A Summoner's Gear Guide

It wasn't the rage I tested, it was the ward. I initially had both the precast and midcast...using precast for the ability delay. However, when I swapped in summoning skill feet into the midcast, I saw no change. When I slid it into precast, I saw the buff duration increase. Made me wonder if midcast was really accomplishing anything. I use Sel's lua.

If you're using 2 or more empy in that set you could have just saw a set proc and thats what caused the increase

Which ward pact

You actually still need to be in your summoning skill / recast set during midcast. Midcast is what matters for BP recast. Precast is fine too, as long as you keep it on for midcast.

Pet_midcast is where you swap your BP damage gear (or swap Beck Horn to Baayami for wards)

I've been discussing this in the past, even in detail in private with Byrth, because for the longest time I've had pretty consistant issues with the pet:midswap thing on Gearswap.

My BPs were being executed in the wrong set, instead of the correct one, they were being executed in the aftercast set.

Basically it seems that not always but often and consistently, Gearswap was returning to my aftercast set too early, with the consequence that BPs were executed in that set and there was a noticeable difference in damage.

How I solved this? In two steps.
Initially I removed my aftercast automatization.
My gearswap was stopping in the pet_midcast set (the correct one to executed BPs in) and NOT returning to aftercast. I had to do that manually.
Either by executing another action or by pressing a hotkey connected to a custom "return to aftercast" function that I made myself.

This worked flawlessly, never experienced the issue not even once, but it was a bit annoying of course.
So after a while (a long time because I'm lazy) I changed to a "timed" function.
Basically the "return to aftercast set" custom function I made to be executed manually with a hotkey, is now executed automatically, but after X seconds.
If the BP is not interrupted and gets correctly executed, after X seconds it returns to the envisioned aftercast set. Basically the same Gearswap would do normally, but with a slightly longer time.
This doesn't happen if Astral Conduit or Apogee are active.

Never experienced the issue not even once since then, and I don't have the "annoyance" of having to remember to press a key to return manually to the aftercast set.



To summarize this in other terms:
In my SMN lua I had to make some exceptional rules so that the regular gearswap "aftercast" doesn't get executed at all when successfully using a Blood Pact JA.
This means that I would get left in my pet: midcast set instead of returning to whatever I'm supposed to (idle or engaged etc)
To avoid that I built a custom function that does for Blood Pact JAs pretty much what aftercast would do (returning me to a specific set) but does so with a longer delay, completely avoiding the risk of BP being executed in the aftecast set rather than the pet midcast ones.

share you smn lua?

Yeah I thought this was common knowledge.
You precast in BP recast timer gear.
You don't do anything in midcast or aftercast if it's a BP.
You use pet_midcast and pet_aftercast for BP DMG and then returning to whatever you need to idle in

Job abilities and weapon skills don't have a midcast just fyi. It's precast and aftercast

This is how i do it. It has the added benefit of handling dropped action packets, which can happen often in instanced zones.

I definitely had similar issues when developing my SMN Lua, it requires some unique behavior compared to other Luas if you want it working correctly. There are a number of ways to solve it, mine has something in aftercast() which aborts processing aftercast if pet_midaction() returns true. That way if your client receives the message about pet readying BP before Gearswap has the chance to go into aftercast, it doesn't even try.

However, if you have a lot of lag or unstable connection, even that doesn't always work. That's why I added a lag mode to mine which sounds like it's somewhat similar to your approach. Instead of waiting for server packets, it just waits half a second and then goes into pet_midcast gear.

This approach is rock solid for me, it always lands in the right set. I've never had to use the lag mode at all, but I guess I'm blessed with a reliable connection.

Edit: By the way this approach also works in precast & midcast to prevent other actions from taking you out of pet_midcast gear before the BP lands. For example if you start casting a spell or hit Assault right after your BP, before it goes off, you don't want it doing swaps for those actions. You want it to stay in pet_midcast even if it results in a gimpy spell cast with no fast cast.

It's actually precast that JA/WS don't have. They have a midcast and aftercast.

I know logically what you said makes more sense, but in practice, there's no difference between the two because nothing happens during precast. It's only midcast where things start to matter.

My SMN Lua swaps BP recast gear in the midcast, not the precast. Works fine.

