A Saucy Summoner Guide (FFXIV: Endwalker) 

KEEP THE RHYTHM UP

@@IsacMH HOW'S IT TASTE!?

I used to be a SMN main when Carbuncle did something. Now I'm angry I went thru so much work getting lv90 tome gear for SMN bc I can't stand it anymore. They broke my heart in EW and no one cares. SMN used to be my favorite class since it had dots and pets. Now I don't have anything to replace it it with.

Been summoner main since stormblood. I'd love everything about summoner if there was more in addition to it, right now it plays like a level 60 class in 90 content. Old summoner was a god damn simulacrum of half baked ideas glued and taped together and everything felt like that in both theme and rotation execution.

Summoners get to know how it feels to be a red mage using lb3 now.

I doubt that any non summoner player does not have all pets set on tiny

@@frapseddatsht this ins a joke either. the last button we put on our hotbar is at level 66, searing light. after that its just the same buttons with upgrades

In Savage it's almost guaranteed that every time you Swift an attack someone will die right after.

@@Kekira cri. My numbers suffer if I have to rez. I low key have started only rezzing unless both healers are down. Otherwise, I'll swift slipstream so i don't get rekt casting it because LATENCY

no seriously SMN is really easy

Summoner is the easiest job/class i've ever played in any game

nah he's serious about this one, smn is pretty easy after the rework, just play through it as normal when levelling and it's very intuitive. it used to be way more complicated but not the hardest job in the game imo (blm was on top, then smn i think).

@@sleepyguy69 Old summoner was only hard because sometimes the egi/demi just didn't do their job. So pet ghosting can just ruin your plan. Plus Phoenix had dumb ai where if you moved in this phase with only instant cast spells, you may lose damage because it couldn't use scarlet flame while moving.

@@PenguinSage It wasn't hard. People just didn't understand that all you had to do was press buttons properly in the opener and everywhere after that you mashed the oGCDs on CD, the Egi skills when you had to move, and /place when you knew a knockback would throw the boss out of your carby's range. Stormblood was honestly its worst iteration by sheer technicality. I'd seriously take that version over Endwalker with Endwalker's pet AI improvements. And they were significant. Scholar's in the best state it's ever been, and I'm saying that with full knowledge of how pets worked pre-ShB.

LIGHT PUNCH

All they had to do was fix the pet AI. But instead they gave up and made Carbuncle a bystander and removed almost all DOTs from most classes. No class now can use pets and single target and spread dots. Everything that drew me to SMN has been removed and now it's just a weaker BLM.

@@kokayinewsome9308 Literally quit the game over it. Raided this tier on Ninja, which was literally the only option left that fit the itch I was after given my static's consistently been stuck with 2+ casters since Gordias. Since all the other options I have an interest in are always covered by someone or just plain suck (ranged dps). And then they killed TA two weeks out from us finishing reclears and have Dragoon (the only other class I'm even considering after hearing all the monk/rpr/sam complaints) on their radar for the same 'QoL update' treatment. Literally our RDM swapped to SMN for one week and got oranges because it is just that easy to execute. I told him he shouldn't play it unless he wants to do callouts and he was confused by that sentiment at first, whereas my healers got it instantly when I told him it had their DPS rotation and none of their oGCDs. They're still the ones doing callouts ofc.

I quit because of the summoner rework, ots painfully obvious the game is going the way wow did, trying to find a new mmo now but the choices are fucking barren

@@prod7906 I'll stick with 14 for the story but I'm done with all mage classes. I don't like any of them.

@@GrimoireM I hoped to play each class that felt like having extra party members. Ninja is fun. And I ride or die for it. I lost Shadow Fang but I still love it. MCH isn't that fun but it's practical and helpful for raids. DNC is like being a DPS and a healer support class. So I play those three now. SMN was my whole world other than MNK and NIN. But now that I gave up SMN and MNK is no good when bosses spam AOEs. There's really no room to try other classes. No matter what they bring. They won't have pets. They won't have dots. They won't have anything like shb SMN. I honestly don't know what classes they can add that would interest me. Psychics? I honestly hope everyone can find something good to play. I'm sticking with 14 for the story but other than NIN, I'm never gonna be happy with the slow-powerhouses or stationary mages or super closer quarters melees. That why I play NIN, as a jack of all trades.

