SMN Merits

Ohh fu
Ohh FUUU 10. Jesus. How wrong could I have been. Whoopdie do. 10. Thats a long way off what most SMN's have. Id love to see some testing that I have done, but alas, I haven't done any.

And saying that someone will just poke holes in it, is a given. Not everyone likes the same art, or the same book. If this were the case, we'd all be sheep. Since we are not sheep, you attempt at trying to insult me some how (If thats what you were doing) has failed.

Also, on that note. Id love to see test's YOU have done. Since, you obviously enough of an expert to make fun of someone else, making fun of the original person doing the test's.

I notice the difference between a Naked PLD with a Sword and a Naked PLD with a sword and a PCC, with just eyeballing, and thats only 10 ACC. Makes sense that a parse can notice the difference of 10 Skill.

You can say the method is flawed and offer suggestions to improve it, but throwing all the data out completly is just stupid. Laughing at the person trying to help is just rude.

I havent done any tests, I tend not to let my Avatars melee much anyway so the impacts, if any, would be minimal to me. I never laughed at other people trying to help though.

Perhaps testing on a higher level mob with more varying degrees of skill would be more convincing. I'd be more willing to accept if they used more than 10.

But thats only 10 skill he's adding. Far cry from what most SMN's use. Hell, I have +37 from my gear. Comparing skill to acc like that is like apples and oranges.

Summoning skill only affects:
- Accuracy on physical and magical Bloodpacts when skill is above the natural cap for the Summoner's level. This means you will ONLY see a bonus to Bloodpact accuracy through skill that is found on gear or is merited.
- Durations on Wards that are naturally under three-minute duration. Again, because skill needs to be above the summoner's natural cap for its level, this is only true for skill acquired through gear or merits.
- The amount of MP recovered when using Elemental Siphon.
- The ability to reach different tiers of the ability Avatar's Favor (current highest known tier is 317 skill).

Summoning skill does NOT:
- Increase HP, attack, defense, or accuracy on normal melee attacks for Avatars. It never has. This has actually been tested and verified by many experienced Summoners in a variety of testing situations. If you want results to look at, check out Kegsay's results posted on both Blue Gartr and Killing Ifrit.

That all being said, the best option for SMN Group 1 Merits is increasing Physical and Magical Attack to boost your damage because there's a ton of equipment and summoning skill equipment out there for increasing accuracy, but fairly small options for increasing damage or attack power. Add in the fact that summoning skill affects BOTH physical and magical accuracy on Bloodpacts and this is an easy choice to make.

Meriting summoning skill is also a very good idea, particularly for summoners who want to make full use of Avatar's Favor while maintaining standard perpetuation gear sets, but this choice is mostly contingent on the availability of magic merits for your character. However, since the addition of Avatar's Favor, it seems that every merit in summoning skill provides more bang for your buck than the majority of the other magic skill merits for other jobs.

not to be rude or anything but dont be an idiot.

do you see where it say AVATAR ATT. The conversation between KORPG and myself was about it effecting the avatar melee/bp att which it does not. Before anything is said please stop being moronic and read the damn post

Double post meh. Agree w/ you 100% Meriting acc/macc is pointless since you have an abundance of skill from gear.

I did physical attack and accuracy, but that was prior to the skill update, back when all skill did was affect magic interrupt rates (lol, sad but true). There also weren't any level 75 BPs at all, nor any Diabolos until I already had 3 of each merit.

Listen to Jerhyn. That's the most sound advice on here.

I would not dispose the phys Acc so fast. The last posts are true about the effect of SMN skill effecting only the ACC&MACC on BPs. And because normal melee attacks are not effected by it, some merrits there do not hurt all those who Solo on SMN, may it be NMs or farming and should spent some points into it. When using kiting strategys hits are a must to get hate on Avatar. First hit misses causes the SMN to be attacked, or unable to use a BP directly after engaging. If you just use your SMN in LS events (Odin, or any other fight where multiple pets are good for) then you best go with improving Attack and MAB and let the SMN skill do the Accuary work.

