The Grand Summoner FAQ and Advice Compendium

[Zholi]

snip

Subject to change, but this is what I'm working towards (rings are Allagan and Hero's): http://xivdb.com/?wardrobe/2755/SMN-Goal

This is the true best set for high end content, imo. I don't buy those stat weights, btw, and there is no situation I would ever use ilevel 70 gear over 90. People who would use crafted gear over Allagan/Myth are just desperately trying to delude themselves into thinking crafted gear can be more than a mere stopgap. It can't.

[T0rin]

Subject to change, but this is what I'm working towards (rings are Allagan and Hero's): http://xivdb.com/?wardrobe/2755/SMN-Goal

This is the true best set for high end content, imo. I don't buy those stat weights, btw, and there is no situation I would ever use ilevel 70 gear over 90. People who would use crafted gear over Allagan/Myth are just desperately trying to delude themselves into thinking crafted gear can be more than a mere stopgap. It can't.

Don't buy it? Either the ratios are wrong or not, but the weighting is based on that. Is was merely meant as a guide for what you can substitute for what, in order to meet the 100% accuracy for Garuda cap, with the smallest sacrifice possible. The AF2 Legs and Shoes represent the largest sacrifice of DPS for a gain of accuracy of all the possible trade-offs, overmelded i70 items included.

Edit: What I'd like to know, is what the true accuracy cap for SMN is, to maintain 100% on Garuda. I know my 459 accuracy is definitely more than enough for T5, I'd just like to know by how much. I _think_ it is in the high 440 range, but I'm really not sure. If we knew the cap, or a very close estimate, it would be a lot easier to figure out definitely, what is the best SMN set to hit that cap without food.

[Zholi]

Don't buy it? Either the ratios are wrong or not, but the weighting is based on that. Is was merely meant as a guide for what you can substitute for what, in order to meet the 100% accuracy for Garuda cap, with the smallest sacrifice possible. The AF2 Legs and Shoes represent the largest sacrifice of DPS for a gain of accuracy of all the possible trade-offs, overmelded i70 items included.

Melded or not, i70 is just flat-out worse than i90. I am not trading real INT for someone's educated guess at effective INT. An item of a given level has a certain amount of room to allocate primary and secondary stats to. I also refuse to believe the amount of DET, CRIT, etc. allowed on an item of a given item level is completely arbitrary. I imagine it is based on formulas and calculations done by the game designers. The choice we have in gear is to decide which secondary stats benefit our job and/or goals the most. But i70 will never beat i90 because it has fewer stat points allocated to work with, even after melds.

It is a very risky thing to trade a sure thing (real INT, more total secondary stats (even if they aren't all in what you want most)) for a forum user's guess.

[T0rin]

It is a very risky thing to trade a sure thing (real INT, more total secondary stats (even if they aren't all in what you want most)) for a forum user's guess.

Except it isn't my 'guess', it is a collection of all the data I could find by everyone who had done research on the topic. Yes, you have no reason to believe me or anyone else as to the accuracy of the values of various stats compared to int. But for the sake of argument, assuming they are accurate, you have to accept the possibility that i70 gear overmelded to have specific stats (not whatever happens to be on an allagan or af2 piece) could potentially outweigh the benefit of a single piece of i90 gear. We mix and match for a reason, because a single full set (all allagan, or all af2) is simply not optimal. We pick the best mix of pieces to give us the best outcome, and the simple reality is, when you pick the best pieces for damage, you end up with sub-par accuracy.

If you want to bring your accurate up from the 'best' damage set, to a set that has a little less damage, but enough accuracy to 100% with garuda, you have finite options available. Most of which are overmelded i70 gear, because practically none of the i90 jewlery has accuracy on it.

Simply put, the sacrifice of 4 int on a piece of jewlery for 12 accuracy and some secondary stats (crit, det, whatever) can be a better deal than using one i90 piece (af2 legs instead of allagan legs) instead of another. You're basically advocating that the 34 crit you lose on Allagan legs is worth the 10 accuracy and 17 det you gain from using AF2 legs. I'm saying that you lose more than you would if you say, gave up 4 int to get 12 acc and some secondary stats by switching to i70 overmelded jewlery.

34 crit is nothing to turn your nose up at.

