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

I think impact counts as a magic apell, so tp would count. Would take a second to check just by aeeing if femrir's tp resets on use. The tp resets on all magic damage pacts and wards that are affected, but not on physical pacts.

As Frod said, and maybe I just misunderstood but I thought you were saying it's great on everything almost all the time. Gutsu's testing showed that TP bonus works great for impact, for some reason TP has a huge "impact" on impact, har har, much like merit pacts. TP does boost all magic pacts though that I know of as Frod said if it resets your avatar TP it uses TP. I retested last night to be certain in Escha Sky and NQ Apogee were beating Enticer's if I had at least 650 TP on 5/5 merit pacts, but did edge ahead a bit at zero TP. I didn't test every TP level to see exactly where one beats the other, but it could be lower than that, especially for Apogee+1.

I want to give Alist credit for being the first to test wards since the update and sharing:

I expanded upon his testing though and before I ran out of time with Jopa on MNK and another few friends on low level mules to level sync/desync to:

No TP or Gear
800 HP Whispering Wind
919 HP Healing Ruby II
640 HP Spring water

No TP and Only Enticer's Pants
800 HP Whispering Wind
1011 HP Healing Ruby II
640 HP Spring water

3000 TP No Gear
800 HP Whispering Wind
1379 HP Healing Ruby II
640 HP Spring water

No TP and seraphicaller
819 HP Whispering Wind

No TP and Apogee Set with 2 +1
1065 HP Whispering Wind
1237 HP Healing ruby II
852 HP Spring Water

3000 TP Apogee with 2 +1, Seraphicaller, Nirvana and Ambu cape
1088 HP Whispering Wind
1898 HP Healing Ruby II

There's some testing missing obviously because as I said we ran out of time but what we can put together is:
* Whispering Wind TP only seems to affect the area size.
* Spring Water TP also affects range, but it's hard to test if it helps status removal in some way or not.
* Healing Ruby TP does affect healing done
* Avatar level gives very little to max hp and does very little for healing wards at all
* Avatar max hp has an extreme effect on how much healing is done.
* Enticer's pants do work on healing wards, but the only one that will heal for more with tp is healing ruby II and possibly healing ruby I.

A lot of that was understood already but there's some new stuff and it's nice to have it all in one place. Thank you to Jopa for info and help testing as well. I also want to test soothing current another time.

I think 1898 AoE heal with mana cede is freakin sweet and has uses even if they are more niche. The default range on healing ruby II is also huge and it's already the highest base aoe heal without gear. I need to test if at 0 tp if enticers or apogee slacks would win, and asking you guys if you had any better suggestions (other gear with pet/avatar hp) to better this set:
ItemSet 344454

Sorry I mis-spoke about Impact, I was thinking of Conflag Strike. I always mix the two in my head because I gear exactly the same for them most of the time. Apologies.

As for Enticer's it seems like you're agreeing with me, not disagreeing, unless I'm the one misreading it.

Sounds to me like Enticer's won unless you had a very large amount of TP and on a 5/5 merit pact. Basically your test was tilted heavily toward Apogee to begin with by all the merits and TP you had.

I don't know about you, but for me it's very rare to have anywhere near 650 TP when doing a merit BP. In fact the only reason it would be so high is if I used Mana Cede, or my avatar had been idle for a long time. And even so this is all on a 5/5 merit BP, if you aren't 5/5 you'll need absolutely massive TP for Apogee to win.

I'm always 5/5 but I agree it's rare to have that much TP though I was trying to build up a pet acc + haste set so I could build tp better between 30 second recasts.

In your testing have you ever seen it work better than apogee NQ at 0 tp and anything other than merit pacts and impact? Conflag works that way too? Gutsu's testing shows it seems to lose out on everything else.

Conflag doesn't benefit from TP, which is why when I mixed it up with Impact, I implied that Impact also didn't benefit from TP which is incorrect.

Seriously? So like if you're doing an event and they finish one NM and move to another that's a different element, you go back to town and re-spec? That sounds like a major pain in the arse. What about enemies whose magic burst changes mid-fight? Like Plouton or Onychophora?