As for group 2 Merits most do Wind Blade (to shine @ Kirin) and Shiva.

i did the same conclusion as jeryhn and ustav...cap the smning magic and merit attack + mattack to full for tier 1
now i need to do a kirin shoot to check if my full merited wind blade kick is *** well
Just adding all that is situational, for solo u want normal hit to land each time so, some merits on acc/macc would be nice...depend the way you play smn
have fun!

Pretty sure he just misread the merits and thought they were -2 cost/upgrade.

First off, sorry for the necro-bump, but better than starting a new thread.

I am going to be leveling SMN, and I was wondering what different opinions were for merits.

The way I see it for Group 1, Acc/MAB seems to be the way to go.

For Group 2, I am a little unsure. Here are a few different patterns that I have seen.

Opt. 1: 5/5 in two different BP

Opt. 2: 5/5 in one, 1/5 in the rest

Opt. 3: 3/5 in two, 1/5 in the rest

Opt. 4: 2/5 in all but Meteor Strike (I can only assume because Flaming Crush also does fire damage)

Opt. 5: Mixture of 1/5 and 2/5 based on player preference

I was just curious what options people use, and what elements they prefer. General Summoner advice is also accepted.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: Oh yeah, I do Voidwatch, so would it be worthwhile to have at least 1/5 in all for procing purposes?

Yes.

I would recommend doing 1/5 in all 6 and then depending on your play style possibly cap one to 5/5 that you find you use the most.

I personally have 5/5 in Wind Blade for Garuda and 1/5 in the rest. I used to have 5/5 in Heavenly Strike when a lot of us summoners were all hot for Atma of the Beyond and Shiva's damage potential but, for me, those days have passed.

Yeah, I was leaning towards doing that. Thanks for the advice.

That's pretty much the route I went. I jumped between Wind Blade for the old Kirin kiting, then played with Geocrush for stun effect. Once aby hit and before we found Razed Ruin It was Heavenly Strike. Now I am leaning towards Thunderstorm for the additional Shock Squall.

how high is the dmg difference between 1/5 and 5/5 merits in magic bps?

Each upgrade is about 20 dmg.

It's actually around a 100~ damage increase per 40 avatar TP, hopped on to test 40TP difference using caller's pendant and wind blade with no gear on went from 1725 to 1865 on a lv1 mob, gonna test it a bit more though.

Unfortunately, yes ... if you're using SMN specifically for Voidwatch, it's wise to have all the merited BP's available.

Personally, I did 5 Avatar accuracy, 2 Avatar attack, 3 Avatar Magic accuracy, 5 Ifrit, and 5 Shiva. I don't use SMN for Voidwatch.

Avatar accuracy is important in my opinion because multi-mit physical-type BP's have a tendency to miss, and when they do, the damage decrease is often a lot.
Avatar MAB I believe is less important, since there's a whole lotta gear available to boost Avatar MAB. Avatar Magic accuracy, on the other hand, is smart to merit in my opinion ... at least until you're able to cap Summoning Skill. Unless you're a main-job SMN, or use a bot, leveling summoning skill is painfully slow.

I like Shiva's BP for the same reason lots of people prefer ice spells when nuking as a SCH or RDM ... lots of type of mobs are non-resistant to ice spells. Likewise, not a lot of mob types are resistant to fire spells, so I went with Ifrit BP, too. This little trinket sealed the deal for me when I was choosing.

Having them all unlocked at least 1/5 is the best option for proccing purposes in VW, but it's a huge drop in damage output for merit BPs, unless you have 1 maxed out and stick with that for magic damage dealing, which can limit when you can use it.

If you want to use group 2 for pure damage, choosing 2 and maxing them is the best option imo, and that they aren't elements that *** you over against a specific element where neither are good against it, (Wind blade+heavenly strike vs an ice based mob.)

