Final Fantasy XIV - Caster Classes / Characters

Magi who use their arcane powers as a method of attack, casters can attack from long range with explosive might but require concentration to cast their spells which can be interrupted by attacks or movement. With patience and careful planning, these classes can bring some serious carnage in the battlefield, blowing up swathes of enemies with a wave of a spell.

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Casters in General

Badass Longcoat: If it isn't a robe, it's probably this instead. Some examples include the Ala Mhigan Coat, Alexandrian Coat, or the Shire Philosopher's Coat.
Badass Long Robe: Casting robes are aplenty in this game, and they usually have this in effect, such as the Void Ark Robe.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: As a DPS role, they all have red class icons.
Limit Break: Caster Limit Breaks strike all enemies within a ground-targeted, circular area-of-effect. Higher-level Limit Breaks will cover a much larger area in addition to inflicting greater damage. These are more often used for bursting down large trash pulls in dungeons than for boss fights, deferring to Melee jobs' greater damage on a single-target when available, but will occasionally be used on groups of adds.
Long-Range Fighter: Casters try to fight at a safe distance, but unlike the Ranged DPS classes they don't have ranged auto-attacks and generally cannot use their spells while moving under normal circumstances, giving them a more inconsistent uptime. Red Magi also have a melee attack phase in their rotation, but have abilities that let them enter and escape melee range to compensate.
Meteor-Summoning Attack: The "Skyshard" and "Starstorm" Limit Breaks both involve raining meteors down on the target. The Black Mage can also cast the series iconic Meteor spell as their Level 3 Limit Break.
Regenerating Mana: The "Lucid Dreaming" role ability gives casters regenerating MP for a short time. They share this role ability with healers.
Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Casters will conjure a glowing Magic Staff as they cast their Level 1 and Level 2 Limit Breaks.
Squishy Wizard: Casters generally have lower health and less physical defense than the other DPS classes. If they accidentally take aggro from the party tank, they’ll die in a few hits. You can avert this trope in the optional Eureka and Bozja instances by using items which dramatically increase a Caster's hit points and/or defensive stats for the duration of the instance. Lampshaded by Cocobygo, one of the guildmasters for the Thaumaturges' Guild.
Cocobygo: We thaumaturges excel at offense, but fail miserably at defense. Our most effective strategy is to topple our adversaries from afar with overwhelming force before they have a chance to respond. Honor is for knights... and dead mages.
Status Buff: "Swiftcast" makes the next spell you cast within ten seconds go off instantaneously, while "Surecast" ensures that you can cast spells without interruption from taking damage and makes you immune to most forms of Knockback for the duration. Like "Lucid Dreaming", they share these buffs with the healer classes.
Status Effects: "Addle" lowers the target’s mental stats by 10%, making their magical attacks less effective for 10 seconds. Endwalker instead makes it so the target deals less damage, with a focus on magic damage.

Thaumaturge and Black Mage

Preferred Weapons: Scepters and Staves
Armor Type: Casting
Guild Location: Steps of Nald, Ul'dah

Magic users that draw upon the aether in their body and channel it through a Magic Staff with a Power Crystal, concentrating on obliterating enemies with Fire, Ice, Lightning spells as well as the ability to unleash a few Status Effects. Becoming a Black Mage gives the player even greater focus on destructive spells by drawing upon the ambient aether of the planet itself.

Thaumaturge

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/12f87ba2_2869_4910_986c_222f0f2b4611.jpeg

Abbreviation: THM
Unlocking Requirements: Available at the start of the story

The Artifact: Shields being equippable alongside one-handed scepters. In 1.0, the shield abilities actually came from a separate class, Sentinel, which was only used as a subclass by Gladiators, Conjurers, and Thaumaturges. This class was removed when Jobs were introduced and the abilities were rolled into Gladiator and Paladin, removing a mage's ability to use them. All weapons introduced since then (aside from the Final Fantasy XIII-inspired weapon) have been two-handed, and two-handed variants of existing one-handed weapons got rolled out as replacements.
Dark Is Not Evil: The Guild leaders refer to their art as "diving into the Abyss", and the god of death is the guild's patron deity. But the Thaumaturges make a point to understand life itself along with the destruction their magic brings.
Deflector Shields: "Manaward" gives the Thaumaturge a damage-absorbing barrier for 20 seconds.
Fireballs: Fire and Fire II manifest as launching fireballs at the enemy with Fire II's generating a large explosion on impact.
Fire, Ice, Lightning: The Thaumaturge's main method of attack is using spells from Fire for Attack, Blizzard for MP recovery and Thunder for Damage Over Time.
Forced Sleep: The Sleep spell which puts the target enemy to sleep for thirty seconds or until someone attacks them.
Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Thaumaturges can wear shields if they are equipped with one-handed rods. Eventually, shields are phased out entirely in higher levels as two-handed rods become the standard.
Magic A Is Magic A:
- Thaumaturgy, and subsequently Black Magic, uses the mage's inner aether as a source for spells while using the crystal medium within their staves or wands to shape the spell; thus their spells take the form of energy elements like fire, ice and lightning. Black Magic then takes it further by using the aether of the surrounding land to amplify the spell by several orders of magnitude.
- Their Stance System shifts the user's aether towards either the astral (active) or umbral (passive) spheres. Under the effects of Astral Fire, their spells have much more oomph to them, but it also means they're putting out so much aether that they can't really recover any of it. When affected by Umbral Ice, their magical output is reduced to relative Scratch Damage because they're limiting its flow, allowing for rapid aether recovery.
Magic Staff: Uses various kinds of two-handed staves, though they can also use a one-handed Magic Wand (with a shield) as well.
Magikarp Power: Prior to getting the third tier elemental spells (which automatically max out the player's Astral Fire/Umbral Ice buff) and Firestarter (40% chance on casting Fire that you get a free Fire III cast), thaumaturges and black mages are decent at DPS output. After that, a Black Mage has the highest damage potential of any class in the game if played right.
Mechanically Unusual Class: Thaumaturge/Black Mage is the only class/job that has "infinite" resource for their abilities. Their ice spells fully regen their mana, a mechanic no other class has. As a consequence, BLM can recover from death easily MP wise unlike other casters, and Lucid Dreaming is basically pointless compared to how important it is for other casters.
Mystical 108: The number of volumes of fundamental thaumaturgical principle. Fortunately, the guild abolished forcing newcomers to read them all. "Too great a deterrent to fresh novices."
Non-Elemental: The paltry Scathe spell far weaker then its origin in Final Fantasy XII, here it is mainly used for attacking while moving.
Not the Intended Use: Thaumaturgy has been widespread and militarized in Eorzea as offensive magic, but historically it was developed to prepare corpses for funerary rites. Ice to cleanse and preserve, lightning to release the soul and fire to burn the remains into ash. It is just as easy to cremate a body while it is still alive, however...
Regenerating Mana: The Umbral Ice buff granted by casting Blizzard spells gives the Thaumaturge insane MP regeneration, allowing them to go from empty to full in a matter of seconds.
Robe and Wizard Hat: In classic Final Fantasy tradition, thaumaturges and black mages wear robes and wizard hats for their better aetheric conductivity when compared to armor, making them better for casting spells.
Shock and Awe: The Thaumaturge’s Thunder spells zap enemies with lightning to inflict Damage Over Time. “Thunder” and “Thunder III” are single-target versions, while “Thunder II” and “Thunder IV” are area-of-effect.
Squishy Wizard: Excellent magical strength, lousy physical defense. Black mages are particularly notable for this among the caster classes due to their "Ley Lines" skill, which encourages them to stay in place in order to fling spells as fast as possible.
Stance System: The Thaumaturge has two stances: Astral Fire, which empowers powerful Fire spells but stops your MP from regenerating; and Umbral Ice, which empowers weaker Blizzard spells but kicks your MP regeneration into overdrive. Knowing how and when to alternate between these two stances is a core element of the class’s gameplay.
Status Buff:
- The Thaumaturge’s Thunder spells have a low chance per tick of proccing "Thundercloud", which makes the next Thunder spell they cast go off instantly, cost no MP, and do its full Damage Over Time upfront.
- The basic "Fire" spell has a 40% chance of proccing "Firestarter", which lets the Thaumaturge cast "Fire III" instantly for free.

