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

Do you have a particular defensive idle set to get Siren to take 0 damage or is it just ezpz with Wind's Blessing? And anything surprising with your bubbles?

I'm doing 12 minutes with a SCH bleeding her out, this sounds like it could be fun

This info on Siren and tp denial strat vs Lilith makes me think a tp denial with blu mage and magic barrier should work pretty well too.

definitely want to try this w/ my smn and bst though.

One thing is she cannot resist darkness spells or abilities in first phase at least so anything /drk and absorb-tp guaranteed to work. Blu spells are wind based so may but hit or miss depending on macc etc

Help me out here and check to make sure I'm not going insane with this minmaxing. I'm trying to make a cure potency set that maxes Cure Potency, Cure Potency Received, Spell Interruption Rate, and Fast Cast all at once. Yes, I know I could pre-cast and mid-cast it, but that would increase the recast time, which I also want to keep as low as possible.

Basically, I want to be able to cure myself reliably for as much as possible as quickly as possible for emergencies.

ItemSet 390966
Cape augment is 10 Spell Interrupt and 10 Cure Potency. Vanya augment is Potency 7. Telchine Gloves augment is 7 Potency Received. Unless I fudged the math somewhere, with /rdm for natural 20 Fast Cast and Spell Interrupt merits at 10, and assuming the worst for Unity Ranking this gives:
Capped Spell Interrupt
Capped Fast Cast
Capped Cure Potency
and 26/30 Potency Received.

Is this the best set? I'm scratching my brain trying to figure out if there's a way to cap it all but I don't think there is. Also Adoulin Ring is being used for something else.

Sorry for the dumb question but capped SirD is because you assume something might be hitting you, potentially interrupting you, I guess?

If that's the case, wouldn't you want to get lotsa DT in that set, then?
Atm you have 14% DT in that set, if I'm not wrong.

This is only for casting, not idle. Plus you can't max DT but you can SirD, meaning the cure spell WILL go off, if I understand the wiki page.

The point is, if I am trying to cure myself to keep myself alive a little longer before I can BP and get hate onto my avatar, having an interrupted cure could be the difference between living long enough and dying. At least that is my thought process here.

wut
You mean "you can't cap DT and SirD at the same time" maybe?
In that case I can't say if it's possible for SMN, but DT alone it's obviously quite easy to cap in a plethora of different ways.


Yes yes, but you are putting SirD in that set, implying you expect to get hit.
And if you expect to get hit, why wouldn't you want to get as much DT as possible then?
For instance let's talk about Cure Potency Received.
What use is raising the amount of HP healed by your spells, if to achieve that you're gonna receive more damage?


That's exactly how SirD works, if you can cap it then the spell you're casting will not be interrupted in midcast by physical damage (it can still be interrupted of course if you get terrored, stunned, silenced, petrified, knocked back or if you move)

Each physical damage you receive has a chance (it's not 100%) to interrupt your casting. It has to do more than 0 damage.
Using SirD gear prevents this part.
Or you can use Aquaveil (on SMN you can prevent up to 10 potential interruptions)

Now... the point is that if you're not being physically hit by targets, there's no need for SirD, because your spell won't be interrupted regardless, right?
And if instead you are being hit, then you should think about getting as close as possible to the DT cap.

Definitely just use aquaveil (especially that damn has it natively) and DT in curing set, when you expect getting hit that hard, that you struggle to survive. Sechs is 100% right.

Look, sometimes Aquaveil isn't up. I'm asking for help with this set, not a DT set, this one. Please help me.

The precast is just precast and is just straight fast cast and doesn't affect anything else. From what I gather from the posters here is that being hit wont affect the precast. The only thing that messes with precast is spamming the macro. So your fast cast is maximized regardless or pretty close to 80% through a variety of equips and especially if you /rdm etc etc.

The mid cast you have to set your priorities. Recast which caps at 80% except 90% on scholar achieved by:
1) Haste Cap from equips 25%
2) Haste cap from magic 43.75%
3) Job abilities which smn doesnt have?

So that's only 68.75% possible unless I'm missing something.

For cure spells seems like you need 2 macros. The first is a cure self or party macro when not getting hit. The second is your emergency heal self macro when getting hit and has low recast. Probably we are talking about Cure IV here?

Personally I'd just maximize SIRD first, then hp/mp, then PDT and or Cure strength, and then recast along with considering all the tradeoffs in defense etc on a slot by slot basis. But 102% SIRD is a must in your scenario that goes right into a full on defense set idle. Some people here might say time your spells also.

I bet those sims Austar does and the other guy would find a good set for your purposes.

My understanding of fast cast is that if you switch out of it before the spell goes off, it doesn't affect recast. Is that wrong? If I switch my fast cast gear in the midcast, won't it make the recast not be affected?


https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Spell_Recast

I understand people are trying to give me advice, but it's very frustrating to ask a specific question and then not get an answer to that question. If I ask what the best umbrella is, please don't reply "Well it's not raining so why do you want to know?".

