Originally Posted by
Malamasala
I think I got the most advanced view of the job you can find. So if you got a few moments to read it, here it is.
1. Main job
Summoner as a main job, has only two choices of play style. One is to go up and melee along with your pet, the other is to stand at a safe distance and let your pet do all the work. In other words, there is an active and a passive choice to play. I advocate active play, because I enjoy it.
2. Melee role
The melee role is very similar to PLD, DRK and BLU. Because you have reliance on MP, you'd easily feel the need to be constantly refreshed. But since you have anti-refresh, called perpetuation, the job is more advanced than all of those jobs. You will most certainly need to regain MP from another source than refresh. Spirit Taker, Myrkr, Siphon, Convert are all good ideas to have if you intend on meleeing. Which is why melee is very rare at low levels and new Summoners easily get the impression we do not belong in melee range. When you finally get these tools, you are usually so behind in skill that you'll get the impression that melee will never work.
There are two goals with melee on SMN.
A) To replenish MP
B) To fill up dead time with action
I consider additional damage from melee to be more of a bonus than the actual cause to melee. That is however my opinion with no staff having over 60ish DMG rating among the ones I tend to swing. If I get my hands on an Empyrean I might give a revised opinion, though I won't consider it "standard mage gear" for a Summoner.
3. Armor sets.
My current armor set for meleeing is not that impressive, but it is a work in progress.
Pole Grip: 2% DA
Tiphia Sting: Accuracy +2, Attack +2
Selenian Cap: Accuracy +13, Pet haste +5%
Peacock Charm: Accuracy +10
Brutal Earring: 5% DA, STP+1
Hollow Earring: 2 Dex, Accuracy +3
Caller's Doublet +2: Perp -4
Caller's Bracers +2: Perp halved, Avatar accuracy up
Evoker's Ring: Perp -1
Adler Ring: Accuracy +8, Attack -12
Aesir Mantle: 1% DA, Attack +8
Swift Belt: Accuracy +3, Attack -5, 4% haste
Stearc Subligar: +1 Refresh
Caller's Pgch. +2: Perp -3
Totalish:
-8 Perpetuation + "half of leftovers"
39 Accuracy
7% DA
4% Haste
-7 Attack
Nothing amazing, but it is worth observing it also gives 5% pet haste, and is designed for you to keep the pet out with you for low cost. There is also my "I don't care about perpetuation" set:
Danger Grip: Accuracy +5, Attack +5
Tiphia Sting: Accuracy +2, Attack +2
Hakke hachimaki: Accuracy +17, Attack +5
Peacock Charm: Accuracy +10
Yinyang robe: +1 refresh
Brutal Earring: 5% DA, STP+1
Hollow Earring: 2 Dex, Accuracy +3
Nashira Gages: 1% Haste, Perp -1
Adler Ring: Accuracy +8, Attack -12
Blood Ring: Accuracy +5
Aesir Mantle: 1% DA, Attack +8
Swift Belt: Accuracy +3, Attack -5, 4% haste
Hydra Brais: Accuracy +10
Nashira Crackows: 1% Haste
So totalish:
63 Accuracy
6% Haste
7% DA
3 Attack
-2 Perp
I'm as said, still working on what is a good setup. I'm not sure if 60 accuracy for a B rank weapon with 16 skill from merits is low, ok, or high. But it does work well for skilling up. This could obviously be improved by a better body, better feet and better hands. Less obvious if I should trade some accuracy for DA and haste. (If I ever bought ASA)
Now follows the second half of my Summoner "how to" opinions.
1. Sub jobs
If you don't mind relying on sub job, you can do many weird things that I consider simply un-summoner-like. You can for example sub WHM, keep a haste rotation and cure and -na party members. This is what many people think is the correct way to play, while it is simply ONE way to play.
My argument for it being an unnatural way to play, is that you could do this on other jobs also. BLU/WHM would do the same thing... but you don't see people play this way. DRK/WHM would also work... but you don't see people play this way. (I might be overplaying the potency of aspir for a DRK to go a longer time though.) You can also go PLD/WHM and do this... and again, people don't do this. For some reason BLU's want to melee, DRKs want to melee, and PLDs want to "melee" (but call it tank). Which is why the natural order of things is for a SMN to melee as well, it just suffers from a few issues at early levels, that manifest themselves at later levels.
That said, there is nothing wrong with playing SMN/WHM if you want to. SMN/RDM for keeping a refresh cycle is also allowed. It simply moves the focus from SMN to /XXX.
Some subjobs do however keep the focus on the SMN. Like COR sub to enhance your avatars (mostly useless combination), or SAM sub to gain TP faster while meleeing.
2. WHM the universal subjob
Sometimes it pays to be versatile. With WHM sub you actually do not just open up the choice to be a sub job based healer/support, you also have the option of accessing Cataclysm for dealing AOE melee damage. In addition you also got travel spells for moving around faster.
3. Last words
The most important part is that you like the way you play. After that it is mostly up to if you hang around with people who play for fun, or only play to finish content as fast as possible.
When I empyrean farm with the LS, it is the latter the counts, so no Summoner melee. If it just is some random thing we are doing, I might take the opportunity to whack the mob some. Usually I'm /WHM for versatility, because /SAM is often not flexible enough for my evenings.
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