5/5 Avatar magic attack merits are the best thing you can merit in group 1 assuming you frequently use magic damage, +10 MAB for nothing is great, and I have never encountered a serious macc problem on mobs without specific magic resistances.

This was in full avatar: mab gear I have, without gear it was adding 120~140 when I used caller's pendant to give garuda 40TP, then taking it off at exactly 40TP before BPing, here it boosted the damage by 159.

I'm 5/5 on wind blade, meaning I should have a 160 TP bonus at 0%, assuming the TP > damage formula is the same throughout 0~300 TP, we're talking around a 500-800+ damage difference in being 1/5 and 5/5.

Agreed, Kunimatsu.

Unless someone is specifically meriting all Merit BPs for "!!" in Voidwatch, it's definitely superior and preferred to do two 5/5 merit BP's, rather than all 1/5's.

Seems I misread the question lol, I thought he was askign how much does each upgrade for avatar mab add XD

If you have equipment that helps avatar accuracy, and capped SMN skill and some gear I'd just go 5/5 with Physical and Magic attack.

It's definitely useful to unlock all 6 BPs to give yourself the flexibility and also for procs in VW.

It's worth mentioning and remembering that the extra merits do nothing to increase your maximum damage for that BP. In other words you can occasionally make up for that dmg disparity through TP gains on your avatar, TP bonus and Mana Cede.

Also even if you only power 1 BP to 5/5 you'll be able to see much utility from it because your avatar shouldn't have problems landing unresisted. If it does, then either the rest of the BPs will do the same or you'll have to pick a specific element.

As for Group1, I went with elemental mP cost because I do like to use them, and phy acc, because even with a ton of skill over cap you can see your avatar will still be whiffing, as opposed to magic. The second best stat to merit is magic attack, because you really don't need magic accuracy for magic BPs if you have skill gear and attack does next to nothing

Unless you are only a VW proc smn, this is horrible smn advice.

If you're using the BP on a constant basis, especially every 45 seconds, I really doubt you're making up for that lost TP bonus outside of mana cede, which is a 5min recast JA, so you end up losing a lot of damage over time.

Remember that even at 5/5, you still need 100 more TP to reach "300%", so even with caller's spats +2 you're 50TP shy of the cap (not counting melee hits and caller's pendant tics). This gives a 5/5 BP an advantage of being able to deal as close to maximum damage as possible whenever it's ready, even when the avatar is freshly summoned.

Saying that, the only times having just 1 maxed out BP does badly is against mobs that resist that specific element, since they all have the same base damage.

I haven't started doing VW yet let alone on SMN, so I speak from a full damage not caring about procs perspective.

Avatars can't get 100% acc, you will already be capped on almost everything not voidwatch.

I think you misunderstand me.

It's quite obvious that 5/5 will do more damage than 1/5, but my point was really that if you're going 5/5 you only need to do it on 1 element if you're going for max damage. If you're the type to exploit elemental weakness, then 1/5 on the rest instead of a second 5/5 will do you more good.

My point of mentioning cede/spats bonus was that they could help to close the dmg disparity by a little (by about 15%, because 5/5 with spats tpbonus + enhanced cede = well over 300%). If your avatars can be left out or melee, then the gap closes even more.

More importantly, it expands your options by giving every celestial a decent nuke and opens up all procs for VW. This allows you more flexibility to pick avatars based on their elemental defense traits, because mostly their elemental attack doesn't matter - the 5/5 one will be best, but the 1/5 one still isn't bad.

As for the part about accuracy. Your acc isn't an issue for old-world (pre Abyssea content), but for VW, WoE and new Dynamis NMs you're going to need that acc. We have every reason to expect that all new events will feature high level mobs so acc will become a focus again. And although merit BPs have generally shown to be better/more reliable in VW and so on, we'll want some degree of reliability for our physical pacts because not everything will take magic damage well.