Summoner Macro and Other QuestionsFollow

Sacrifice Torque is a must-have. Not only should you use it for every physical pact you ever do, because it's awesome like that, but you can also use it to wake yourself from sleep anytime you have an avatar out because it drains 8hp/tick while equipped. Aside from that you have all the important stuff covered. The rest is obvious (summoning earring, vox grip, etc.) but not critical like the Sac Torque.

As far as macros, I don't use Spellcast either so I think I can help. I used a style very similar to yours: My primary macro set is just a starting point with a macro to summon each avatar. Summoning an avatar takes me to that avatar's specific macro page. Here's how I laid them out:
1. Primary + Carbuncle
2. Fenrir
3. Ifrit
4. Titan
5. Leviathan
6. Garuda
7. Shiva
8. Ramuh
9. Diabolos
0. Spirits + Alex/Odin

Note that I did them in order of the elemental days. :) That was to help me memorize day order. Anyway, each summon also equips the appropriate equipment for that avatar like you mentioned. Then on each avatar's macro set I have two important macros:
Alt+8: Perp down gear (goes back to this avatar's perp down gear)
Alt+9: BP timer gear (goes to -15 BP timer)

Then each BP macro only needs to worry about one thing: the equipment that BP needs to land in. For example here would be my cycle to summon Pred Claws:

{Ctrl+6 Summon Garuda}
/ma Garuda <me>
/equip main "Vayu's Staff +2"
/equip body "Caller's Doublet +2"
/equip hands "Caller's Bracers +2"
/equip feet "Caller's Pigaches +2"
/macro set 6

{Alt+1 Assault}
/pet Assault <t>

{Alt+9 BP Timer Gear}
/equip body "Yinyang Robe"

{Alt+5 Predator Claws}
/pet "Predator Claws" <t> <wait 1>
/equip main "Soulscourge"
/equip body "Caller's Doublet +2"
/equip neck "Sacrifice Torque"
/equip legs "Caller's Spats +2"

After Pred Claws lands:
{Alt+8 Perp Down gear}
/equip main "Vayu's Staff +2"
/equip neck "Caller's Pendant"
/equip legs "Evoker's Spats +1"

That's just going off memory but you can see how the BP timer & Perp timer macros just become a part of your process. This gives each BP macro 5 lines to equip gear specific to that BP, as long as it's one of the 6 item slots covered by your macro to return to Perp Down gear.

The magian staves help here a LOT. I'm talking HUUUGE if you aren't a Spellcast user / Windower macro user, because they have both perp down and a massive BP timer reduction. It makes hitting the BP timer cap much easier and use less macro lines.

Jeez that's a lot of staves :( If you get the time for Garuda & Shiva staves that will be more than enough. Those are the two I've done so far, and working on Ramuh right now. (Also did Cure staff & Pet:MAB staff.)

Also, Sanguine Scythe isn't as good as you'd expect. I'm not sure why that is, but the three you are using now are pretty much accepted as the best for physical DD on SMN. It's what I've had the best experience with, anyway. RR+GH is the only way to cap crit rate and dropping one causes a massive drop in consistency, and the STR from VV is also very important for the big numbers.

I'm with you on not being as impressed by Heavenly Strike. It has its uses though!

EDIT: Oh and as far as actual timing, you don't need to wait at all after going into BP timer gear. It's basically Alt+9, Alt+5, wait... then Alt+8.

Edited, Oct 3rd 2011 9:09am by Pergatory

You don't really need the -perp staffs either, you can get free avatars and -15secs in gear and elemental staffs alone. ToM staffs are best at tweaking gear sets, so you can put them at a lower priority if you need to.

Edited, Oct 3rd 2011 11:41am by jlejeune

I also am a harpy advocate, as garuda is my favorite. I also favored wind blade before Abyssea.

Heavenly Strike is consistent at least, but predator claws is usually better, you guys are right. The other nice thing about Garuda's Predator Claws setup is that it has a MUCH higher DoT from melee hits than a magical setup. 300 damage criticals add up over time. Should she hit say 12 times between bloodpacts for ~300 a hit, that's ~3600 extra damage. Shiva with a heavenly strike setup would do far less (and also have a lower accuracy rate without +50 dex).

The one nice thing about Shiva though that you should appreciate in Abyssea is diamond dust. We were doing some pulls the other day with about six people...

BLU pulled 15-20 mobs at once. BLM and BLU would sleepga. Shiva would use Diamond Dust for ~4400 on all of the mobs. Blu would use Temporal Shift as it was going off, and then BLM and BLU would sleep. Either killed with another diamond dust, or the WAR would fell cleave. RDM healed and refreshed. Restore chests went to me on summoner first, and then the warrior for mighty strikes / 300 tp fell cleave. It worked out really nice.

Diamond Dust is the strongest because of Beyond, but Astral Flow is pretty nice because it doesn't get the multiple target damage reduction like -Ga and -Ja spells do. She will do 4400 to one target, or 100 targets. It gets really fun depending on your setup. And it goes well with black mages for mass killing

I'm with you guys on both Shiva and Garuda. I haven't played around with Ramuh much since the changes, looking forward to giving that a go. ^^