SMN BIS & Gear FFXIV 6.11

FFXIV Endwalker Summoner SMN Gear Advice & Stats

6.05 Gear Sets (Savage/Tome)

General Builds

2.46s GCD w/ SpS Melds

2.48s GCD no SpS Melds

Spell Speed Builds

2.20s GCD w/ SpS Melds

2.25s GCD w/ SpS Melds

Crafted & Alternative Builds

2.42s GCD Pentamelded

2.47s GCD Budget Set

Ultimate Gear Sets (5.x, Outdated)

TEA

i475 2.48s GCD i515 Relic | with i535 Relic

i475 2.48s GCD | with Ultimate Draconomicon

Food: Smoked Chicken HQ

UCoB

2.47s GCD i515/535 Relic

2.50s GCD Non-Relic

Disclaimer: If you don’t have the specific pieces listed, you may substitute any i418+ gear piece that provides the same substats.

Food: Espresso Con Panna HQ

UWU

2.48s GCD i515/i535 Relic

2.50s GCD Non-Relic

Disclaimer: If you don’t have the specific pieces listed, you may substitute any i470+ gear piece that provides the same substats.

Food: Espresso Con Panna HQ

Starter Kits And Gear Priority

New to Level 90 Summoner

This section is pending an update for Endwalker

Stats

Gear stats play an important role in FFXIV, as both achieving higher stat totals, as well as using the proper combinations of stats, will allow you to reach higher levels of performance.

Below we provide insight on what these stats are, and how you should prioritize them.

Primary Stats

The two most important stats for Summoner are Weapon Damage (WD) and Intelligence (INT)

Weapon Damage is based on the Magic Damage stat listed on the tooltip of any Summoner weapon.

Intelligence is one of five main attribute stats in FFXIV, and can be found on any armor piece for magical DPS jobs.

Increasing both of these stats will directly increase your base damage output, and due to the multipliers associated with each, will lead to a much larger DPS gain per point compared to your secondary stats.

This means you should ALWAYS prioritize a higher item level weapon due to the increases in WD and INT, regardless of the secondary stat rolls.

Secondary Stats

After WD and INT will come your secondary stats, which are split into the following:

  1. Critical Hit (Crit) - Increases your Critical Hit Chance & Bonus Damage %
  2. Direct Hit (DH) - Increases your Direct Hit Chance, Bonus Damage is fixed to 25%
  3. Determination (DET) - Increases your base damage by “x” %
  4. Spell Speed (SpS) - Increases your GCD speed, also increases your DoT damage by “x” %

It’s important to understand that secondary stats are based on wider stat tiers. This means that gaining just 1 point of any secondary stat will likely not result in any gain, you must reach a new tier to receive the next % gain.

Use these tables to see how close you are to reaching your next stat breakpoint or to further understand your stats in general.

Best Stats For Summoner

6.x Changes With Endwalker

This section is due a rewrite because of the Endwalker Summoner rework.

The stat situation is now more complex with Spell Speed affecting the core rotation cycle and as such there can be merits for going much faster instead of keeping SpS as low as possible. Keep an eye out for both Crit builds and high SpS builds, but also fight specific builds tailored to encounter downtime.

WD > INT > Crit > DET >= DH > SpS

Summoner will always favor Critical Hit as a secondary stat. Due to the interaction of increasing both the % chance and % bonus damage, this allows Critical Hit to have a much greater scaling curve in comparison to the other secondary stats. This scaling curve can then be amplified further due to the various Critical Hit party buffs that exist, such as Battle Litany, Chain Strategem, and Devilment.

Following Crit will come DH and DET. In the simplified order above however, we label DH as slightly great than or equal to DET. This is due to the fact that both DH and DET have very similar scaling curves to each other, which means there’s not a significant difference in expected damage output between these two and will generally come down to which stat can reach an additional tier compared to the other

Spell Speed is labeled at the end of the priority order, due to the fact that roughly half (50%) of your damage output as a Summoner is completely unaffected by Spell Speed (as this portion comes from oGCDs). This results in SpS simply being a weak stat for Summoner and will be minimized as much as possible, however in very specific situations, small amounts can be useful for GCD alignment.

Advice on Current Gear

  • If you are not planning on not replacing a piece of gear anytime soon, have it melded with non-SpS materia
  • Do not skimp out on item level just because a piece has more SpS.
  • WD & INT upgrades » secondary upgrades until you can get BiS pieces.

Consumables

Consumables are a necessity for high level content, allowing players to gain bonus stats for a variety of purposes. These consumables are crafted items, which means you should prioritize HQ consumables for slightly higher stat gains compared to non-HQ.

Consumable options for Summoner can be broken down into the following categories:

Tinctures

Summoner will want to use Tinctures of Intelligence for the bonus Intelligence gain.

As of Patch 5.58, Grade 4 HQ Tinctures are the strongest option available, however, lower grade Tinctures can be used for item level synced content that would allow you to reach the lower stat cap (minimum item level Savage raids, level 70 Ultimates, etc.).

Food

Summoner will generally want food that increases Critical Hit as much as possible, while combining this Critical Hit with either Direct Hit or Determination.

Unfortunately you will not have every stat combination available when new food is released, therefore it’s not possible to always target one specific combination. This means food that’s either Crit/DH, or Crit/DET can both be used, depending on the stat cap.

As of patch 5.58, Smoked Chicken HQ is the strongest option available.

Super-Potions/Ethers

Super-Potions and Ethers are HP and MP regeneration potions that are usually prioritized for raid progression purposes. Since Summoner provides battle raise utility, Super-Ethers can prove valuable as battle raise comes at a high MP cost.

Super-Potions provide a small HP heal, however, it has a short cooldown of only 60 seconds with an HQ potion.