Your spells only do one thing?

## A different kind of mage.

As can be said for many jobs, Summoner, especially so, is a unique, hybrid job that can perform as a source of physical or magical damage, healing, buffing, is a skilled soloing job, and can pivot between these functions with minimal effort. It is however, quite weak without use of pets, and being primarily a mage, it is decidedly vulnerable to being silenced. To summon pets, you must have adequate MP to cast the spell, and while your pet is active, you must maintain its presence with your own MP. MP costs also vary with level, and pet summoned, gradually gaining in maintenance cost as your level raises. Summoner's most important skill by no small margin is its summoning skill, which effects potency and accuracy of bloodpacts, elemental siphon, performance of elemental spirit behavior, and makes it harder to interrupt casting of summoning spells. Beyond that, having your staff skill leveled up can be valuable in solo, or low man situations, as some of their weaponskills can be useful for added damage, debuffs, or most of all, MP restoral with Spirit Taker.

For equipment, the most valuable stats in most situations for summoners are as follows, in most to least important order;

1. Refresh
2. Avatar perpetuation cost
3. MP
4. "Blood Pact" ability delay
5. Summoning Skill
6. MP recovered while healing

As for why these are, one point of refresh is equal to one point of avatar perpetuation cost, however, it also provides MP recovery when you do not have a pet summoned, or if your ability to maintain the pet is greater than its cost. After petpetuation, having a large pool of MP is beneficial, either for fueling the spells granted by subjobs, or just providing capacity for your bloodpacts to draw from. And as much of your utility and output comes from bloodpacts, a shorter delay on their use frequency can be desirable, howeve this mostly comes in to play at endgame levels. Lastly, for when you have the luxury of time having a MP recovered while healing set can shorten downtime and keep you being a productive summoner.

### Types of Pets

There are two types of summons for summoners, and these must be addressed. First you have Avatars, of which are **Carbuncle**, **Ifrit**, **Shiva**, **Garuda** **Leviathan**, **Ramuh**, **Titan**, **Fenrir**, and **Diabolos**. These are more difficult to maintain, and have access to avatar specific bloodpacts which can range from healing, buffing, debuffing, and damage, applied to single, or multiple targets.

The second type are elemental Spirits, one for each element. These have their own benefits, being that they are all mono-element black mages (although dark spirit and light spirit are not) with their own MP pool, low perpetuation costs, and fast to cast spells to summon them. These can be used effectively for dealing with weaker enemies, or over long period soloing, or even just as an emergency pet, should your previous summon be destroyed. They also are the target of the ability Elemental Siphon which can restore a large amount of MP for a summoner. Using both will make you a better summoner, and knowing when its better to just use a spirit and enjoy their essentially free black mage spells will save you a lot of MP woes.

### Combat Skills

Summoner has moderately high Staff skill with mediocre club, and quite low evasion and dagger skills, beyond this, their only other native skill is Summoning Magic, which affects the potency of various summoner functions like Elemental Siphon, and blood pact potencies. On rare occasions, it may be useful to sub something like Thief for farming, or just idling away some EXP at high levels, as a sneak attack spirit taker weaponskill can restore a massive amount of MP, but this is generally impractical in any real events. Still, if things are safe enough and you have assembled an adequate set of gear and have some high accuracy food, meleeing to get TP for Spirit taker to restore MP can be really valuable.

### Job Abilities

Summoner has a collection of these, most tied to their pets and their bloodpacts. But beyond that, summoner also has access to a selection of other job abilities which can entirely change the outcome of fights if used effectively.