Black Mage

Abbreviation: BLM
Unlocking Requirements: Level up Thaumaturge to 30

An Adventurer Is You:
- The Nuker magic DPS, playing effectively the role of the "Artillery Mage". Big, powerful, and very unsubtle attacks to one or more foes.
- In PvP, the Black Mage also picks up the role of the DoT Master and the Mezzer. While they retain their signature high damage output, the Black Mage truly shines in its ability to inflict a long-lasting DoT debuff or freeze a single-target or even an entire team with its Astral Warmth and Umbral Freeze debuffs and "Superflare".
An Ice Person: The "Umbral Ice" stance regenerates MP like nothing else in the game, grants powerful ice spells like "Blizzard IV" and "Freeze", and may grant up to 3 stacks of "Umbral Heart" which prevents the drawback of "Astral Fire's" MP cost increase. Shadowbringers introduces the ability "Umbral Soul", which instantly refreshes "Umbral Ice" and gives a stack of "Umbral Heart", but only while in that stance. While it will seldom see use in the middle of a heated fight, between fights or during downtime it replaces spamming "Transpose" to keep "Enochian" up and you're building "Umbral Hearts" by spamming it.
Attack! Attack! Attack!: Unlike its fellow casters, the Black Mage brings little utility to the party. Their playstyle revolves around blowing things up and keeping themselves alive by killing an enemy before it can even get to them. The Black Mage, at high levels, has the highest damage potential of any class in XIV, but at the expense of being to do little else besides straight damage.
Awesome, but Impractical: Several higher-tier spells can be this when they are cast at inappropriate time.
- "Fire III" is a fairly powerful single-target spell, but its long cast times and high MP cost makes it impractical to spam. The Firestarter proc from spamming "Fire I" mitigates this somewhat, giving you a free instant-cast of it.
- "Flare" is a very powerful AoE spell, but it consume all of your remaining MP and takes painfully long to cast. The latter can be nullified with Swiftcast once per minute, but it remains to be a one-shot spell until much later when you gain the Enhanced Umbral Hearts trait at Level 68.
- "Despair" is essentially a single-target version of "Flare"; powerful, but has a long cast time and expends all your MP. Unlike "Flare", however, "Despair" is unable to use Umbral Hearts to reduce its cost. Its lack of spammability relegates it into a finisher spell that uses up the rest of your MP down to the leftovers.
Badass Longcoat: The "Seventh Hell" coat in Stormblood steers away from the usual black robes to instead harken back to the original Black Mage with a yellow hat and blue coat.
Badass Long Robe: Not only can you assemble attire that lets you wear colors with the same palette as the classic Black Mage attire of past Final Fantasy titles, their "Wizard" Artifact armor having a partially tattered leather shawl, and long coat which goes from the collar covering the nose and mouth of the character to just below their knees looks very badass.
Black Mage: Duh. In Eorzea, black magic was invented by the genius mage Shatotto as the pinnacle of destructive magic. By drawing aether from the land to supplement the wielder's personal aether, black mages became feared as avatars of destruction even before Shatotto's successors in ancient Mhach started binding voidsent to their will.
Black Magic: Black Magic not only draws upon the power of the body's inner Aether but also the land's aether and the Power of the Void to fuel their spells and is thus known to be a branch of Dark Magic. In the process of learning, you must deal several quests of using demon blood to open planar fissures and kill the monsters within to enhance the power of your magic. The Shadow of Mhach raid explores the folly of the Black Magi kingdom of Mhach which delved too deeply with demonic magic.
Casting a Shadow: Fitting with their Black Magic theme, they gain a powerful shadow magic based nuke known as "Foul" in Stormblood. Shadowbringers takes it even further with the single-target dark spell called "Xenoglossy", which has no cast times.
Cast from Hit Points: “Convert” would sacrifice some of the Black Mage’s health to restore a large chunk of MP. Shadowbringers removed this HP cost and renamed it to “Manafont”. On a broader level, high-level Black Magic requires the practitioner to have a soul crystal: trying to cast black magic by channeling aether from the land on top of the wielder's aether without proper instruction from a teacher or a soul crystal will lead to the user incinerating themselves.
Cool Mask: What the artifact headgear gives.
The Dark Arts: Black Magic is on paper one of the more "Evil" powers the Warrior of Light can wield, as the powers of Black Magic draw upon the aether of the land, can easily kill an unprepared caster, and need either a soul crystal or some form of "sacrifice" to cast, that more unscrupulous Black Mages substitute those sacrifices with the blood of innocents and actively summon voidsent to serve them, the art is shunned and practicing it is outright illegal, the Warrior of Light only catching a break because they're, well, them, and they don't practice the whole innocent-sacrificing or demon-summoning bit. Subverted as of Shadowbringers in the Level 80 quest Lalai and the WoL make a case towards the Thaumaturge Guild, using the events of previous storylines to convince the Guild to make it more along the lines of the White Mage's Dangerous Forbidden Technique.
Difficult, but Awesome:
- One of the hardest classes to play optimally in the game, as to put out high damage, you are rooted to the spot with little time to move around. This means you need to know the flow of a boss's moves and know exactly where to stand when so you can cast your spells without being impeded. It requires knowledge of a fight more than pretty much any class for the best results. And although the Black Mage rotation is probably one of the simplest in the game, it has very strict time limits if you want to be able to cast your full rotation without dropping Enochian, which can be crippling to your damage if dropped at the wrong time. An unprepared black mage will probably do mediocre damage on a given boss. But a prepared black mage is easily one of the most powerful classes in the game.
- In-lore, Black Magic utilizes the aether in one's environment in addition to the aether in one's body to exponentially increase the power of one's spells. This technique, however, requires immense control and finesse to utilize properly. Doing so without proper instruction or the aid of a soul crystal like the Gem of Shatotto can cause a would-be black mage to incinerate themselves from the inside out.
Evil Laugh: A rare heroic example, but their victory pose emotes a sinister-looking laugh.
Evolving Attack: "Thunder" upgrades to "Thunder III" at level 54, while "Thunder II" becomes "Thunder IV" at level 64. In Endwalker Fire II and Blizzard II now also get upgraded to High Fire II and High Blizzard II, and at level 90 the normal Fire I and Blizzard I will get upgraded to the powerful Paradox spell under certain conditions.
Eyepatch of Power: All Black Mage specific sets have an eyepatch attached to the hat they wear. This has lore reasoning behind it too, as black mages were known for dealings with voidsent. And since voidsent tend to have powerful sight based abilities, Black Mages would wear big brimmed hats and an eyepatch that obscure their vision as much as possible without being totally blind so they can avoid eye-contact with the voidsent.
Double Meaning: The level 80 spell is called Xenoglossy, which normally means the ability to comprehend a language not naturally learned, but in the case of the attack it could mean strange gleam.
Geometric Magic: The "Ley Line" manifests itself as a magic rune on the ground.