Basically, it comes down to a very much assumed design decision on your part. You assume the game's designers built it so that no i70 piece, regardless of being fit with 5 pieces of materia, could ever possibly outweigh the benefit of an i90 piece, with sub-par secondary stats, simply on the merit of some arbitrary assumption that you have more total stats allocated. What you're comparing is like apples to apples, except one of the apples is covered in caramel and nuts. It may be a little smaller apple, but it's covered in caramel and nuts! Maybe that's worth more than 20% less apple.

Not to mention, there is no i90 jewelry with Vitality on it, and since total hp is an issue in coils, getting up there with extra vit from jewelry can do something for you that no i90 piece can.

[Kevee]

snip

The only thing I don't agree with is Spell Speed. The others? Yeah, but I feel you're greatly under-valuing it, or whoever you got that value from is under-valuing it. Especially since we get a passive ~2-3% boost(4-6% if you use ifrit), and it makes SF cast faster than 2.5s cast skills(EDIT: I mean skills with longer cast times get bigger returns on spell speed).

[T0rin]

The only thing I don't agree with is Spell Speed. The others? Yeah, but I feel you're greatly under-valuing it, or whoever you got that value from is under-valuing it. Especially since we get a passive ~2-3% boost(4-6% if you use ifrit), and it makes SF cast faster than 2.5s cast skills(EDIT: I mean skills with longer cast times get bigger returns on spell speed).

From all the research I did, that valuation was arrived at mainly due to the nature of how summoner plays. Most of our damage come from DoTs, which get a minor bonus from spell speed, but you only cast once every 15-45 seconds. Then we've got secondary damage, from the likes of Ruin, which is a much smaller percent of our total DPS output, where spell speed would have more of an ongoing impact on, akin to BLM. I am skeptical about all the information, but it is the only data I have access to, so you pretty much have to go off of that. Unlike BLM, it seems that the kind of people who like to do the analytical analysis on damage don't play SMNs.

I'd love to see some more hard numbers to come to some really concrete conclusions, but until someone does the leg work, this is the most accurate anyone can be.

[xxalucard]

Except it isn't my 'guess', it is a collection of all the data I could find by everyone who had done research on the topic. Yes, you have no reason to believe me or anyone else as to the accuracy of the values of various stats compared to int. But for the sake of argument, assuming they are accurate, you have to accept the possibility that i70 gear overmelded to have specific stats (not whatever happens to be on an allagan or af2 piece) could potentially outweigh the benefit of a single piece of i90 gear. We mix and match for a reason, because a single full set (all allagan, or all af2) is simply not optimal. We pick the best mix of pieces to give us the best outcome, and the simple reality is, when you pick the best pieces for damage, you end up with sub-par accuracy.

If you want to bring your accurate up from the 'best' damage set, to a set that has a little less damage, but enough accuracy to 100% with garuda, you have finite options available. Most of which are overmelded i70 gear, because practically none of the i90 jewlery has accuracy on it.


Simply put, the sacrifice of 4 int on a piece of jewlery for 12 accuracy and some secondary stats (crit, det, whatever) can be a better deal than using one i90 piece (af2 legs instead of allagan legs) instead of another. You're basically advocating that the 34 crit you lose on Allagan legs is worth the 10 accuracy and 17 det you gain from using AF2 legs. I'm saying that you lose more than you would if you say, gave up 4 int to get 12 acc and some secondary stats by switching to i70 overmelded jewlery.

34 crit is nothing to turn your nose up at.

Basically, it comes down to a very much assumed design decision on your part. You assume the game's designers built it so that no i70 piece, regardless of being fit with 5 pieces of materia, could ever possibly outweigh the benefit of an i90 piece, with sub-par secondary stats, simply on the merit of some arbitrary assumption that you have more total stats allocated. What you're comparing is like apples to apples, except one of the apples is covered in caramel and nuts. It may be a little smaller apple, but it's covered in caramel and nuts! Maybe that's worth more than 20% less apple.

Not to mention, there is no i90 jewelry with Vitality on it, and since total hp is an issue in coils, getting up there with extra vit from jewelry can do something for you that no i90 piece can.

