Duoing HNM's and other questions.

[Theiry]

Hey everyone. I started playing Summoner recently, and I really like it so far. My brother and I play together all the time, and we are having a lot of fun duoing our Summoners. We level really well (for us anyway) and we seem to be pretty powerful. We decided to level our Summoners as our main jobs, but I don't know much about high level Summoners. I looked around the forum to learn as much as I can, but I still have some questions that I hope some of you can answer. I'm going to ask all the questions I want answered in this post, so I'm sorry for it being long. I've tried to find the answers on my own.

1) I've heard so many people say that Beastmasters can duo (and solo) NM's and some HNM's really easily, and I've heard that 'There aren't many monsters that a Summoner can't marathon'. But I also hear that high level Summoners have a hard time with Even Match+ monsters. So my question is, can two high level Summoners duo HNM's like Beastmasters can? (Or at all for that matter)

I am leveling Alchemy, and my brother is leveling Cooking. Neither of us mind farming/camping/loging/whatever to get items for synthesis, so we should be able to use a ton of MP restoring items if we need too. So if running out of MP is the only problem, we can get past that. But we are worried that our avatars will die too quickly and not be able to hold enmity, or that they won't be able to deal enough damage.

Sorry for not giving more detail on what HNM's we want to duo someday. I don't really know much about HNM's. So I guess I just want to know if they can duo tough monsters like Beastmasters, Ninjas, and a Red Mages can.


2) The second question of mine is about the Summoner AF gloves (the Evoker's Bracers). The ones that 'Occasionally convert damage taken of avatar element to MP'. I have never heard much about them, and I was wondering how they work exactly. How often does it trigger? And does it convert 1:1 damage to MP?


3) Does the 'Weather: Avatar perpetuation cost -3' effect of the Summoner's Horn trigger when it's a double element? (You know, like double fire in Altepa. Where it has two icons.)


4) I'm not sure anyone knows this for sure, but I'll ask anyway. What exactly does 'Avatar: Enmity-3' do (it's on some of the summoner AF). I've heard it means your avatars enmity is -3, and I've heard that it's more like 'When you have an avatar out: Enmity -3' (Which makes allot of sense actually...) I'm hoping someone can clear that up for me.


5) I've heard people say that using the Assault command takes 5 seconds off of your blood pact timer, is that true? I've tried to test it, and it seems like it might be true. But I'm not sure. I've heard that KOing a monster does the same thing. So, if any of this is true, what all takes 5 seconds off?


6) This is a bit off topic, but I hope someone can answer it anyway. How do Hyper Ether's work? All the sites I've found about it just list that it restores 125 MP, it doesn't say how long it takes to use or how long until you can use another one. Do any of you know? I'm sorry for asking this here, but I want to know for my Summoner, and I don't have enough gil to test it myself (they are 50,000+ gil last I saw).


That's all the questions I can think of right now. Sorry again for the long post. I just thought I should get all my questions out of the way in one post. I'm also sorry if these have been answered before, I really did look (for quite a while) to find the answers on my own. Anyway, thanks for any replies. I love playing Summoner, and I'm sure I'll love it even more when I learn more about it.

[grunion]

1) summoner has 2 ways to kill high level NMs:

carby melee: this gives you back +1mp/3sec with the right gear, but kills slowly and with very little hate management. you can regen yourself but any curing or buffing will pull hate off the monster and onto you

fenrir/avatar melee+BP: this kills much faster, and the hate will be solidly on the avatar so you can cure yourself or whatever. the downside is MP usage. with very good gear (penance robe, royal cloak, etc) i have 1400 mp and fenrir costs -4 every 3 seconds. that's 1050 seconds or 17 minutes keeping him out (unless you use bloodpacts. also remember that when the avatar dies, hate will be back on you.

what i generally do is alternate carby with a tougher avatar. carby allows me to refresh some MP and the other avatar does damage. however carby has to reliably hit the monster. if your avatar dies and comes after you, carby can pull hate with 1 hit. but if carby misses a few times in a row, youll be dead. that's really the only risk factor outside of your control.

the bottom line is:
if your carby can reliably land 50% of attacks
if carby lasts longer than 30 seconds before dying
if you have a big enough area you can run back and forth far enough to summon carby, without getting agro from other monsters
and if you have good gear that gets you 1mp back while carby is out

you can kill something no matter how hard it is. even match-tough stuff is no problem at all at 70+ if you have decent gear.

