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HELLO IT IS I, THE ALLEGEDENDARY TSUNDERE IMOUTO. I graduated! Wooo. Which means I have been playing lately, so, much of the advice in this guide has been updated to help with practical experience. I hope it is useful to you!

The two goals of this guide are:

1. Give you some structured rotations to practice. Summoner is more about when to do things than what to do.  I want you to focus on this as a goal if you are playing Summoner as an alt job or just picking it up from scratch starting at level 70.
2. Teach you how to mix up this flow when needed and analyze what your options are at each position in your rotation. I want you to focus on this goal if you are here as a Summoner player with some practice in savage already looking to boost your numbers higher than they are.

If you are looking for a more concise and visual introduction to Summoner in savage raids, I encourage you to use Koda’s visual guide.

FAQ:

1. Ifrit or Garuda?
   1. Short Answer: Garuda
   2. In 4.4, Radiant Shield got nerfed. Garuda and Ifrit were already pretty close. Garuda is better now in all cases if you manage her Contagion properly. If you do not line contagion up properly, Sicfrit is still better.
2. What gear do I need for summoner?

Build towards one of these two options:

1. Check out this minimum spell speed build if you have very low ping and are very practised at bahamut timings. Low spell speed will require you to use addle during bahamut to get 11 wyrmwaves unless your ping is extremely good.
2. If you want a less strict rotation with slightly less max DPS potential, check out this moderate spell speed build.

Openers:

The general structure of the Summoner opener follows this pattern.

1. Burn the first set of Aetherflow in your pool and enter DWT ASAP.
2. Weave oGCDs (Rouse, Shadow Flare), space out pet abilities to avoid conflicts.
3. Line up your big stuff (death flare, enkindle, tri-disaster, and festers) into as many overlapping buffs as possible.

Openers are no longer contingent on whether you want a slow or fast bahamut; we now know ways to get 11 wyrmwaves without needing tri-disaster, and so now openers are optimized per-fight and for latency reasons.

Opener #1: Fryte & Puff’s Opener — 3rd GCD Shadow Flare, Delayed Contagion

Because Garuda is the main pet of choice, if you choose to use her pet-swapping in the middle of your opener is no longer necessary. I recommend this opener for the general-case, but you may use a different opener depending on fight. However, this gamut of abilities comes with its own challenges, so let’s break them down.

Flaming Crush?: For the Sic to work later in the opener, you have to get Flaming Crush on cooldown. Why? Weird pet AI. Don’t target the boss when you press Flaming Crush.

Radiant Shield Timing: The sequence shows casting Radiant Shield after summoning Garuda, so what gives? Summoning Garuda takes 3 seconds, and you can still instruct Ifrit to do things during this cast, so you simply tell Ifrit to cast Radiant Shield halfway through your Summon Garuda cast.

Sic? Why is there an asterisk?: Sic gets Garuda to cast Contagion much faster than spamming it yourself would! You’ll tell Garuda to Sic’em roughly sometime between Painflare and Shadow Flare. However, because we instructed Garuda to use Devotion briefly before this, we need to make sure she’s actually cast it, the darn little bugger. If you press Sic too early, Garuda will cancel Devotion, so make sure to experiment with your own timing.

Opener #2: Takoyaki Sicfrit Pet Swap

This opener is an updated version of the guide’s old openers. I strongly don’t recommend it, but if you’re stubborn, it’s an option. Garuda is better even for personal DPS.

If you want the full breakdown on why things happen where, and what this opener is good for, go check out Nemekh’s breakdown of the Takoyaki Opener.

I don’t recommend this opener, but if you insist on using ifrit and not learning garuda, this is provided for you so you have a decent opener. (but learn garuda)

Rotation:

Summoner has two golden rules.

1. Keep DoTs on the boss
2. Cast Aetherflow every minute

Summoner’s kit consists of many, smaller mechanical priorities (I call them minigames) that together dictate what your immediate action should be. Playing summoner well means to build these many smaller, flexible minigames around the two rigid golden rules.

Summoner’s minigames:

1. Casting the maximum number of ruin 3’s and 4’s without triple weaving.
2. Knowing when and how to spend 3 stacks of aetherflow every minute.
3. Identifying when to Dreadwyrm trance for maximum possible movement.
4. Setting up Dreadwyrm trance to reset your tri-disaster instead of manually casting DoTs.
5. Milking as many wyrmwaves as possible out of Bahamut (11).
6. Using Rouse, Dreadwyrm, Bahamut and Aetherflow without locking yourself out of any.

To this end, you cannot learn to be a very good summoner by practicing an exact sequence of skills. Playing summoner optimally in raids means molding the unique flexibility of these smaller priority systems to your advantage. I tend to frame rules of thumb relative to the two rigid timers (Aetherflow, DoTs). Use them to guide your decision making moment to moment.