Glass Cannon: In PVP, Black Mages have massive AOE damage for their attacks, and their Limit Break allows six of them to be instantly cast (along with Foul) at their highest level. However, this comes at the expense of the Black Mage having the lowest maximum HP of any class in PVP modes.
Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Black Mage will glow yellow at times.
Having a Blast: "Fire III", "Flare", and "Fire IV" all involve blasting the Black Mage’s target(s) with increasingly spectacular explosions.
Hellfire:
- At Level 72, the player gains access to a very powerful spell called "Despair", which briefly summons a tall column of fire. It is aptly described as a single-target Flare, as it is even more powerful than the already powerful Fire IV that drains the Mage's MP to 0.
- Notably, this spell is learnt alongside the Aspect Mastery that allows Ice-elemental spell to be cast even in 0 MP. While Fire IV is much more spammable, Despair is a powerful finisher for Astral Fire phase. Since it also refreshes Astral Fire timer, this gives the player an ample time to switch to Umbral Ice. Or use Manafont to restore MP to throw one extra Fire IV and Despair.
Lady of Black Magic: Female Warriors of Light qualify, able to be played with a composed demeanor while casting strong elemental spells.
Language of Magic: The Black Mages have the "Enochian" trait (formerly an Ability) to cast more powerful spells, Enochian being the angelic language. At 70 the trait is enhanced to grant "Polyglot" (an understanding of many languages) after 30 seconds of uptime, allowing the use of "Foul" or "Xenoglossy" (the knowledge of language one has never learned).
Ley Line: "Ley Line" lays down a magic circle that increases the black mage's overall haste within the zone. Come Stormblood, it also serves as teleport beacon for "Between the Lines" ability.
Limit Break: "Meteor": The Black Mage sticks their staff into the ground and channels energies to the heavens, causing a gigantic meteor to crash down. In PVP, they have "Soul Resonance", which grants them Polyglot for casting Foul, and allows them to cast Flare or Freeze right away up to six times, and also allows them to use Superflare back to back without waiting for a recast time.
Lunacy: The overall theme of the Black Mage's Goetia armor set, complete with its accompanying weapon, the Lunaris Rod, itself is adorned with a crescent moon.
Meteor-Summoning Attack: Their Level 3 Limit Break, Meteor, drops a gigantic meteor on its targets' heads. The animation is somewhat similar to Final Fantasy VII, which made using Meteor a plot point.
Playing with Fire: The Astral Fire stance grants the Black Mage access to Fire spells, which are the biggest source of damage in their kit. However, each Fire spell has a very high MP cost — "Fire III," if it's not affected by a Reduced Mana Cost, takes four thousand MP to cast once — and the Regenerating Mana of the Black Mage comes to a complete stop. It's possible to use other abilities to mitigate these costs or recover a bit of MP, but Astral Fire is going to run out of resources sooner or later, forcing you to switch to "Umbral Ice" to recover MP.
Power Crutch: Soul crystals are each an Amulet of Concentrated Awesome in which the experience of previous holders of the crystal can be passed down to the next, enabling the newest holder to learn at an accelerated rate. But in the case of the Mhachi black mage soul crystal, it's essential for an aspiring black mage to use magic safely, as black mages channel so much aether to cast their spells that doing so without extremely strict training and/or a soul crystal for guidance will simply incinerate the would-be mage from the inside out.
Reduced Mana Cost:
- While in Astral Fire or Umbral Ice, the MP cost for spells of the opposite element is halved at one stack and reduced to a quarter at two stacks. With the "Aspect Mastery" trait, learned at level 72, spells of the opposite element, with the exception of Flare, cost no MP when Astral Fire or Umbral Ice is at three stacks. As of Shadowbringers, Umbral Ice also reduces the cost of ice spells by a quarter at one, half at two, and nulls it entirely at three (even without Aspect Mastery).
- The "Firestarter" buff makes your next casting of "Fire III" cost no MP.
- Since Stormblood, some of the Black Mage’s ice spells grant Umbral Hearts, which negate Astral Fire’s increased mana cost for fire-elemental spells. They also reduce the cost of "Flare" to two-thirds of your total MP rather than all of it.
Regenerating Mana: On top of having Umbral Ice's regenerative properties, they also have "Manafont", which gives them an extra handful of mana in a pinch, even when in Astral Fire.
Robe and Wizard Hat: All of the Black Mage's artifact sets have this aesthetic.
Smug Smiler: They sport quite the smug smirk in their /victory pose, along with a taunting laugh.
Spam Attack: "Triplecast" allows the next three spells to be cast instantly, which helps them really rack up the damage. This is especially useful for Flare spamming, which takes 4 seconds to cast without it.
Status Buff: "Sharpcast" guarantees that the next casting of "Fire", "Scathe" or any Thunder spell will trigger that spell’s secondary effects^note.
Teleportation: Thaumaturges have "Aetherial Manipulation" which allows them to teleport to nearby allies. Stormblood introduces the "Between the Lines" ability, which allows the Black Mage to instantly teleport back to the Ley Lines they have set up.
Useless Useful Spell:
- Scathe. It's the only non-casting skill the Black Mage has, is quick to throw out, and it's the only way that a Black Mage can attack while moving. That's all it has going for it though. Scathe does little damage, interrupts the flow of your spells, and doesn't interact with any of the Black Mage's skill set beyond having a tiny chance of having double potency, which isn't that high in the first place.
- Prior to Shadowbringers, "Freeze" fell squarely into this as it only provided a temporary Bind debuff, removed existing Astral Fire buff without replacing it with Umbral Ice, and only gave one Umbral Ice stack. This is turned around as of Shadowbringers release, since the Bind debuff is replaced with one stack of Umbral Heart (at level 68) and it now grants a full stack of Umbral Ice even in Astral Fire, which makes the spell more useful for Flare spam, as casting Flare with an Umbral Heart will reduce its cost to allow a second cast. It also had its casting method changed from a clicking circle AOE to automatically making it damage all enemies around the target, making it easier to cast.
- Prior to Endwalker, Blizzard II was outclassed by Freeze in all respects and Fire II dealt such abysmal damage that it was mathematically superior to spam Freeze once you obtained it. Much like Freeze above, Endwalker's release also buffed them substantially, making them AoE equivalents to their Level III counterparts for transitioning between phases (while limiting Flare and Freeze to only be used in their respective Fire and Ice phases like their Level IV counterparts), and allowing them to upgrade into "High" forms. Fire II in particular also directly empowers Flare when used as a filler spell.
Violation of Common Sense: Typical Black Mage gameplay incentivizes staying far out of enemy attacks so you can fling spells freely without retaliation. But in PvP, the "Burst" spell deals a powerful 12,000 potency attack in a large area that is centered around the Black Mage. This means that the ideal use of the spell is to use "Aetherial Manipulation" to dash into the enemy team, cast "Burst" to hit them all, while hoping that the shield granted by the spell grants you enough reprieve to hopefully dash back out of the fight to continue your bombardment from a safe distance.
Yin-Yang Bomb: The "Paradox" spell hits the Black Mage's target with fire and ice at the same time. It can only be used after switching from a maxed-out Astral Fire to Umbral Ice, or after switching from Umbral Ice with three Umbral Hearts to Astral Fire.