* Astral Flow (LV1) - This is your SP ability, and can only be used once hourly. It allows you to perpetuate your pet for free during its duration, and grants access to special bloodpacts with each of the avatars. The caveat of these special pacts is they will consume ALL of your MP on use, and require a bare minimum of MP to initiate at all.
* Elemental Siphon (LV50) - If you have an elemental spirit out, this will transfer a portion of their MP to you. This portion is affected by your summoning skill, the MP your spirit has remaining, and will gain bonuses for matching the day or weather's element, with multiple matches further boosting the potency of the effect. Be aware that the recast on this ability is somewhat long, so don't expect to be able to use it too frequently.
* Avatar's Favor (LV55) - This is in the Pet Abilities category but can be a very, very potent ability. Upon use, it reduces your Avatar's offensive abilities, and the cost to maintain them by 3, and causes them to produce a beneficial effect to party members near them, gaining in potency the longer the avatar remains and has not performed any blood pacts. Carbuncle generates Regen, Ifrit Double Attack, Titan Defense, Diabolos Refresh, Garuda Evasion, Ramuh Critical Hit Rate, Fenrir Magic Evasion, Leviathan Magic Accuracy, and Shiva Magic attack. Just remember that you lose about 25% of your offensive power while favor is active, however you can remove it if needed. But remember that it has a fairly long cooldown before it can be reapplied.
* Apogee (LV70) - An interesting tool in the arsenal, your next bloodpact will not set that category of bloodpact into cooldown, but will cost more MP. This can be used to apply numerous effects to party members, enemies, or, in rare cases, perform avatar self-skillchains. Generally, a self-skillchain from an avatar will do around the same damage as using its go-to bloodpact twice, but at a slightly reduced MP cost, and will have opened a small window for single element magic bursting.

### Subjob Selection

As theres not too much for subjobs that enhance what a summoner does natively, making them better at summoning or operating their pets, instead you want a subjob that grants functions otherwise unavailable to you. That leaves you with a rather slim selection if being honest, but that shouldn't stop you from experimenting. With that said, my recommendation for summoner subjobs, best to worst, is featured below.

1. Scholar - This subjob gives you MP conserving and restoral job abilities, which when paired with Elemental Siphon and a good set of gear, can give you over half your MP back in a dire situation. Additionally you get most of the perks of the other subjobs with the added benefit of potency. No other subjob for Summoner will let you have an actually usable Sleep, Dispel, Aspir, Drain, Elemental Magic spells, or give you as much potency with cures. As for what you lose for all of this, you lose out on Stoneskin, which Titan can grant anyway, Barspells, and Erase. You still keep blink, aquaveil, status removal spells, Regen II, Raise, Reraise, and just so much overall. With access to a nice selection of Magic accuracy, and attack bonus, and elemental skill gear, Summoner really can benefit from this subjob, and its immense MP pool only makes it so much more useful.
2. White Mage - Not as universally useful as Scholar, but situationally better, granting Cures, status removals, Erase, Raise, Reraise, Stoneskin, magic defense bonus, and autoregen, it's the 'older schooler' subjob of choice for summoner. It does have the added benefit of having access to Dia, but most other non restorative white magic spells will be of little use to a summoner, and it lacks the faster cast speed or MP discounts/restoral of Scholar. Still, you will likely see many a player stuck in their ways still subbing this job
3. Red Mage - Faster cures than white mage or Scholar, but can't match either's potency. It also has the benefit of a little magic attack bonus and magic defense bonus, but as Scholar lacks any elemental skill natively, the attack bonus is a waste. Similarly, theres not really any use in having any of Red Mage's Debuffs outside of Dia II or Bio II, both of which Scholar lacks but generally renders obsolete. Compared to white mage, you lose access to raise and reraise, auto regen, status removals, erase, and your barspells become self-target only. All in all, it has the least to offer to summoner of the main three. Its not bad, but the above two just do so much more that it makes Red Mage a questionable option. It does gain access to some Spike-based defense spells, but since your goal isn't to get hit in the first place, thats rather moot.
4. Black Mage - And if Red Mage is the last 'reasonably useful' subjob, Black mage is the most useful of every other subjob in the game, which isn't saying much. It lacks virtually all defense spells save for elemental spike spells, can't grant stealth status on its own, All it really gets is Elemental seal, a single use every ten minutes ability to make it nearly impossible to resist a spell that the target isn't already immune to. You're not going to make much use of its elemental spells, you have access to sleepga via one of your avatars, its magic attack bonus is wasted with no skill or spells, so really unless you want it for the conserve MP, or warp, there are infinitely better options out there.

