Class Setup | Summoner.txt

Skill Tree

Summoner has a pretty straightforward tree. Most of Summoner’s skills benefit your ability to do damage with your pet in one way or another or provide useful utility, which doesn’t leave you with much room to invest in the skills that don't.

My recommended Summoner Trees for both JP and Global can be found at arks-layer.com/classbuilds, but I’d recommend reading the following explanations on why certain skills are or aren’t used first.

To start assigning Skill Points, visit Bea in the gate area.

Bea nice to him.

Dear Master / Dia Master (5 SP)
When taking damage that would kill you, your pet receives the damage instead. This skill is crucial to Summoner gameplay because by default, your character has no defensive mechanisms outside of dodging. No invincibility frames, guard frames, nothing. Investing into this skill allows you to be unburdened with caring about your character's health bar, which leaves you much more time to focus on your pet in combat.

With Dear Master, it's beyond common to see your character at red health while your pet is full HP.

Pet Sympathy (10 SP)
Allows your pets to request Shifta and Resta casts. When you cast Shifta at your pet’s request, your pet gains a +20% damage buff. When you cast Resta at your pet’s request, your pet gains a 200% HP recovery buff. These buffs last 90s. Simply cast the technique your pet requests and it will gain a damage/HP recovery buff. Make sure to take the time to meet your pets’ requests as it can sometimes take your pet a while to request again. Meeting a Pet Sympathy request while it's already active will refresh the buff.

Wanda after you've met its Sympathy request

As a note, pets are more likely to request Shifta Sympathy while around bosses and typically request Resta Sympathy when they're low on HP. You can tell if your pet has Sympathy by looking for the red music note (Shifta Sympathy) and yellow music note (Resta Sympathy) above its health bar.

Pet Sympathy is also more likely to proc when your pet has been recently summoned. For example, if your Synchro loses Pet Sympathy mid battle, you can switch back to Maron, cast Maron Strike, and return to Synchro - likely providing you with a new Pet Sympathy proc! This isn't worth doing on mobbing pets, such as Jinga and Redran; switching away from them would gut their Steady Parfait stacks.

Assist Share (1 SP)
When switching pets, any buffs such as Pet Sympathy, Shifta, and Deband will be automatically transferred from your current pet to the next. Without this skill you would lose Pet Sympathy when switching pets, and you would need to reapply Shifta every time you switch pets. Extremely important skill for the cost of just 1 SP.

Also, Shifta, Deband, and Pet Sympathy's durations are paused when you switch onto a palatte with no pet. You won't be doing this very often at all, but as an example, if you're waiting for Alter Ego between stages in an Extreme Quest, this can be a cute way to prevent Pet Sympathy from running out before your next stage.

Point Assist / Summoner's Mark (10 SP), Active Skill
Places a marker on an enemy. Damage dealt to the marked point by you and your pets is increased by 15%. Marker lasts 40s. 5s cooldown. A crucial tool for dealing damage to bosses. Do note that this skill is much less effective in mobbing situations - stopping to cast this on one enemy when you could be slaying the whole crowd usually doesn't make much sense.

However, when finishing off a crowd that features a particularly tanky enemy, casting Point Assist on them is worth your time.

Support Fire / Enhanced Mark (1 SP)
Increases damage dealt to a Point Assist-marked enemy by 10%. With the addition of Support Fire, you will deal a total of +26% damage to the marked point and +10% damage to anywhere else on the enemy.

Alter Ego (10 SP), Active Skill
For 60s, your pet deals 20% more damage, however, 80% of damage dealt to your pet is also received by you. Has a 30s cooldown. Taking that much extra damage might sound harsh, but +20% damage is massive, so this skill is mandatory. That said, Summoner’s level 85 Skill, Alter Ego Harmony, makes this much more manageable. Don’t be afraid to take this skill and use it often!

Be careful not to press Alter Ego twice, or you'll cancel it, putting it on a 90s cooldown! Consider placing it somewhere inconvenient on your subpalette, to prevent these double taps.

Alter Ego Harmony (0 SP), Requires Level 85
While Alter Ego is active, damage dealt to you or your pet is reduced by 80%. Additionally, you gain Super Armour and are immune to status effects. This skill significantly reduces the damage you and your pets take and makes you immune to nearly all stuns, knockdowns, and displacements while Alter Ego is enabled. Always take this skill.

