Summoner Questions

Summoner is a deep job with a lot of room for gearing and improvement, but it's totally fine if you want to make it your starter main. You don't need to level something else first (I'm proof of that).


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.


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.


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.


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).


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.

I use /SCH 100% of the time. I like the 'nas and such that /sch offers. Between Elemental Siphon, a nicely timed Conduit, Sublimation, and even aspir (in some cases) - I have yet to run out of MP, to the point where I have to rest.

A summoner's sub job will depend on their play style. What I have found works for me (/sch) does not work for everyone else. With that said, the only sub job that I will probably never use is /WHM; simply because there is no MP gain with that subjob (such as refresh or sublimation).

Like I said, people have their own opinions. Refresh provides around the same MP or more than Sublimation, on top of Convert which is a full MP heal every 10 minutes (usually up by the time you run out of MP). The bonus to Elemental Siphon from weather is relatively minor, and in 99% of scenarios, if you really wanted more MP out of it, there is gear you can go and get still that will make it better. If there's any weather in the area, this bonus is also potentially diminished.

Some people like the na's SCH offers, but I personally don't like SCH because it doesn't have things like Dia, Distract; and having to juggle the arts for things like Sleep is a pain (and you completely lose Sleep II, which is another sleep cooldown, and better). If status effects are ever really a problem, Soothing Ruby and Spring Water exist. You also lose fast cast for having SCH as a sub job. I could go on further, but the penalties for the subjob just far outweigh the gains of RDM.

You don't entirely lose Fast Cast, since arts do effectively the same thing for corresponding spells.

I think a potentially significant bonus of /SCH that you're glossing over is that Arts boost the corresponding skills. Given SMN's lack of native magic skills other than Summoning, that can be relevant. You aren't just getting nukes, you're getting B+ elemental skill to go with them, etc.
Obviously, that'll depend on the content, since for older stuff the MAcc bonuses on ilevel weapons are likely enough to make it work anyway.

You having the weather doesn't benefit Garuda at all for her spells/abilities, and you can't cast weather spells on the avatar. It will certainly benefit your Aero, though, sure.


Avatar's auto attack is really poor compared to players. The best you can get is Garuda with Hastega II on, and she attacks decently fast with pet haste gear. However, the damage is still low, and the majority of the damage dealt will still come from Blood Pacts.

As for tanking, it entirely depends on what you're up against. Avatars get a large variety of +enmity gear, so they can draw aggro in many situations, especially with the burst damage of Blood Pacts. Avatars actually have a really small HP pool (somewhere around 1k) compared to something like BST pets, but they have a decent amount of -damage taken. On something really high level, or a boss, they will die in 3-5 hits I would say. It really just depends on what you're fighting, because on 99 mobs, they could tank like 5+ at once and hold for a while, and certain monster attacks/abilities mess them up pretty bad while others don't.

As for gear, you should just look into the guide thread at the top of the forum. There's a large variety of gear for physical, magical Blood Pacts and other situations. If you have questions past that, I can help.


You don't entirely lose it, correct. If the proper arts is on you get 10% instead of 15% (a 5% loss) and if the proper arts aren't on, you lose 20%. So if you have Light Arts on and want to cast Cure on yourself, then want to cast Sleep or Aero, you're kinda dunked. Aero will cast really slow, and you can't even cast Sleep without switching to Dark Arts and then spending a stratagem. If you could, it would also be really slow. You could be dark arts instead, but then there's the problem for Cure. Instead of casting 15% faster as RDM, you're casting -20% slower. That's painful. That's not even mentioning the MP cost penalty.

And, yes, the elemental magic skill of SCH is actually quite nice, and the main reason I was looking into subbing it. The problem is that they lack any enfeebles, so they can't make use of that gained skill. All you're left with is nukes, and yes, I would say that is the primary appeal of the sub job. However, in the majority of scenarios as SMN, you're probably fighting something your nukes can land on regardless. If you are fighting something you really need the macc on, then it's useful, provided you still have MP to burn with SCH as subjob and your gear (matk, macc) is good enough. With a proper gear set, SMN can land nukes on things up to level 100 or so (mobs outside Adoulin) without issue, but once you start going past that, you need to start dropping matk for macc or change your subjob to SCH.

With that said, a good leader and group can fit in most jobs. However there is a difference between putting up with a player who wants to play x job because they like it and they suck at it and working around a good player who plays their job well and doesnt suck.

My group has a mythic smn that runs with it, he does well but he also has a well geared cor which can out damage his smn on most content so its really up to what we are doing more so then the specific job. Its easier to keep smn buffs up but for pure damage buffs the cor wins out every time.

Summoner was never a top tier party slot. It's getting better but there are lot of fundamental things holding it back. I hardly use in parties except for a few niche things like Delve II.

In this game, every thing is situational. Most events do not include settings where smns are favored. The job doesnt need to change, its the game that needs to add more varied content.

In the old days, there were many situations where hateless ranged damage was very handy. However there was not often a time limit for it. In most modern content, there is a time limit and smns cant fill that slow since their damage for the most part is slow. Trying to fit it in somewhere doesnt work well. You can get by but its not the solution.

They can vary the content all they want but that wont fix Avatars having very low attack compared to what players get with good support buffs.