Summoner Macro Guide

Category:Guides
As preface, this information comes entirely from the blog of Erecia of Sylph, writer of the famous For Glory guide to Chains of Promathia. Many thanks for his permission to put this on the wikipedia. My contribution is merely a few spelling and grammatical corrections as well as a few rephrases for a guide format. 
Macroing summoner effectively is an interesting challenge. You can't simply use /ma "Burstaga IV" <t> to get results. You have to summon the avatar, move it into position, use its move, and dismiss. Macros have to allow you to do the steps in order and, more imporantly in panic situations, out-of-order as necessary. There's also dealing with cure spells from you subjob and managing elemetal siphon based on the day. The absolute number of macros necessary is staggering and without some sort of organizational system to keep them all in line, Summoner can be a disaster.
Before the addition of macro books, this was pretty much a lost cause. People with multiple jobs couldn't afford to spend too many macro sets managing each individual avatar and were mostly forced to choose commands out of the menu. However, with the addition of macro books, a world of new possibilities have opened up.
The following image is the system in a nutshell. Look it over but it's not necessary to understand it completely. I'll be making references to it through the rest of the explanation.
For every one of my other jobs, the set has enough space to access the most necessary abilities and magic spells, but as already discussed this is impractical with summoner. So when I'm playing summoner I start with book 1, set 5. . Instead of trying to stuff every Blood Pact and avatar into the macro set, book 1 set 5 is a "hub" of activity. I can't do much here directly but from this set I can readily access any and every ability a summoner would need.
You can see this macro set at the top of the graphic above. The set only has ten functional macros - one macro for each of the avatars (not the spirits) plus 'sWHM" which I'll explain a bit later. The "alt" bar is entirely left open for future additons and temporary macros and thus isn't included in the graphic.
Where things get interesting is when I want to summon an avatar. For example, because I find Leviathan a very reliable and useful avatar, let's use summoning Leviathan as an example. Here is my macro for summoning Leviathan:
Firstly, of course, this summons Leviathan. Secondly, it gears me up properly for using Leviathan, which only consists of a staff and body change. And finally it does the fancy stuff of moving me to book 3, set 4. All three of these functions are very useful when I start hopping around and want to move back to an avatar's control panel or reequip gear after casting a spell that changes things.
Book 3 is a book devoted entirely to avatars, and set 4 is a set of 20 macros specifically designed for commanding Leviathan in all possible ways I may need to use him. As you can see from the detailed image above, the sets are in the same order as the initial macros to get to each avatar's set, to prevent as much confusion as possible. 
My command macro set for Leviathan. Using book and set swaps for each avatar, I have more than enough room to put anything I need for controlling each specific avatar. Each avatar has a near identical setup which helps make it less confusing to me when rapidly moving around between the avatars.
On the control (top) line I put every blood pact I've wanted to use from Leviathan. The rage ones start at 1, the ward ones start at 0, and there's some space in the middle since no avatar has a total of ten pacts. This image shows them in a 70+ setting; for example, Barracuda Dive or Water II aren't there because they're rarely if ever useful at this level. If for some reason they become necessary, there is plenty of room to add them in.
On the alt (bottom) line I have avatar commands and other necessary stuff. Retreat, Assault, and Release are there at 8, 9, and 0 of course. I have Cure III on every avatar set because it's an amazingly useful emergency spell and I found myself wanting to cast it without mucking with macro swaps. Every avatar has a resummon macro in spot 6 that is also a good visual way for me to see what macro set I'm on in case I forget or hit a wrong button.
The other two buttons are "sWHM" and "back", both which show up in a lot of my macro sets for SMN.
 
"sWHM" takes you to set 10 of book 3, a special set devoted to both casting useful white magic spells like Curaga, Silena, or Erase. It also houses my eight elemental siphon macros. You can see this set in the main graphic way up top and pretty much guess which spells are which. Personal preference which ones you put in here.
Every set in book 3 has a "back" button that returns me to my main summoner hub at book 1, set 5. I use this when I want to summon a different avatar, access any of the temporary macros in the alt line, or am done with summoner and am changing to a different job.
That pretty much sums up the technical explanation. There are lots of realistic benefits of doing it like this. I have every spell and avatar move at my fingertips and can command them fully without needing the menus. I have enough room to make sure I can hit an elemental siphon for every day of the week, use an obscure but tactically useful avatar move in an emergency, pop a cure 3 on the fly no matter what's going on, or switch all my gear for a new avatar that I want to bring out.
When you set this up, it is easy to mistake which book or set you are actually pointing toward, so make sure you test every macro while you're setting up and again after you're finished, to ensure you really are summoning Garuda or trying to use Crimson Howl. But once you have your system down, this will completely eliminate your dependence on spell menus! There is plenty of room to add things like Spirit Taker, Retribution, Ether or Elixir macros for BCNMs, and anything else you can think to add.
Again, many thanks to Erecia of Sylph for this information and his permission to put it up on the Wikipedia.