Much like every other job at the end of the day

@@ashleybricco4107 yeah you're not wrong, game hasn't been complicated since stormblood dropped

@@ashleybricco4107 I dare you to play black mage in savage, you will loose lots of dps from movement and can even die. Black mage is not easy at all! After months of practice I still struggle with the job

@@lushdontu4015 black mage is definitely harder to learn a fight on, not saying it isn’t. But it’s still basically memorization - map a fight out and then do the same thing every time. More or less.

Level 90. No, we dont know why they make us wait until level 90 to get half the job.

@@Ed-1749 Except all that the "new summons" that you get at level 90 are literally just bigger, flashier and more damaging versions of the previous Egi summons, but the funcionality is basically the same.

Imagine if you will: A caster job with 2 dots you only had to reapply manually once every 2 minutes; a pet with 2 abilities that each had 2 charges, and you could lose a charge by simply playing too fast or fat fingering something else; and 2 burst phases where you could literally lose DPS should you do something that made your pet move (oh, and one of those burst phases had nothing but instant casts. Still couldn't move during that phase lest you risk losing DPS). This was old Summoner. As much as I enjoyed it, most of the "complexity" was in dancing around how poorly pets are designed in this game. Other than that you spammed Ruin III unless something else lit up instead (Ruin II when you would inevitably forget that you need to move soon and you just burned your last Egi Assault). Also, managing the DoTs was the easiest part of the job, don't let anyone fool you (look up what Tri-Disaster was pre-EW).

as someone who started ~6 months before shb, shb and sb smn were just slightly different version same class to me and both were fun and rewarding. EW smn is a new class.

@@Umbrellify the big difference was what they did to carbi at shb... it became untargetable and lost most of the carbi utility abilities...some got worked into smn toolkit some just got deleted

I never actually got to raiding as a SMN in SB, but isn't that that one iteration of it where it used Addle as a DPS button?

As if the heal ever matters anyway. I wish they’d replace it with something more useful.

@@ashleybricco4107 I definitely wouldn't mind more moves or complexity to be a stronger caster, but with the job as is the free healing is pretty powerful sustain in casual and high end content alike, and much appreciated. :)

If I'm feeling spicy I'll just click somebody randomly in the party list to throw it on

Yeah I mean it “could” matter… if the healers actually keep it in mind. None of the healers I’m with ever do.

I used to rekindle the Tank when EW first dropped, but after talking with a few Tanks, they admitted that they didn't even notice or need it at all. It's just for flair so I use it on myself just so there's even less of a reason for healers to notice my existence.

I would never let someone else's perception of a class affect my enjoyment of it. I'd say you'd be better off reading through the job actions on the website to get an idea of what's what, then watch some smn pov videos or something to see how it plays. Personally I love it, even if people snicker behind my back about "muh ez class" as if it isn't already a very casual game outside of high-end content.

@@tartarsauce65 yea ive started already and i love it. Its different but not different to me if that makes sense. I spent so much time away from the have that i didn't have any real memory of how old summoner played. I had to get used to the proper cycles to follow but that was gonna happen anyways. I will say it does feel more fun to play sumn now.

For optimization, mostly to keep your cooldowns and party buffs in line with everyone else's I hit my Demis as soon as they are off CD. The Arcanums are your filler while waiting for them to be up, so no matter where I am in the rotation of primal summons, as soon as phoenix/bahamut come off cooldown, I got into them.

I always summon ifrit last so that if this happens I can freely demi-summon on cooldown because ifrit is trash.

Align Bahamut and Searing Light with raid buffs

because if you do garuda first you can swiftcast slipstream to fit it under raid buffs, he said that in the video. if you don't land the slipstream under raid buffs then it's a loss and the swiftcast was better used on ifrit

@@weedgoku69 I understand that. But if ifrit (Ruby rite) is better than slipstream out of buff windows, it's better in buff windows. Ruby rite is 510 potency Slipstream is 430 + 150 dot. If the boss doesn't move slipstream is better. Had to look it up to figure it all out but thank you for the reply.

Only do that if there's a gun to your head (mechanic forcing movement) and there's no other option to keep the GCD rolling. The recast on Ruby is longer than normal to make swiftcast a damage loss; it was done in a recent patch. The sole reason to use SC normally in the rotation is snapshotting Slipstream.

@@weedgoku69 Actually it isn’t better to swiftcast anymore, they increased the recast to be longer than the cast time so it’s always better on slipstream noe because of the time it gives you

True, but you really don’t want to delay the demis if possible.