Arcanist and Summoner

Preferred Weapons: Grimoires
Armor Type: Casting
Guild Location: Limsa Lominsa Lower Decks

Sorcerers that specialize in commanding familiars, and delving into enfeebling and Damage Over Time spells (prior to Endwalker removing them) by using a form of magic called Arcanima, a process that uses a Grimoire inscribed with geometric signs and mathematic formulas. Later on, they can learn the arts of the Ancient Allagan Summoner class, which summons elementals which have gained enhanced power from exposure to a primal of their element.

The Arcanist, unusually for a base class, can also branch into a Healer job, the Scholar. More about that job can be found here.

Arcanist

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/a5e03ba3_f39f_41da_b8ad_78a0fb2b2a96.jpeg

Abbreviation: ACN
Unlocking Requirements: Available at the start of the story

An Adventurer Is You: The Arcanist was a hybrid of the Beastmaster and the DoT Master, using both an autonomous pet and Damage Over Time spells to offset their rather weak offensive spells. Endwalker removes the latter part and dials back direct control of the pet in favor of summoning them for a single large attack, turning them into a nuking Summoner.
Anti-Frustration Features: In older expansions, summoning a pet took a long time and a lot of MP, and the pet could die if the Arcanist wasn’t careful. By Shadowbringers, various quality-of-life improvements let the Arcanist summon their pet instantly and for free, and the pets are now invincible.
The Artifact: Their status as the DoT Master has actually been removed in Endwalker, with their rotation now revolving around their summoned pet and their own damage spells, which have been increased in power. As a result, the starting Arcanist quests which delve into "Bio" and "Miasma" become rather awkward in hindsight.
The Beastmaster: The Arcanist and its associated Jobs call forth magical beings to assist them in battle. These invincible pets will attack the Arcanist's target on command, and can be ordered to use powerful abilities with "Egi Assault", "Egi Assault II", "Enkindle", and "Aetherpact".
Blood Magic: The "Energy Drain" spell steals blood from the enemy; it used to restore both health and magic (and still does for Scholars), but as of Shadowbringers it seems to drain aether for Summoners (as it now provides their Aetherflow resource).
Blow You Away: "Summon Emerald" hits one enemy with wind damage. It also lets your "Gemshine" and "Precious Brilliance" moves cast wind-aspected versions of Ruin and Outburst.
Bond Creatures: After their rework, Summoners channel the aether of their summons after they are called to their side granting the summoner the power to unleash a primals own magic themselves in tandem with that of their egis and demis.
Casting a Shadow: The now-removed "Shadow Flare" spell created a pool of dark fire which damaged and slowed any enemies that stepped in it.
Damage Over Time: They specialized in these for offensive spells, before Endwalker removed them and reworked their gameplay to focus more on their pets.
Death of a Thousand Cuts: They focused primarily on chipping off HP prior to Endwalker, relying on damage-over-time effects and their pet's attacks to complement their "Ruin" spells. They're one of the highest-damage jobs in the game, even though their normal spells on the global cooldown deal significantly less damage than Black Mage's or Red Mage's.
Difficult, but Awesome: In lore, arcanima is considered to be one of the most difficult schools of magic to learn and is no less potent than the more immediately destructive thaumaturgy. Their magic relies on the geometetry penned in their grimoires to manipulate aether, from direct spells to properly commanding a Carbuncle to fight in tandem. Before the creation of the grimoire, the spells had to be prepared in advance, and even required memorization to properly cast until the geometries evolved into more simplified and efficient ones in modern arcanima.
Dishing Out Dirt: "Summon Topaz" inflicts earth damage to one enemy and makes your "Gemshine" and "Precious Brilliance" abilities earth-aspected.
Energy Ball: The "Ruin" and "Ruin II" spells fire a colorless energy ball at their target.
Familiar: The summons of this class work on a principle like this.
Formulaic Magic: According to their lore, they study magic through the art of... Mathematics and geometry. Yes, Finding X on the Triangle, and understanding Pi, squaring, and cubic powers, and combining multiple symbols together, gives you access to magic and summoning.
Geometric Magic: The grimoires are filled with magical runes and geometries that act as a focus for the Arcanist's spells, high level spells cast by Scholars and Summoners will also be cast from glowing runes generated out of magic.
Good Is Not Soft: Most Arcanists are extremely affable people, and Summoners are generally a "good" class in most of the games, but their spells don't shy away from mentioning that the effects are horrifying and cause suffering ("Miasma", for example outright says it fills the target's lungs with choking poison, "Energy Drain" outright pulls blood into your book to heal you, etc. etc.) Summoner especially, as they draw upon the power of the evil, xenophobic Primals and eventually Bahamut himself, something that's used against you at least once in the class story to make people think you're a branded slave and attack you.
Gradual Regeneration: The now-removed "Sustain" spell gave the Arcanist's pet regenerating health for 9 seconds. It was rendered obsolete when Shadowbringers made pets invincible.
Healing Hands: Prior to Stormblood and the introduction of the Red Mage, Arcanists and Summoners were the only DPS class/job able to resurrect dead party members in battle. This makes them very useful in raids and trials, as a Summoner can prevent a wipe by raising the healers if they go down. They also have access to "Physick", a basic healing spell, though as it scales based on Mind rather than Summoner's main stat of Intelligence, its healing is very weak.
Life Drain: "Energy Drain" reflected the Blood Magic properties by restoring the user's HP and MP on use, before it was repurposed into Aetherflow generation for Shadowbringers. The original effect is under Scholar's ownership.
Magic Is Mental: The Arcanists are scholars who create aether spells by drawing up mathematical formulas and geometric symbols.
Magical Gesture: The Arcanist performs various gestures while casting most of their spells. The most basic spells simply have them hold their free hand over the opposite shoulder, while more powerful ones have them trace a magic circle in the air with their index finger. In Endwalker, the Summoner's "Mountain Buster" has a unique animation where they clap their hands together, causing two slabs of rock to rise up in sync with the gesture and "clap" enemies between them.
Mechanically Unusual Class:
- The Arcanist is unique in that it is the only class which branches off into multiple jobs, with one (the Summoner) being an improved version of Arcanist while the other (the Scholar) is radically different on a mechanical level, turning into a Healer rather than remaining a DPS. They were also the only class with pets of any kind until Heavensward introduced the Machinist, and returned to being the only class with pets when Shadowbringers turned Machinist's pets into cooldowns.
- The commands of the Arcanist to their Egi are instantaneous, but the Egi itself needs some time to perform these actions.
Mundane Utility:
- Thanks to Arcanists' skills at mathematics and bookkeeping, their guild, located at one of the major docks for Limsa Lominsa, also acts as the city's customs department, overseeing the collection of tariffs and fees. Their Carbuncle summons act as a magical equivalent of drug-sniffing and guard dogs.
- In Margrat's Custom Deliveries, it's revealed that the researchers of Sharlayan have begun incorporating arcanima into their technology for the sake of "automatically heating foodstuffs to optimal temperature for consumption". Or in other words, creating a microwave to reheat leftovers to the perfect temperature.
Non-Elemental: Most of the Arcanist's personal spells inflict unaspected damage, with elemental attacks coming almost exclusively from their pets.
Not Completely Useless: "Physick" will quickly fall out of a Summoner's arsenal because it scales off Mind rather than Intelligence, preventing it from restoring a useful amount of health and pushing the Summoner further into the DPS role. However, as Arcanist leveling gear carries Mind up to level 50, a leveling Arcanist or Summoner in this range can actually put it to good use as a backup healer, ironically allowing them to outperform a higher level Summoner in this role as the latter's gear would have no Mind.
Onmyōdō: Though the player can’t actually play as one, the Othard counterpart of the Arcanist is the Onmyouji. They make use of similar spells to the Arcanist, and summon shikigami in place of carbuncles.
Plaguemaster: In previous expansions, Arcanists could inflict status ailments like "Disease" and "Virus" with certain spells.
Playing with Fire: "Summon Ruby" inflicts fire damage to a single enemy, and allows you to cast fire-elemental versions of your Ruin and Outburst spells through "Gemshine" and "Precious Brilliance".
Poisonous Person: The Arcanist used to be able to poison enemies with spells like "Bio" and "Miasma", inflicting Damage Over Time. These abilities have been removed from the Arcanist and Summoner as of Endwalker, though Scholars still have access to some of them.
Red Mage: Despite the Arcanist being a DPS class, it naturally learns Physick and Resurrection in tandem with its damage dealing spells, allowing the Arcanist to effectively function as a secondary Healer in emergencies. The tandem DPS/Healer nature of the job drops off significantly at higher levels and especially when the Arcanist promotes to a Summoner, as the Physick spell scales off of the Mind stat, which a Summoner is going to have a pittance of, although Resurrection is still very useful (and Physick is still very usable as a Scholar).
Runic Magic: With a mathematician flair. The Arcanist's grimoire contains a myriad of magical geometries that they can use to cast the spells they want, and are represented by geometric symbols in their spellcasting animation. Summoner eventually spices it up with actual runes to reflect their more ancient origins.
Situational Damage Attack:
- Prior to Endwalker, the potency of "Fester" changed based on whether the spell's target was afflicted with Bio and/or Miasma. This expansion gives "Fester" a fixed potency to make up for the fact that these DoTs have been removed.
- From the launch of Shadowbringers until patch 5.08, the Arcanist's various "Ruin" spells became more powerful if used on a target suffering from "Bio" and/or "Miasma".^note
Spell Book: What the Arcanist uses for their spells. The Arcanist and Summoner get Grimoires, while the Scholar gets Codices.
Stance System: The Arcanist's pets functioned as this during Shadowbringers, with each one specializing in a different thing. Emerald Carbuncle and Garuda-Egi specialize in area-of-effect attacks for burning down groups of enemies, Topaz Carbuncle and Titan-Egi give the Arcanist some defensive options, and the Summoner's Ifrit-Egi has hard-hitting single-target attacks.
Status Buff: Until the Shadowbringers Expansion removed removed it, the Arcanist was able to grant its summoned pet the "Rouse" status, giving it a significant boost to its healing or damage output and rendering it immune to certain status ailments for 20 seconds.
Stone Wall: Topaz Carbuncle and its upgraded form, Titan-Egi. They have the most health of the Arcanist and Summoner's pets (often as much HP as an actual Tank of equivalent item level) and can give themselves Damage Reduction for a short time, but their attacks deal the least amount of damage. With the Shadowbringers changes to pets, those two pets can no longer 'tank' for their caster, however they were given an ability to give a shield to their caster, giving them a new support identity.
Summon Magic: The Arcanist, Scholar, and Summoner all specialize in these with Carbuncle for the Arcanist, Faeries for the Scholar and Primal Egis for the Summoner.
Super Mode: "Aethercharge" temporarily increases the power of the Arcanist's Ruin and Outburst spells. It also grants them the elemental Arcana needed to summon their Ruby, Topaz, and Emerald Carbuncles.
Support Party Member: Topaz Carbuncle and its upgraded form, Titan-Egi, filled this niche in Shadowbringers. Its "Egi Assault" action was purely defensive, granting the Arcanist a damage-absorbing shield, and its other abilities were weaker versions of what the Summoner's Ifrit-Egi can do.
Throw the Book at Them: Arcanists whack monsters over the head with their grimoire for an auto-attack. Amusingly, Arcanist and its jobs have a disproportionate Strength stat compared to other caster disciplines, allowing their auto-attacks to hit nearly as hard as a Gladiator's or Paladin's before gear is factored in. It was enough that Arcanists were encouraged to auto-attack in early raids before Power Creep settled in, as their autos could make up a significant portion of their damage.
Useless Useful Spell: "Physick". On paper, it's a healing spell with a higher potency than the Red Mage's "Vercure". In practice, it runs on Mind rather than Intelligence, making it nearly worthless when cast by an Arcanist or Summoner — it might heal three digits worth of HP when your max health is in the tens of thousands. This is likely for balancing purposes because if they had a decent healing spell in addition to their other abilities they could come too close to Master of All territory.
Weak, but Skilled: Arcanists don't have much in the way of direct damage, with Ruin only having a modest 180 potency, and Bio and Miasma having a paltry 20 potency up-front. The Skilled part comes in trying to play the long game in slinging Ruin, juggling the two DoTs, as well as coordinating with their pet, where all the damage adds up.