All Attack Bonus 1 & 2 (5 SP Each)
Increase you and your pets' damage by 32% total.

High Level Bonus Su (5 SP), Requires Level 80
Increase you and your pet's damage by 5%.

Harmonize Up (5 SP)
Increase the chance of your pet requesting Pet Sympathy to 300%. Not having Shifta Sympathy hurts your damage a lot, so this skill is worth investing in to prevent that as much as possible.

Sympathy Time (5 SP)
Extend the duration of Pet Sympathy by 200%. Same idea as Harmonize Up. Losing Shifta Sympathy sucks, and it probably makes your pet feel pretty unloved as well. Take this skill to prevent that.

Easy Sympathy (1 SP)
Extend the acceptance window of Pet Sympathy requests by 10s. This allows you to put off activating pet Sympathy for a little while if you’re busy doing something else in combat, such as fighting an enemy during it's knockdown phase, where you really don't want to lose out on damage just 'cause your pet chose a bad time to ask you for buffs.

A nice utility that's definitely worth 1 SP.

Long Distance Love (1 SP)
Gain the ability to meet Pet Sympathy requests from a distance. Being able to meet your pets' requests without taking the time to recall them is pretty nice. Less time wasted moving the pet in and out of combat means higher combat uptime.

Pet Element Weak Hit / Pet Elemental Precision Hit (5 SP)
When your pet’s attribute matches the enemy’s weak attribute, increase your pet’s damage by 10%. Much of PSO2's enemies are weak to Light, making this a relatively consistent 10% damage increase so long as your Pets are Light element.

You can also invest in a type of candy called Ramunes, which allow you to change your pet’s attribute on the fly by slotting a 1x1 Candy into your pet's candy box. Changing your element on the fly like this isn't required, but it is an option if you wanna swap your pet's element for a quest or boss that isn't weak to Light.

Pet Element PP Restorate / Pet Elemental PP Restorate (5 SP)
When your pet’s attribute matches the enemy’s weak attribute, increase the PP recovery of your pets’ normal attacks by 50%. Same deal as Pet Element Weak Hit. This is often active with a Light pet, and you can switch your pet’s attribute to make use of this skill more often than that if you wish.

PP efficiency can be problematic on some pets, so it's very much recommended that you take this skill.

All Attacks Up / Total Attack Up (5 SP)
Increases your attack by 50.

All Attacks High Up / Total Attack Mega-Up (10 SP)
Increases your attack by 150. While not as important as Summoner's other damage skills, this skill and its predecessor still add up to a decent amount of attack. Summoner's tree isn't super constrained on SP, so we can afford to take these flat ATK ups.

PP Up 1 PP Up 2 PP Up 1 & 2 (5 & 10 SP)
Increases your PP by up to 15. If you’ve invested in all other skill points that interest you and still have skill points left over, this is a good place to invest them. Interacts well with Critical Stream on Phantom subclass.

Pet Recovery (5 SP)
Gradually recover your active pet’s HP. You’ll need to invest 3 SP into this to access the rest of your skill tree, but investing the additional 2 SP to get +1% HP per 5s is optional. Some extra HP regen usually won't save your pet's life when pets are getting clapped in a couple of hits in Ultra Hard.

Pet Photon Barrier (5 SP)
Grants your pet a 10% chance to avoid damage. 5 SP for a 10% chance to nullify an attack is kinda lackluster, but then again if it's a choice between this and 5 more PP on your tree, this isn't so bad. With how many skill point we have now, it's really easy to justify 5 SP into this.

Also, Maron and Melon's size will still increase when they're hit, even if this skill results in them taking no damage - there's no downside to Pet Photon Barrier.

PB Advance / Advanced Photon Blast (5 SP)
Increases your Photon Blast's damage by up to 30%. Has no effect on Ketos Proi. This is far from a core skill, but in mobbing content where you use Julius Nykta to group crowds together (such as Endless), this can be pretty useful.

Reserve Recovery (1 SP)
Increases the HP recovery rate of inactive pets on your weapon palette. Your inactive pets already recover HP quite quickly even without this skill, so this doesn't really do anything for you.

HP Restorate (10 SP)
Regenerate up to 7.5% of your HP every 5s. You'll need to put 1 SP into this to access other important skills in your tree, but investing any more into this skill isn't really recommended. With Dear Master keeping you alive, extra HP regen just isn't that important.