Edit: As for pet:haste/acc to build TP faster, it's a cool idea and I had a set like this a long time ago, but what I discovered is that on any mob that takes more than like 60 seconds to kill, I generally suffer more for feeding the enemy TP than I benefit by obtaining it. The damage just doesn't go up a really significant amount and you leave the avatar open to the possibility of dying to AOE before you can do the MB in which case the TP is lost. That's totally down to personal play style, though.

Since merit pacts are one of the biggest damage sources for smn and that's a great way to increase it yea. Rather than respeccing on weak stuff though I'll use the t4 spells or use a level 70 pact. For big stuff I always respec if I have to, I almost always leave Heavenly Strike merit'd 5/5, it's the best raw damage if you include crystal blessing. Then I switch the other, most often between thunderstorm, wind blade and meteor strike it's pretty rare I need water or earth and I'll often just use conflag for fire even though it does do less damage.

When you play with DDs too I like to have heavenly strike for dark/umbral bursts and either windblade or thunderstorm for light/radiance bursts.

I wish we could 5/5 all of them because for example I love the utility of spring water alongside a merit pact without switching avatars.

Baaaaaasic Enticers vs apogee +1 testing!

Wearing nothing but nirvana and pants.
Target is level 1 ***in east saruta, BP is 5/5 windblade, 0 TP.

Enticers: 7147 w/ 7859 weather procs
Apogee +1 A: 7763 w/ 8538 weather procs

Damage was extremely consistent with no variations to above.

If someone can suggest a better way to test, LMK.
(would ilvl/more gear skew this in any way?)

This has not been my experience. In my experience, physical pacts are almost always superior unless you can do magic bursts and even sometimes then.

Of course this depends often on the GEO bubbles being used. I would say no more than 20% of my rage BPs are merit BPs these days. Also, a 1/5 merit pact will still beat a T4 spell. Personally, I leave at least 1/5 in all six of them at all times, and change my 5/5 around for big events like Kirin or CP parties back before I capped. Honestly that rarely happens because physical pacts are just so much better.

Yeah you need to test with all gear equipped. For example if you have nothing else equipped then the 35 MAB on Apogee Slacks +1 would be a 35% straight damage increase. If you have 200 MAB elsewhere and add 35 MAB, then it's a 16.6% increase (335/300) which is much less of an increase. I think doing it against a low-level enemy should be fine though.

If you do a test with all gear equipped, I'd be very curious what the results are! Not just on 5/5 but also on 1/5 if possible. Thank you for the testing!

The only equation I've ever found for merit pact damage looks like this:

Which if it's true, and when I did some testing a long time ago and it seemed at least on the right track, it means MAB has no effect on the value added from TP and it's added on instead of multiplied. It gets confusing and untested how the tp part interacts with BP damage though, or base damage increases. It definitely does depend on the rest of your gear though at least to some extent which is why I was really interested if Pergatory's sets were getting more mileage somehow.

***is situational. They often perform more if no magic burst, if buffs/debuffs favor it, if you aren't interrupting others skillchains and bursts, and if the mob isn't strong to either blunt or slashing (And if you have nirvana) :D

That said I rarely gear my apogee set toward physical only for the extra attack, and I doubt I'll ever own 2 full sets of apogee +1 or want to go through that :< So I leave path A most the time on apogee and pants on D because that gets me the most mileage. I'm not really a fan of critiquing others play styles or personal preferences though. Do what you want man, but for me yes I'm usually 5/5.

The MAB is a separate multiplier from the term that has the TP in it.

It's just how the math works. Any percentage multiplier like MAB or BP Damage, the more of it you have, the less each further point is worth (relatively speaking).

It's the same reason why 1 BPD isn't the same as 1 MAB. In theory they should both be the same, adding 1% to your damage, but most of us have so much MAB that adding 1 point doesn't give us the same value as 1 BPD. Going from 300% to 301% is less of an increase than going from 150% to 151%. Well, strictly speaking it's not, but when weighing it against other multipliers it is, because of the way separate multipliers affect each other.

This is why it matters whether you have your other equipment on or not during the test.