Summoner

Abbreviation: SMN
Unlocking Requirements: Level up Arcanist to 30

An Adventurer Is You: At its core the Summoner retains the Arcanist's Beastmaster and DoT Master roles, while also dipping into the Nuker at higher levels as they acquire powerful offensive spells like Fester, Painflare, and Deathflare. At level 70 and up they truly adopt the Summoner role, gaining the ability to summon the powerful Demi-Bahamut and Demi-Phoenix for short bursts. Endwalker completely does away with the DoT Master part of the job and dials back direct control of the pet in favor summoning them for a single large attack, letting them truly embrace the Nuker and Summoner roles.
Anti-Frustration Features:
- "Dreadwyrm Trance" has gotten easier to activate with every expansion. In Heavensward it required Summoners to use their Aetherflow spells to build up stacks of "Aethertrail Attunement", which wore off after 30 seconds. Stormblood made the stacks last indefinitely, while Shadowbringers got rid of them altogether and let Summoners activate "Dreadwyrm Trance" once a minute instead.
- During Stormblood, Summoners could only cast "Ruin IV" if their pets successfully procced "Further Ruin" with an attack. They also needed to cast it within 30 seconds, or the spell would be lost. Shadowbringers changed this to "Further Ruin" proccing whenever the Summoner uses "Egi Assault" or "Egi Assault II", while also letting the Summoner stockpile up to four castings of "Ruin IV" and hang onto them indefinitely.
- During Stormblood and Shadowbringers, your Demi-Primals would follow you around whenever you moved. As the Demi-Primals could not attack while moving, any movement on your part would cut into their limited DPS uptime and could potentially cost you an Akh Morn or Revelation. Endwalker addresses this problem by making the Demi-Primals stationary when summoned.
Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Summoners can only have 3 Egi "programmed" into their aether, as each one takes a different imprint to project itself into an external form. While the Egi can be swapped out for Carbuncles by the same Clap Your Hands If You Believe that makes real Primals function, they'll still only ever behave as the egi they were summoned to behave after. Getting around this was the reason the Allagan Summoners developed Trance, as internalizing the Primal aether doesn't burden them like trying to summon egi does.
The Archmage: Even by the standards of the WoL, Summoner stands out due to the sheer difference between them and the competition. To put it into perspective the second strongest Summoner alive can only summon Iffrit and Titan egi, whereas by Endwalker the Warrior can summon no less than five demis.
The Artifact: As the Summoner is a pure DPS job, the skillset revolves around damage - but because the base class is still the hybrid Arcanist, Summoners still have access to Physick, which, when used by them at high levels, is so weak so as to be useless in battle.
Badass Longcoat: Their level 50 "Evoker" artifact set includes a green longcoat with elaborate gold trimming. The level 80 set features a similar coat.
Bad Powers, Good People: The ability to summon primals to do your bidding would raise eyebrows anywhere in Eorzea given the havoc Garuda, Ifrit, and Titan have wrought in the past. But the original Allagan summoners were trained to defeat primals and the Warrior uses the art to fight evil around the world.
Begin with a Finisher: In Endwalker, the mechanics for high-level Summoners encourage them to begin most boss fights by going straight into Dreadwyrm Trance and blasting the boss with Akh Morn, their most powerful attack.
Blow You Away: Garuda-Egi's attacks are all wind-based. Its basic attack is a Razor Wind, and its Shockwave ability is a powerful blast of wind that inflicts knockback on the target. Aerial Blast is a powerful AOE with no secondary effects. However, Shockwave was removed in Shadowbringers and replaced with "Slipstream", which creates a damaging zone of wind, replacing the "Shadow Flare" spell. The Summoner themselves can cast the selfsame wind spells in Endwalker, and have four stacks of Wind Attunement and Garuda's Favor to do so.
Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Summoner has three Super Mode abilities. The first, Dreadwyrm Trance, allows them to instantly cast most spells, resets the cooldown of the ability Tri-Disaster, and allows them to use the powerful nuke ability Deathflare. The second, Summon Bahamut, replaces their summoned Egi with Demi-Bahamut, who attacks with Wyrmwave whenever the Summoner casts a spell and who can use the powerful Akh Morn twice per summoning. The last and most powerful, Firebird Trance, is a combination of these: It allows the Summoner to instantly cast their spells (while replacing their basic spells with more powerful versions) and resets Tri-Disaster's cooldown, while also replacing their Egi with Demi-Phoenix, who attacks with Scarlet Flame whenever the Summoner casts a spell and can use Revelation (essentially a reskinned Akh Morn) twice per summoning.
Cast from Lifespan: Each Egi is created from part of a Summoner’s life force, so there’s a limit to how many Egis a single Summoner can have. When the player tries to gain a fourth Egi by conducting the Austerities of Lightning in Heavensward, nothing happens. The ancient Allagans came up with Trance as a way to get around this limitation.
Context-Sensitive Button:
- "Egi Assault", "Egi Assault II", and "Enkindle" each had three separate actions bound to them, which changed depending on which of the Summoner's Egis was currently out. Their Endwalker equivalents, "Gemshine" and "Precious Brilliance", behave similarly.
- "Astral Flow" has five different actions bound to it, with each one tied to the summoning of a Primal: "Deathflare" for Bahamut, "Rekindle" for Phoenix, "Crimson Cyclone" for Ifrit, "Mountain Buster" for Titan, and "Slipstream" for Garuda.
Cooldown Manipulation:
- During Stormblood, the "Enhanced Enkindle" trait would shave 10 seconds off Enkindle's cooldown whenever the Summoner's pet procced "Ruin IV". Shadowbringers changed this to a fixed reduction from three minutes to two.
- "Dreadwyrm Trance" and "Firebird Trance" reduce the casting times of the Summoner's spells by 2.5 seconds while active, allowing them to cast most spells instantaneously and greatly reducing the time it takes to cast Resurrection.
Counter-Attack: Prior to Shadowbringers, Ifrit-Egi's "Radiant Shield" was a status buff which damaged enemies whenever they attacked someone affected by it.
Crown of Horns: Every set of artifact gear has a headband with a single protruding horn. The horn is described as a channeling tool to better interact with the Egi.
Damage-Increasing Debuff:
- From Stormblood up until Patch 5.1, Summoners could use Tri-Disaster to inflict "Ruination", a debuff which made their "Ruin" and "Outburst" spells do more damage to the target.
- During Stormblood, Garuda-Egi's "Contagion" and Ifrit-Egi's "Radiant Shield" made enemies more vulnerable to magic damage and physical damage, respectively.
Damage Over Time:
- Before Endwalker reworked it into an AOE damage spell, the "Tri-Disaster" ability would apply the effects of the Summoner's strongest damage-over-time spells to a single target at no MP cost.
- Notably, Endwalker actually completely does away with this concept for the Summoner, drastically reworking the job into what can be considered a true Summoner.
- Garuda's "Astral Flow" ability, "Slipstream", creates a whirlwind which continuously damages any enemy standing within it. Prior to Endwalker, Titan-Egi could create a similar continuous damage zone with "Earthen Fury", and Ifrit-Egi could inflict a fire-based damage-over-time effect to all enemies in a cone with "Inferno".
Dash Attack: In Endwalker, summoning Ifrit allows the Summoner to use "Crimson Cyclone", which has the Summoner lunge at their target for a fiery tackle.
Death of a Thousand Cuts: "Emerald Rite" and "Emerald Catastrophe" may have the lowest power out of the three attunements, but it makes up for it by having an extremely fast cooldown at 1.5 seconds as opposed to the standard 2.5.
Defeat Means Friendship: Twofold. In order to even have the potential to summon an Egi, you need to defeat the primal it's based off of and be washed in the Aether as it disperses (or in Tristan's case, survive a Primal's attempts to temper by having the Echo). Once that's done, a ritual has to draw the Egi out of your Aether and then you have to defeat it to be able to summon it for your own use.
Deflector Shields: Titan-Egi's "Earthen Armor" ability grants the Summoner a shield which absorbs damage equal to 20% of their max HP. Endwalker renames this ability to "Radiant Aegis" and makes it available to the Carbuncles instead.
Difficult, but Awesome: Prior to Endwalker, Summoner was the most complex of the Magical DPS classes. Optimal play requires you to maintain your DoTs at all times while carefully managing the actions and positioning of your Egis to benefit both the party and yourself. You also need to know which Egi works best for a given situation, and which abilities will make your Demi-Primals attack when summoned. Summoner is also one of the few classes to be consistently reworked between expansions, meaning that every expansion notably changes the Summoner in ways that can make playing and learning it difficult. An inexperienced Summoner will lag behind, while an experienced one can adapt to any situation and dish out a lot of damage. Luckily, Endwalker's rework of the job has drastically reduced its difficulty, doing away with the aspects that made it so technical (namely, the juggling of DoTs, and choosing which Egi to summon), in favor of a straightforward rotation that incorporates all of the Summoner's summons, in a way that is more fun and consistent.
Dishing Out Dirt: Titan-Egi's attacks are earth-based. "Earthen Fury" shatters the ground in Titan-Egi's vicinity, creating a patch of molten earth that damages any enemies which step in it. Summoners can access Titan's Mountain Buster with Titan's Favor granted from using their Earth Attunement stacks.
The Dreaded: Although summoners were initially hailed as heroes for defeating primals in the name of Allag, the art was nearly lost after people turned on the summoners out of fear of their destructive power. Summoner is also the one job that the Ascians are wary enough of to attempt to impede the Warrior of Light's attempts to master the art.
Energy Absorption: From Shadowbringers onward they need to drain enemies with "Energy Drain" or "Energy Siphon" in order to fuel their "Aetherflow". Endwalker changes Energy Drain and Energy Siphon to grant a stack of Further Ruin, which allows use of Ruin IV.
Evolving Attack:
- The basic "Ruin" spell is permanently upgraded to the stronger "Ruin III" at level 54. Before that, "Bio" evolves into Bio "II" at level 26, and then again into "Bio III" alongisde "Miasma" for "Miasma III" at level 66.
- At various levels, "Summon Ruby", "Summon Topaz" and "Summon Emerald" are upgraded to "Summon Ifrit", "Summon Titan", and "Summon Garuda", respectively, replacing the carbuncle with their respective Primal-Egi. Each of these is more powerful than its base form, and at level 50 they change from single-target to area-of-effect. They are each upgraded again at level 90, becoming "Summon Ifrit/Titan/Garuda II" While referred to as "Ruby Ifrit", "Topaz Titan" and "Emerald Garuda", rather than being Egis, the player is summoning the primal wholesale to do their attack.
Explosive Punch: The Summoner job's Crimson Cyclone attack has them rush at the target with a burst of flame before jumping and slamming their book into the target as an explosive hammer blow. This causes a fiery pillar to engulf the target and anything near it.
Fight Fire with Fire: According to the lore, the Ancient Allagans created the Summoner discipline as a way to fight Primals by harnessing the power of Primals and turning it against them.
Fragile Speedster: The Summoner is almost as mobile as the Machinist, thanks to their numerous spells with instant cast times. But they still have a Caster DPS' paper-thin defenses, requiring them to use their mobility to stay out of danger.