Quick Recovery (5 SP)
Reduce the time you are affected by status effects, jellen, and weak bullet by 70%. Most of the time you’ll have Alter Ego enabled, during which you will be completely immune to status effects anyway because of Alter Ego Harmony. Very niche skill, only potentially useful in content where status effects are really problematic.

Massive Mate / Unstoppable Recovery (1 SP)
While using a mate, take reduced damage and become immune to flinching. Drinking a mate heals you, not your pet, so this skill isn't very helpful.

HP Up

HP Up (5 SP)
Increase your character's maxiumum HP by up to 50. Put in 1 SP to access the rest of your tree, and don't bother investing more than that. You get the idea by this point. Disregard your character's defensive stats and focus on your pets' defensive stats instead.

HP High Up / HP Mega-Up (10 SP)
Increase your character's maxiumum HP by up to 100.

All Defenses and Dexterity Up / Total Defense/Dexterity Up (5 SP)
Increase your character's defense and dexterity by up to 50 and 25.

All Defenses and Dexterity High Up / Total Defense/Dexterity Mega-Up (10 SP)
Increase your character's defense and dexterity by up to 150 and 75.

Pet Switch Strike, Pet Switch Shoot (1 SP Each), Active Skills
Changes your pets' damage to scale from S-ATK or R-ATK instead of T-ATK. It's preferred to skip out on these skills because of Rykros Staff, a commonly used Summoner weapon - which fires projectiles that scale exclusively with T-ATK.

Subclass

PSO2 has a wide variety of classes that you could use as a Subclass for Summoner, but the only two that really stand out are Phantom and Fighter.

You'll gain the ability to equip a subclass around level 20 by completing Koffie's "Subclass License" client order, at which point you can speak to Bea to equip your subclass of choice.

Koffie is an important NPC in her own right because she offers client orders that allow you to increase your level cap, unlock new difficulties, and gain access to your Mag.

Phantom is far and away the best choice of subclass for Summoner. Poor PP recovery and high damage variance are some of Summoner's most major issues, and Phantom addresses both these issues while also offering great multipliers for pet damage.

Phantom is unique in that only a fraction of its skills work when using Phantom as a subclass, so you don't have any real choices to make. Take all of the skills mentioned below, and you're done.

You can unlock Phantom by getting any two classes to level 75.

Phantom PP Restorate (5 SP)
Increases your PP recovery by 30%. This applies both to active PP recovery (your pets' normal attacks) and to your passive PP regeneration. Drastically improves Summoner's PP economy!

Critical Stream (5 SP)
Gain critical hit rate equal to 20% of your max PP, up to 60% critical hit rate. Gain critical hit damage equal to 3% of your max PP, up to 5% critical hit damage. Where previous Summoner subclasses such as Fighter only offered 25% critical hit rate, Phantom offers up to 60%. Between Critical Stream and pet candy, Summoner can easily reach 100% critical hit rate to completely avoid dealing with damage variance.

300 PP is what you want to strive for end-game, but you don't need to sweat it earlier on - you can still reach 100% crit and have competant gear with a lesser amount of PP.

PP	Stats Gained
300 PP	60% Crit + 5% Crit Damage
250 PP	50% Crit + 5% Crit Damage
200 PP	40% Crit + 5% Crit Damage
150 PP	30% Crit + 4.5% Crit Damage

Photon Stream (5 SP)
Gain a damage bonus equal to 5% of your max PP, up to 10% damage. To get the full benefit of this skill you need to have 200 PP or higher.

All Attack Bonus Ph (5 SP)
Increases your pets' damage by 35%.

PP High Up (10 SP)
Increases your maximum PP by 20.

Tech Short Charge (5 SP)
Reduces technique charge time by 50%, technique damage by 30%, and PP consumption by 30%. Quicker charge time allows you to more quickly buff your pet with techniques like Shifta, and more easily weave in Zanverse for extra damage. The PP consumption reduction also saves you a lot of PP over the course of a quest. Summoner only uses support techniques and movement techniques, so this skill's technique damage reduction won't impact you much.

Zanverse's damage is not reduced by this skill.

Sprint Tech Charge (1 SP)
Move faster while charging techniques. This isn't super crucial, but you've got more than enough SP for it. Nice for buffing your pet without coming to a complete crawl.