Rules of thumb per-minigame relative to Aetherflow / DoT timers:

1. You should always cast Ruin 3 if you are standing still. Learn to slidecast to expand the opportunities to get more of these Ruin 3’s in. When you get a Ruin 4 proc, use it immediately; The longer you wait, the higher chance you’re missing more procs.
2. Festers should always be cast within the 15 second window of Contagion, just after your mid-cycle Dreadwyrm Trance. If Bahamut is ready to cast, save Aetherflow in your pool until you summon Bahamut, so you can use the festers to get extra Wyrmwaves.
3. You can flexibly cast your 2nd Dreadwyrm Trance any time your DoTs on a target are at 16 seconds or fewer remaining simply by holding the reset tri-disaster until the DoTs are just about to fall off instead of casting it as soon as it is reset. 1st DWT should line up with Contagion, and so must be used more strictly for optimal dps.
4. If you get Aetherflow into your pool with at least 15 seconds remaining on your dots, you should burn through your festers ASAP to enable Dreadwyrm Trance -> Tri-Disaster instead of manually resetting DoTs.
5. Don’t cast Bahamut unless you have 3 Aetherflow waiting in your pool to use for Wyrmwaves. If you have low spell speed (>=2.46sec GCD) you need to use Addle with Bahamut to get 11 Wyrmwaves.
6. 1. Rouse as early as possible before Bahamut (usually ~15 sec before).
   2. Bahamut at least 40 seconds before Aetherflow comes off cooldown.
   3. Dreadwyrm Trance at least 16 seconds before Aetherflow comes off cooldown.

The summoner 2 minute cycle happens in four distinct 30 second phases. You enter this cycle when you cast Bahamut at ~70 seconds, no matter which opener you use.

1. Bahamut Setup & Bahamut
   1. Cast Rouse as soon as it is off cooldown from the opener. (~16 seconds before Bahamut).
   2. Cast Contagion 1-2 seconds before casting dots (if on Obey).
   3. Manually cast your dots right as they are about to fall off.
   4. Cast Aetherflow, Summon Bahamut and do the sequence.
   5. You must follow an extremely specific sequence of skills to ensure 11 wyrmwaves without using Tri-Disaster. (At bottom of cycle)
2. Post-Bahamut downtime:
   1. Cast Tri-disaster just as dots are about to fall off.
   2. Cast Ruin 3 a lot.
   3. When your Aetherflow has ~16s on cooldown remaining, Dreadwyrm Trance.
3. 1st Dreadwyrm Trance
   1. Cast Ruin 3 a lot.
   2. When dots have 5 seconds remaining, cast Contagion (if on Obey).
   3. Weave Tri-Disaster inside of DWT in the last GCD, after Contagion lands.
   4. Deathflare, then once you Aetherflow, we move to Aetherflow & second DWT.
4. Aetherflow moves & 2nd Dreadwyrm Trance
   1. Burn through festers ASAP to take advantage of Contagion.
   2. Dreadwyrm Trance for Tri-d reset to refresh DoTs.
   3. Cast ruin 3 a lot.
   4. Once we deathflare, we rotate back around to Bahamut Setup.

There are a couple different Bahamut Sequences you can choose from, but baaaasically…

Use this one if your GCD is 2.45sec or lower.

Use this one if you have sucky ping.

Aaaand use this one once you’re out of prog if you’re a greedy bastard with low Spell Speed:

IMPORTANTLY: For ANY of these to work, you MUST cast Summon Bahamut LATE in the GCD preceding this sequence. It’s put after Aetherflow in all of these for good reason. Even if you miss it after Aetherflow, you must cast it after about ~1sec has elapsed in your weave.

ROUGH Timeline:

AoE:

Optimally taking advantage of AoE phases is one of the hardest things about playing Summoner. Unlike other jobs whose AoE rotations revolve around spamming “that button” that deals AoE damage, Summoner has a large variety of options.

AoE for summoner has a single golden rule that you need to constantly consider:

How many seconds do I have until some or all of the enemies I’m AoEing die?

The difficulty of this question compounds because the better you do in AoE, the faster they will die, and the shorter you will have. To illustrate the importance of this rule, let’s consider an example: There are 5 enemies, and they will all die in 20 seconds, or 8 GCDs.

But, before we get started, know this: any restrictions to Bahamut like “Only bahamut when you have Aetherflow available! Make sure tri-disaster is up for bahamut!!!” do not apply in AoE situations. If Akh Morn can hit even just two targets, it is worth it to Bahamut out of sync of your regular rotation.

