FFXIV: Dawntrail Arcanist/Summoner 1 to 100 Leveling Skills Guide

24 thoughts on “FFXIV: Dawntrail Arcanist/Summoner 1 to 100 Leveling Skills Guide”

1. I was very curious to see this one, as a SMN main for the past 6 years. I am really not the best player, and I also hadn't really gone and re-learned the early rotations after the big changes (removing DOTs etc). I don't do early content often on SMN. Very interesting. I admit I usually use Radiant Aegis on myself to compensate for my errors
   Maybe one small detail is that in DT the changed Crimson Strike to be usable later (though not very long) you used to have to use it immediately, but now you can choose to move away and back into melee. Not a big deal but in some cases it can be nice.

   LOL about Slipstream… I still see even very seasoned players move away from it or panic when they see it. We're just trying to help, please keep the enemies in the green puddle !

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2. Always delivering the best guides. You never miss, dude.

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3. Hey, he's back!

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4. Justice for Physick

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5. Uh Wesk, I think you made a mistake, it looks like you just uploaded the EW SMN guide again?

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6. Silly question: know any good controller set-up recommendations? Also, thank you, this will help me SIGNIFICANTLY.

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7. If you could make the decisions for Yoshi-P, what summons would you add in 8.0 and, more importantly, how would they be implemented? I personally like the idea of a Shiva install state ala Enshroud or Awakening.

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8. Always appreciated!

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9. Am I understanding right that Searing Light is now cast from you rather than from Carbuncle, and therefore there’s no real reason to keep Place and Heel on my bar anymore?

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10. Funny thing is I like SMN for it's simplicity

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11. I just want you to know my mother (60s) started playing ff14 recently and I sent her your videos to help her learn arcanist/smn. They helped her out so much in understanding not only what to press but *why*. You have consistently made the best intro job guides for years! Even I, a veteran of the game since 2.0, have always referred back to your videos when trying to learn or re-learn a job. Keep up the truly excellent work!!

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12. Tbh I don't even care if we get new summons I just want the class have little more going on
    Also I kinda hate how solar bahamut interacts with death or killing a alliance raid boss before summoning regular baha/pheonix desyncing solar from raid buffs possibly for rest of instance

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13. It's easy to be sarcastic about a Summoner guide after the rework, especially with the lackluster additions in Dawntrail, but at the end of the day just because something is "easy" doesn't mean it's inuititive, especially if you have little to no experience in the caster role or even the MMO genre as a whole. As always your effort is appreciated, Wesk.

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14. It does seem like how out of all the casters, Summoner got the short end of the stick with seemingly just Lunar Bahamut at best. Who knows what the future will hold for the class, but it would be nice if there was seemingly more to the class than what it currently is. Either way, Summoner still remains the first caster Class I usually max out before the other casters since it is still fun to break out the moves and how straightforward it is.

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15. It’s a small thing, but the “Watch as you go from this… to THIS” is always one of my favorite parts of your guides, and once again you didn’t disappoint

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16. "Keep in mind that this is an active MMO; Patches can and will change jobs. ESPECIALLY SUMMONER."

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17. Oh… right yeah. Carbuncle has a hotbar. Suddenly I'm getting flashbacks to prepositioning carby before fights. I kinda miss that small detail!

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18. Ok but why did they give us TWO bahamuts over literally anything else

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19. >Calls Solar Bahamut boring

    Okay Woops.

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20. Your "watch as you go from this…" is always so incredibly on point.
    I liked the new rework in EW, but Solar Bahamut… idk. I appreciate a certain symbolism Larry talked about in his video, but imo instead of pulling a reskin out of their hat, they could have used Quetzacoatl instead, adding a neat little extra lore nod with this and adding a Dawntrail region reference. (Not going to elaborate on a video aimed at sprouts obviously.) But that aside, it took me a long while to adjust my brain to Bahamut being the second demi now, and seeing phoenix only once in a blue moon. (Phoenix doesn't even appear on a Stone Sky Sea dummy duty, because the timer runs out after 3 minutes…) The Solar Bahamut heal is neat but I still prefer the phoenix heal because it gives me the feeling of having to use half a braincell on who to put it on, and the healers see they can do more DPS while the tank has the mini excog on them. Honestly, I'd rather have them stay with EW SMN + that extra searing light carby attack, than bloating the rotation up for no real reason other than having to do something new without breaking that damn 2 minute meta. ^^;

    I wonder what we're getting with 8.0. 6 minute rotation?

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21. I want to add a small aside on the pet hotbar

    For summoner is useless
    But if you want to branch on scholar to try healing (or to cheat the duty finder queue, I won't judge) a small optimization is placing your faerie in the center of the boss arena since half your healing kit is combosed by skills that originate from said faerie

    Just to be sure you actually get everyone regardless

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22. The "watch as you go from this to this" did get a chuckle out of me

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23. One of my friends has been confused by low level summoner, I think because gemshine is the first genuinely complicated button a player is likely to run into, and makes arcanist seem a lot more complicated than the job ultimately is. Glad to see the updated guide so the information is clearly up to date even if it hasn't changed much from endwalker.

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24. They gutted this job and Wesk still can make a guide over 30 mins as he's that good!

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