I tried a few. First I tried Hastega before I was like "duh." Then I tried Titan's Earthen Ward and then Shiva's STP one.

That's what I thought, and would explain why my BP midcast wasn't really doing anything, but the precast was. I only kept it because it was built into Sel's lua.

Yes, I tried a wide range of solutions. Each were an improvement over the default, but none was fault-proof.
In the end the only one that proved to be safe is a coroutine.
I just skip aftercast for Blood pacts, and added a coroutine that returns me to my intended aftercast set, after X seconds. I don't remember how much I set X to, longer than it should be because I wanted to be super safe.
I also had to code some additional checks like BP action notinterrupted and also special handles for when Apogee or Astral Conduit are up.

Either way, I assume there might be some special situations where this system fails as well but to date it still hasn't occurred to me not even once, and I'm pretty satisfied by that.

The only annoyance is what I mentioned before. More often than not you end up being in your petmdicast set a little longer than you have to (meaning if there's something attacking you or AoE etc... you know the deal).
I still think it's a pretty acceptable compromise, at least to my eyes.
I prefer this compromise than the previous solution where sometimes I was shooting BPs in my aftercast set, that was way worse for me but to each his own I suppose.

Yeah stuff like that is why I tend to recommend my own Lua to SMNs instead of something generic like Sels or Arislans. Those are one-size-fits-all-jobs Luas and that just doesn't work well with SMN.

Sechs you should give mine a try sometime as well! Could've saved you a lot of trouble from the sound of it :) Though you may already be through the pain so I'd understand wanting to stick with it after all that work.

When looking at Physical Blood Pacts, how do y'all weigh Double Attack vs. Attack vs. Blood Pact Damage?

I have two pieces for Physical Pacts right now:
Apogee Pumps +1
12 BP Damage + 35 Attack
Helios Boots
8% DA, 7 BP Damage, 27 Accuracy

I'm trying to weigh these numbers against the new Glyphic Pigaches +4, because +99 Pet Attack seems /really/ high. I know generally 1 BP Damage ~= 2-3 Magic Attack Bonus, but, does that hold true for Attack as well?

In this case the Attack is far from as valuable as MAB as a Dmg multiplier. I can see it having uses if you're low buffed, as in no
Beast Roll and/or Geo-Frailty or other Def Down debuffs.

And as for BPdmg vs Double Attack. A healty mix. Also depends on if you ride AM3 Nirvana, then less Double attack and more BPdmg.
You can use Pergatory's Bloodpact calculator which is linked in the guide.
Ive sadly not played Smn much last few years so I've lost the touch.

playing around w/ the bpd vs da calculator (it does not account for fickblix's ring or Sroda earring though, and I'm pretty confident both will be BiS)

It seems you want to maximize Double attack when Am3 is down and maximize bpd when am3 is up.

Amd3 + max BPD being the highest damage.

ItemSet 400058


ItemSet 400059

the only things that change are body, hands, 1 ring, and feet.

Sorta skeptic Beckoner+3 is winning over Apogee+1 there.
Did you factor in the Set Bonus?
If you factor that, Apogee Pumps+1 have BPD+14, and then the pet Attack which has a marginal relevance, true, but it still adds a bit of damage.

Beckoner has pet acc but honestly, even with the lack of it on the Relic body, it shouldn't matter in the feet slot.

where are the two pieces of nyame path d with pet damage in the running.
body with +11% and legs with+10%
would be interesting to see what the 45 stat bonus on the other three does too.

Short version: They are, more or less (Beckoner's Earring +1/+2 are competitive with Sroda Earring but Fickblix is flat-out BIS).

Long version: Fickblix Ring, Sroda Earring, and the Nyame stuff are all separate modifiers from BPD & Pet:DA so you can't easily fit them into the calc. If you're just comparing one it's pretty easy to math out, for example Fickblix will just be a straight up 1.1 multiplier on top of your current multiplier.

I assume the Nyame Pet:DMG stuff is like Fickblix's "Pet:Damage+10%" and not Sroda's "Pet melee attack DMG" so you would probably add Nyame+Fickblix together as its own multiplier. I haven't actually tested that or seen such testing but that's my assumption.