Full-Contact Magic: The Summoner is normally content to keep their distance from their target. When casting "Crimson Cyclone", however, the Summoner will lunge at their current target and whack them with their grimoire to create a fiery explosion. Its follow-up move, "Crimson Strike", has the Summoner produce another explosion with a jumping ground slam.
Gameplay and Story Integration: Summoners have to beat a Primal before they can conduct the rituals needed to summon its Egi. As such, the player can’t even unlock the Summoner job until they’ve beaten Ifrit in the Bowl of Embers, and they can’t do the class quests needed to obtain Titan-Egi or Garuda-Egi until they’ve completed the corresponding Trials. The one exception is "Dreadwyrm Trance", since defeating Bahamut was one of the most difficult battles in A Realm Reborn. The Warrior of Light instead goes through a specialized ritual to access Bahamut's Trance, since everyone who survived the Calamity has a trace of Bahamut's aether in them. Word of God says that this applies to Firebird Trance as well, since Louisoix relinquished his primal aether as Phoenix to speed up Eorzea’s recovery.
Gradual Regeneration: Demi-Phoenix will cast "Everlasting Flight" when summoned, granting mild health regen to the whole party. In Endwalker it also gains a healing spell, "Rekindle", which gives its target both some immediate healing and a health regen effect that kicks in if their HP drops below 50% over the next 30 seconds.
Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: The masculine Ifrit- and Titan-Egis claw or punch their enemies, while the feminine Garuda-Egi attacks from a distance with wind magic.
Jack of All Stats: A Summoner utilizing the Titan-Egi trades some of their damage potential for better survivability via regular applied Deflector Shields. And they stay as mobile as they are with the other two Egis. With their Earth Attunement, their Topaz spells are middle of the road damage, but boast the most mobility options by having all instant-cast spells.
Kung-Fu Wizard: The Summoner in Endwalker learns "Crimson Cyclone" and "Crimson Strike" from summoning Ifrit-Egi, which has them rush towards the enemy and strike them at close range.
Limit Break:
- Their level 50 job skill prior to Endwalker, "Enkindle", makes their Egis use a weaker (but still strong) version of the associated primal's ultimate attack.
- In Endwalker the Egis (or primals themselves at level 90) use a much stronger version, while Enkindle is reworked into a trait.
- Their actual level 3 Limit Break is Bahamut's "Teraflare", where the Summoner sprouts Bahamut's wings and emulates the dreadwyrm's roar as they rain down the same attack that brought ruin to Eorzea.
- In PvP, they can "Summon Bahamut" or "Summon Phoenix", letting them use "Megaflare" with Bahamut, dealing heavy damage in a wide area, or use "Everlasting Flight" with Phoenix, granting a potent HP regeneration buff to all nearby allies, along with a larger heal when the effect expires or they hit 25% of their HP.
Magic Missile Storm: "Ruin III" and "Ruin IV" have these as their visuals, distinct from "Ruin" and "Ruin II"'s almost identical Energy Ball attacks.
No Self-Buffs: When Stormblood launched, the Summoner's pet could only grant Devotion to a nearby party member who was not the Summoner. This was quickly reworked into a party-wide buff that benefited the Summoner too.
Not Completely Useless:
- The "Tri-bind" spell was given a much-needed buff in the 4.1 patch. While the Summoner is in "Dreadwyrm Trance", "Tri-bind"'s potency is more than tripled, its binding effect is removed and its MP cost is reduced, turning it from a spell that most players never use into an effective and spammable source of crowd control.
- Shadowbringers reworks "Tri-Bind" into the more useful "Outburst" spell. It no longer binds enemies, but its potency is much higher by default and it benefits from "Ruination"'s potency increase. During "Firebird Trance" it becomes "Brand of Purgatory", a not-quite spammable AOE nuke stronger than "Fester" and only slightly weaker than "Deathflare".
Not the Intended Use: Summoner's PvP Limit Break, "Summon Bahamut" is intended to deal massive amounts of Area of Effect damage to entire teams to help swing a fight. But while the damage is survivable in Crystalline Conflict where only one of each job is playable per team, on Frontlines teams of summoners began using their Limit Breaks all in tandem to vaporize entire teams in seconds with little opportunity for counterplay other than finding and killing the summoners first.
Our Dragons Are Different: The Summoner can call a Demi-Bahamut as one of its spells.
The Phoenix: Shadowbringers gives Summoners the ability to summon a Demi-Phoenix.
Pillar of Light: The Summoner's "Deathflare" and Demi-Bahamut's "Akh Morn" are both depicted as columns of blue light which erupt from the ground beneath their target.
Playing with Fire:
- Ifrit-Egi's abilities are all fire-based. "Inferno" creates a cone of exploding fireballs, doing damage to all enemies within that cone and setting them on fire.
- The "Painflare" spell, while Non-Elemental, takes the visual of blue fire.
- "Firebird Trance" changes the non-elemental "Ruin III" and "Outburst" spells into the more powerful, fire-based "Fountain of Fire" and "Brand of Purgatory", respectively. Demi-Phoenix's "Scarlet Flame" and "Revelation" abilities are fire-elemental equivalents of Demi-Bahamut's "Wyrmwave" and "Akh Morn", respectively.
Power Gives You Wings: The Summoner sprouts a pair of draconic energy wings while casting their Level 3 Limit Break, "Teraflare".
Secret Art: Twofold.
- The art of summoning originated in Ancient Allag and died out after the empire's collapse, though records of their existence and practices are unearthed by the Sons of Saint Coinach in the present day. With the help of the Sons' research, the Warrior of Light becomes the first active Summoner in thousands of years.
- Even then, not just anyone can become a Summoner. It’s a long and dangerous process which involves surviving an encounter with a Primal, absorbing the Primal's aether as it dies, and conducting a magical ritual to draw out that aether and give it form as an Egi… which will then try to kill you and must be beaten into submission. Y’mhitra puts it best:
  Y’mhitra: The path of the summoner is naught if not fraught with peril!
Simple, yet Awesome: In contrast to how it was in previous expansions, the Summoner in Endwalker has become this, reworking its rotation in a way that incorporates its summons in a much more straightforward manner, and retains a degree of its engagement while playing it. They're arguably simpler to play than even the Red Mage of all jobs.
Spam Attack: Titan's "Astral Flow" ability, "Mountain Buster", gets procced every time the Summoner casts "Topaz Rite" or "Topaz Catastrophe", meaning it can be cast up to four times per summoning of Titan. Contrast that with the other Astral Flow abilities, each of which can only be used once per summoning.
Status Buff:
- Summoners can use "Aetherpact" (or "Searing Light", as it was renamed in Endwalker) to buff the damage output of all party members within a certain distance of their Egi.
- From Stormblood onward, performing certain actions will proc the "Further Ruin" buff, which allows you to cast "Ruin IV" once. The buff's triggers and duration vary by the current expansion. ^note
- From level 86 onward, summoning Ifrit, Titan, or Garuda will grant you that Primal's Favor, allowing you to use Astral Flow in new ways specific to each Primal.
Status-Buff Dispel: The PVP-exclusive "Wither" spell removes barriers and health regen effects from its targets.
Status Effects: The PVP version of "Painflare" stuns enemies in addition to inflicting damage.
Strong and Skilled: Building upon Arcanist, the Summoner adds onto what is already known with Aetherflow management fueling two abilities, excellent utility between “Devotion” and their ability to raise, and a third summon at their command for increased adaptability in any situation. Shadowbringers patch 5.1 brought some significant changes and buffs for Summoners so now they rival the Black Mage and the Samurai in damage potential while losing none of their Utility.
Summoning Ritual: Summoners obtain their Egis by conducting Austerities, magical rituals which draw a Primal’s aether out of the Summoner’s body and give it form. They involve traveling to a land where the naturally dominant element matches that of the Primal in question and then shifting the Summoner’s "aetheric balance" to match that element using their soul crystal as a focus. The Warrior of Light conducts Austerities of Flame, Earth, and Wind in order to obtain Ifrit-, Titan-, and Garuda-Egi respectively.
Super Mode: High-level Summoners unlock several of these.
- High-level Summoners have been able to enter "Dreadwyrm Trance" ever since Heavensward. Its precise effects have varied by expansion, but it always lets you cast the powerful AOE spell "Deathflare" once per Trance. In Endwalker it acts as an improved "Aethercharge" by replacing your "Ruin III" and "Outburst"/"Tri-Disaster" spells with the more powerful "Astral Impulse" and "Astral Flare", and providing the arcana needed to summon Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda. From level 70 onward it also summons Demi-Bahamut (previously a separate ability from Dreadwyrm Trance), who can be ordered to use "Akh Morn" once^notepreviously twice per summoning.
- Shadowbringers added "Firebird Trance" at level 72, which works similarly to Dreadwyrm Trance. Entering it upgrades "Ruin III" and "Tri-Disaster" into the more powerful "Fountain of Fire" and "Brand of Purgatory" spells, and it also provides the elemental arcana for summoning Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda. From level 80 onward it also summons Demi-Phoenix, who gives the whole party gradual regeneration and can be ordered to use "Revelation" twice per summoning. In Endwalker, Firebird Trance gives Summoners access to the single-target healing spell "Rekindle".
Symbolic Wings: The Summoner's "Evoker" and "Caller" Artifact armor sets include small, purely decorative wings on the back of the outfit.
Touched by Vorlons: The first step on the path to becoming a Summoner involves confronting a Primal, killing it, and soaking up the aetheric essence that it releases as it dies. This aether can then be drawn out and incarnated into an Egi of the Primal using a magic ritual.
Useless Useful Spell:
- "Tri-bind" was an incredibly weak AOE spell that did little damage and inflicted the near-useless Bind status. Stormblood attempted to make the spell more useful by buffing it in various ways, before Shadowbringers got rid of it and replaced it with "Outburst".
- During Shadowbringers, Titan-Egi suffered from this. Before Shadowbringers, it was a tank pet designed to pull aggro from the Summoner and give them breathing room, but the changes to the Summoner's pets meant it no longer could do that, and it could only offer a shield to the Summoner on a cooldown. Endwalker would fix this by incorporating it into the Summoner's full rotation alongside the Ifrit-Egi and Garuda-Egi.
- A downplayed example in Endwalker with Garuda at level 90. Gardua's unique ability is an AOE wind circle akin to how it was in Shadowbringers, meaning it is best used during phases where the boss is likely to remain within the circle for its full duration, which can vary between boss fights from possible to entirely unlikely. It still is helpful for trash pulls though.
Vampiric Draining: As of Shadowbringers, the "Energy Drain" and "Energy Siphon" spells drain life from their targets to replenish the Summoner's "Aetherflow" charges.
Willing Channeler: Summoners can enhance their magic by using "Dreadwyrm Trance" and "Firebird Trance" to tap into the powers of Bahamut and Phoenix, respectively. Their Level 3 Limit Break also channels Bahamut’s power in order to cast "Teraflare".
Witch Hunt: Summoners were the victims of persecution during Allagan times. They were initially lauded as heroes for fighting the Primals, but after some corrupt Summoners started abusing their power and lording over the people as petty tyrants, the common folk became convinced that all Summoners were evil. The resulting mage hunts were a major factor in the art's decline.