* Honorable Mentions: Blue Mage, which grants some survival spells, and heals, but nothing else, this is still inferior to Red Mage.
* Honorable Mentions: Ninja, As with any subjob list, Utsusemi and stealth can be invaluable in some situations. But you still can get by nearly as well with Blink and Stoneskin
* Honorable Mentions: Paladin, similar boat to Blue Mage, it grants some survival tools, and cures, but at the cost of no stealth, and massive hate generation.
* Honorable Mentions: Thief, Samurai, Both of which grant some of the only useful melee bonuses to Summoner, but again, you don't want to be in melee range in most situations, so this is primarily for farming or solo play.

## Playing Summoner

summoner can be a powerful soloing job. The reason for this is similar to how Beast Master can be powerful in soloing, and thats to keep far from your target, which keeps you safe, and let your pet do the work. Unlike BST however, Summoners don't need to worry as much about cooldowns before they can replace their pet, and instead need to worry about MP costs, and windup time to cast the spell that brings out a new pet. Summoner pets also have unique AI and will rush to targets that currently have attention drawn to their summoner. This makes Elemental Spirits particularly powerful as they will also cast strong magic without input from their summoner, allowing them maximum time to escape from danger, and potentially restore MP with a siphon once their pet is deployed. A second popular strategy is using Carbuncle for its Meteorite bloodpact, which deals a modest 500-600 damage at endgame levels, but is for all intents and purposes, unresistable. This can allow a player to gradually wear down targets even if they have unique mechanics that make them difficult to fight otherwise. Beyond that, with use of the Apogee job ability, for an additional MP cost overhead, summoners can use two of the same bloodpact category successively to either more quickly recover, buff, or even self-skillchain with some avatars. All of these benefits and strategies improve in performance with more summoners should you be playing with friends, or multiboxing them, for what thats worth.

Group play for summoners varies quite a bit, depending on what you are doing. If you're in an endgame event, there is a strong likelihood that you will be using avatars and high damage bloodpacts to defeat a desired target as quickly and safely as possible, as your pet will take the hate rather than you, and can simply be resummoned after. Since you also don't need your pet to tank, you can also sometimes leave your pet unsummoned until needed to save on MP costs, or simply summon them, use a desired pact, then release them afterward. This is called the "Pact and Release" method. There are even times where you may use spirits in events, as, again, with little need for them to tank for you, you can just use assault and retreat alternating, in order to force them to cast spells more frequently, as each time you use assault from an idle state, your spirit may cast a spell. Lastly, you may be called upon to use buffs like earthen ward, hastega or healing pacts to help maintain the HP of partymembers or tanks, or occasionally debuffing pacts.

## Leveling Summoner

### Level 1-49

So, you got your ruby, all your weather effects, and unlocked Summoner? Great! Now its time to start leveling up! So, for your first ten or so levels, you have a few choices for how to conduct yourself. Subbing Red Mage, or White mage is perfectly viable, as enemy resistances will be low, and self-healing can help. You also have Carbuncle, and any spirits you managed to source scrolls for, so these can help you out. Its also 100% viable to sub Monk, if you have it leveled at all, as in this range, the attack speed and use of Combo will be a great source of damage for soloing. For equipment? You're not gonna find much better than +MP or the highest defense pieces you can find. When you hit 10 things become a bit different, you can begin partying with use of levelsync, but your equipment will largely remain the same for quite a while. You're going to want to sub White Mage or Red Mage, and you're going to be doing some support healing while using spirits to perform light damage dealing. Your best bet is to group or solo up to level 20, which is when you have some choices to make.

One good choice to make however, is taking up just a little cooking to make orange or apple juices, so that you can give yourself some refresh when you aren't in areas with moogle buffs. With EXPing off crabs, the needed water crystals should be abundant, and NPCs carry the apples and oranges, so all you need is a few craft levels, and time. And at LV25, you get access to autorefresh At 20, you can, if so inclined, take your Carbuncle, and build a little fame for the "Trial Size" avatar fights for Garuda, Ifrit, Ramuh, Leviathan, Titan, and Shiva. Honestly, for the bulk of your early career, Carbuncle, and Earth Spirit will provide plenty for your needs, so these are entirely optional. You can also change subjobs to Scholar if you have unlocked it, which will give you more flexability in your spell selection, and added potency. Since Summoner doesn't change much as it levels, you can go a longer period of time without having to think too much about what you're doing. And With all this in mind, your first shopping list is below