So for example if you wanted to compare Nyame body & Fickblix ring versus a set with Glyphic body & Varar Ring. You'd have one set with Glyphic/Varar stats, then another set with 0 BPD and 0 Pet:DA in those two slots. Then you'd take the final total for the second set, and multiply by 1.21 for the Nyame+Fickblix bonus. (As you can imagine, the Fickblix/Nyame set will win by a lot.)

Sroda Earring is harder to math because it's not a straight multiplier to your total damage output. It's the same reason I didn't include Pet:Attack or Pet:STR/DEX/etc on the calculator, then you have to start knowing other things like enemy defense and stuff.

P.S. I think you'll want Apogee Pumps +1 in your second set to activate the set bonus on your pants. You may also want to double check hands on your non-AM3 set, I find Merlinic to still beat Convoker.

It does seem like Nyame Body/Legs are just generically BiS for all types of blood pacts, physical magical and flaming crush. I find it hard to believe any one piece can hold a torch to 10% or 11%..

And it also seems like full augmented Nyame is just easily BiS for Magic accuracy, even with Convoker's +4 out there. I don't see any of those pieces hitting 80 magic accuracy.

Circling back because I am often forgetful and it's nice to have all the information in a single post.

Where does Opashoro stand for the big six uses, ie does it ever become BiS for magic, hybrid, single hit, double hit, defuff, or ward buff? If so, what level?

This is second hand so grain of salt etc.

Nirvana comes out on top if you have AM3 up. Otherwise Opashoro.

For multi-hit physical BPs (this covers basically all the popular ones: Volt Strike, Hysteric Assault, Predator Claws) Nirvana with AM3 is top, then Opashoro stage 5, like Dodik said. Opashoro stage 4 and R15 Nirvana without AM3 are tied for 3rd place.

For single-hit, Opashoro stage 5 always wins. Opashoro stage 4 ties with Nirvana R15.

For Flaming Crush, Opashoro stage 4/5 always wins, especially with AM3. Without AM3, R15 Nirvana ties with stage 4 Opa again.

For magic pacts, Grioavolr always wins. I dabbled with Opashoro with AM3 a bit and it wasn't awful, but Grioavolr still beats it.

Something like 25 Avatar MAB and 10 BPD on the Grio?

If you go from that 1 BP = 2.5 Pet MAB, Grio has base 115 which is "46 BP" which is 4 BP of Prime Stage 5, dont need good augs to overshot Prime Staff.

If we use Perg's rough conversion, Opashoro Stage 5 has roughly ~125 mab (in BPD), and then the Mab from the Aftermath (how much is that, 30?), then there's the avatar stats from the Level+3.

Now I'm not claiming you need a perfecct Grioavolr to trump Opashoro, but the gap between the two should be pretty small when AM is up.
Now you could argue you won't always have it up but that's another story I guess xD


@Perg you forgot to mention Augmented Gridarvor.
For Physical multi hit BPs with replicating FTP, it should be on par (if not above?) with Nirvana when AM3 is down.
I seem to remember when some years ago it was mathed out, people were surprised to see Gridarvor so high, considering it's a "normal" and very cheap weapon.

So it's been some time since I tested this, but it was in an AOE party in Dho Gates. I was locking Opashoro so that I could throw out Cataclysms as well, and when AM3 was up I want to say my Thundersparks were doing a bit under 12k, while with weapon unlocked (meaning Grioavolr) I think it was doing over 13k.

Again it's been a while so my memory is pretty fuzzy on it, but I do recall Grio being farther ahead than I thought it would be. Especially since at the time there were rumors flying around about Opashoro AM3 being like 80 MAB and I was hoping for big numbers.

It's still about 10% worse than Nirvana even without AM3, but I don't want to make it sound nonviable. Gridarvor is absolutely endgame-viable. The question was just more about what's BIS in each situation so that's why I only talked about Nirvana & Opa.

i've been getting back into summoner and ive noticed an issue that has me a little worried:
my HP drops like a rock because of apogee gear

do i need to be worried about this or what?

How many are you using for a given set at a time? I don't use head or hands at all anymore. At most I only ever use 2 at the same time. It used to be an issue, but other gear has eclipsed it where it doesn't matter as much. I don't think I ever dip yellow.

It'd be helpful if you told us which pieces you were using for what situations.