirvana.
Opashoro also has much more macc which helps in situations where you expect resists to happen.

Then you have physical BPs with TP transfer (like Volt Strike etc), we already know AM3 on Nirvana there makes a huge difference and it's no surprise to see it on top, granted that the 10% more BPD and additional stats from the avatar level+1 should make the gap pretty small.

Then there's magical BPs, and we already know Nirvana was losing there to simple options like
1) Espiritus (pet mab +150, bpd+3)
2) Grioavolr (pet mab +140, bpd+10)
3) Keraunos (pet mab +125), pet crit +6%, bpd+10)

Opashoro aftermath gives what, 40mab/80mdmg? Has this been tested or are we assuming the same stats the player gets?
Mdmg is probably meh and 40mab is nice but nowhere near what the other staves give, so I can see Opashoro not being able to close the gap with the additional >40% BPD and Lotsastats.
Still, I guess Opashoro is probably the best option after those 3 staves? And with a *** of additional macc for situations where you expect resists.

Flaming Crush physical hits are most likely 1.0 fTP, same as all other hybrid WSs, so technically it doesn't matter if it has ftp transfer, because the result will be the same, since additional hits will have 1.0 fTP as well. Multi attack definitely has a huge impact on FC damage. That being said I don't try to judge which weapon has an advantage here. I just wanted to clarify things.

That makes perfect logical sense in theory Simon, you have a strong point.

But then in reality there's been such a huge difference in damage output when judging non-nirvana options, and the numbers sorta always skewed towards BPD (which is applied twice, both for the physical part and for the magical part, kinda like what WSD does for hybrid WSs) and pet mab compared to multiattack.

All of this to say that I'm sure multiattack has a strong relevance, as emphasized by your logic, but ultimately it seems like it falls behind other options in terms of efficiency for the final numbers?

I was mainly just clarifying what the difference is between the two in terms of how they operate. I'm not entirely sure which is "best", not super knowledgeable on smn stuff, from what i remember if the avatar's acc is capped though the relic +3 will win out over AF+3, but that was years ago so things may have changed, id assume that with the boost to pet crits that itd only improve the appeal of relic body though.

is it possible to roll bpd 10 and 25 mab? because I lost Hope on that roll, got 10 bpd and 21 with 15 macc.

Grioavolr (pet mab +140, bpd+10)

Like I said, I don't have the time to check which is better in sim or on average. I just wanted to clarify that TA proc on Flaming Crush will double its damage (assuming its not gonna be limited by 99999 ofc, which can be a valid factor in many cases), because it will add 2x 1.0 ftp hits to 2x 1.0 ftp hits.

Are we sure it's gonna be exactly 2x though? Because for WS (and I assume physical BPs too) it's totally like you said, but Flaming Crush is a bit "special", sort of like Hybrid WSs and maybe the calculations behind are somewhat similar to those of Hybrid WSs.

Here we have 2x Physical Hits, each with 1.0 FTP, and then a magical hit.
The damage of the magical hit is calculated using the damage of the physical part as base of the formula, which then gets somehow empowered by pet Mab.

I don't think we know exactly if both physical hits contribute to this "base damage" of the magical part. It could be just the first hit, and even if it's both we don't know if additional physical hits granted by multiattack would further increase the magical damage.



Let's assume two simple scenarios:
1) The "core" damage of the magical part of Flaming Crush is based on the amount of damage dealt by the first (or first two) physical hits

2) The "core" damage of the magical part of FC is based on the amount of damage of ALL hits (including MA procs) of the physical part.


If it's 1) then hits added by MA would still be a nice addition, but a TA would not double the damage of Flaming Crush.
Whereas if it's 2) then I guess, yeah, absolutely?
Not sure if I made my worded my point in a clear enough way.
I don't think we know exactly how this interaction works, am I wrong?

The reports I saw through the years from parses etc would seem to hint the case here it's 1), so just the first hit (or the base two) contribute to calculating the base damage of the magical part, before Pet Mab/Mdmg are added to the formula, and that would explain why BPD and Pet Mab always weighted more in the final damage of Flaming Crush instead of Multiattack, no?

Nah it's for sure all the physical hits including multi attack proc. It works like that for hybrid WSs and FC. Ma proc are super potent on hybrids, but BP and WSD too.

Nah Simon I'm afraid you are mistaken. Multi attack does very little for Flaming Crush. It does not get any of the BP multipliers and does not increase the base damage of the magic hit. It's literally like adding extra avatar melee attack hits.

This becomes extremely apparent if you try Flaming Crush with Nirvana AM3 and without, the damage will be the same.

I went to test this and you are right. I guess saying things from memory is not the best idea anymore. I'm too old, my apologies.

Another thing I forgot is that this game and 'consistency in mechanics' never even lay next to each other.

Hmm...But what I'm saying is from what I've heard the Triple Attack only applies to the first hit of the BP. And the chance for that is only 20%. So then we are comparing the base stats like this:

AM3 Relic

1st Hit = 20% crit + 55% DA + 20% TA
2nd Hit = 20% Crit + 15% DA
3rd Hit = 20% Crit + 15% DA

AM3 AF3

1st Hit = 40% DA + 20% TA + 16BPD
2nd Hit = 16BPD
1st Hit = 16BPD

If the AM3 only applies to the first hit, then doesn't the relic come out superior every time? Considering accuracy is not an issue ofc. I mean from my anecdotal experience my AM3 AF3 hits barely spike. My Relic AF3 always almost always spiking, albeit for lower values.

Yes

You can't really compare them in a vacuum, you have to factor in all the other sources of BPD and pet multi. Because for example let's say you have no BPD at all, well that 16 BPD is literally 16% more damage. But let's say you have 100 BPD already from other slots, now that 16 BPD is actually more like 8% more damage. You only get half the benefit from the same increase.

As such, which one is best will depend on the rest of your gear. For example, Gridarvor users will find the Convoker body to be more competitive than Nirvana/Opashoro users.

That's why I made that calculator Auxtaru referred to, to help you add up all your sources of BPD/Pet:DA and do the math for you. With current optimal sets, Convoker does beat Glyphic when Nirvana AM3 is up (by about 2.2% average in the long run).

That calc is here by the way: https://pastebin.com/WQ1Gn8Hs (HTML)

Blood pact crit rate isn't as valuable as you might think, so I wouldn't factor it into your decision process as anything more than a tie-breaker.

If my memory is right they changed pet crits to give the same pdif+1.0 that players get instead of pets being locked into whatever their pdif was(2.70ish?) And crits would either push then up to that if they werent there, or did basically nothing.

Did that change not have any real impact on phys BPs that could crit?

Edit: guess pdif+1.08 if that wikis right actually abd they get crit dmg II

https://w.atwiki.jp/bartlett3/pages/329.html

I also remember an update to BP crits a couple of years ago, making it a lot better than it used to be. Too bad testing this stuff is absolutely a pain in the ***.

AFAIK all physical BPs can crit. Not sure about Flaming Crush.