2) no high-level summoners i know of use the gloves. carby mitts, austere mitts, or AF2 gloves are god. AF gloves are useless. that being said, i believe the way they work is that your avatar absorbs damage of its own element sometimes (like 20% of the time i heard) and give you back that amount of damage as MP. but this only works if, for example, you have ifrit out and something casts Flare on it. which is rare.

3) it triggers on 1 or 2 weather icons, but it's always -3 (not -6 for double weather)

4) there was some debate over this but from what i've read the final word is that it's literally avatar enmity -3. which sucks, because you WANT your avatar to have enmity

5) yes it's true. when i'm in a hurry to kill stuff i always retreat+attack and it definitely seems to knock several seconds off the timer. should be easy to set up a test w/ a stopwatch but i haven't bothered

6) hyper ether works very fast, about 2 seconds. you can only use it once every 10 mins or so (might be 5 mins but there is definitely a delay)

[Theiry]

Cool, thank you =) I have a few more questions about your replies though.

(In reply to your answer to number one)
1) Good, I was really hoping they could duo NM's well. I love trying to do things that are considered impossible (or at least really hard). It looks like Summoner is the job for me to do that with =)

2) no high-level summoners i know of use the gloves. carby mitts, austere mitts, or AF2 gloves are god. AF gloves are useless. that being said, i believe the way they work is that your avatar absorbs damage of its own element sometimes (like 20% of the time i heard) and give you back that amount of damage as MP. but this only works if, for example, you have ifrit out and something casts Flare on it. which is rare.

I have two questions about that. First, I can see why Carby Mitts and the AF2 Gloves are good, but why are the Austere Mitts considered that good?

And the second question about that is, can avatars absorb non-magic elemental attacks too? Like if a goblin used Bomb Toss on Ifrit could he convert that to MP? (Same with Self Destruct and other elemental based attacks.) Or is it just magic attacks? How about damage from spikes and en-spells?

3) it triggers on 1 or 2 weather icons, but it's always -3 (not -6 for double weather)

Awesome =) That has to be really nice in areas that always have double elements.

4) there was some debate over this but from what i've read the final word is that it's literally avatar enmity -3. which sucks, because you WANT your avatar to have enmity

That's too bad =l. That would be fatal when trying to duo or solo something really tough. Though I suppose it could have it's uses when duoing, I doubt it would ever be of much use.

5) yes it's true. when i'm in a hurry to kill stuff i always retreat+attack and it definitely seems to knock several seconds off the timer. should be easy to set up a test w/ a stopwatch but i haven't bothered

Cool =) I've got to mess around with that. Shaving time off of the BP timer could be a huge help in timed battles like BCNM's.

6) hyper ether works very fast, about 2 seconds. you can only use it once every 10 mins or so (might be 5 mins but there is definitely a delay)

That's good to hear. At least the part about it going off quickly. It seems Elixirs are a better value though, unless they have a re-use timer too. I just have one more question about these (and other ethers) can you use other medicines while still waiting for the re-use time to be up? I mean, could you use a Pro-Ether (that has a 16 minute re-use timer) and then use a Hyper Ether right afterwards? Or does that effect lock out all medicines?


Sorry for so many questions =) There's so much to know about Summoners, and so little information online about it. Thanks again for your reply.

[grunion]

First, I can see why Carby Mitts and the AF2 Gloves are good, but why are the Austere Mitts considered that good? lower BP timer. they aren't great but they are better than AFcan avatars absorb non-magic elemental attacks too? Like if a goblin used Bomb Toss on Ifrit could he convert that to MP? (Same with Self Destruct and other elemental based attacks.) Or is it just magic attacks? How about damage from spikes and en-spells? dunno, i dont think anyone has tested them out that much. if you look around online you might find the answer but i have no idea.can you use other medicines while still waiting for the re-use time to be up? I mean, could you use a Pro-Ether (that has a 16 minute re-use timer) and then use a Hyper Ether right afterwards? Or does that effect lock out all medicines? i'm not sure. i know you can use juice but that's a food, not a medicine. i never tried another medicine after hyper ether