**Shopping list:**

* LV1: Earth Spirit Pact - or any spirits, this one is in Norg for maybe 1k gil
* LV1-??: Hairpins - These provide MP, upgrade as you see fit. You can even craft your own first one if you happen to have a bone chip or two and a wind crystal.
* LV20: Carbuncle Mitts - +14 MP, perpetuation of Carbuncle cost halved, you will need help to kill the NM, but its worth it
* LV27-33: Your RSE set - with Carbuncle Mitts Depending on race, these grant HP and/or MP
* LV41: Rain Hat - Another substantial amount of MP, not required but nice
* LV10: Astral Ring - Get two if you can, they grant a large buff to MP
* LV40: Vilma's Ring - Same as an astral ring, but with 1 INT/MNK/CHR, you will want help killing vilma, but it can replace an astral and let you sell one back
* LV41: Kukulkan's Staff - a nice bump to MP, and the first of your Artifact, but you can keep running the Melampus Staff if you want
* LV29: Melampus Staff - Off Wake warder Wanda, a reasonable staff with boost to cure spells
* LV40: Air Spririt Pact - If there aren't any for sale, level 40 should be good for soloing some Yagudos to get one as a drop. Its a LV1 scroll, but the pacts can be tricky to come by early on.
* LV30: Lizard Leather Strap/+1 - 5-10 MP in a slot where you had none
* LV25?: Morion Tathlum - 3 MP in a slot you had nothing

### Level 50-74

This is where things get wild. You're largely going to be doing what you were already doing, only moreso. At 50, you can if you want, change your subjob to bard briefly for access to Mage's Ballad for 1 MP refresh, which will stack with your fruit juices, however, I would personally just stick to /WHM, /RDM, or /SCH. 50 allows you to begin working on getting your Artifact Armor, unlocks the ability Elemental Siphon which lets you restore MP with use of elemental spirits and you get access to another MP boost trait which will help a lot. And a level later you can use elemental staffs, their high quality ones, Iridal Staff, or Chatoyant staff which will cut the cost of matching avatars, and grant additional bonuses. Austere and Penance pieces are now available too, which are great for you in lieu of artifact pieces. Besides this? Numerous bloodpacts come on line, but those will benefit mostly from experimenting, although in the endgame section I will cover the ones I generally recommend. So aside from your artifact at level 50-60 which you may want to wait on anyway, at 65, with some effort, you should be able to take on the full sized avatar fights solo with your Carbuncle and Earth spirit and unlock those. They can be performed once a week (or possibly daily?) resetting on Sunday night and can be also used to generate some Gil should you be strapt for cash. And when you hit 70, your scholar subjob comes fully online finally, and you get Apogee.

**Shopping List:**

* LV51: Elemental Staffs/Iridal Staff - These will subtract 2 cost from avatar perpet and Iridal also grant cure potency, and MP recovered while healing
* LV52-60: Artifact armor - If you can manage it, if not, don't worry, of particular use are the pants.
* LV50: Austere armor - This can carry you until endgame, particularly body
* LV59: Vermillion Cloak - Better than Austere body, worse than Penance body
* LV50: Serket Ring - Replacement to one Astral ring
* LV50: Beak Necklace - More MP
* LV66: Phantom Tathlum - more MP
* LV45: Astral Earring - More MP

### A note about soloing or pet job partying

Summoners can solo quite effectively and gain good exp while doing so, if lucky, but it primarily comes down to a luck factor. How does it work? Short version, find a Bomb, Bee, or some other monster that checks Very Tough or higher, but not too high (Consult FFXIclopedia for some level ranges) that has some TP move that can kill itself, and throw wave after wave of your own pets at it. The idea behind this is to let your pet feed the monster TP, and gradually wear them down, until they end up self-destructing, and granting you a big boon of exp for doing so. That said, on Era, this can be difficult or uncommon, so don't be surprised if this ends up slower than killing Easy Prey and Decent Challenge enemies.