Red Mage

Abbreviation: RDM
Unlocking Requirements: Exclusive to Stormblood and onwards; must reach level 50 in any of the combat classes
Preferred Weapons: Rapiers
Armor Type: Casting
Guild Location: Steps of Thal, Ul'dah

Hailing from the mountains of Gyr Abania where the survivors of the Mhachi Black Mages and Amdapori White Mages fled to survive a great flood millennia ago, Red Mages use both the White and Black magics of their ancestors in tandem. Wielding a rapier and crystal medium, they marry their spellwork with swordplay to attack enemies with long ranged chain magic before closing in with finishing moves with their sword.

Ascended Glitch: The proper use of "Dualcast" in XIV is based on a Metagame technique in the previous appearances of the feature. Players would start with a short cast spell to use a long cast spell in instant succession for much better DPS. This was an oversight the developers didn't expect to be so effective or popular.
Amplifier Artifact: The Red Mage's weapon is specifically designed to act as an "aetheric accelerator", allowing for small amounts of aether to translate into significantly powerful spells. Lorewise, as mages were facing persecution after unrestricted magic overtaxed the land's available aether and caused the Sixth Umbral Calamity, the first Red Mages took a vow to not use any more of the land's aether, instead drawing only upon their own bodies' reserves of aether. They make this work by the use of their magic-amplifying weapons and using their bodies as a focus for their magic through their acrobatics and fencing techniques, which let even those who have low natural reserves of aether (as described in the level 80 quest) be an effective Red Mage. This is reflected in gameplay, as they're the only magic-using job which has no built-in way to restore MP or discount their usage and their spells also cost significantly less than other spellcasters' spells.
An Adventurer Is You:
- In true Final Fantasy fashion of The Red Mage, the class is a bit of a Jack of All Trades role, heavily focused towards single-target damage. In terms of the roles they do play as, they're a Nuker mage first, a Blademaster Melee DPS second when their Mana gauge is charged up enough, and a Classic Healer third via the use of their "Vercure" and "Verraise", which also take advantage of their Dualcast chain-spell trait.
- In PvP they pull triple duty as the Nuker, Debuffer, and Classic Healer, able to burst down single targets with their melee combo, riddle their opponents with status effects, and heal their teammates by swapping between their Black and White Shift stances. They also bear traits of the DoT Master as their melee combo inflicts a nasty damaging debuff while in Black Shift.
Badass Cape: The relic armors of the Red Mage is equipped with a dynamic half-cape.
Badass in a Nice Suit: The Red Mage's signature gear is a flashy double-breasted red suit with a long jacket and a cravat.
Balance Buff: In Endwalker, the Red Mage's finisher spells, Verholy, Verflare, and Scorch, took a slight decrease in potency in exchange for making them capable of hitting multiple targets. Their combo system was reworked so that Enhanced Moulinet is also able to give them the charges required to access their finishers. This dramatically increases the Red Mage's AOE damage potential, making them much more suitable for clearing dungeons even at endgame.
Blade Spam: "Redoublement", the final blow of the Red Mage's weaponskill combo is a rapid series of stabs.
Bifurcated Weapon: Their swords and crystal mediums are two halves of a proper magic staff.
Black and White Magic: The Red Mage's specialty is to build up Black and White Mana so they can close in for sword blows.
Charge Meter: The Mana Gauge is actually two meters—one for White Mana, and one for Black Mana—that fill up as the Red Mage casts spells, and can be spent to execute stronger, "enchanted" versions of their melee attacks.
Combat Parkour: Because they are designed to fight at long range and then close distance for finishing blows, the Red Mage is capable of a flashy gap-closing lunge with "Corps-a-Corps" to enter melee range and the "Displacement" backflip to escape melee range. Shadowbringers adds "Engagement" as an alternative to Displacement, which slashes at the target as the Red Mage does a flip in place.
Crutch Character: Red Mages are fantastically powerful in early to midgame dungeons thanks to having naturally high potencies on their skills, but they start to fall off by the endgame, where they are usually wanted for their utility instead.
Damage-Increasing Debuff: The PVP spell "Frazzle", only available while in Black Shift, makes the target take 10% more damage for several seconds. It also weakens incoming healing by 10%.
Deflector Shields: The aptly named "Magick Barrier" will increase the defense of the party and increase the amount of healing they receive.
Elemental Powers: The Red Mage has "Verthunder" and "Verfire" from Black Magic and "Veraero" and "Verstone" from White Magic. They also have "Verflare" and "Verholy" to go along with them.
Evolving Attack: "Jolt" to "Jolt II" at level 62. "Scatter", as of Shadowbringers, upgrades into "Impact" at level 66. "Verthunder" and "Veraero" likewise receive upgrades in Endwalker, becoming "Verthunder III" and "Veraero III" at level 82.
Flower Motifs: Roses. The shade of red for the class is associated with roses, their soul crystal is shaped like a rose petal, and rose petals scatter during their melee attacks. "Impact" resembles a blooming rose, and "Resolution" will trace the magic circles out with thorned vines.
Gameplay and Story Integration: X'hrun Tia brings up how Red Magic was made to avoid destabilizing the world's flow of aether by using the caster's aether exclusively, but very efficiently. This is reflected by their much lower MP costs compared to White Mages and Black Mages. They're also the only caster job that has no in-class method of recharging MP, just the single Role ability Lucid Dreaming. Normally this isn't a problem, but Verraise does take a lot of MP...
Gemstone Assault:
- The Red Mage's "Jolt" spell fires a shard of red crystal at enemies for projectiles while the "Scatter" spell generates a cluster of red crystals which detonate on groups of enemies. "Impact" even takes the appearance of a crystalline flower that expands under the enemy and shatters.
- "Fleche" and "Contre Sixte" also generate crystalline swords to fire at the foe, albeit seemingly made of condensed, unaspected aether.
- The core of the "Scorch" spell features a large, spinning, red-purple crystal surrounded by Instant Runes that explodes into red and black lightning.
Gratuitous Foreign Language: Many of their attack names are taken from French or German fencing terminology.
Green Thumb: Red Magi can conjure up a magical rose with their Impact spell for attacking enemies.
Healing Hands Red Magi can heal allies with Vercure and raise them in battle with Verraise. Both benefit from Dualcast, giving RDM the easiest access to combat resurrection in the game... with the downside of consuming a quarter of their max MP every cast, and lack of any means to restore said MP beyond Ethers and Lucid Dreaming.
Instant Runes: Scorch conjures a rune that detonates into red lightning. Resolution also generates a row of runes in front of the user that the Red Mage stabs, generating a magical beam that pierces through all targets in a line.
Jack of All Stats: The Red Mage class has consistently shown up in the mid-tiers of jobs, even after multiple patches and expansions. This is because the class is explicitly designed to be competent but unremarkable in every facet of play. Decent healing, decent utility options, decent mobility, decent pack magic, and decent melee combo potential, all of which are done better by another class. This leaves the Red Mage as a class that's good at everything, the best at nothing.
Limit Break:
- Their level 3 Limit Break is Vermillion Scourge. The Red Mage conjures Instant Runes of Black and White Magic, pumps immense power onto both of them, combines them to generate two massive crimson explosions.
- In PVP, they use "Southern Cross", which simultaneously damages enemies and heals allies in a cross pattern, with the damage doubled in Black Shift stance, or the healing doubled in White Shift stance.
Magic A Is Magic A:
- XIV is unique amongst Final Fantasy entries in that it explains Red Magic as being unique from Black or White Magic, rather than Red Mages simply being eclectics who learned the basics of both schools as well as swordplay. The use of the sword is explained as a means to cast spells more efficiently by amplifying one's own aether, while using both types of magic is explained as maintaining an internal balance to mitigate the negative effects of Casting From Lifespan. Casting in this manner also has the effect of funneling mana from their spells into their sword to enchant their strikes, essentially defining Red Magic as a type of "sword magic".
- The "Ver-" spells may be similar in element to white and black mage spells, but they seem to be divergent forms of tier I spells, slightly more powerful and designed to make up for their individual power by being double-casted, and they deal straight damage. Prior to Endwalker, "Verflare" and "Verholy" took the cake for being different; they were concentrated powerful single target spells instead of being a diffused but reasonably destructive attack. Post-Endwalker, they're AOE spells that are more powerful than either Flare or Holy, at the cost of of only being available when all three Magic Stones are filled.
Magic Knight: The Red Mage is noted to combine Black and White Magic with a rapier to attack.
Master of All: Strictly speaking of internal magic, that is. By balancing their white and black mana and having a means of venting it to power a finishing combo, they have none of the power limits and safety concerns that hold back a thaumaturge or conjurer from achieving mastery of their own aether. Of course, mastering one's own aether will fall short in favor of the Black Mage's or White Mage's ability to draw from the aether around them. Still, Red Magic seems to only fall slightly short in spite of this, and the Wo L shows some of the upper limits at their highest level.
