Summoner's Elemental Spirits

[Khamsin]

Granted, spirits do largely suck for any practical, dependable purpose, but they are a fun toy when used effectively. This is the reason for my 5 spirit cost merits. I didn't really see a huge difference between 5/5 and 3/2 physical accuracy/attack, so I put 5 merits into spirit cost for the hell of it. At least that's something I can actually see working, and makes a world of difference for it's intended purpose. This goes a long way toward making them actually manageable.

Now, there are various threads out there on KI and such that outline various spirit tips, like how AF2 pants, skill, day, and weather affect response times, differences between auto-assault and manual-assault modes, etc. What I wanted to do was see what sorts of tips people came up with in the actual effective use of spirits.

For example, if you want your Light Spirit to cast on someone in particular, you point it at them and ensure that they are the first person in its direct line of sight. If you want to make it cast Pro/Shell, cast Regen first. If you want it not to cast (i.e. to preserve its timer so you can force it to cast at will), turn it away from anybody and get on its backside so there is nobody in its line of sight. An extension of this is, say you have a tank, you can point it at the tank in such a way that nobody else is in its direct line of sight, and assuming they already have pro/shell/haste, you can just keep regen on them. This means the Light Spirit will be able to cast, but have nothing to cast and so will just idle. The moment their HP drops, the spirit will instantly toss a cure V out. Alternatively, if you have no RDM or WHM, you could do the same thing and the spirit will keep haste up the moment it drops, and idle the rest of the time waiting for their HP to drop so it can cast Cure V. The important element of this is that you point it directly at the intended target so it doesn't try to regen everybody.

Likewise, for other elements in an offensive capacity, you can leave your spirit out for a bit before aggroing something to get it to immediately cast. Whenever it casts a long-casting spell like tier IV or AM, Assault immediately to reset its casting timer right away rather than after it finishes casting. If the mob is moving (kited), the assault will also ensure the spirit is still in range to cast when it finishes, since they can move and cast at the same time.

So, any summoners out there with any other tips on getting the most out of a spirit and minimizing unwanted actions, downtime, etc?

[Naver]

Light Spirit for me was fun to play with when I used to play SMN. Orange HP member of your alliance = Curaga IV. Spells the Spirit casts: Haste, Regen, Pro IV, Shell IV, Cure V for Defensive spells. I rarely assaulted anything when I used Light Spirit so I'm unsure of the Offensive spell list it has. Something I did notice was, if you were to cast Regen on yourself, the spirit would acknowledge that you did have Regen on and will cast either Pro ,Shell, or Haste instead.

[Dreampainter]

Wow, you just summarized the entire spirit thread. Thats basically it as far as I know. I use my spirits in every ksnm99 rather than avatars for damage because they ofter cheaper and more sustainable damage. Its too bad that they still somewhat suffer from the same problems as avatars, mainly that they seem to be slow when you only need one spell. For this reason I only use them in long fights where the enemy is weak to magic and I have my smn skill maxed out to the point where i can get 3 spells per minute from it.


I used to heal mnk parties in KRT with light spirit, and that just involved getting all the buffs on me, then following the party around with the spirit behind me. It was costing me 1mp/tick so It wasn't a strain, then switch to fire spirit for the ghosts. Since mnk has a hard time with the ghosts compared to the other mobs, that helped a lot. You always want to keep the elemental weakness of the enemy in mind as well as the day and weather.


All I can think of is gear changes when using spirits as opposed to avatars. Of course for spirits you know to never take off the pants and gloves of the relic set. The gloves should only be replaced for the nashira gages if that one more perpetuation will make the spirit free. AF1 horn over relic horn unless the correct weather is out. I was on the verge of trying to understand why the spirit would cast debuffs on enemies much stronger than it, but it seemed the AI was changed before I could figure that out.


Sometimes you can memorize the pattern that spirits follow on a certain tier of enemies. Like fire spirit tends to go Flare >>>FireIV >>>Flare >>> Burn in most cases. I think its technically impossible for one spirit to maintain a constant offense against an enemy without resorting to enfeebles at least once.

[evilpaul]

You can Hastega everyone with Garuda and then toss on a Regen if you want to force it to Pro/Shell slightly faster on otherwise non-Hasted people. You covered basically everything though.

I've got 2/5 Elemental MP Cost so I need to merit some more before I can really play around with them. It's kind of sad that's the most noticeable thing SMN gets to merit.

I got LightSpirit to Holy an Aura Pot for about 35 damage (long story), and it got interrupted trying to Banish III a Aht Urghan Attercop, so I would probably avoid trying to eek damage spells out of it. The Banish line kind of sucks a lot anyway.

How's their magic acc post patch, btw? I've got +30 skill, so I'm unsure whether Avatar Magic Atk would be worth doing?

[Rakshaka]

I think you pretty much summed it up Khamsin. :D

You don't need to hit assault again after you've aggroed something. Once your spirit starts casting, you can hit retreat, and it'll automatically attack the mob, because the mob's aggroed on you. This can be useful, becase you don't have to be next to the mob to do this. This is useful when pulling with ranged attacks.

As far as other spirit tips, air spirit is good vs. imps if you need something fast. It's extremely resistant to deafening tantara, and chances are that you're going to get a good spell out of it. Both silence and gravity are great against imps. This'll give you enough time to run away and cast something more durable.

Also, spirits behave differently in FMF. Light spirit will cast on anyone in range, not just on people in front of him. And he has to stop moving to cast. I think this also affects avatars being able to move while casting blood pacts.

If you're kiting something that's weak to magic/dots (i.e. black mage af3 mob) you can do the spirit version of carbie kiting. Summon a spirit, do an initial assault, then just keep running around casting spirits. Try to be the right distance away, so that the spirit starts casting when the mob gets to it. Once you see your spirit start casting, hit retreat to make it follow the mob again. The mob should be far enough away from you that retreat won't give you any additional aggro.