## Endgame

So you finally made it, clawing your way to the top. You know what to do, but you want to be dressed for the part eh? Finally want to be the best summoner you can be? First, on to some tech before we talk gear. Summoner can now use Apogee, and with knowledge, you can do some really neat combos. Its hard to do too much without multibox or other summoners, but one nice bread and butter combo is to use Garuda's Claw and Predator Claws bloodpacts, to do a low level skillchain. It does around the same damage as two back to back predator claws pacts, but at a slightly reduced MP cost, and provides a window for mages to magicburst with earth spells. Keep in mind, you must maintain target on the same enemy for it to work correctly. Also many other avatars can skillchain themselves, or off eachother, so looking up a skillchain guide or calculator may be advisable! And don't overlook the value of just using two meteorites, or magic/physical pacts to try and burn down an enemy.

Now with this out of the way, lets look at you. Looks like you're wearing an iridal staff, carbuncle mitts, and your artifact feet and legs. Not too bad so far, a good place to start. But now its time to look at your next upgrades and where you're gonna get them! Be aware, outside of some +MP pieces, theres not too much you can get off the AH without having a lot of cash on hand.

**Notorious Monster loot hunting list:**

* **Yinyang Robe (LV71)** - off of Shikigami Weapon, this is gonna be your best all-rounder body bar-none. 1 point of refresh, -enmity, 25 MP, and faster bloodpacts make this pretty great. Unless you start crafting and camping to make a Penance Robe, this is fantastic
* Carbuncle Mitts (LV20) - If you don't have these already, its time to go get them, and better still, you have a chance to earn a Light Spirit pact for your troubles! Its just as required now as it was back then when using Carbuncle.
* Serket's Ring (LV50) - A big bump of MP, if you can get it from Serket, it can save you some gil.
* Astral Earring (LV45) - Another nice chunk of MP, in the ear slot of all places, this is great. Padfoot can be somewhat camped, but gated behind Chains of Promathia progress, its not a huge problem to get from time to time, so it really just comes down to getting the drop.
* **Evoker's Ring (LV71)** - Not actually from NMs, but, taking a trip through killing all the avatars and fenrir again nets you a 25mp -1 perpetuation ring, which does fantastic things for you. And if that wasn't enough? It comes with 10 summoning skill.
* RSE Rope belt (LV70) - Off Ruebezahl, depending on your race, this could be another huge bump to MP, for hume and mithra alone, these have a nice 40 MP which makes them great for summoners.
* Dalmatica (LV73) - Dropped by Aspidochelone, or Nidhogg, this is largely inferior to Yinyang Robe, however, it does have the benefit of giving you more MP so it may be worth having before performing summoner duties to buff yourself for free with the extra padded MP.
* Phantom Tathlum (LV66) - From Phantom Worm in Kuftal tunnel, 10 MP in a slot where you're not getting any MP otherwise. This can be great and easy to get.
* Optional: Spurrer Beret (LV75) - If you're idling with a pet you can let just auto-attack, having 5% haste on your pet is pretty handy. But you're in for a heck of a fight if you plan to get it.

### Dynamis

Theres not too much special to operating in Dynamis, or any other event for a summoner, you're going to use Avatars to tank damage, deal damage, and buff your allies. As for what you want from Dynamis? Basically everything, but I'll put them in order of what I think matters most.

1. **Summoner's Bracers** - Stellar, with bonuses to skill, avatar accuracy, and bloodpact delay, these are ideal for performing pacts. Dynamis Bastok has them.
2. Summoner's Pigaches - Not quite as good as the gloves, but with a boost to avatar attack, and pact delay, these are ideal for physical pacts which most summoners are going to use.
3. Summoner's Horn - More bloodpact delay, but no skill, so a bit less useful than Evoker's Horn. You will still want it for starting bloodpacts though before swapping to Summoner's horn
4. Summoner's Spats - mostly just for the pact delay.
5. Summoner's Doublet - This is debatable, but mostly inferior to the Yinyang Robe, however if you are willing to match your Avatar to the ingame day of the week, it is the best MP conserving body you can get. Don't feel ashamed wearing or using this. Also may be useful to pact in for the crit rate boost.
6. Summoner's cape - Should be higher on the list, however being from Dreamworld Dynamis which needs further progress to unlock, this is largely a minor upgrade to Errant cape, more HP and MP, and some hate generation down.

