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any advice for a person starting SMN?
Not too much really. As you're leveling, the sooner you get other avatars the better, because you have them all available from level 1 as long as you unlocked them, and they all have their own skills they get as you level up.
Any refresh gear is a tremendous aid when leveling (things like the Vermillion Cloak) and your AF gear when you reach that level.
Things as a Summoner get easier and you get a lot stronger the higher level you get. At higher levels you get access to more refresh gear and more perpetuation cost reduction gear. Once you hit 99, you can really push it and make your avatars free to maintain, and eventually, even maintain a high refresh while they're out. There's a strong power progression for Summoner in this way, and it feels really good.
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I think it will be fun to play a summoner with a scholar, for one thing weather control is nice for elemental bonuses on summons and for two scholar is nice and versatile and can help in a lot of situations buffing/debuffing.
Scholar is a great job. However, I don't mean to be a party pooper, but the weather won't really benefit Summoner. The only thing the weather will do is grant you a bonus to the amount of MP you get back from Elemental Siphon, and if you have any gear with -perpetuation cost under weather, help that out too. The latter is actually very useful, only while leveling really, if you have the gears that do it (example being Caller's Bracers +2).
That being said, there's nothing wrong with Scholar on the side; Scholar gets decently powerful nukes, and the support is a nice aid to Summoner. As soon as you get some weather gear, it will really shine.
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I know I'll need to level rdm and probably scholar subjobs.
99% of the time you will be using RDM as a subjob. If you have a scholar with you, there's practically zero reason to have SCH as a subjob. WHM is also a choice of subjob (you have that leveled I see) but that's only when you want the support it offers (status cures, aoe heals). Personally, I just stick to Red Mage, but some people really like sticking with White Mage. Red Mage has stuff like Refresh, Convert, enfeebling magic, and some nukes, all which are really nice.
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Also really excited for Cait Sith is he that good or used? :) His Astral Flow and the ability cast reraise on other people seems good.
Cait Sith is mostly just used for the Reraise spell, or Raise. She's not really that good. Her wards have some funky utility to them, which is kinda useful, but very situational and usually not worth the cooldown over your other options. Level ? Holy is just random... it can be very powerful (as strong or stronger than Astral Flow) but many times it just does nothing as well.
Her Astral Flow is good for when the situation calls for it. Besides that, it's nice being able to give the entire party Reraise III, and from my experience, it lasts an absurdly long time (forever or for many hours). That doesn't apply to the Reraise II she casts, however (that's standard duration of 1 hour).
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Also seems like we got a lot more wards and rages. Seems the spirit cast times are really low now too with max gear... tho light elemental is still the only one too useful?
Spirits are still only really useful when you're looking to save mana due to how low their perpetuation cost is, or you're looking to mess around. They're useful in a dangerous situation to summon when you need a pet right away, because yeah, they cast fast (this can change later when you hit 99 if you get lots of Fast Cast gear, you won't really have much of a difference between avatar and spirit cast time).
The light one is still really the only "useful" one, being able to grant yourself and other party members Protect V, Shell V, Regen, and Haste. If you're low on health and summon it, it will cast a nice Curaga on you.
I hope that helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.