A Summoner's Gear Guide

The only harsh reality is that it seems you've lost your creativity and ffxi has never been about equality. It's all about situation and niche. I'm sorry that you lost fun due to meta.

SMN could do with a buff to wards anyway, would be nice if it was an alternative to BRD, after all, if a BRD can fully buff a party then start Savage Blading every 5 secs i'm sure SMN could provide buffs and BP every 20 seconds. it's only fair.

This here is why i've been playing around with different sub jobs and seeing what works with different trusts, it's fun being creative and trying different setups.

"Here's a neat set I made for a niche I didn't think was served. If you like my idea, you can watch this video I made trying it out."

And suddenly none of the previous two pages worth of argument happened. Amazing isn't it?

Hey now, don't wrap me up in that, I'm in agreement with you and said the same thing on the previous page. My quote is directed at an entirely different person for a different subject lol

You misunderstand. My quote is what he SHOULD have done. IE if he had done that, no one, not even myself, would have found any reason to call him out on his ***. But alas, he did not.

I did understand, I said the same thing, I'm just saying you should have only quoted him and not add him quoting me as well lol quoting him replying to me there is bridging an entirely different discussion that has nothing to do with the mislabeling

Since there's doesnt seem to be any super huge changes with Limbus gear for Smn, I've only updated the Guide abit.
And I've added a Melee/WS section. I used Kastra's Dmg Simulator for Tp/Ws setup.

Do you really think Fickblix isn't worth it for any of the top sets?

Except one of them is objectively better, and like others have pointed out, your video is titled BIS sets not "my preferred sets." Claiming BIS means you better be ready to have your sets picked apart and defend them especially if they differ from conventional wisdom. That's literally what we're here for :) I'm not attacking, you know me so I'm sure you know that, but we're all passionate about this stuff is all. We want to know what is the best! And debate it until the cows come home!

You've stated consistency is your goal and why you don't lean into Pet:DA, but I'm going to convert you one of these days.

Consistency can mean a lot of things. For me, it means consistently getting 4 or 5 hits instead of only 3. Like folks have said, you're not even using Incarnation Sash in your physical pacts which is just crazy.

It looks like your physical pact set has only 9% Pet:DA total? So 83% of your pacts will only do 3 hits, and you'll basically never see 5 hits (less than 1%). My set I posted on a prior page, for comparison (but with Merlinic instead of Indom), has 44% Pet:DA and will do 30%/50%/20% for 3/4/5 hits respectively. So 30% of the time it'll do slightly less than yours due to less BPD, and 70% of the time it'll do significantly more due to double attack. Average damage will be 10.5% higher with the set I posted than the one in your video. Indom gloves would push it even higher.

You're leaving 10% damage on the table bro, and calling the set BIS, that's why people are reacting so negatively.

Well no, I just in general factor out most of those rings, since most people play many jobs and pick different rings. A miss on my part, I'll add it. The DD section wants the Lehko's Ring for TP, but I X'd it.

I hate to nitpick again, but your advanced hybrid set has dual wielding Nirvana and Opashoro... not that I object to dual wielding staves.

Not everyone has an Opashoro Stage4+5, and Nirvana is equal~ to Stage 4 Prime w/o AM3, hence the're both in the set. I'll add a note in the set for clarification.

I thought Grio was better than Nirvana for magic/flaming crush?

For Magic yes, for Flaming Crush nope. Nirvana is way ahead, so is Opashoro.
Nirvana AM3 not particularly relevant on Flaming Crush (it's a huge difference on stuff like Volt Strike and Hybrid Barrage etc, but I'm sure you know that already)

Thanks!

hey guys, i dont have Byaami +1 ( yet ) but i was wondering, since the Byaami set is still expensive ( in my book at least ) and i also dont have Nirvana, will i be better of building Nirvana 1st ? I have Empy +3 5/5 relic +3 5/5 and currently working on artifact that is 2/5 +3 and 3/5 +2. also working on R25 my Bunzi gear ( work in progress since no one wanna do Mboze for Rp useually lol )

so, at this stage of my gearing Smn ( cause its fun, and i like smn when bored ) i would love to hear your thoughts

thanks in advance

Bit late for this advice, but I'd say make 0-1 pieces of relic+3 and 0-1 pieces of AF+3. Coulda saved that money and used it to get some bayaami lol.