### Sky

Like all events for Summoner, its all about using your avatars to take hits and deal damage so you hopefully don't die in the process. You're really valuable on bosses here, because of your safety and strong bloodpacts, and thankfully, theres a few things we may enjoy from here. However, be aware, that many of the offerings from Sky don't do particularly much for a Summoner.

* Zenith Crown - Off Genbu or Byakko, it converts HP to MP, and having bunches of MP is generally good, but you're still better with other combos day to day.
* Zenith Slacks - Off Suzaku or Seiryu, More HP to MP, but again, not ideal for SMN unless you're just banking massive MP for pre-fight things. Even then, if you're subbing Scholar, you want to bank +HP for a bigger sublimation battery.
* Zenith Mitts - Same as above. You know the drill. At least these may be useful if you want to make a setup for Helix usage while /SCH. But I'd still go for Yigit pieces for the autorefresh, its not much for +MP, but it helps you upkeep your avatars and recover MP.
* Genbu's Shield - Err... Its good, but you don't have anything worth wielding opposite it, so an Earth Staff would suit you better, honestly.

### Assaults

Okay! This is where we get to shine a little bit actually! You're still doing the same things, but some assaults just really trend toward Summoner's skills, with the ability to mitigate damage resistance with Diabolos's Nether Blast, or being able to distance yourself from enemies, or even use your pacts to aid a party and help them complete the mission more effectively. Even Nyzul! And theres some things we can use here.

* **Yigit Turban** - Pick three and get a point of autorefresh
* Yigit Gages - Pick three and get a point of autorefresh
* **Yigit Seraweels** - Pick three and get a point of autorefresh
* **Yigit Crackows** - Pick three and get a point of autorefresh
* **Goliard Saio** - Big HP for Sublimation, and haste, pretty handy for some uses like Utsusemi casting.
* Goliard Trews - Not bad for idling in with a pet out, but 10 def isn't much for your pet.

### Limbus, Einherjar, and other endgame content

By now you know what you should be doing, and how to do it. With that in hand, keep doing what you've been doing and collect some goodies along the way. Things like:

* **Nashira Crackows** - Obtained from Proto-Ultima, these are some of the only feet pieces with Summoning skill.
* **Nashira Gages** - These could be argued as the most important piece off Proto-Ultima, granting an amazing -1 avatar perpetuation.
* Various Marduk Pieces - For summoner, these can offer big boosts to HP, MP, and Summoning skill. Odds are you only want a few pieces of this, and it will depend on what you have already gotten elsewhere, and you may not be particularly popular in Salvage, needing so many resources to become functional, but if you can get them, they're quality!
* Various Hydra mage pieces - Same as Oracle below, if you happen to reach Dynamis Tavnazia and get a group together to farm em, you can get some very nice MP recovered while healing pieces from here.
* Various Oracle pieces - Mostly for the MP Recovered While Healing stats, but the Bracconi (legs) also grant a healthy dose of MP, and some Summoning magic. Try and get em if you end up running ZNM content.
* **Evoker's Pigaches +1** - Needing some items from Limbus, these are the other piece you need to decide between with Nashira Gages. If you're using Yigit legs and head, and Yinyang Robe/Dalmatica/Marduk Jubbah/Penance Robe/Summoner's Doublet, you don't have any other slot to give up for reaching the three pieces of Yigit for the 1/tic refresh. Since you're likely using Carbuncle Mitts when Carbuncle is out, my recommendation is to go with Yigit Turban, Seraweels, and Crackows, and skip this piece, and lean on the Nashira Gages (which synergize better with /SCH and dark arts for landing spells like Sleep and Dispel) but this ultimately comes down to your tastes.
* Various -1/+1 Evoker and Summoner pieces - If you're already using these pieces, they're even nicer +1'd.
* Karura Hachigane - Off a Tier 1 ZNM, this head piece reduces Garuda's Perpetuation Cost by 2! And gives her a boost to attack and defense. VERY powerful.

