Making Summons competitive with Tamed Pets

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by thesometimeslurker, Sep 29, 2018.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. thesometimeslurker

    thesometimeslurker Avatar

    Messages:
    521
    Likes Received:
    507
    Trophy Points:
    75
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    A hovel
    Hi everyone! THis is just a short thread about how summons could be on par with tamed pets without outdamaging or outtanking them. Basically, allowing players to invest in them and still get a great, but different payoff from tamed creatures ( Hoping @Chris or @DarkStarr sees this and maybe gets some ideas for the future).

    1. Better Utility

    Since pet training and being able to command your pet to unleash certain skills on command has been brought up multiple times, why not make summons have better overall utility? This could come in the form of: Increased attunement, debuffing enemy attunement, increased stats or heals and etc, etc.

    2. More Active Summons

    What I mean by this is being able to have more than one summon out at any given time, perhaps 2 or 3 at maximum (I'll talk about Undead and this implication later). Not only this would work in terms of focus upkeep since they are cheap to keep around, but it would also justify their lower stats compared to tamed pets.

    3. A Summoning Skill Tree

    Adding a skill tree that focuses entirely on increasing the overall power of summons would do wonders to make them stronger in their own way. Unlike the taming tree, the summoning tree would instead focus on drawing out the primary strengths of each summon (Example: The Fire Elemental would grow to extremely strong with offensive, defensive, and supportive Fire magic. It would utilize spells such as Immolation, Ring of Fire and cast two special Fire spells: The first being an Ignite Weapon spell, but it affects nearby allies, and the second being Cauterize, which removes bleeding and rending DoTs and heals a small amount). This way, through this tree, each summon will not only have a general use, but also a niche one as well where they can excel.

    4. The Undead

    Undead summons are trickier to balance, since not only do they have an artifact and an enchant that boosts their overall effectiveness, but they have two passives that slowly increases their damage (which really helps since they have no damage scaling from their own summoning skills; unlike the other summons right now) and makes them last longer by reducing their decay. Plus, there is also the possibility of skills like Animate Dead where one may be able to keep multiple Undead roaming around for a limited time. So my proposed idea is to add a new passive that gives you the ability to call higher level Undead when you use Summon Skeleton, Summon Skeleton Mage, or Summon Lich (Example: The passive skill would upgrade the Lich Fighter into a Malefic Lich Lord at some point, with better stats), and then make skills that animate multiple Undead gain that same boost, but to a much lesser extent (To give the feeling of overwhelming your enemy with one strong Undead, and many weaker ones).
    As for utility, I'd make the Undead summons a hybrid of damage/utility. This way they can deal more damage than other summons, but not have as much utility and vice versa against tamed pets. For example: Let's say you have your Lich Fighter and 3 lesser zombies currently animated. One of the Lich Fighter's skills would be his overhead chop that stuns, while the Zombies would all share a skill that makes them use their Plague Claws to inflict a weak poison that reduces healing while active for a very short amount of time.


    What do you guys think?
     
    Last edited: Sep 29, 2018
    Mingo Ebonmark likes this.
  2. Brass Knuckles

    Brass Knuckles Avatar

    Messages:
    3,958
    Likes Received:
    7,707
    Trophy Points:
    153
    I think summoned pets should scale a little with leveling but NOT be near as good as tamed pets however they should have a attunment buff tied to thier school. With the exception of the water elemental that pet needs to be adjusted down.

    +10 attunement is plenty of extra damage also it will pull people to use the summon of thier school vrs everyone having a water elemental.

    If you want pure dps pets use taming imop, there is a whole taming and leveling system coming in eps 2 for combat pets.

    Lich xp cost should be reduced to that of all the rest of the summons. Id like to see skeletons summons increase skeletons #s.

    Earth and Ice elemental should have a medium size taunt effect mabey instead of the attunment buff or a smaller amount of attunment even.


    That is interesting, its a good idea. The dev team is too small and has too many other projects however id support this over dungeons and OT.
     
    Last edited: Sep 29, 2018
    Pawz and Perashim like this.
  3. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

    Messages:
    6,194
    Likes Received:
    12,076
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Side wish:

    Necromancy summons be more hordes of smaller minions summoned from the corpses of the fallen. Having them just be a single skeleton defeats the idea of being a mad necromancer.
     
    Perashim likes this.
  4. thesometimeslurker

    thesometimeslurker Avatar

    Messages:
    521
    Likes Received:
    507
    Trophy Points:
    75
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    A hovel
    I actually wouldn't mind this at all either! As you said, it is kinda the point of being a Necromancer to have hordes of undead at your disposal.
     
    Vladamir Begemot likes this.
  5. Xee

    Xee Bug Hunter

    Messages:
    2,199
    Likes Received:
    2,993
    Trophy Points:
    153
    I think they should do like that of the necromancer staff. have mage weapons that boost the summons only. with the Death staff the lich is very powerful as well with the pet boost in the three. the other schools need similar.
     