I don't see why there is a reason to sacrifice an optimal i90 BiS set for some more accuracy. You're severely over-estimating how much garuda will miss at ~424 accuracy and the trade off for how much extra damage you do with the int + other stats should more than make up for it. The Vit boost you get from the i90 main armor pieces add up to more than enough hp for turn 5 fireballs, so there really is no argument (when you can have a full 90 set) to ever use melded gear with VIT, since it won't help DPS and you will already have more than enough hp to survive.

I agree that allagan legs are much better than AF2 legs (Not sure what the guy was thinking with that) for the reasons you mention.

@kevee- spell speed sucks. I have no idea why you would think anyone under-values the least helpful statistic in the game, especially when the placeholder stat in other gear is usually crit or DET (both better stats for dps, even det). In any burst situation even with full spell speed gear it isn't enough to ever be more DPS than one of the alternative placeholder stats, and will gimp you and the party compared to better dps alternates. Also there's an invisible GCD between all skills, even between on-gcd and off-gcd skills (you cannot use both types simultaneously, unlike pet skills which you CAN use simultaneously with casting a spell), rendering any GCD speed-boost useless, and the only possible benefit being in the actual cast time of a skill itself. That boost to the cast speed is negligible and if it didn't have a different number on the skill description you'd have no idea it was any faster...that's how insignificant it is.

[T0rin]

I don't see why there is a reason to sacrifice an optimal i90 BiS set for some more accuracy. You're severely over-estimating how much garuda will miss at ~424 accuracy and the trade off for how much extra damage you do with the int + other stats should more than make up for it.

Well, thing is, I'm not over-estimating anything. I simply did an analysis on the best pieces to swap out BiS pieces for, if your goal is to get more accuracy. I'm not saying 450 accuracy is better than 424 accuracy in terms of overall damage. People can come to their own conclusions about how they value the Garuda DPS, or whether missing in Turn 5 matters more or less than not missing everywhere else and doing more damage. I'm not telling people how to gear, I just tried to show which pieces give the best 'bang for your buck' in terms of accuracy gains for the DPS loss involved. Other people (Kevee, etc. earlier in this thread) have done some napkin math on DPS gained/lost by not capping Garuda accuracy. If someone feels like they need more accuracy for Garuda, I just tried to provide some analysis that would help them make the best decision of what to do.

The Vit boost you get from the i90 main armor pieces add up to more than enough hp for turn 5 fireballs, so there really is no argument (when you can have a full 90 set) to ever use melded gear with VIT, since it won't help DPS and you will already have more than enough hp to survive.

Key thing to note here.. "when you can have a full 90 set". I don't know about you, but I don't have a full 90 set. I'm on Turn 5. I started playing the game a month ago, I have my Relic +1 and am about to get a single Myth piece next week. I've had 1 single caster item drop for me in the 13 turns I've done to date. I'm sitting in mostly i70 gear, and I have to survive those fireballs and potential divebombs. You know what isn't going to help me survive it now? Waiting another month or two for more AF2 gear or hoping the RNG is in my favor on coil drops. Vitality on i70 gear is something I can do, right now.

Yes, once you have full i90 gear, you don't need vit on jewelry to hit those HP milestones for surviving T5. But, most of us aren't there yet.

[Kevee]

snip

DET is a horrible stat, and until someone properly math-s it out for SMN, I personally value SS more than DET. More up-time on our DoTs, faster SF/Tri-Disaster casts, passive buff, etc.

Not to mention other weights won't be valid for long, because DET has a value based on each ability used.

Not to mention it's also been said that DET has either no, or very very low scaling for any DoTs(or the DoT portion of skills).

http://chocobro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=91

http://chocobro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=101

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...3SjEzeUE#gid=0

[Zholi]

DET is a horrible stat, and until someone properly math-s it out for SMN, I personally value SS more than DET. More up-time on our DoTs, faster SF/Tri-Disaster casts, passive buff, etc.

Not to mention other weights won't be valid for long, because DET has a value based on each ability used.

Not to mention it's also been said that DET has either no, or very very low scaling for any DoTs(or the DoT portion of skills).

http://chocobro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=91

http://chocobro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=101

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...3SjEzeUE#gid=0

One of those posts said a SMN tested gains of only +1 per tick by adding 30 DET. With the damage I do that'd be slightly more than 1% more damage, which is similar to (actually slightly greater than) the gains from adding the same amount of CRIT points (+0.98%) according to Valk's calculator. The gains in both cases are slight, and personally I feel DET is undervalued by most people.