Summoners

Are summoners any good? I know most people just use them as a WHM but I was wondering if their summons are used and if so, which ones and why? Also which one do you think is the best? The hardest one to get?

They're nice to watch. Apparently, many parties won't allow the summoner to keep the summons out to fight (as a summoner should). You'll be bringing them out solely to cast a group enhancement spell, then recalling it. Then they'll have you backup healing. Might as well cut to the chase and be a whm. Just like people have made ninjas a tank, and told red mages not to melee at all, a summoner shouldn't fight with summoned monsters. I'm still considering summoning myself, as well as bardhood or remaining a whm, but I'm pretty sure if I get avatars, they're staying out to fight. If noone complains when the paladin wears armor, or the dragoon calls his wvern, noone should complain when the summoner fights with summoned monsters. I have heard, however, that Fenrir, if you get it, rectifies this whole problem to a degree.

First 20 lvls, your going to be subbing WHM to heal, then at 30ish, they come out, area buff, then go back. At lvl 70 tho, they are ultra powerful like the previous FFs, so yea ^^;;;

Summoner are really special, the avadars are really cool too. there also Element Sprits as avadars too.so a Summoner is great if you like strong magic.

They arent that strong at first, first few lvls they suck ass, dont really do good, so your going to have to put yourself to some use(aka healing), then later on you can group buff your party members with Aerial Armour(Blinkaga), and Ice spike-aga and Enthunderaga, and stoneskinaga. Then at lvl 70(65 for Fenrir), THEN they gain a super powerful attk, good for HNM and BCNMs only however.

After I get my BLM to 75 (Currently 70), I am going to become a Summoner with all avatars and sub Black Mage, as opposed to white mage. I won't get many invites, sure, but I want to see how far I can go and if the avatar's attacks are really as bad as they seem. A lot of people seem to not take into account the day it is and the monster's weakness.

People forget that when you use your sub more than main that your hurting your main. Why summons so weak early levels? No one takes time to use summons more and just heal. You get no skills from using your sub such as heals from whm.
In order for summons to be stronger with attacks, you need to have high summoner magic. I notice whenever I skill up summon that summons hit harder with monsters in same area as before. You also get abilities and strengthing the summons' abilities/power when lvling your summoner as well.

Put it this way, if you were a blm main and all you did majority of the time was use sub magic of whm your blm skills will be lacking and never capped.

What about those people that spend hours summoning things in Rolanberry Fields? O_o

And using your sub spells do level up the skill. I noticed with my 30BLM/15WHM that when I used cureII or protectra, my skills went up, slower but they still went up.

But yeah, there's ALOT of summoners who just call all their summons over and over again, like they have no life. =P

Kind of like spamming cure, protect outside a mog house? No mages have a life. ;p

That's the way you raise your summon's skills I think and since they're barely being used in battle, they have to call them somewhere :/

Actually if your WHM/BLM with an underlvled Elemental skill, you cant raise it by nuking, you can raise Enfeeb from BLM spells tho because they share the same skill. At least thats what i noticed.

So how can you make your summons uber then? Just slightly off-topic, I'm getting FFXI THIS WEEKEND!!! Yay for me then. Which server, anyone? I know Midgaurdsomar has all the Beta Testers (I've read nearly everything on the game, heh) but which one would you reccommend?

You summon it over and over and then get gear that helps your avatars like lower avatar perpetuation costs. Thats pretty much all i can see from it..

Join us in midgard..XD

Ragnarok has alot of import players, Gilglamish has alot of French people, and i guess everything else is sorta spread, Japanse dominent seems to be Valefor....and Fenrir has a decent NA base. Thats all i can pick out...o and FFLegend forum members usually play on Fairy although their economy is messed up alot.

If you sub BLM and your elemental skill isn't capped (as a sub too) then, if you nuke a bit it will slowly raise the skill. If it's capped it won't do anything.

I remember when I was BLM/WHM that I used protect a bit and my enhancing skills went up slowly from it. ^^

Untrue, thats because BLM DOES have an Enhancing skill. How else are you able to use Blaze Spikes then? The Healing skill however from a WHM if is not capped, will not rise at all if you are a BLM/WHM. Because Healing magic isnt shared by the two classes, whereas Enhancing does. So Protect can be used to raise your Enhancing as a BLM/WHM because BLM already has an enhancing skill.

Ok Lion I'll go to Midgard. Umm, I'm still pretty confused. Will Summons be used ever to dish out damage? If so, when and at what level? Why? There's enough questions for now....XD

Like they said, summons won't be used to dish out damage until you're level 60-70. Until then, you're either a back-up white mage (or black mage if you so choose, I wouldn't suggest anything else) and at level 30 or so you'll be using them to cast their area buffs. That's about it.

I do not see them ever being BLMs because your elemental skill is capped at half, and fighting things half a lvl from your main is no fun.

You are support, and thats mainly it. You CAN do alot of dmg at low levels, but that costs you your two hour ability and all your MP doing so, it does an area massive damage, around 500 in 40ish lvls. But its not really say consistant until the higher lvls. So pretty much healer and group buffer. Its not crappy buffs...Hasteaga, Fenrir's Elipic Howl, and Aerial Armour(Blinkaga) are real useful.