We have 3 aetherflow in our pool

Bahamut is half-charged

	2.5s	5s	7.5s	10s	12.5s	15s	17.5s	20s
GCD	Ruin 2	Tri-Bind	Ruin 2	Tri-Bind	Ruin 2	Tri-Bind	Tri-Bind	Tri-bind
oGCD1	Pain		Pain		Pain		Swift	DeathF
oGCD2					DWT
Potency	1000	150	1000	150	1000	385	385	2145

So, let’s approach this from a basic PoV. We’ll use our aetherflow to Painflare the things, then enter Dreadwyrm Trance and cast our super-buffed Tri-Bind. Since we can see they’re gonna die by the end, let’s swiftcast an extra tri-bind in there and cast death flare.

In total, we get ~6000 potency! Wow, that’s quite a lot! But… what’s a shame about this, is just as we generated a Bahamut (and therefore, a 600 potency AoE Akh Morn), all of the adds died. But, because Summoner is relatively flexible, we can just immediately death flare as we enter Dreadwyrm trance, right?

Well… we probably should do that, but losing those high-potency Tri-Binds is an awful shame. So, let’s recognize something: the main gridlock that held us back for the first 10 seconds is waiting for painflare’s cooldown. We had to cast weak, unbuffed Tri-Binds to space out the cooldown. So… how about we change one of those Painflares to a Bane? That way, we don’t lose any time in dreadwyrm trance, and instead buy 5 extra seconds by cutting something less valuable to us.

	2.5s	5s	7.5s	10s	12.5s	15s	17.5s	20s
GCD	Ruin 2	Ruin 2	Ruin 2	Tri-Bind	Tri-Bind	Tri-Bind	Ruin 2	Ruin 2
oGCD1	Pain	Bane	Pain		Swift	DeathF	AkhM	(lands)
oGCD2	Tri-D		DWT			Baha
Potency	1000	2000*	1000	385	385	2145	100	2175

*5 ticks of bane on 5 enemies ~= 1900 pot

This time we did 9190 potency by rushing through stuff! We gained nearly 3000 potency by changing one painflare to a bane because of the state that we were at. The tricky part about summoner is… what if Bahamut isn’t about to be ready? What if I don’t have Aetherflow? What if DoTs aren’t available to spread and I don’t have tri-disaster? The most terrible thing about this example is by rushing out more damage faster, the adds might die before your akh morn anyways simply because you’re killing them faster. AoE sucks!

There are so many variables to account for. It’s remarkably difficult to decide what the best sequence of actions. But, for me, I think the #1 indicator of success is being able to realize how long it will take to get to your big burst windows (death flare, akh morn) and simply starting to rush towards them within 5-7 seconds of when you think enemies are going to die.

As for the controversial question: is Bane worth it?

I’m not a mathemagician who can prove it to you with walls of text detailing exact comparisons. Since the Tri-Bind change to Dreadwyrm trance, it means that rushing towards Dreadwyrm trance as fast as humanly possible is incredibly valuable. So… if only to that end, yes. Bane is useful, but only because it allows you to DWT faster, which in turn allows you to cast 70pot Tri-Binds and Deathflare, which in turn can generate a Bahamut for you.

Tips, Tricks, and Strategies for Optimization:

This is the section for Summoners who are already quite skilled, and are just looking to get a small amount of extra damage out of their kit to push to the next level. If you are still on fundamentals, you can read this section, but keep in mind working really hard to get these things down is going to give you a lot less bang for your buck than working really hard on the fundamentals.

1. Actually use infusions of intelligence (and food).
   1. I shouldn’t have to say this, but so many people neglect this or buy weaker potions. Use them, sometimes even twice or three times a fight. Summoner is so reliant on burst phases and snapshotting, it is unexpectedly important.
2. If you are nearing the end of the fight (5% on boss or less) and you still have a Dreadwyrm trance, use it even if it is out of Sync. Your first priority should be rushing out Bahamut and ending the fight when the 2nd Akh Morn goes out.
   1. Gain: 500pot-700pot depending on when fight would end.
3. If a boss becomes untargetable just before Bahamut, or when Bahamut would be summoned, wait to use Bahamut until afterwards, and swap Tri-Disaster’s position in the Bahamut rotation with the first fester instead.
   1. Gain: worst case: 200 potency. Best case: ~1000 potency.
4. Keep Contagion aligned with Trick Attack. If there is downtime, communicate and re-align, or plan before the fight.
   1. This is a big, big deal. You’re lining up your big stuff with contagion, so if you keep the two synched up, your big stuff has a 21% buff instead of just 10%.
5. Prioritize keeping Contagion aligned with your Death Flare and Tri-Disaster over keeping it aligned with festers.
   1. Tri-Disaster and Death Flare have higher potencies than Fester, and so are more important to fit within the 10% buff.
6. Obey Garuda directly after each Bahamut and ensure air slash is desynced from contagion (i.e use it manually when contagion’s cd is 25sec or lower), then sic Garuda and she will use contagion much faster when it comes back up.
   1. This will help get more consistent contagion timings!
7. If a boss is about to become untargetable for a sufficiently long time (30sec+) rush through a Dreadwyrm trance early and just pocket the Tri-Disaster reset for later
   1. Gain: It’s hard to say, but this is a strategy I use to keep my Aetherflow cycling properly. The goal here is to spend aetherflow far in advance so you can use it during the downtime and not be wasteful.
8. If Potion will only come up twice in a fight (The fight is 9 minutes long or less), save your second potion for a bahamut phase
   1. Gain: Depends on when you’d have used your potion otherwise.

