-BP gear macro/timingFollow

Silly question right?
I want to know how some of you setup your macro for switching to -bp gear to do bloodpacts and switching back,the process like do you change gear then bp or issue bp and change gear.

How does changing gear effect your MP?
How low can you get your BP timer with gear you can buy?
I would like to know the exact sequence of your macro.

Thank you,

I don't know. I don't pay attention to my MP because I don't gear for MP+. I'm pretty sure that macro swapping causes me to lose 50 or so MP, but after the first BP, it doesn't matter anyway.


That would be Austere gear. NQ Austere will give you -6 among the pieces. HQ Austere (Penance) would give you -9. However, it would be ill-advised to not at least quest some of your AF gear, since a fair amount of it is going to be useful the rest of your Summoning life.



Since I have a palette devoted to each Avatar, my macros look like this:

Macro 1 - Summon (Control 1)
Macro 2 (optional) - Assault (Control 2)
Macro 3 - BP Reduction gear (Alt 3)
Macro 4 - BP itself (including +Smn. Skill gear) (Alt 4-7)
Macro 5 - "Standing" macro, which is basically -Perp. Gear and an Orochi Nodowa since I use a Sacrifice Torque during my Rage BPs.

With your Avatar out, use one macro to swap into your BP reduction gear. The optimal time to switch from BP- to +Skill would be as your Avatar does their "readying" animation for the BP in question. You don't need any sort of delay since the animation takes longer than the actual game calculations (which are near instantaneous). After your Avatar completes the BP, use another macro to swap back into perpetuation gear, or resting gear if you dismiss, etc. etc.

Ok, so I have basically the same kind of thing going with my macro sets.
I have a seperate set for each avatar.
I'm I wrong with the thought that + summoning skill increases damage with physical bloodpacts?

I ask that because I was wondering about the process of swapping to -bp gear, initiating bloodpact then swapping to + summoning skill gear to get max damage.
I think thats what you were getting at Dzian but wanted to clarify.

You said I didnt need a wait timer so could my macro look like this:
/ equip head "Austere Hat"
/equip insert here lol
/bp "Mountain Buster" <t>
/equip head "Evokers Horn"
/equip insert here

Does that work and will give me the minus to bp and then the + summoning magic?

At the moment I have no AF2, I would like to obtain it but it hasnt happened yet.

While you are correct that the macro wouldn't work, it's not always the case.

Just to clarify, you often don't need a /wait. However, there can be a problem with it interpreting your swap as a "toggle". What I mean by that is when you make a macro that has two /equip commands for the same equipment slot, it will ignore one of the two commands. If you already have the first piece equipped, it'll ignore the first and equip the second. Otherwise it'll equip the first and ignore the second. Putting /pet commands and other similar commands between the /equip macros doesn't seem to stop this from happening, but a /wait does.


Thus, this won't work:
/equip head "Summoner's Horn"
/pet "Hastega" <me>
/equip head "Marduk's Tiara"
/equip legs "Marduk's Shalwar"


However, adding a "/wait" or swapping the order of the last two lines would solve the problem:
/equip head "Summoner's Horn"
/pet "Hastega" <me>
/wait 1
/equip head "Marduk's Tiara"
/equip legs "Marduk's Shalwar"

/equip head "Summoner's Horn"
/pet "Hastega" <me>
/equip legs "Marduk's Shalwar"
/equip head "Marduk's Tiara"

The only reason I bring this up is because it can be nice to know if you are running out of macro lines and want to get rid of that /wait by changing the order in which you swap the gear. The only time the /wait actually serves a function is if you have it before swapping something that increases MP drain such as Sacrifice Torque or swapping out a piece that reduces perp cost.

Edited, May 26th 2009 12:38pm by Pergatory

That is an interesting thing I've noticed when summoning carby. The change to carby mitts usually lower my MP max, and I've noticed that after summoning carby I'm usually at cap. So it would seem like summoning cost is deducted from the MP pool you had before gear changing.

Not sure if it depends on timing since I've only observed it a few times and mostly never thought about it.

Summoning skill should be the primary focus in your rage macros. You get oodles more opportunity to equip Skill than you get to increase your damage. And since our most utilized physical BPs (Predator Claws, Chaotic Strike) are multiple hit, you should prioritize Accuracy over Attack.

You equip Accuracy for consistant damage, not for spikes in damage output.

Multiple Hit Accuracy Model:
Know that each hit of a multi-hit weaponskill, or bloodpact, runs through the accuracy calculation individually.