Mechanically Unusual Class: Most classes are content to stay at the range they're designed for. Red Mage is technically a ranged DPS but the core of their fighting style is to bombard the enemy with spells, then close the gap for melee attacks and leap back after they do damage with the rapier to continue casting. They were also the only caster class to make any use of TP (for their melee attacks) before its removal.
Multi-Directional Barrage: "Verthunder III" surrounds the target with a globe of sigils, which each loose lightning bolts toward the epicenter. This effectively turns the target into a living plasma lamp.
Mythology Gag:
- The Red Mage's artifact rapier "Murgleis" slightly resembles Genesis's sword.
- The Red Mage's idle pose when their weapon is drawn comes from Ramza's pose in the artwork for Final Fantasy Tactics.
- The Red Mage's "Enchanted Zwerchhau" resembles their exclusive "Chant du Cygne" skill from Final Fantasy XI.
Non-Elemental: The Red Mage has a few non-elemental spells in their repertoire that usually grant equal parts Black and White Mana — Jolt, Impact, Scatter, Scorch and Resolution. Notably, all of these spells are unique to the Red Mage (rather than Ver-cloned from White or Black Mages), and may in fact be what the "Red" motif is derived from in XIV's lore as they all use red or magenta spell effects.
Out of the Frying Pan: Similarly to the Dragoon's "Elusive Jump", the Red Mage's "Displacement" allows them to backflip out of melee range and hopefully out of range of enemy AOE attacks. Also similarly to Dragoon, it's entirely possible to hurl oneself off a ledge by accident if they aren't careful.
Petal Power: The Red Mage's sword attacks give off a flurry of red rose petals upon attacking, while the "Impact" spell takes the form of a flowering rose.
Pillar of Light: "Verholy" is a pillar of white magic that descends on the target from above.
Power Crystal: One half of the Red Mage's arm is a crystal medium which they can use to aid them in casting spells and combine with their sword to make a Magic Staff.
Prestige Class: Red Mage can only be unlocked after getting another class to level 50, and the job itself begins at level 50 rather than level 1.
Red Is Heroic: Even the Red Mages who aren't the Warrior of Light are traveling duelists who wander the world doing good.
The Red Mage: Well, yeah. It's right there in the name. Their powers are a hybrid of Black and White magic, even fusing their magic into their sword to finish with strong melee attacks. They've got a healing and resurrection spell to help allies, and they can even jump in and out of combat with a flourish using their magic.
Required Secondary Powers: Subverted. The fencing and acrobatic movements required to perform Red Magic means that the user must be as athletic as they are magically gifted. Being a hardened adventurer with incredible physical stamina, the Warrior of Light has no problems with this, but the younger and less mature Alisaie is said to struggle with the physical component of Red Magic.
Reverse Grip:
- When they attach the crystal medium to the hilt of the rapier, they hold their sword in a reverse grip to use the combination as a magic rod.
- When they attack with their sword-based Area of Effect attack Moulinet, they swing their rapier in this manner.
Royal Rapier: The signature sword of the Red Mage is an elegant rapier, setting their graceful fighting styles apart from the other more knightly sword-wielding tanks or the Japanese styled blade-wielding damage dealers.
Secret Art: Due to the physical component required to use Red Magic, it fell out of use in the centuries leading up to the Sixth Astral Era. It was later rediscovered by the Crimson Duelists fighting for Ala Mhigo's freedom from King Theodoric's reign of terror, but the Duelists were slaughtered almost to a man following Garlemald's occupation of the country. By the events of Stormblood, there are only seven known practitioners left: X'hrun Tia, Lambard, Arya, Lovro, Meryall, Alisaie, and the Warrior. Arya and the Warrior would then strike down Lambard, leaving only six. That said, Lovro's Field Notes mention that he taught Red Magic to those whom he believed would help him rebel against Garlean oppression, meaning that there may be more practitioners who are simply not encountered in the story.
Shout-Out: The Red Mage's Zwerchhau has them carving out a Z with their sword like Zorro.
Simple, yet Awesome: Red Mages make up for their simplicity by being decently mobile compared to a Black Mage and being able to revive fallen allies quicker than any other job. This utility has earned them the community nickname "rez mage", and despite being slightly skill-gatey, they have been very consistent in every patch while other jobs fluctuate on the ladder. Due to the chaos and unpredictability of random players, Red Mages can often pick up the slack around them, or at the very least pick them back up off the floor. This has rightfully been the most reliable job for instances like Eureka due to a combination of being acceptable but unremarkable in every way.
Skill Gate Characters: Red Mages sacrifice some damage for party utility. They can heal in emergency situations^noteRDM's Vercure scales with Intelligence rather than Mind, making it one of the most powerful heals among DPS in spite of its low potency, since it can be Twincast like everything else; SMN's Physick scales with Mind, making it nearly useless past level 50, before which gear may boost both Intelligence and Mind and quickly resurrect multiple party members by Dualcasting Verraise. However, a skilled RDM will generally deal less damage than an equally-skilled SMN or BLM, which can be significant in endgame raids with tight DPS checks, and ideally the party shouldn't need an RDM to heal or revive anyway. This leads to an attitude that Red Mages are good in raid progression, but bad in raid farming due to being a Jack of All Stats instead of a specialist. This is amusingly similar to FFI's Red Mage, which is considered a crutch in the early game that falls off in effectiveness around mid-game, when it is overtaken in damage by Black Mage.
- Before Endwalker, RDM was also considered the easiest caster class to learn, compared to SMN's steeper learning curve with juggling damage-over-time effects and BLM's low mobility and stricter spell rotation. However, SMN's reworked kit in Endwalker is now generally considered to be the easiest caster class to learn, since its rotation is fairly simple and stays essentially the same from level 30 all the way until endgame.
Spell Blade: The main mechanic behind Black and White Mana is to use each in near-equal measure to charge the Red Mage's sword so their weapon skill combo will be more powerful.
Stance System: In PvP they possess two stances, Black Shift and White Shift, that modify the effects of their abilities. Black Shift grants access to "Frazzle", an AOE Damage-Increasing Debuff, while turning "Resolution" into a binding spell and adding a Damage Over Time effect to their melee combo. White Shift grants access to "Magick Barrier" instead, reducing damage taken and increasing allied healing, while having "Resolution" silence goes instead. Their melee combo also grants a personal shield while "Verholy" has less damage than "Verflare" but heals allies as well. Their Limit Break, "Southern Cross", will also deal more damage or heal allies more strongly depending on whether the Red Mage is in the Black Shift or White Shift.
Status Buff:
- "Acceleration" allows Red Mage to instantly cast the next "long" spell (Verthunder, Veraero, or Scatter/Impact). The former two will also be guaranteed to trigger Verfire/Verstone Ready, while Scatter and Impact will have their potency increased.
- "Embolden" boosts the Red Mage’s magic damage and the physical damage of all nearby party members by 5% for 20 seconds.
- At level 78 and up, "Manafication" boosts the Red Mage's magic damage by 5% for the next five spellcasts or weaponskills. Level 90 adds a sixth stack to this buff.
- "Magick Barrier" reduces magic damage taken by the Red Mage and their party by 10% and increases healing they receive by 5% for 10 seconds.
Tornado Move: "Veraero III" changes the animation into a large green tornado rather then ball of wind launched at enemies.
Stepping-Stone Sword: Contre Sixte, the AoE version of Fleche, has the Red Mage do a Sword Plant, then jump up and perform a backflip off of the grip, before summoning a barrage of aetheric blades in mid-air that fall around the target and explode.
Storm of Blades: The Red Mage has the Fleche and Contre Sixte spells that conjure magical swords that they shoot at enemies.
Sword Beam:
- When flipping away from enemies with "Displacement" the Red Mage simultaneously launches a cross-shaped sword beam at the enemy.
- "Enchanted Reprise" launches a wave of red energy from the Red Mage's sword.
- "Resolution" fires one through a series of magical circles.
Weapon Twirling: Their victory pose emote has them throw both their crystal medium and rapier up into the air which connect into staff form while spinning, catch it in their right hand, then throw it spinning up into the air again from behind their back, and straighten their collar or Hair Flip (if male or female respectively) before catching their weapon.
Yin-Yang Bomb: Due to being descended from the survivors of both practitioners of powerful magics who made peace with each other, Red Mages combine Black and White magic to warp spells in ways neither of their individual parts can. Their Limit Break in particular fuses two powerful black and white magic spells into one attack, and the clashing forces creates an explosion of such intensity that it makes Black Mage's Meteor look tame (even though it does the same damage).

Characters / Final Fantasy XIV - Caster Classes

Thaumaturge and Black Mage

Thaumaturge

Black Mage

Arcanist and Summoner

Arcanist

Summoner

Red Mage

Video Example(s):

FFXIV Black Mage Job Actions

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FFXIV Black Mage Job Actions

Characters / Final Fantasy XIV - Caster Classes

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Thaumaturge and Black Mage

Thaumaturge

Black Mage

Arcanist and Summoner

Arcanist

Summoner

Red Mage

Video Example(s):

FFXIV Black Mage Job Actions

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Index

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FFXIV Black Mage Job Actions