Dear fellow summoners, if you could share your stories, tips and strategy on soloing Abysea NMs for others. Keep the format short and simple but hopefully quite helpful for other aspiring summoners out there. Thanks and happy sharing!!
I will start with some of mine, hope y'all can add more
Just to add additional notes: although summoner solo is rather fun, hate management is a big issue, especially if you are dealing with NM with hate decay or hate reset. If you plan to duo trio with another jobs, beast master would be the best combo, and a black mage if you are planning to farm plus 2. Can also bring another job for red or blue proc but only going in and out to do just that. Beast + Smn + Blm are a very nice trio to put together if you just want to plus 2 items. The same can be said with Beast + Blm duo but BST may consume some pet food and dawn mulsum.
You can also use Selenian Cap augmented with Pet Damage Taken -10% and Staff Trial 3041 for another additional -12% if mp is not an issue. Basically doing what most beast master do with their damage reduction gears for pet.
What to bring: 3-5 Dawn Mulsum for emergency, make sure to get at least healing salve 1 for temp items, clear salve 1-2, and all the mp + hp recovery temp items - things can turn bad, best to be prepared.
Atmas to have:
The basic set: Ducal Guard (quested), Mounted Champion, Minikin Monstrosity, Razed Ruin, Gnarled Horn, Stronghold, Future Fabulous, Ultimate
The elemental damage set: Atma of the Cosmos + Banisher (dark), Atma of the Claw (Earth), Atma of Smoldering Sky + Lone Wolf (fire), Atma of the Beyond + Undying (ice), Atma of the Beyond + Sellsword (light), Atma of the Lion + Blinding Horn (thunder), Atma of the Noxious Fang + Tusked Terror (water), Atma of the Gales (wind)
What to merits:
This is up to you, most summoners pick 2 of the tier 2 merit BP of their favorite avatars. Most NMs are weak vs water, ice, wind, thunder. To have wind + ice or thunder + water would be nice since its complementary. Or if you want to have a happy medium, you do your first pick with 5 merit, second pick 3 merits, and last pick 2 merits. Your last two merited BP will deal less damage but at least you have a few more handy. Most people pick Heavenly Strike due to Atma of the Beyond + Ultimate for big damage, but the same set up can also be used with Grand Fall (Noxious Fang + Ultimate), Wind Blade (Gales + Ultimate).
In general, NM that has hate reset move should be fight with caution due our not having Snarl JA. Mob that spam different elemental magic is also problematic and need to time to BP to stun it. NM that does mostly physical TP moves are easier to handle. NMs that has added effect of poison, bio and amnesia are also problematic.
DISTANCE is your best friend. DO NOT try to melee, or getting too close to NMs, stay as far as possible and only go near to use BP but always try to be at the very far edge as possible. Most of these mobs has huge AOE range, and some very annoying auras, it will kill taru summoners rather easily if you are not careful and get hit within its AOE moves. Magic AOE is extremely deadly. Getting hit by multiple ga spells during NM's chain spell while getting poisoned and paralyzed aura is not fun, if you get petrified or doomed then it's reraise time.
Always have your buffs ready, with aqua veil, blink, and stoneskin. Very important to have aqua veil handy in case things go bad and NMs going after you as you are trying to resummon. Subjobs is up to you, but I prefer white mage or scholar. In abyssea - MP should not be a problem, white mage subs give more bang for your buck, with bar spells, cure 4, and reraise. Why Scholar and not Red Mage? Some of these NMs required that you can land dispel, Scholar sub with Dark Arts will raise your dark magic skill considerably to 350s which let you land dispel. Also if you plan to come with blue/ninja, and blm/bard, you do want to sub scholar for dispel to cover dark magic proc.
SUMMONING MAGIC - what does it do exactly?
It affect the duration of your Blood Pact ward and its effectiveness, and made it possible to reach their maximum time allowed. ALSO it affect your Avatar Physical and Magical Accuracy by a great deal, a summoner with low level summon magic can still land Predator Claw for those OMG nice numbers, but you will miss a lot by a great deal and your PC won't land all three hits so the number can seems so random with lots of lows and few highs. This one is a royal pain to skill ups, but doing a lot of these small groups NMs hunting will get you a great deal of skill ups.