When Garuda has an average accuracy rating of 70%, the following reflects the percentage of time that she will connect all 3 hits of Predator Claws:

Hit 1   Hit 2   Hit 3    3/3 Hit Accuracy 
(.70) x (.70) x (.70) =    .343 or 34.3% 

Hypothetically, if +20 Summoning Skill raises Garuda's accuracy on BPs by 10%, effectively making it 80%, then the model for 3/3 Pred Claws looks like this:

Hit 1   Hit 2   Hit 3    3/3 Hit Accuracy 
(.80) x (.80) x (.80) =    .512 or 51.2% 

In the same hypotheticals, if Garuda can reach the soft Accuracy cap of 95%, the model looks like this:

Hit 1   Hit 2   Hit 3    3/3 Hit Accuracy 
(.95) x (.95) x (.95) =    .8574 or 85.74%

Mellowy, at the best possible situation, Predator Claws will still miss one hit of the three 15 times in 100. And we both know that the best possible situation is not realistic for many mobs that a Summoner places his avatar on.

For those of you reading, if you do not know how multi-hit weaponskills/BPs work in terms of accuracy, learn this, and never forget it.

In addition, straight Accuracy increase does nothing for critical hit rate either, unless Avatars are coded differently (highly unlikely). Indirectly, I guess, the more hits you connect, the more opportunity you have to hit for a critical, which just reinforces the use of Summoning Skill in multi-hit BPs that can critical.

I want to know what you're fighting where Karura's attack boost is "killer." Everything I've seen points to it being modest at best. Without knowing the exact correlation skill has on accuracy, it's safe to assume it's better. Only at high accuracy rates will attack beat accuracy. Think Cuchulains vs Amemet+1 or Foragers (even just WSing).

As for the -2 perp, you should be swapping BP gear out when it's done, you lose something like 4 MP a BP.
They're both accuracy, with AF probably edging out. Don't forget, the argument was that skill increases accuracy, and the accuracy is what makes it a primary concern.

For all we know, the attack boost could be anything from +5 to just +10. Attack is only a fractional increase to the final damage (something like base dmg * att/def). If anything, accuracy is a better direct stat boost than attack, it's a direct increase to your hit rate. It takes a large amount of attack to cause more damage than additional hits. Across any given time period, consistency usually wins.

Does that mean you ignore attack? No, but you don't equip it based on assumptions, eyeballing (which I'm betting you did), or "killer" boosts. You need to figure out when your hit rate is high enough that attack edges out, and I'm willing to bet few SMNs actually reach that level.

Our biggest obstacle is figuring out how skill correlates to accuracy. It's a non-trivial ratio, all things considered, given most SMNs reports.

Edited, May 28th 2009 12:39am by jlejeune

The arguement has never been that skill improves accuracy. the arguement is essentially whether skill should take priority over other stats.

about a year ago ago i did some testing on the af legs. nothing extravagant just beat the hell out of a bunch of even match crabs in the tree without them and then beat the crap out of a bunch of even match crabs in the tree with them. while limited tests i'd found af to give my avatar (fenrir for my tests) a 6.8% accuracy boost. which i had guessed equates to 10-15 accuracy accounting for margin of error from the limited sample sizes.

admiteddly i have been meaning to go continue testing and get more accurate numbers and also tests on the affects of skill but to be frank its not the top of my priorities list.

i hypothosise and based on Acturus numbers above he would agree that based on the way melee jobs work that 1 skill equates to ~1 accuracy thus in terms of legs i could get ~5acc from oracles or the 10-15 i found from my testing with af. thus based on this giving oracles priority is wrong. now of course avatar accuracy might follow a completely different logic to melee but neither i or anyone can be sure of this at present.

finally in relation to expense i had not meant monetary value. i had meant that to trade for example 5 skill the for af legs enhance avatar accuracy effect was a big price to pay for a little skill.

one of these days i or someone will do more testing on af/skill stats and with bigger samples of results a more accurate number for the accuracy granted by af should be easy to find.

comparing the accuracy boost granted by skill to /attack boosts from relic / karura. using af/nashira would grant about 2% accuraccy bonus from each slot (based solely on the hypothosis of 1skill = 1acc. now while there are no numbers for the attack bonuses granted from karura/relic it wouldn't need to be an overly huge amount to par / beat 2%. and even less of an amount if you let your avatar melee aswell as rage.

so going back to arguement that skill should take priority over direct avatar boosts i find that nothing offers enough skill to compete with these boosts.

back to my af legs vs +skill legs. translating the 6.8% from my findings into accuracy equate to ~13acc. thus for any legs to compete they would need to offer more than 13 skill.

sadly more tests are fairly low on my to do list but its an easy enough test. simply kill x number of mobs without af legs and x number of mobs with af. keeping the rest of your gear the same and making sure all mobs are even match the only thing affecting theaccuracy of your findings will be the value you give x. (which for me was a rather low 20 for each test)

Edited, May 28th 2009 2:17pm by Dzian

Acturus we still need to do that testing we had planned :( I'm still game for this if you'd like to start on it sometime. I'll have to update the version of DirectParse that I modified for our purposes but it shouldn't be too difficult.

Yep this is what I do too. Rate up for the concise post.