And yes I totally agree that ***is situational, I find it extremely interesting how differently you and I play the job when I know for a fact we both share a great passion for playing it to the best of its abilities.

*Edit for clarity

Wind blade, 1/5 merits, 0 TP.
Enticer's: 16176
Apogee +1: 15903

Wind blade, 3/5 merits, 0 TP.
Enticer's: 18245
Apogee +1: 18171

Wind blade, 4/5 merits, 0 TP.
Enticer's: 19283
Apogee +1: 19310

Wind blade, 5/5 merits, 0 TP.
Enticer's: 20323
Apogee +1: 20440

Enticer's wins at 3/5 merits and below at 0 TP, 4/5 and 5/5 Apogee is better.

For Shiva this means 3/5 may win out with crystal blessing and 30 seconds of caller's pendant.... but neither bonus is strong enough on it's own to break a merit 'tier' of 400 TP.

Gear worn:
Griovalr(bpd4, mab 26)
merlinic hands (bpd 8, int 1, mab 29)
apogee+1 head, body, feet.
Campestras
incarnation
Evoker's & Speakers
Gelos & Esper
Deino
Elan +1
Seraphicaller

I said it in game last night but I'll say it again thanks for the testing Frod! I'm disappointed that I overestimated the Enticer's, but not as much as some have underestimated it. :) I guess we shouldn't be surprised that reality fell somewhere between.

I think it's safe to say this rules out NQ Apogee. NQ Apogee is closer to Helios than it is to Apogee+1, and Apogee+1 barely held its ground against Enticer's while Helios lost horribly back in the day and I don't see why that would've changed.

I suspect NQ Apogee wouldn't be able to win until your TP bonus takes you over 3000. That point is at 750 TP for a 5/5 merit (750+1600+650 = 3000) and 2350 TP for a 1/5 merit.

the question now is everything that is tp dependant but doesn't have the bonuses the merits give. It looks like t4s and all the rest will need enticers until you've got like... 1500 TP. This also doesn't take into account the 15 macc of enticers in a parse against higher level/more resistant stuff, they might still be best in slot just for that.

So Enticer's will beat out pretty much all others for both normal and merit magical pacts or just merit? And for physical, stick with Apogee (NQ or HQ)?

We only use my SMN for Erinys, so I don't get to experience T4's with that job much unfortunately despite how well-geared it is. SCH + BLM strat wins out every time. :)

Maybe some day my linkshell will get bored enough to start experimenting with different job set-ups (probably on our 6th Aeonic or something) and I'll make a case for my SMN being used more.

By the way, which T4's are you guys using your SMN for (besides Erinys)?

:< Your discussion is confusing people guys.

He means 4 merits Avallon not reisenjima t4, and SMN has been used successfully for worm, erinys, vini, and zerde with the right setups and possibly more I am not aware of. On teles you can do good pred claw damage in a pet setup.

Normal pacts don't do well with enticers, if you click the linked testing by gutsu on the previous page this is shown since months ago. Only ones that have a huge boost from TP, namely merit pacts and conflag strike and impact, others you're better off using NQ apogee. Depending how many merits you have and how much TP you have, you use NQ apogee or enticers. It can depend on the rest of your gear, and buffs, but around 750 pet tp is where enticers will start having less returns on those pacts I named. For HQ apogee, thanks to frod we know for most people it starts at 0 TP and 4 out of 5 merits where enticers is a net loss. The difference on 5/5 with NQ apogee at least for me tho is pretty small to the point that if you don't have enticers yet I wouldn't go out of your way to obtain them as a high priority item. If you have companion's roll, and your avatar is building tp through auto attacks or caller's pendent then it becomes even more moot a point for merit pacts. Since impact and conflag strike can't have tp bonus through merits though they are almost always good choices for that. For merit pacts even with NQ apogee the only time they are a huge boost are if you aren't fully merit'd like pergatory.

The lack of magic acc is one of my big concerns with apogee set +1 except for the hands it's missing a lot. That said avatar seem to have a lot higher base magic acc than mages, until you start factoring in mages can receive buffs like indi-focus and avatars can't. For a really high magic acc set we're left with using merlinic for 4 out of 5 slots... which means auging an entire set just for magic acc which bums me out. I think one reason for the higher base magic acc of avatars is we get 100 magic acc just for using a blood pact and we get a lot of smn skill too. Buffs can easily make up for that however for blm/sch etc.