​@@ashleybricco4107 Depends on the party I guess, but buffs are usually longer than your demi phase. Moving it by 1 GCD as in the example I mentioned will not reduce your DPS. Especially because you didn't wasted two GCDs doing nothing. If you are talking about orange parse optimization than I would expect you to slidecast Ruin while doing backflips over the mechanics, just not to move your GCD by millisecond.

@@LazyLame666 Depends on your build. There are two ways to play SMN. Spellspeed SMN or Crit SMN. The former just means summoning on CD. The one you want is Crit SMN where all your Demi-summons are in buffs *naturally*. Trying to align your buffs with Ruin 3 filler makes spellspeed beyond an extra Demi-GCD redundant and actually less potency (If you can get another Demi-summon in, most cases you can). Being stuck in the middle absolutely sucks, because it's awkward in damage and doesn't matter on what you do to align yourself with buffs or just Demi-summon on CD.

Honestly it’s not too far off haha. Jk. At that point you will really only have summon ifrit egi. (A cuter smol version of ifrit) but only if you did the job quest. Summoner’s set is especially locked by job quests so make them your priority.)

East coast baby philly where you at

I dunno, Warriors have to remember to turn on their enmity generator which immediately makes it a harder class than summoner /s

@@saltytattie833 Summoners have to re summon carbuncle when they change classes and when they die. Warriors don't drop tank stance when they die. Summoner is therefore harder. /s

Warrior at least had defensive cds to manage so it makes sense to a certain extent why it’s simple, summoner has no excuse it exists solely to do damage

@@miricobladetail9670 Actual fair point.

However the carbuncle not being summoned is more easily noticeable since you can't use 90% of your kit, whereas the enmity generator is 100% passive so you're less likely to notice

It is 2/4/4

How does being stuck in place feel good?! But I would take less mobility if we got a dps increase for it.

Granted, most black mages dont really like the clock. It's a little large of a ui element. But you are right about aetherflow being weird, it's been an outdated system for ages, especially with sage just having an automated version of it. Scholar aetherflow makes some sense, since it's a limit on their more powerful heals, but for summoner it's just a resource you spend immediately that's been grandfathered in year after year.

@@ashleybricco4107 How does barely having to think about mobility feel good? I liked being punished for having no sense of the future (AKA using literally every instant cast thing at once and only having pathetic ruin 2 for mobility). Nowadays if you use everything when it comes up there's a 75-85% chance (depending on SpS) of you being fine.

@@varia2354 To be honest, I’ve come to feel like summoner should be harder. And I want it to be based around strategic thinking ahead regarding summon usage, which it is now. But the problem is in most content it just doesn’t really matter which order you use. And I don’t really know how they can make it matter without it being about mobility…

They are ready for both Bahamut and “orange” Bahamut, no?

@@LunaGer Yes, but you want four festers under raid buffs

It's called increase your item level and get good at the game

@@tacotuesdays3336 Scholar is better anyways.

@@antyrak7905 To each their own I suppose play what you have fun with

What do you mean? I worry about optimization all the time on summoner.

@@ashleybricco4107 Most classes you can make mistakes on but summoner is nice because not only do the buttons light up essentially in order, but the class almost stops you from being able to push buttons on the wrong order. You can only make a few mistakes, such as pressing ruin when anything else is lit up, not using bahamut or Phoenix when it's up, and during ifrit using the dash then casting a ruby before doing the dash followup. other then that you can mash your face on the keyboard and the class will literally throw out all the abilities in a sensibly correct way without thought. It's kind of relaxing

@@CenKyne I mean there’s more to summoner optimization than that.. but it is true that most optimization for summoner leads to pretty small dps increase and is drowned out by crit variance and kill time. It’s definitely easier than other dps to optimize.

@@ashleybricco4107 I mean I'm not good. Whenever guides talk about burst windows and timing things for it, I'm like no fucking way lol. Also I play monk mostly and while I can write down how the rotation would go perfectly, it's never going to happen. I'm just going to rotate the first three skills then the next three back and forth because my brain can't handle the correct sequence. Same with the damage buff skills. Im just hitting them when they come up and not figuring out anything past that. For people like me summoner is great

Honestly if you aren’t trying to min-max everything and lose it if you ghost something, the job was never really that hard. It wasn’t easy, but it’s really not that difficult.

uess you dont have any savage gear, then you'll have just enough sps where trance will come up halfway through your ruin 3 cast and it feels awful but I'm too comitted to change it now.

it sucks when you're in-between like that, yeah.

Crit is the way to go. Big numbers make dopamine brain go brr

@@Kekira yeah but more bahamuts/2 minutes tho

Also I use Garuda first then push her back each time