## Mastering the Forbidden Magic

You've been through some highs, lows, probably had a few near death experiences, and even more actual deaths. You've learned to help a party, solo, and blow stuff up! You're a pro now. Time to dress like one!

### Weapon slots

These you're going to essentially full-time. Your short term goal is to get a **Chatoyant staff.** It provides every benefit that Iridal does, but with added potency to magic, and 1 more perpetuation reduction. Your long term goal(s) are to get a **Claustrum,** or maaaaaybe a Nirvana. That said Claustrum has -4 perpetuation, and 1 refresh for FIVE total for your avatars, and if you happen to be meleeing, and use Gate of Tartarus, you gain an additional 8 refresh for the duration of the aftermath! Nirvana only has -4 perpetuation, but it grants other benefits to your avatars, and is substantially harder to obtain, while also being ONLY usable by summoner. And Nirvana is currently not actually obtainable in game. So there is that.

Staff Strap is your goal, 20 more MP, and minus hate work great. Alternatively you could get one or more elemental grips, but these are generally not better for Summoner unless you want even stronger sleeps and dispels. And in this vein, you could get a **Magic Strap** and maybe even upgrade it with the various elemental grips. For the ammo slot? Phantom Tathlum is just fine, although you may want to look into a **hedgehog bomb**, or a Sturm's Report if you don't mind giving up some MP for some magic accuracy for your /SCH sub. Now onto your specialized sets!

### Perpetuation set

* **Yigit Turban**
* Beak Necklace +1 / **Morgana's Choker**
* **Loquacious Earring**
* **Astral Earring**
* Marduk's Jubbah/Yinyang Robe/**Penance Robe**/Summoner's Doublet
* **Nashira Gages**/Yigit Gages
* Serket Ring/**Vivian's Ring**/*Conjurer's Ring*
* **Evoker's Ring**
* **Summoner's Cape**
* **Hierarch Belt**/Race Specific Rope belt (LV70)
* **Yigit Seraweels**
* **Yigit Crackows**/Evoker's Pigaches +1

These pieces here give you the most stability and ability to keep your precious avatar out without bleeding your entire MP pool dry, and having a healthy dose of that MP with which to support yourself or party members. That said, while I recommend using the Yinyang/Serket combo, there is a case that can be made for a Dalmatica or Penance robe and Conjurer's Ring combo, assuming you can get enough gear to convert HP to MP and lower your HP below 75%, this will net you an additional 1-2 perpetuation cost down. Otherwise? With your native auto-refresh, the Nashira gloves, Yigit set effect, Chatoyant Staff, Evoker's ring and Yin Yang Robe, you're reducing the cost of all summons by 8, which is pretty respectable.

### Blood Pact Delay Reduction Set

* **Summoner's Horn (+1)** / Penance Hat
* **Yinyang Robe** / Penance Robe
* Penance Cuffs / **Summoner's Bracers (+1)**
* **Summoner's Spats (+1)**
* **Summoner's Pigaches (+1)**

Not much to concern yourself with here, stack as much as you can in available slots. With all of this paired up, at time of initiating a blood pact, it will reduce the cooldown from 60 seconds to a more reasonable 46. Which means you can use offensive and defensive pacts around 25% more often. I shouldn't need to tell you why this is so powerful.

### Blood Pact Potency Set

* Evoker's Horn (+1) / Elite Beret +1 / **Marduk's Tiara**
* **Summoner's Torque**
* **Summoning Earring**
* **Summoner's Doublet +1**
* **Summoner's Bracers +1**
* **Evoker's Ring**
* **Astute Cape**
* **Summoning Belt**
* **Evoker's Spats (+1)** / Oracle Bracconi / **Marduk's Shalwar**
* **Marduk Crackows** / **Nashira Crackows** / **Summoner's Pigaches (+1)**

There is a bit of nuance to consider in this set, and you may even want to make two sets respective of things like Support/Magical blood pacts, and physical ones. For Physical pacts, you likely want to use the Evoker's Spats and Summoner's Pigaches, while magical ones will want to one of the other options with Summoning Magic Skill.

