Summoner

Overview
The Summoner is a versatile class in Blade & Soul, and is best described as a jack-of-all-trades. Summoners call upon a Familiar to take damage for the player and to assist in close-range combat. A Summoner's primary attacks cast spells at a distance, and so are excellent at ranged combat. With their mix of support and defensive skills, they are easy for most players to use.

Races
The Summoner is exclusive to the Lyn.

Familiars
The introductory quest Master Hong's Summons goes a little bit different for Summoners than for other classes. At the end of the quest, the player is prompted to choose a Familiar out of five options.

Toggle for the Cats!

Solo
Using their cats as a tank that attracts all sort of damage from mobs and bosses, Summoners can stay in a safe distance from afar and dish out damage to their heart's contents

Along with their tanking cats, Summoners also boast great self-healing, nice amount of CC/Double CC skills for self-rescue when in pinch, and be able to stealth away for a good while when the situation become dire.

Being a ranged-attacker, Summoners have easier time to avoid boss' deadly melee-ranged AoE in some contents, such as Soulstone Plains.

Grouping
Summoner accesses diverse utilities to offer to their group.

When the group has no real tanker like Kung Fu Master and Blade Master, or have one but cannot do their role properly, and the aggro is upon the strongest damage dealer in the group, Summoners can use their cats to force taunt, temporarily alleviating the tanking pressure of the tanker for a good while.

Summoner is one of few classes with Snare skill. Using Grasping Root or Weed Whack, a Summoner can keep mobs in place, waiting for being slaughtered by AoE (Area of Effect) while the cat taunt is in cooldown, or even stall a boss from doing his mechanic attacks, giving free DPS time to achieve some difficult achievements.

Summoners also offer Healing or Focus Regeneration. The first is preferred during random grouping in cross-server dungeons, to keep your party members alive. The latter is to offer a boost in DPS of some classes, when you're confident about your group's performance.

Next is Crowd Control. Except for Knock Back, Summoners can do double Daze, Stun and Knock Down with ease, but they need their cat to not be CCed first in order to execute these CCs. Additionally, Summoner is the only class that can have a boss pinned for free DPS time with their cats, without sacrificing their own DPS contribution like Destroyer and Blade Dancer.

Finally, Summoner is also known as a Party-saver. They can send their cat to aid the revival of a dead/chi-recovering party member, protect a Chi-recovering member from being killed by upcoming attack, and stealth a whole party from a deadly AoE. In case of bad luck where Summoner is killed, as long as their cat is alive, they can do self-revive, or even whole-party revive (the latter comes with long cooldown).

PvP
Summoner is a strong class against inexperienced players, where you often meet them in Lower Gold metal rating. Self-healing, stealth, being able to CC the opponent even when being CCed, and simple damage-dealing mechanic make the class newbie-friendly, and a headache to players who are not used to deal with them. This also make Summoner a good class to farm Zen Bean for extra income and other necessary goodies.

However, when facing experienced players in Upper Gold metal rating, Summoner starts to fall behind, due to the lack of escape skills, and their great reliance on the cat, which is often killed, rendered useless, or have its auto-attack taken advantage in high-tier matches. Participating to such matches mean that you will have to learn how to control and protect your own cat, in addition of knowing how to handle your enemy.



How Summoner's DPS works
Summoner has the simplest but yet efficient DPS rotation, revolving around the use of Rosethorn, Sunflower, Doom'n'Gloom and Flying Nettle. Maybe Power Pounce too, if the situation calls.

The Sunflower build requires to execute Sunflower on enemies are being life-drained by Doom'n'Gloom, standing on Flying Nettle area of effect, or being pinned down by Power Pounce to proc Super Sunflower, in order to build up stacks of Photosynthesis up to tier 5, converting the buff to Overflow for focus-free Sunflower spam for 3-5sec. (depend on if you have the Hongmoon version of Sunflower or not). Therefore, it requires a bit of rotation in order to maintain the uptime of Super Sunflower.

The rotation is simple and easy to execute: Keep the cooldown of Doom'n'Gloom and Briar Patch being 5-8 seconds apart. Whichever skill hits first does not matter. Only use Power Pounce if the target moves outside of Flying Nettle area of effect, or when you find yourself run out of conditions to proc Super Sunflower, or when you or your party member are in a pinch. The reason is that if you spam all of skills that can proc Super Sunflower at once, you may get a few rotations of Overflow, then find yourself in an awkward situation where you have like four stack of Photosynthesis, but can no longer build it up as all required skills are in cooldown. Hence DPS loss for a short while.

The build is highly dependent on critical hit of Rosethorn in order to maintain focus for Sunflower and Super Sunflower until Overflow, it is recommended to have at least 50% critical rate.