Sprint Tech Charge

Phantom Mag (0 SP) (Default Skill)
Converts your Mag’s Dexterity into all three attack types. Provides SuPh the choice of using a Dex mag instead of a T-ATK mag. In Short, both Dex and T-ATK mags provide you the same amount of damage, but Dex aids you slightly better defensively, making it the best choice for SuPh.

If you're curious why, Dexterity lowers damage variance by increasing the minimum damage that you can deal, and lowers the minimum damage that you take from attacks - which doesn’t actually do anything, since SuPh consistently reaches 100% critical hit rate.

(In other games, Critical Hits may have an additional damage multiplier, but in PSO2, Critical Hits only bypass damage variance - they don't deal additional damage unless you have skills that explicitly say they do.)

Dexterity also lowers the minimum damage you recieve, making it the better of the two mags defensively. In the end it’s not a world of difference. So while Dex is ideal, a T-ATK mag is still acceptable.

High Level Bonus Ph (5 SP), Requires Level 80
Increase you and your pet's damage by 5%.

Previously the best subclass for Summoner, Fighter has now been heavily outclassed by Phantom. If you’re new to the game and haven’t unlocked Phantom yet, Fighter sub is recommended because it offers you high damage more consistently than other available classes.

Brave Stance / Valiant Stance (10 SP)
Increase you and your pet's damage by 40% when attacking the enemy from the front. This is the stance that is active by default, and it’s the stance you’ll be using most of the time when playing Su/Fi. Damage bonus lowers to 35% when you attack enemies from behind.

Brave Stance Up / Valiant Stance Up (5 SP)
Further increases damage dealt to the front by 10%.

Brave Stance Up

Brave Critical / Valiant Critical (5 SP)
During Valiant Stance, increase your critical hit rate by 25% when attacking from the front.

Wise Stance (10 SP), Active Skill
Increase you and your pet's damage by 35% when attacking the enemy from the rear. Switch to Wise Stance against any enemy with a rear weak point. Damage bonus lowers to 30% when you attack enemies from front.

Note: Activating Wise Stance will automatically disable Brave Stance.

Wise Stance Up (5 SP)
Further increases damage dealt from behind by 30%.

Wise Critical (5 SP)
During Wise Stance, increase critical hit rate while attacking from behind by 25%.

Adrenaline (1 SP)
Increase the duration of Shifta and Deband ticks by 30s. Shifta and Deband will still cap out at 60s of duration, but Adrenaline means you can cap out your Shifta or Deband duration without fully charging either technique. Not bad.

Deadline Slayer

Deadline, Halfline, and PP Slayer / Photon Slayer (10 SP Each)
Increase your S-ATK, R-ATK, and T-ATK when you are below 25% HP, 50% HP, or 50% PP.

Crazy Heart (5 SP)
PP regeneration is doubled while suffering under a status effect. An extremely inconsistent skill. This is the only PP recovery skill Fi offers you, and it pales in comparison to Phantom PP Restorate.

Chase Advance Plus / Extra Chaser Damage (5 SP)
Increases damage by 15% when attacking an enemy that’s inflicted with a status effect. This damage increase can be activated with pet PAs that inflict stun, such as Jinga Shock. Jellen doesn't count as a status.

Crazy Heart

High Level Bonus Fi (5 SP)
Increase you and your pet's damage by 5%.

The TL;DR here is that subclasses other than Phantom and Fighter don't bring anything meaningful to the table for Summoner. If you're interested in why other subclasses are garbage, read below.

Hunter
All of Hunter’s skills either increase Striking and Ranged damage, or increase damage dealt when you Just Attack. The former doesn't help us, since pets do Tech-type damage, even while using Switch Strike or Switch Shoot, and the latter doesn't either since pets cannot perform Just Attacks.

Ranger Class Icon

Ranger
Ranger's skills increase ranged damage, so there's nothing of value here.

Gunner Class Icon

Gunner
Gunner provides increases to ranged damage only, and Chain Finish only works with TMGs.

Force Class Icon

Force
Force skills increase the damage of techniques, such as Grants, Megid, etc. but not the damage of pets. Hard pass.

Techer Class Icon

Techer
Same deal as Force.

Braver Class Icon

Braver
Average Stance and Weak Stance both provide less damage than what you'd find from Fighter's Brave Stance, or from Phantom's multipliers.