You're restating what I had already said :<

Yeah I think it's safe to say the threshold for non-merit magic BPs which benefit from TP (like the T4 nukes or Impact) should be identical to a 1/5 merit BP, so around 1200 TP for Apogee+1 and very likely 2400 for NQ Apogee. Anything less and you should use Enticer's.

Yes, Apogee for physical pacts (NQ or HQ, path D), and Enticer's for magical pacts unless you've got a second pair of Apogee Slacks +1. (Assuming the first pair would be path D for physical pacts.)

This is wrong. Look at Gutsu's testing. If helios can beat out enticer's for most magical pacts, then NQ Apogee for sure will. This info has been available a long time and was linked on the last page. Outside impact, conflag strike and merit pacts, enticer's isn't useful and for merit pacts if you are 5/5 and have some TP it's not best either vs NQ apogee.

I looked at his testing, where does it say Helios can beat Enticer's for most magical pacts? He only said that for specific pacts like Night Terror, Holy Mist, and Conflag Strike. (I'm pretty sure none of those 3 are affected by TP.) I don't think he ever tested T4 nukes. I wish I had time to test this stuff.

Conflag strike actually is, as well as every other magical pact. If your avatar pet tp goes to zero after using it, it uses TP. Conflag strike isn't on the same tier as merit pacts and impact but they all use tp, tp just means a lot more for impact and conflag. The only magical type pact which doesn't that i know of is nether blast.

Level 100 mandies outside adoulin:
Ifrit 3k tp: 17249 Conflag strike
Ifrit 0 tP: 13282 Conflag strike

I didn't waste time standing around more to do it for night terror, but it does reset pet tp to zero on using night terror.

Only merit pacts and impact seem to get enough damage bonus from TP however to use enticers over other options. Conflag strike gets a nice bonus but as Gutsu shows not enough to win out with enticers.

Edit for Night Terror:
Diabolos 3k TP vs 100 mandy: 15464
Diabolos 0 TP vs 100 mandy: 12507

Edit 2 for Holy Mist:
Carby 3k TP vs 100 mandy: 13011
Carby 0 TP vs 100 mandy: 11040

Hmm this must've been changed at some point, used to be that very few magical pacts besides the T2/T4/merit nukes consumed TP. Holy Mist and Night Terror didn't used to consume TP when they came out.

But if what you said is true, then TP applies differently to every BP basically. We'd need to test them all to say for sure which piece is better. Yet more testing I don't have time to do. :(

As much as I've seen only Impact and Merit pacts get this special treatment of huge boosts to damage through TP for the others it's much more minor. I've never found a pact that doesn't follow this rule, though Conflag strike does seem to get more than normal it's not enough to change gear for tp bonus (at least for the amount of tp bonus enticer's gives).

Having a community is great for testing things we don't all have time to do, and we all have room to improve. I joke with a friend that in three years my SMN will be perfect but we both know that is probably more true than false b/c it takes forever to get all those perfect augs etc most stop way short of that and call it done but whatever. The most untrue thing about that joke is you're never done and never perfect :D It's about the journey anyway, you've taught me things no shame in being wrong sometimes, mistakes is often where we gain the most knowledge and insight afterall.

I still stand by my assertion that Enticer's is superior to NQ Apogee. Merit pacts and Impact are about the only magic pacts whose damage I care about. The only other ones are Thunderspark and Night Terror. It's been shown that Helios used to beat Enticer's for Night Terror so it's possible that's still true (but don't take it as a given, gear has come a long way since then and any BPD/MAB increases stack the deck against Helios/Apogee), and Thunderspark hasn't been tested. For the other 7 BPs I care about, Enticer's wins over NQ Apogee.

I wasn't confused about the topic of discussion. I was just chiming in and asking if other SMN's are being used by their linkshells for Reisenjima T4 NM's - and if so, which ones.