    Perashim likes this.
  6. thesometimeslurker

    thesometimeslurker Avatar

    Messages:
    521
    Likes Received:
    507
    Trophy Points:
    75
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    A hovel
    I definitely agree that summons should most certainly not have damage on par with tamed pets, which is why they should be more focused on utility. Undead are different, since they also have passives and enchanted gear that boost their power, so I think that they should deal more damage than other summons, but less than tamed pets, but more utility than tamed pets but less than other summons.

    The problem with lowering the xp cost to other summons level is that most summons don't have the same xp cost. The Water summons cost 1.2 mil xp each, the Air Elemental costs over 2 million xp, the Fire Elemental, Earth Elemental, and Skeleton cost over 4 million xp and so on and so forth. I would simply make it so that the more xp a summon costs to level, the more effective it is in combat over the others (Which would make the Lich and the Daemon the strongest of the summons).

    I agree that certain summons should definitely have some sort of taunt abilities, but something more than that so they can be used in other nonsolo instances.

    I know that their small and have many projects, so the summoning tree idea is more of an idea that may or may not influence how summons and pets are balanced in the future.
     
  7. thesometimeslurker

    thesometimeslurker Avatar

    Messages:
    521
    Likes Received:
    507
    Trophy Points:
    75
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    A hovel
    Agreed. I think they actually mentioned this in the community livestream on the 28th.
     
  8. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

    Messages:
    6,194
    Likes Received:
    12,076
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    Necromancers again, I think you shouldn't be able to summon until their are dead on the battlefield, and you can pop one from each corpse, including players. They are weak on health but you get a lot of them, and they can still hit.
     
    Perashim likes this.
  9. thesometimeslurker

    thesometimeslurker Avatar

    Messages:
    521
    Likes Received:
    507
    Trophy Points:
    75
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    A hovel
    Hmm, I like the reanimating portion, but I don't think all of the undead pets should be super weak. I would make one stronger than the rest, as a sort of "elite" undead pet you can have. This "elite" undead would focus much more on damage than utility.
     
  10. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

    Messages:
    5,676
    Likes Received:
    11,810
    Trophy Points:
    165
    Location:
    Dara Brae
    Good point. I do have an idea that would balance summons and tamed pets to make them equal.

    Make a necklace that is non-enchantment that makes summons as powerful as tamed pets! Then we will have the same bull that us tamers go through - no necklace slot for arties or better necklaces with stat bonuses. :D
     
    Witcheypoo and Perashim like this.
  11. thesometimeslurker

    thesometimeslurker Avatar

    Messages:
    521
    Likes Received:
    507
    Trophy Points:
    75
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    A hovel
    I mean, if you really want the most out of Undead summons you have to give up your main weapon slot for an artifact, as well as your jewelry jewel enchantment to boost their damage.

    But I think DS mentioned in a past livestream that summoning necklaces would be enchantable in the future.
     
  12. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

    Messages:
    6,194
    Likes Received:
    12,076
    Trophy Points:
    153
    Gender:
    Male
    It's got to have a tradeoff. If we get to have zombie hordes they have to be weaker. They could hit hard still, but have to go down fast. Or one single summon of equal power to the other trees, which is more or less what we've got now. No way we'll get a horde of equal strength summons, everyone would instantly be a necromancer.
     
    Perashim and Jason_M like this.
  13. Jason_M

    Jason_M Avatar

    Messages:
    770
    Likes Received:
    1,164
    Trophy Points:
    93
    I see no reason why an "animate dead" spell would preclude an inclusion of a lich summon - giving the choice of an on-the-spot summon from felled humaoids and a stronger summon that requires more investment.

    Overall, in my humble opinion, scaling the strength and abilities of summons to spell level (or even atunement) would do the trick. It need not be a terribly fancy solution, at least until the next major overhaul.
     
    Vladamir Begemot and Perashim like this.
  14. thesometimeslurker

    thesometimeslurker Avatar

    Messages:
    521
    Likes Received:
    507
    Trophy Points:
    75
    Gender:
    Male
    Location:
    A hovel
    I agree, which is why I'm not saying that the strong Undead should be stronger than the rest of the elemental/daemonic summons, just stronger than the stock zombies/skeletons. Or, we could add a passive along with an animate dead skill which would act in a similar manner to Spirit Lore in UO: Unlocking more and more powerful Undead created by Animate Dead, but also reducing the amount of Undead created depending on the strength of the undead summoned.

    Additionally, a Command Undead ability could be added, but the tradeoff would be is that it would function much like a late game tamed pet in that you can't get it back if it is gone, but also being unable to utilize teleport scrolls and it will automatically leave the moment you log out.
     
    Vladamir Begemot likes this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.