Basic DPS rotations
= +  =  +  +   =  =  +  =  =  +
 * Begin with Doom'n'Gloom:
 * 1) Doom'n'Gloom.
 * 2) Weave Rosethorn and Sunflower until the Photosynthesis stack reaches 2-3.
 * 3) Flying Nettle.
 * 4) Weave Rosethorn and Sunflower until Overflow
 * 5) Spam Overflow Sunflower.
 * 6) Repeat
 * Begin with Flying Nettle:
 * 1) Grasping Roots or Weed Whack
 * 2) Flying Nettle
 * 3) Weave Rosethorn and Sunflower until the Photosynthesis stack reaches 2-3, or nearly run out of Focus.
 * 4) Doom'n'Gloom.
 * 5) Weave Rosethorn and Sunflower until Overflow
 * 6) Spam Overflow Sunflower.
 * 7) Repeat

Or:

= =  +  =  =  +  =  =  +  =  =  =  +  =
 * Begin with Power Pounce, followed with Flying Nettle
 * 1) CC or Double CC of choice on the target. Lunge or Thorn Strike + Strike
 * 2) Power Pounce
 * 3) Weave Rosethorn and Sunflower until the Photosynthesis stack reaches 2-3, or nearly run out of Focus, or when the pinning ends
 * 4) Weed Whack. It's better to cast it during the pin.
 * 5) Flying Nettle
 * 6) Weave Rosethorn and Sunflower until Overflow
 * 7) Spam Overflow Sunflower.
 * 8) Start another rotation with Doom'n'Gloom first.

Or:

+ =  =  +  =  =  =  +  =  =  =  +  =  =  +  =  =
 * Begin with Power Pounce, followed with Doom'n'Gloom
 * 1) Same as above
 * 2) Same as above
 * 3) Same as above
 * 4) Doom'n'Gloom
 * 5) Weave Rosethorn and Sunflower until Overflow
 * 6) Spam Overflow Sunflower.
 * 7) Start another rotation with Weed Whack to trigger Flying Neetle

Or:

+ =  =  +  =  =  +  =  =

DPS together other Summoners
Summoners can help each other with their skills to build up Photosynthesis, so you can rotate your skills 10 seconds after a fight to maintain the uptime for Super Sunflower proc.

DPS together Warlocks
Warlocks will often do their rotation for the first 10 seconds before execute Soulburn. The buff will boost DPS, reset all cooldown, and enable Awakened Rosethorn in place of its normal counterpart.

To maximize your DPS output, it's better to reach Tier 4 Photosynthesis or Overflow upon Soulburn, and have all of your skills in cooldown so that the buff will reset them all. Within the buff duration, you can spam Overflow Sunflower, then build up to another one before the buff end.

After that, it's pretty hard to keep track for another Soulburn, so just do normal DPS rotations. If you want to keep track, you have consider the Warlock's Soulburn cooldown, which is 3 minutes. If there are two Warlocks in the party, they will cast the buff as soon as the global cooldown of the buff is gone.

 NOTE:  During the buff, if your party has Force Masters, do not Power Pounce, because it will make them lose the chance to execute of of their strongest attacks.

How to do CC chain
Summoner can easy to pull off CC chain, both single and double CC, provided the target does not have long CC resistance period. + +
 * Double Daze:
 * Thorn Strike T2S3
 * Strike T2S2
 * Double Stun:
 * Lunge T3S1
 * Double Knock Down:
 * Make sure that your cat face the target.
 * Anklebiter
 * Beckon T3S2

Or +
 * 1) Beckon
 * 2) Surprise Gift T2S2. Must press twice

Or: + Or: + =  =  =
 * 1) Anklebiter T4S1 x2 (Hongmoon version)
 * 1) Surprise Gift T4S1 (Hongmoon version). Must press twice
 * Chain CC target with single CC bar:
 * Double Daze or Stun with Lunge or Thorn Strike + Strike
 * Power Pounce T3S1
 * Wait for the Cat to start to slash, or the Defense Reduction debuff to appears and count down to 9.
 * Weed Whack T3S2 to get reduced cooldown
 * Wait for the target to get knocked down when the debuff hits zero.
 * Weed Whack
 * CC of choices when the Snare runs out
 * Repeat.

Or:  =  =  =

Or:  =  =  =   Or:   =  =  = = =  =  =    +  =  =  =  =
 * Chain CC target with double-CC bar:
 * Double CC either Lunge T3S1 (stun), Thorn Strike T2S3 + Hammer Strike T2S2 (daze).
 * Power Pounce T3S1
 * Wait for the Cat to start to slash, or the Defense Reduction debuff to appears and count down to 9.
 * Weed Whack T3S2 to get reduced cooldown
 * Wait for the buff to hit zero and proc a Knock Down bar.
 * Anklebiter
 * Weed Whack
 * CC of choices when the Snare runs out
 * Repeat.

Trivia

 * In the G-Star 2009 Trailer, a prototype Summoner was shown at the beginning but never revealed as being one until the Korean CBT3.
 * The prototype Summoner was quite different from the current Summoner. The class used to be somewhat dark-themed class, using a giant brush to summoning circles on the air, and summon a Thrall-like dark creature to fight.
 * Later, the dark creature is replaced by a cute bipedal cat, brightening the class' theme. The brush is also replaced by the staff, though there are still a few staff skins in the game that resemble to a brush.
 * Lynspaintbrush2.jpg

Screenshots
The following screenshots were taken from the character creation screen at NA launch in 2016.