Bouncer Class Icon

Bouncer
Elemental Stance has a much lower multiplier than Fighter's Brave Stance, and Break Stance is just really conditional.

Etoile Class Icon

Etoile
Etoile doesn’t offer pets any critical hit rate, requires that you alternate PAs with Tech Arts Count Bonus to offer similar damage to Fighter, and offers less damage than Phantom.

Luster Class Icon

Luster
Luster doesn't offer us multipliers that compete with Phantom subclass, and gaining voltage is really difficult. Most pets don't hit that quickly.

Pietro

Everyone’s ~~most despised~~ favourite class trainer. On top of offering you client orders which reward you with additional Summoner skill points (complete these ASAP!), Pietro also offers repeatable client orders that reward pet candy.

Pietro also offers you the option to "Limit Break" your pet, which enables 12★

or higher pets to level past level 100.

Pietro sucks, and Aika's cuter anyway.

Skill Point Client Orders
Candy Client Orders

Client Order Name	Objective	Clear Reward
Becoming a Top-Notch Summoner	Defeat [Fang Banshee] x1, [Gwanahda] x1	+5 Summoner Skill Points
Let's Master the Summoner!	Defeat [Big Vardha] x1, [Quartz Dragon] x1, [Snow Banther] x1	+5 Summoner Skill Points
The Perfect Summoner I	Deliver [Su Excube] x1	+1 Summoner Skill Point
The Perfect Summoner II	Deliver [Su Excube] x2	+1 Summoner Skill Point
The Perfect Summoner III	Deliver [Su Excube] x3	+1 Summoner Skill Point
The Perfect Summoner IV	Deliver [Su Excube] x4	+1 Summoner Skill Point

These client orders may only be completed once. Make sure to complete your Skill Point client orders on your subclass as well!

Client Order Name	Objective	Clear Reward
My Gallant Wanda!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Wanda	Two Layer Pancake
My Gallant Torim!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Torim	Sta-Spi Cookie
My Gallant Cery!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Cery	Tech-Arm Cookie
My Gallant Maron!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Maron	Latency Roll
My Gallant Melon!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Melon	Finish Roll
My Gallant Viola!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Viola	Reversal Parfait
My Gallant Rappy!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Rappy	Bonus Egg 10★
My Gallant Synchro!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Synchro	Complete Parfait
My Gallant Jinga!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Jinga	Vin-Spi Candy Stick
My Gallant Aero!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Aero	Power-Arm Cookie
My Gallant Popple!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Popple	Critical Candy Stick
My Gallant Redran!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Redran	All-Resist Candy Stick
My Gallant Glass!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Glass	Super Bolster Parfait
My Gallant Vulcan!	Defeat [Any Lv.61+ Enemy] x60 using Vulcan	Super Luxury Parfait

These client orders are repeatable every 7 days.
On Global, you can forget about these COs and cop the candy you need through the Rising Weapon Badge 5 shop.

Ariel

This is the Summoner NPC you’ll spend most of your time at. Through Ariel you can compress candy, upgrade your pets’ rarity, and obtain various pet items and candy. Ariel can be found in the Shop Area, next to Dudu or Monica.

"Do you have what it takes to stack up pancake?"

Menu Item	Description
Candy Compression	By default, candy takes up hella space in your pet's candy boxes. Compression will increase the grind on your candy, making it take up significantly less space. Sticks, Sandwiches, and Gummies cannot be compressed.
Change Pet Name	Spend 500 Meseta to rename any one of your pets. Has an 8 character limit.
Evolve Pet Rarity	Select a pet from your pet list, and an egg of the same type from your inventory which is equal or higher rarity - this will keep your current pet's level, stats, and candy, but upgrade its rarity to that of the egg. Can also be used to give your pet a different personality, or to upgrade Wanda/Torim/Cery/Redran/Synchro into Jinga/Aero/Popple/Glass/Vulcan.
Return Pet to Egg	Convert a pet back into an egg. Your pet will retain its levels and stats, but if you've crushed caramel on your pet, you'll need to crush it again when you add the pet back to your pet list. Any candy on the pet will be lost upon being converted to an egg, so remove it before selecting this option.
Pet Goods Shop	Trade resources for a variety of pet and candy items, including EXP Eggs, Caramel Crushers, Pancakes, and Ramunes.