Is playing a summoner viable yet?

Not talking about taming here, so please don't bring it up.

For years, I've waited to be able to play a summoner in this game. My posts on this topic are extensive, so I'm going to ask a basic question and hope to get a factual, basic answer:

If I log into this game, summon my mid-level pets, and go adventuring, are they going to be useful? Or do they all still have the same HP, hit for basically nothing, etc. at all levels? I don't need them to play the game for me, but they should get stronger and be more useful the more you put into them - to my knowledge that has never been the case, but with launch one week away, I'm hoping I missed something.

Useful to me does not mean barely functional. Useful means being a staple and able to build around while doing all content levels (if invested in accordingly).

Thanks!

 

I can only tell about the water elemental Skill 80 and that is basically a healer in the background
- about up to 160HP heals on me and itself
- its attack is meaningless up to 20HP
(both noncrit)

never bothered about his HP, but if it is under attack it first heals itself before healing me

 

No. And, don't believe that is in their plans. I know many would like to, and may, disagree with me but that's how I see it.

 

Chris talks about it in tech talk with Violation in the most recent one. He does have plans to improve them. Sorry I'm on my phone so I can't link it but it was awesome.

 

I agree with Onyx. To this point, summons have not gotten much love since introduced. Even with all the new "Specialization" skills added to each skill tree, the summons do not yet get any benefit from them. Perhaps someday they might benefit from the Specializations (I think they should, at least somewhat), but I don't think Chris wanted to tackle the balance issues it might cause by making summons better with Specs at this stage of the game.

I know you stated you are not asking about tamed pets, but the new Taming tree Specialization does improve tamed pets a little. Nothing substantial from what I hear, but my point is, there might be hope that summons get improved soon.

But to answer your question, NO, they are not viable as a main playstyle right now, and I don't believe you will ever be able to control more than one at a time... so if you have intentions of sending a horde of elementals into battle as you will them to do your bidding, don't count on that for quite a while, if ever.

 

Depends on what is viable.
Yes for T3-4 Scenes, mostly no for T5 or higher.

As this community allways stated it's all about your PoV and therefore i need to learn that you can even be a pure crafter, never kill mobs to Master All Crafting.
Just your PoV.
Same for taming, specialisations, Archetypes or whatever.
If you mean viable= strong and competetive , no way as nothing in this game except you level as much as possible to 150+

 

This is a great question and I gotta imagine an extremely difficult build to make viable. Unless I am mistaken (which is entirely possible) you would have to level up almost all schools of magic in order to get "summon xxxx" skill; then you'd have to take those summon skills to at least 80 if not higher to make them worth a damn. Plus you can only summon one pet at a time which becomes even trickier. Also, aren't their issues with attunement when raising opposing schools of magic? Yeah man, I have no idea but this sounds really difficult to accomplish.

 

My thoughts exactly, because of the variety of monsters you encounter and their different resists... you'd have to switch between each summon... get a very defensive build on top of custom decks... and it won't work everywhere.

 

nope - perhaps in r53 but as of now no changes-

they still do not use spells and skill level not reflected-

 

All this talk about it not working makes me REALLY want to try to make it work

 

To my knowledge the only build that involves combat pets involves taming and unlocking its specialization. Still, I can't wait to see what they do to buff the magic summons!

Currently the magic skill combat pets that can deal the most damage are the undead pets, but the most damage I've seen them do is 42 on a critical hit. Fortunately, they also have the most health, but that decay rate can be brutal at times.

 

Well... we already DO have to level all magic schools to 800+ points to get attunement, so that we have resistance to that magic type. Leveling an entire magic school to 80ish is not that big of a deal, to be honest. The real issue is that you can't rely on that summoned pet to do any damage, because, well... they just don't do much damage. You still would absolutely have to use either your own magic or melee to fight mobs. Right now, the Water Ele (for its heals) and the Wisp (for the debuffs it can dole out), are the only things worth having at your side. I'd say most players mess around with summonable pets while they are developing characters, and then abandon that concept once they are a (nearly) fully developed character.

 

Pretty much this: You need some serious dedication to keep using summoned pets, and even if you have them trained up to GM and beyond, the majority of them are nothing more than a small disposable damage boosts. I personally still use the Chaos Daemon for it's ability to mess with an enemy's current attunement, but that's all it is really useful for, which is a far cry from the water ele's heal and wisp's debuffs. Not to mention the Daemon is a melee combatant primarily, so it tends to die a lot.

Speaking of this, if you are going to use a summons, there are two things you will need to keep in mind: Melee summons deal more damage and some of them critically hit, but ranged summons will generally live for far longer (The death summons are actually exempt from this due to just how much health they have, despite the decay). I can't tell you how many times I've had to resummon my Chaos Daemon because it died to some sort of AoE or being targeted by a roving enemy (I still use him, but it just means more trips to shardfalls to collect chips), meanwhile I only need to resummon my Fire Elemental every now and then because it usually tries to keep its distance from the main fight.

 

I've gotten to level 95 as a pure cloth wearing Mage and summoned creatures have been crucial in this. I Almost always have something summoned. Their use is defensive. By drawing fire they really help. They also can draw fire from a sudden spawn that would otherwise lead to a surprise death. The best situation is when your ice elemental is chasing around an archer mob, who is thus not killing you. Arrows are the bane of cloth.

 

As I said earlier - his question was more along the lines of if they have changed - sadly nope

Now sure they have their uses and if you look at it Water and Ice, they are the best - why??

1 Water can heal you but he is ranged so he stays back and can live longer while healing you

2 Ice is a bruiser and will chase around archers and stuff to distract their damage and / or keep they busy while you do what you need to.

In the end they are a little better than a pet (not what he was concerned about) because they cost less in focus and compared to training skillz minuscule.

BUT they are not any better than they were in release 32

They still do not use spells in their tree and a skill level 20 is just as efficient / effective as a skill level 80

 

Maybe consideration can be given to a special "magic summoner" tree, bringing in one specialization to wrangle all the magic pets other than death (death has two skills that help you to manage your pets). Alternatively, or in addition, give each tree with pets another skill or two to help with "specializing" in them?

 

Honestly, summons are pointless. The only summon of worth is the water elemental and doing without is pretty much fine as well

 

Not sure myself... I only summon my manservant Hecubus.

 

Death is my lowest attunement but I use the lich extensively.

Call it underpowered if you want.. I disagree completely. As a pure mage, there are about 1/5 mobs where the lich does the same or more dps than I can.