Speaking exclusively about the baayami/Nirvana, Nirvana is much, much more valuable. Most of the Baayami set is either just used for BP:W durations (not a huge deal most of the time), or for BP recast, which is pretty easy to cap without much (any?) of it.

I definitely recommend getting it at some point, but the Nirvana is more impactful by a country mile.

I only bothered grabbing the Baayami feet since that's the only slot where SMN doesn't have a good alternative for Summoning skill.

k, gonna start up Nirvana then, main reason i went for full relic af empyy, its easier to store that ***as a full set in storage slips, saving me 15 inventory space :p

I'm not going to try to convince you to change your ways, but I would like to push back a bit on the idea that this is saving 15 spaces.

You can just not get (or toss) the pieces you don't want.
If, for some reason, you feel inclined to get all the pieces, rather than holding them in your inventory, you could store them on another slip (original, reforged, reforged+1, etc.) So at best it's saving 3? inventory spaces. Per character, not per job.

So...you might want to reconsider this inventory "saving" strategy.

To be fair I don't know what to say.
Baayami+1 (at least some pieces) were necessary to reach a certain threshold of skill in BP precast gear to mantain the number of BP delay recast granted by Avatar's Favor, blah blah can read all the details on BGwiki or on this thread.
That USED to be pretty huge if you ask me, and the rest (like Refresh Idle from feet or more seconds for BP Wards) was icing on the cake.

These days though you have skill from ML, I haven't done the calculations but I'm pretty sure thanks to that you no longer "need" Baayami+1 to reach those thresholds. So its relevance really fell apart.
Unless you have no ML yet, at that point you could consider buying and then reselling after? I dunno.


As for Nirvana I'm gonna say something really unfamiliar but I think its relevance as "mandatory" is overblown.
Want my take on it?
It's a very nice weapon that allows for a different style of play. With AM3 up it's a massive boost for physical BPs with TP transfer (Volt Strike etc).
It's not the BiS for magical BPs regardless of AM status and it's nice for Flaming Crush.
You can still be an incredibly tough SMN even without. I lost count of the times I outdpsed other Proud Nirvana owners (clearly mediocre players of course, not some of the good ones you can find over these boards).
Especially for situations where it's not possible to put AM3 up in advance, it's quite easy.


Either way, if you have to focus your gil on something my priorities would be:
1) Get the gear you need (whatever it may be) until you reach the 10 seconds delay cut threshold
2) Focus on nirvana
3) If Nirvana is completed and you still have gil to burn, then and only then get Baayami+1 for longer BPward duration lol. Or feet for refresh+3 idle.

I agree with basically everything Sechs said, just wanted to add:

Whether a non-Nirvana SMN can beat a Nirvana SMN (they can) isn't very relevant (IMO), because you're talking about YOU with a Nirvana vs YOU without a Nirvana. It will improve your damage. Significantly. Especially with AM3.

Fair point, fair point!
Btw I do own a Nirvana myself! Don't want people to think I'm downgrading Nirvana out of spite or envy like the old Fox and the Grape story XD

what would be the absolute top duration be on bloodpact ward Hastega for example ? atm i am looking at 9 min 30(ish)

Don't know the exact number, too lazy to calculate it, but I think I have BIS and I'm hitting around 10:50.

I think that if you are willing to swap staff and grip out, it maxes at 11 minutes and 3 seconds at ML 50.

I thought I was. Mind sharing your set?

I'd wager you're missing Hoxne Torque, that's the only change to max skill set in recent history.

ItemSet 255753

I don't have hoxne, hq baayami, nor do I have summoner anywhere near ml50, so I was just mathing it out and not testing in game.

Since it's 3 min base duration (180 seconds) + (Summoning skill - 300) seconds. It seems I made an error earlier though.
99 smn = 417
merits = 16
job mastery = 36
ML50 = 50
So, 519 naked.

Then the set is what Pergatory posted above. So 262 in gear. 781 max summoning skill atm. So 481 secs added to the base duration for 661 seconds total.

11 minutes and 1 second. I have no idea where I got those extra two seconds earlier. Sorry about that.