Just Erinys (Mewing Lullaby, random buffs for the THFs) and Teles (Earthen Armor). We do use Mewing Lullaby on the Sandworm at some points, but it's nothing a COR/SMN can't handle. I guess you could make a case for SMN on Vinipata for Earthen Armor+Scherzo as well, but I don't know for certain how many of his moves are actually single-hit that are capable of 1-shotting people.

SMN is a very good dd, potentially better than BLM on Kirin, Zerde, Vinipata, Onychophora and can play a support/dd role on Erinys/Teles. All these NMs can be defeated with just SMNs for damage but THFs and BLMs are still vastly superior on Erinys/Teles. SMN can also kill WoC's Wynavs fast with 2 AFs or 4 Thunderspark BPs using Apogee, AC or revi but this is anecdotal and unnecessary for a 3 min fight.

SMN is definitely the best DD out there for Kirin, my shell has parsed a lot of them and we have some top notch BLMs with dark matter Merlinic and all the goodies, none of them have beaten me yet. I think the closest someone came was ~380k total damage against my 420k, and I only had one 99k Wind Blade on that run.

Also did great damage on Zerde but I missed a couple SCs, usually due to applying Impact & Conflag Strike (the latter of which you can MB too but the damage in a full skill build isn't that great). I'm not sure if the debuffs paid off or if I should've just hit the first MB instead of bothering with them. Normally I wouldn't fret about missing an SC but that's one of those fights where speed matters.

As for the others I can't help a lot. Erinys/Ony, I just end up Mewing Lullaby *** usually. Can do some magic bursts too on Ony but it's tricky because I try to Mewing right at the start of wind/dark SCs and it leaves very little time to change avatars and then get them close enough to MB, but it can be done. Teles/Schah/Albumen/Vinipata I've never gone SMN to.

You can use them if you want, it's your 12.95, but they don't win except for merit pacts at low TP over NQ apogee and impact. You're free to retest, but since helios has less stats than NQ apogee it seems pretty obvious to me the outcome. I think you're a great SMN, and I know you do endgame and you give a lot of great info and advice.


I know it's how you use them and that's fine, I want to say though that using SMN for its support abilities is fine and dandy but is only one small slice of the job, totally agree with Papesse here and he should know, he's done those fights with SMN as primary damage source. The first Vini that was even known about that I know of was 5 SMN so it's not making a case, it's been done. Properly setup, SMN elemental spike damage from AF + Conduit is way faster than any other elemental damage out there. If it doesn't kill the NM though BLM does eventually catch up if given enough time and back to back skillchains from more than 1 sch or resetting them with COR when they run out of strats.

The main problem with mixing BLM and SMN is this, usually there's less SMN, they don't get PUP and Companion's roll while BLM get Wiz and Warlocks, as well as an extra GEO just to use Focus/Acumen many times, so the buffs are really stacked for the BLM since avatars don't benefit from any of that and then people often use that as the metric for how good SMN will do. You can't just stuff SMN in there you have to give it equal buffs or make a party for it. The other issue is keeping the avatar alive and timing. If the sch misses their chain or bubbles aren't right when the SMN 1 hours it's a total waste. As for survivability, rarely used abilities like Intervene and Odyllic Subterfuge do a great job on keeping avatars alive during 1 hour. The last issue with BLM and SMN mixing is usually the skillchains aren't timed well for blood pact timers, and that really hurts SMN to stand around waiting for a burst.

I've personally used SMN for Zerde, Kirin, WoC, Teles, Erinys, and Vini. There's very few endgame SMN on my server though so opportunities to make setups with them are basically non existent, I usually am the one mixed SMN in with many BLM and without proper support and doing support things like conflag + impact for a lot of INT down. What I listed in my previous post is taken from testimonies of others and their cleared fights. It's really hard to get people to change from what is most known to work, because it works so why change it. I play support COR in a lot of endgame fights b/c that's what is asked of me and no one wants to hear about how much I like SMN and want to use it, but with the right people leveling the right jobs and an open mind these other ways have been shown to work too.

By the way Papesse I saw you used two SMN in your Tumult Curator win, congratulations on beating one of the hardest fights in the game :) I especially liked the killing blow with titan, was a nice touch. Go SMN!