Authors
General Information & About The Guide
Welcome to our Summoner guide for Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers 5.58!
Here you will find our most current information on how to play Summoner at a high and respectable level.
This guide has been co-written by the authors above who actively play and collectively share a wealth of high end raiding and theorycrafting backgrounds in FFXIV and several games before it. We can all be found hanging out in the AkhMorning Discord.
The content will be maintained here on AkhMorning.
Overview
Summoner has always been a caster known for its unique playstyle among casters with its pets, DoTs and ability cooldown management while being one of the kings of AoE damage. Previously a job of considerable depth, it has since been streamlined with our choice of which pet to use given the situation and the change to a more fixed cooldown style of play with our on demand burst actions of Fester and Painflare.
Early on in leveling it is a job with a more constant source of AoE with Emerald Carbuncle/Garuda-Egi than others, while having a degree of sustain in overworld content with Titan-Egi later on though note: pets cannot tank for us anymore! Ifrit is now our egi of choice for single target encounters.
We remain a strong job to learn new encounters on given our on demand mobility and raising potential, especially with Trances shaving 2.5s off cast times to allow for a ~5.5s cast Resurrection instead of 8s. Titan’s Earthen Armor also allows us to play with a safety net as healers and us both become used to new encounters.
The job has also has a history of being perceived as an intimidatingly complicated “galaxy brain” job to play, so we are here to help address that to show that it’s much easier by providing and explaining a roadmap on how to play the latest iteration of the job to its fullest.
Tri-disaster on hit potency reduced from 300p to 150pSummoner Strengths
- Strong incidental cleave with Deathflare, Brand of Purgatory, Revelation and Akh Morn.
- Strong Damage over Time with Tri-disaster, Miasma III and Bio III.
- Brand of Purgatory and Bane’s aoe range of 8y reach targets most aoes cannot.
- Is one of the safest jobs to learn encounters on with Titan’s Earthen Armor.
- High mobility with Egi Assaults, Ruin IV, instant GCDs during Trances and Ruin II.
- Brings utility in the forms of Addle, Devotion and the invaluable Resurrection.
- Provides the party an additional window of appreciable sustain with Everlasting Flight.
- The only job that gets to Summon Bahamut and Phoenix!
Summoner Weaknesses
- Rotation can be regarded as somewhat clunky and rigid.
- Not as downtime friendly compared to prior expansions with Trances and Energy Drain.
- Trance cooldowns at 55s will be confusing to inexperienced players.
- Pet AI is a source of frustration with pet actions being inconsistent.
- Movement interferes with Demi Summon actions which can result in a dps loss.
- Mobility with Ruin II is a dps loss.
Summoner Viability
In dungeon content, Extremes and Normal raids, Summoner more than holds its own.
In Savage, having a caster for Addle is strong given the amount of magic raidwide AoEs which when combined with the aforementioned perks makes us a popular choice for Progression.
Thanks to the welcome changes in 5.10 Summoner has become more of a tour de force with its increased damage potential and being easier to play in typical encounters thanks to the extra free mobility from Egi Assaults, the Trance cooldown reduction potentially allowing more GCDs for movement while keeping to alignment and being able to use Ruin IVs more freely after Bahamut.
Summoner is in a much better place to be picked up for raiding and really shines in The Epic of Alexander (Ultimate) with the multi-target phases and ability to further adjust Trance timings. It’s a great DPS job to play!
Changelog
- 12/09/2021: Updates to numerous pages. Restructure in the works.
- 21/01/2021: E12s: Oracle of Darkness Guide added.
- 09/08/2020: Levelling Up SMN section added.
- 01/08/2020: UCoB SMN Guide added. Website relaunch in prep for 5.3 on Aug 11th.
- 20/04/2020: Pet section, Opener page updated and updated Footer. More changes.
- 06/03/2020: 5.00 Official Job Guide images added to gallery.
- 28/02/2020: 5.20 updates.
- 22/12/2019: 5.10 Rotation, TEA Guide, Combat Resource pages added. More changes.
- 15/11/2019: Demi-Summon page updated for 5.10. Tweaks to other pages. More WIP.
- 06/11/2019: Intro page updated. Tweaks to other pages.
- 04/11/2019: Opener page update completed for 5.10.
- 01/11/2019: 6th and 5th GCD Summon Bahamut openers added. Tweaks to other pages.
- 18/10/2019: Starting Off added, tweaks to other pages, changing “Clip” to “Hold” method.
- 22/09/2019: Intro, Demi-Summon, Role Actions pages ported over and updated.