FFXIV Arcanist (ACN) Leveling Guide & Rotation | ShB UPDATED

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Aching to level yer’ Arcanist? Lured in by the pets? Don’t sweats. Well you’ve found the right place. Hopefully, our Arcanist Leveling Guide helps you out!

While this page focuses on Arcanist info like skills, traits, rotation, and playstyle notes. The GENERAL PROCESS that you follow is outlined in our FFXIV General Leveling Guide – use it alongside this guide. Looking at that, we’re in the “A Realm Reborn Tier” as we’re only looking to level our Arcanist up to 30.

This guide has three major segments:

• Arcanist Leveling Rotation & Skill Changes – How new skills affect your play.
• Arcanist L1 to L16 – General reminders and notes.
• Arcanist L15 to 30 – General reminders and notes.
• I’ll mention it again, knowledge from General Leveling Guide is REQUIRED.

I put rotation changes up top as you might reference it often. Without further ado, let’s get to it.

Arcanist Rotation for Leveling, Skills, Traits, Etc.

In this segment we run down how each skill and trait affects your Arcanist’s rotation during the leveling process.

L1 Skill Unlocked Ruin – Essentially, this is your “basic attack”. Or basic spell, I guess.

L2 Skill Unlocked Bio – An instant cast DoT (Damage over time) spell. Always open fights with it, and renew it when its duration is 3s or less. While this is a good habit to form, the initial form of this DoT is actually horrible – the enemy life expectancy has to be 24 seconds for it to be good.

L4 Skill Unlocked Physick – A basic healing spell. Nothing else to say here! 

L4 Skill Unlocked Summon – Calls forth a blue caster-type minion that helps you DPS! Emerald Carbuncle is cute ain’t it? 

L2 Skill Unlocked Miasma – A second DoT! Like its predecessor, it’s still quite unimpressive. Only worth if enemy life expectancy is around 21 seconds. 

L8 Role Action Unlocked Addle – Reduces targets INT (reduces enemy magic damage). Has almost no use in non-boss encounters and basic leveling activities.

L10 Skill Unlocked Egi Assault – Has different effects depending on which summon you’re using. Blue pet: AoE attack. Yellow pet: gives you a chunky self shield. 

L12 Skill Unlocked Resurrection – Revives a dead ally, even in combat, but at the cost of a lot of mana, a huge cast bar, and your newly returned friend suffering a stat penalty. That being said, this is one of the most important skills in group content.

L15 Skill Unlocked Summon II – Brings Topaz Carbuncle by your side – a yellow “support” / tank type pet. The self-shield (from Egi Assault) is pretty useful for tougher solo encounters.

Summon I – Blue is more suitable for AoE (dungeons), while
Summon II – Yellow is more suitable for single target and most solo content.

L18 Role Action Unlocked Swiftcast – Primarily used to speed up Resurrection. Advanced usage is “continuing to DPS while moving”. In group content, I highly suggest simply saving it for res during the leveling process.

L18 Skill Unlocked Energy Drain – An off-gcd nuke that gives you your first stack of Aetherflow! USE THIS AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN, but never “overcap” your Aetherflow. Aetherflow is used to execute certain skills. The first of which is Fester. This is the cornerstone mechanic of any Arcanist-evolved class.

L18 Skill Unlocked Fester – Ah, your first skill which REQUIRES Aetherflow to use . It’s a single target nuke that is stronger for each of YOUR DoT’s on the target. 

While your DoT’s may not be the best, keeping them up so you have a more powerful Fester is worth it.

L24 Role Action Unlocked Lucid Dreaming – Gives you mana! Use this early and often as there’s almost no point holding on to it. Don’t wait until you’re low on mana.

L26 Trait Unlocked Corruption Mastery – Transforms Bio into Bio II, which is just better all around. Stronger initial damage, stronger DoT. Doesn’t change your rotation in any way – the key even rebinds itself…

L26 Skill Unlocked Bio II – This isn’t really an unlock – the previously mentioned trait simply upgrades your old Bio. 

L30 Skill Unlock Bane – Finally, some consistent AoE! Spreads your DoT’s to all nearby targets, but weakens them on the “new targets”. There’s some math and situationality of when to bane and when to manual DoT – let’s save that discussion for Summoner related discussion as it’s irrelevant now, and irrelevant for Scholar. 

Completing the L30, “Sinking Doesmaga” quest and unlocking Bane marks your final class quest as Arcanist. You now have the right to become a Scholar or Summoner!

Arcanist Rotation – L1 to 30 SUMMARY

Here’s a by the book summary of what your ACN rotation is in the early leveling process. Adjust to your currently learned skills.

Wow, now that I typed it out – pretty much Bane is the only difference.

While your DoT’s may not be the best, keeping them up so you have a more powerful Fester is worth it, even if your full or “good enough” DoT duration won’t tick. Don’t sweat about optimizing it this early on.

Arcanist Leveling: L1 to 30

As per the general leveling guide, this tier is divided into two sub-chunks. So I’ll be sub-chunking the following segments into two “tabs” as well. These two tabs represent A) L1 to 16, and B) L16 to 30.

Arcanist Leveling L1 to 30 Activity Flowchart

A rundown of things you can do to gain EXP – again split “to 16”, and “to 30”.

Important Notes (ACN L1 to 30)

Here are the important things to keep in mind during the process.

ACN L1 to 30 Gear Updates:  Needed?

TLDR: Not really significant. This applies to both sub-tiers. Just make sure to pick up whatever along the way, or find dirt cheap upgrades in the MB or wherever (quests etc).

Important notes to keep in mind

Stop at Level 30! Unlock your advanced job as soon as you can!
(ACN turns into Scholar or Summoner at Level 30)

Arcanist L30 Onward: Unlocking ADVANCEJOB

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING ONCE YOU HIT Arcanist LEVEL 30.
Unlock Scholar or Summoner ASAP!

How to become a Scholar or Summoner? Unlocking Scholar or Summoner requires a Level 30 Arcanist, and completion of the L30 ACN Class Quest. From there, return to your guild and it should point you to the quest! See: Unlocking all jobs.

The reason we unlock ASAP is, not only to get a new skill at L30 (SCH gets Adloquium, SMN gets Summon III – Ifrit), but most if not all new skills and traits going forward are for SMN/SCH and not ARCANIST, so you have no reason to stay as an ACN any longer.

Arcanist Leveling – Related Reads

Some good reads and related links here:

• General Leveling Guide – Oft mentioned here, but bears mentioning again.
• Arcanist General Basics Guide – Basic info regarding the ACN class.
• Scholar General Basics Guide – Basic info about ACN advanced job, SCH.
• Summoner General Basics Guide – Basic info about ACN advanced job, SMN.
• Unlocking all Jobs and Classes – Summary on how to become the various jobs.
• Caster Role Actions – a more detailed look and use cases for them.

Summary and Closing

And with that YOU’RE DONE WITH LEVELING Arcanist! Congrats! Hopefully our Arcanist Leveling Guide helped you out.

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