Its equally frustrating to see you ask a question you know is stupid because you are too lazy to separate out your fast cast.

You are too greedy by wanting to cap everything in one set and you cannot do it, so then you blame others for not helping you when they ignore the stupidity and answer something practical and more meaningful.

My question has to be what are you fighting that requires all that to be maxed?

Cure spells have such a short cooldown that you don't need FC in your set unless you're weakened. And even then, if you're sitting at 80% FC, you don't really need SIRD, unless you have a bunch of mobs hitting you.

I think the absolute first and foremost question has been asked multiple times and should be answered first.

If your goal is to cap SIRD to prevent physical damage from interrupting spell casts, why isn't your set reducing physical damage taken?

Because let's say you're casting cure4 on yourself (hence why you want to cap cure pot and received), during the time you're casting you're getting hit physically by 1 or more mobs (hence why you want to cap SIRD) a couple things are going to happen which knowing what you're fighting will determine.

A. You are fighting mobs that are too weak to be doing that much damage to you while casting, which the lack of pdt will be noticeable but not a huge detriment.

Or

B. You're fighting things that do strong damage to you in your dt idle set, and you need to cure to save yourself. At which time dropping all of your defense to be in this set for even half a second could lead to you on the floor, or will just require you to continuously cure yourself, continuously putting yourself in this set with no defense, which will lead to your cast getting interrupted by your death.

Maxing all 4 of those stats will probably make you happy, and that's great. If you think you have it, you probably do. I don't know of anyone who would willingly cap those 4 stats without making sure this set won't get them killed.

DT + SIRD > cure pot > pot received >= fast cast. If you die while casting your cure pot, pot received and fast cast for recast won't matter at all.

It has zero to do with greed or not wanting a precast set. I can easily do it. I explicitly don't want to because I want the recast to be as low as possible. Very often if I am curing myself back to back, cure 4 won't be up by the time I go to cast a second cure and I have to default back to cure 3. I am trying to avoid that.

Why isn't the set maxing DT? Because I value not getting interrupted more. It's a preference.

I have answered your questions, can you please answer mine? I am so tired of having to fight for a single answer just because you don't approve of the type of set I want to build. Telling me over and over again that you think it's a useless set isn't helpful.

"I dont need DT!! I need my recast to be as low as possible because I'm taking 600++ damage in the ~4 seconds it takes for cure4 recast to be up".

Thats what you're saying.

Another thing to consider here is that if your goal is to get hate back on your avatar, repeatedly curing yourself is going to make that more difficult over time — so part of the value of DT in this situation is cutting out the excess hate you build from preventable follow-up cures.

And? Why does it matter? Again, just because I want to build a set you don't approve of, why does that mean my question doesn't deserve a single answer? Do I have to play the game the most optimal way as approved by you before you will deign my question answerable? Christ this place is infuriating sometimes...

No one cares about how you want to play FFXI. This is just like the cara gem discussion. You're the one asking for feedback on something, and you're upset because you dont like the feedback.

/RDM is only FC+20 at M.30. Prior to that it's +15.
Going to put variables and unmentioned augments in ().
Let's do this slot by slot:

	main-	sub-	ammo-	head-	body-	hands-	legs-	feet-	neck-	ear1-	ear2-	ring1-	ring2-	back-	waist-	traits-	merits-	Leviathan
Cure Pot:	-	-	-	17	-	10	-	-	4	5	-	-	5	10	-	-	-	-
Cure Rec:	-	-	-	-	-	7	-	-	4	-	-	5	-	-	10	-	-	15
Haste:	-	-	-	6	3	3	5	3	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
SIRD:	-	5	10	-	25	-	20	16	-	-	8	-	-	10	-	-	10	-
FC:	50	-	-	-	3(6)	-	-	6	-	-	-	-	-10	-	-	15(20)	-	-
DT:	-	-	-	-	0(5)	-	9	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

Conclusions:
cure pot: 50+1
Cure rec: 30+11
haste: 20
SIRD: 104
FC: 64(72)
DT: 9(14)

cure recast isn't cap'd, you'd need another 6 gear haste + magic haste to cap, the recast you can get from FC isn't capped either.
SIRD is cap'd but this is the SMN thread so wtf are you doing getting hate in the first place?!
DT isn't cap'd or anywhere close, SMN has low max HP so you're asking to get killed if you get hit by some AoE while casting even w/o being the main target.
Cure rec?! Why would SMN ever need that? you should be getting hit less often than anyone else.

anyway, showed where the set isn't cap'd for you.
based on the rest of the page, you aren't interested in more obvious solutions like trying to cap enmity- & DT- & Haste & Cure Pot only.

No, everyone's not telling you it's a useless set, they're telling you the set will get you killed which is the opposite of what you want to do inferred from the fact that curing yourself puts out the notion that you want to be alive.

I created a far more reasonable base set for you. It's 48% pdt, 102 SIRD, 79% fc, and 10 cure pot in your midcast(minimum) and it leaves your 4 slots to do with whatever you want for your cure potency.