### Elemental Siphon Set

* Evoker's Horn (+1) / Elite Beret +1 / **Marduk's Tiara**
* **Summoner's Torque**
* **Summoning Earring**
* Astral Earring
* *Dalmatica* / Goliard Saio
* **Summoner's Bracers +1**
* **Evoker's Ring**
* Serket / Vilma's Ring
* **Astute Cape**
* **Summoning Belt**
* **Oracle Bracconi** / **Marduk's Shalwar**
* **Marduk Crackows** / **Nashira Crackows**

Thankfully and essentially near the same as a magic or support blood pact potency set, this will save you time and space. The goal here is to maximize your Summoning Magic skill and have enough maximum MP to get whatever your Siphon gives you after use. Realistically, matching day and with merits and as much skill as you can muster, this could fill a quarter of your maximum MP or more!

### Sublimation Set (Optional)

* Walahra Turban
* Goliard Saio
* Bloodbead Amulet / Shield Pendant
* Various RSE 62 hands/feet
* Gigant Mantle
* Pigeon Earring
* Bloodbead Earring
* Bloodbead Ring
* Bomb Queen Ring
* Oracle/Yigit pieces
* Various RSE 70 Sash belts

As you won't always be subbing Scholar, and thus, won't always have sublimation, this is optional, and even when you do, all of this effort will reward somewhat diminished returns. That said, a good Sublimation set can make the ability return upward of 400MP, however coming at a cost of a longer charge time, but this is really the sort of thing you use before a fight, and dip into this battery as a last resort, or, use as soon as you have room in your MP gauge, then start charging again without the specialized set so that you can just simply keep up your activities all the longer, smoother, and with less effort and downtime. Speaking of downtime actually...

### MP Recovery set

* Dark Staff / Pluto Staff / Iridal Staff / Chatoyant Staff / **Claustrum**
* **Bibiki Seashell (Augmented)**
* Oracle Cap / Hydra Beret / **Yigit Turban** / **Mirror Tiara** / Goliard Chapeau
* **Beak Necklace +1**
* **Relaxing Earring**
* **Antivenom Earring**
* **Mahatma Hopulande** / **Oracle's Robe** / **Yigit Gomlek** / Errant Hopulande / Evoker Doublet +1
* **Oracle's Gloves** / Hydra Gloves
* **Star Ring (x2)**
* **Invigorating Cape**
* Hierarch belt / **Qiqirn Sash +1**
* **Yigit Seraweels** / Oracle Bracconi
* **Numerist Pumps** / **Goliard Clogs** / **Avocat Pigaches** / Hydra Boots

Once again, I am putting three pieces of Yigit in there, the turban has +1, the body +5, and the legs +2 MP Recovered While Healing. While Oracle Cap, and Hydra Beret and Goliard Chapeau beat the turban by 1, Mahatma, and Oracle beat the body by one, nothing beats the legs, and the refresh is effectively a +3, so it would require you to have the Mirror Tiara, an Oracle or Mahatma body, and Oracle Bracconi to match the Yigit trio that you likely already want some of for your perpetuation gearset anyway! Beyond that, stacking the best of the best on this list nets you upward of +42-48 ADDITIONAL MP for every rest tick. With that, it would take the average 1100MP summoner around 2 and a half minutes from 0 MP to recover to full, as the Calm Mind trait, auto refresh, and the building with each rest tic would increase.

## Closing thoughts

With this all understood, there are some things that you can do to further increase your stability, flexibility, or even utility. I would highly advise familiarizing yourself with your various bloodpacts, knowing what they can do, and when to use them, and more than that? **ALWAYS** keep plentiful echo drops on your person at all times. Unlike Beastmaster, Puppetmaster, or Dragoon, without the ability to cast spells, if your pet falls, you are entirely dead weight. I also wouldn't necessitate it, but if you were so inclined, you could work toward a melee set for your summoner so that in the event you do have time to melee, or end up silenced, or amnesia'ed, you have something you can do, but your goal should be to never stay silenced, and never be in range of amnesia if you can help it. All in all, learn to read your situations, and make the best use of the tools at your disposal, and you'll be rolling in gear, popular to have to events, and can pivot from Summoner to nearly any job you want with the wealth of lategame gear you will have amassed!