1. If big AoE phases are coming up, halt your rotation just before the 2nd DWT phase. The best case scenario for AoE for summoner is having 3 aetherflow in pool, aetherflow off cooldown, and Deathflare/Bahamut readily available to be rushed to.
   1. Gain: like a fucking billion potency, if the AoE phase is significant enough basically just say “screw it” to your original rotation and resync afterwards. This is mostly an fflogs thing because the boss might not die any faster though.
2. If AoE phases are coming up, save Enkindle for them
   1. Gain: ~200 potency / add
   2. Smaller gain than #9, but also doesn’t mess up your rotation.
   3. If you are in the last couple minutes of the fight, you can also save Rouse to boost that Enkindle some more. But desyncing it earlier in the fight generally isn’t worth it.
3. In the case of two targets that take a while to die (v3s white flame, apanda, iron knight) manually cast DoTs on them instead of using Bane to spread.
   1. Gain: ~180pot, a bane turns into a painflare ideally.
4. In the case of an add that spawns right by a boss, but is then quickly pulled away, try to time a Dreadwyrm Trance such that Deathflare is available for the split second both mobs are close enough to be hit with it. You can do this with Enkindle as well, but is much harder due to the delay.
   1. Gain: 400potency
5. Mana Shift your Bard whenever he casts Foe Requiem
   1. Mana is basically endless since 4.1, so this is just a strict gain, but the actual amount depends on how much group damage you are doing.
6. Most fights have downtime. In each of those downtimes, you should summon ifrit, use Radiant Shield, then resummon/swiftcast Garuda before the boss returns.
   1. On Omega M/F in Savage, you can get 3 Radiant Shields in while still getting all your Contagions, since you have ample time to swap pets back and forth when the boss splits and each time they do the number dashes.
   2. Credit to u/HarkiniansDinner for the tip!
7. Do Not send Tsundere Imouto on Coeurl 1,000,000 gil attached to a letter that says “Anime is garbage (and so am I)”
   1. Last time this tip didn’t work very well, so I’m trying reverse psychology.
   2. Gain: I’m in my last semester of college and I took hours out of my life to write this guide so basically I’m a saint, which buffed the karma gain to 1000-2000.

UI:

This could be a whole guide on its own. Ironically, it’s extremely subjective. I’m not going to tell you precisely how to build a UI, only that if you are using the default UI and Keybinds you probably need to seriously re-evaluate how difficult you are making the game on yourself. Some core principles for Summoner I recommend you adhere to:

1. Put a hotbar with Aetherflow and Tri-Disaster near your target bar that holds DoT timers.
2. Create an organized hotbar that contains all of your longer cooldowns. This hotbar (or multiple, side-by-side hotbars) should have AT LEAST:
   1. Aetherflow
   2. Tri-Disaster
   3. Contagion / Radiant Shield (depending on which pet you use, or both)
   4. Potion
   5. Shadow Flare
   6. Rouse
   7. Enkindle
   8. Devotion
   9. Swiftcast
3. Try to maximize the space in front of your character by raising your third person camera angle (Character config -> Control Settings -> General -> Scroll down to bottom). Space behind your character is basically lost real estate you could have to watch mechanics.
4. Stick your buff bar (where Aetherflow, Devotion, etc show up) next to your other things.

My UI is really weird and I don’t necessarily suggest you recreate it, but if you are interested in what it looks like in practice, check it out here.

Credits & Resources:

So this time, instead of writing my own guide, I basically just lifted a bunch of the work from the great people over in The Balance discord. I have to especially thank three people in particular.

Nemekh has done a bunch of work theorycrafting and mathing stuff in the channel.

Fryte who has been consistent in trying things out, creating openers, mathing pet options, etc. I’m not sure there’s a single thing Fryte didn’t have a hand in somehow.

And lastly, thanks to Super Puff or Elevation Xx or whatever your name is now; he’s the boy with the big dps who puts a lot of these techniques into practice, answers questions with frightening regularity, and was responsible for outfitting most of the new bahamut rotation tech.

For other resources, I recommend:

XIVAnalysis a tool to automatically look over your logs and point out glaring issues with them.

Koda’s image guide to Summoner, a more approachable step for beginning Summoners.

The Balance FFXIV Theorycrafting Discord. Ask questions about stuff not in the guide here!