ItemSet 390974

No. This is not what you asked for.

Yes. What you asked for IS self defeating.

Yes. Everyone who has responded has had your best interest in heart when they criticize what you want to do.

To answer your original question, "Is this the best I can do to cap cure potency, potency received, sird, and fc in midcast at the same time?" yes that has to be the single best way I've seen someone show how to cast a cure on yourself where the only thing that will interrupt your cast is your impending death.

Edit:

I find it *** ironic that this is your response to someone posting a near 50% dt set for melee smn.


And yet here you are asking for a set implying that YOU ARE GOING TO BE HIT, with 0 defense.

This is officially a troll, and you got us all. Congrats.

Because

<spoiler>

It's alas a stupid question.
It feels like you are not really looking for a discussion or for feedback, you are just looking for people to say "yes, your set is the best" or for people to point out item1 or item2 that you may have accidentally forgot.

Anyway
This is the best I could create trying to follow your rules
ItemSet 390970
Cape: MND+30, Eva/Meva+20, FC+10, Interrupt-10
Telchine: DEF+20, CurePot +8%, MND or VIT +10

For a total of:
>50% CurePot
10% CurePotReceived
47% DT
~77% recast reduction
-37 enmity

Not ideal clearly, but it's imho a better compromise that the set you posted, while still tryin to stay true to the rules you defined.



Furthermore a few things I'd like to point out.
Your set has an excess of Fast Cast that's not gonna help with the recast.
Assuming your set with 20% gear haste and Haste2 (and why wouldn't you, on SMN?) you need 60 FC to reach the recast cap, and you get 20 from /RDM, so basically just 40 in gear.


Also about Aquaveil:
May ask why you think so?
If you're fighting something that constantly spams dispel/dispelga ok, but in every other situation why would Aquaveil ever be down?
It lasts for like ~15mins and can prevent up to 10 potential interruptions, on a job like SMN.
I'm not sure if you realize it, 10 interruptions is A LOT. And you can refresh it and overwrite it whenever you feel like it.
So why are you assuming Aquaveil might not be up?

I can't possibly think of a situation where a non-tank (and even then, only a tank handling a gazilions of targets at the same time) would need anything other than a 10 interruptions boosted Aquaveil, to prevent spell interruptions.
I mean, it's why the spell was created to begin with after all.




My final take on your approach to the creation of this set and why I personally think you're taking a wrong route:

SirD
SirD to cast spells on yourself isn't exactly useful on SMN when you can rely on such a powerful Aquaveil. But even then, if we want to assume you being hit without Aquaveil, then it makes no sense to cap SirD without also focusing on DT/Def at the same time

Cure Pot Received
CPR is awesome, but what use is to boost your cures for 100 HP more, if for doing so you don't cap your DT, meaning you will be hit for 200 HP more than you would have with capped DT? Completely defeating the purpose of boosting the cure spells?
This would work normally, but here we're talking of a set where you expect being hit by targets, so no, it doesn't make sense.

Recast Cap
Getting as close as possible to the recast cap makes a lot of sense for spells where there's only one per category, or spells with very long recasts.
But here we're talking about spells with very short natural recast and where even if one spell is on recast, you can alternate between C4 and C3 without any delay.
So it doesn't make a lot of sense to go for capped spell recast for spells like these.
Not when going for that has a "cost", and the cost is keeping your equipment slots busy, making you unable to stack other stats that are way more important for the scenario you are preparing this set for (DT, Defense, Enmity-, etc)

Only place I can think of where SMN wouldn't be able to have fulltime aquaveil is Odyssey which

A) it doesn't matter there since if the SMN is getting hit something went *** up
B) you aren't participating or meaningfully contributing with your only job being SMN anyway

You can still use Siren's Chinook for AoE Aquaveil without a subjob if needed.

Not as easily recast as the aquaveil spell, but still essentially able to fulltime it.

C) You don't have access to subjobs, so no cures and the only magic you can cast is summoning magic, for which there is a 100% SIRD body.

youve got a point

I have learned my lesson. Next time I ask any question, I shall endeavor to make sure that the question itself and the entirety of my play style conform to the absolute only accepted one, and shall not ask about anything that doesn't completely match the current meta. I will never again attempt to try new things that may not work, or ask questions that will result in anything other than someone copy/pasting the current meta at me. Please forgive this humble serf and his wanting to play the game in a way you don't.

I did not ask for feedback. I asked for "Am I missing an item combination that will allow me to do what I want to do." What I got, for the most part, was "You aren't playing the game right."

You do realize what game have you been playing for the last 20 years right?

But it's not asking your friends what flavor of ice cream they're getting and everyone saying strawberry, it's not the herd's opinion, it's people who know more than you who have considered more than you telling you what is objectively better than what you're proposing. You're lying to yourself and to us that you somehow get more enjoyment out of casting the cure in some weird *** set when the set you were provided will literally, mathematically, be better in the long run. Grow up.