A feedback about the summonings in R50

Well, finally, I've leveled all the summonings to level 80, having a very clear feedback about how useful are the summonings in this version. I'm conscious that @Chris is thinking about how improving the summonings since the Magic Masteries. However, although it's good for those spells having upgrades via masteries, I don't think that thing itself will help them. It's more, unless the masteries offer them a significantly help, it's hard to believe that people will use them for efficiency. Of course for roleplaying purposes summonings are a good tool for people who want to be summoner or be a mage with summoning skills, but outside of it, I'll explain the reality of the summonings.

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In first place, the most useful summoning is the water element. There is no other reason than the 100 hp heals which can cast occasionally to both, user, allies and even itself. The damage from the summoning is ridiculously low to be considered a partner for helping you. That's because the heals, and then the low fizzle for full plate users, make that summoning the best one for theorycrafting purposes, although that summoning will be more used for healers than other users. That doesn't meaning other users will not use it, especially for soloing.

In second place, well... I recognize that the no focus cost of the undead minions of the Death Magic users magic make them useful, but only if they're accompanied from a constant help of healing spells casted to them or having the Harp of Invigoration for nullying completely the negative health regeneration since the decay effect of them. But if I prefer using one of the two, more for efficiently than for another thing is the skeleton summoning. Near of 900 hp while having both, the skill and the passives at level 80, makes the skeleton a good spell for distracting from one to two enemies in a spawn of 3, 4 or more. However, depending of the zone, that thing can hold more or less than 10 seconds. The lich, altough that skill is not necessarily bad, that skill is only useful for melee users who want to have a multi-hit support, and in the case that the lich gets the aggro, the lich is killed instantly. In other words, the undead companions are good because they don't carry the focus debuff while summoning it, for non-talking that both, the skeleton and the lich, gets more HP than the entire family of summonings, but outside of it, they aren't better than the water elemental since the heal feature of it.

NOTE: Skeleton and Lich, both, suffers the 100% of the Death Damage of the enemy mages when they must be completely immune to death attacks.

In third place, maybe the Will-O-Wisp summoning will be considered another useful summoning. However, that summoning is not an offensive one. Instead, it's a support one which debuffs to a single target. Since the Will-O-Wisp uses a very few ammount of focus, that summoning is near the same than using an undead summoning. Although the debuffs are not necessarily too bad, they are not enough good to see people using it for supporting the party. I can understand that the main reason of the power of the Will-O-Wisp is not seeing an entire party of 8 using the same summoning in all party members for overcoming easily the bosses. But that thing is not enough for seeing in that thing, for example... a debuff of -1 Defense Resistance, Confusion (Completely useless in PVE since Confusion only works in PVP) or Mesmerize (People will not think in random Mesmerize, unless the guy is playing in solo mode or offline mode). The idea is good, but there is a certain point when the debuffs of the Will-O-Wisp are useless in high-end content. Maybe I'm wrong, but although the role of that summoning is good, I think they need some love, or at least IMO of course.

In fourth place, well... Fire Elemental, Air Elemental and the Phoenix are considered a very situational summonings since they're used to make a wall for a certain type of enemy which uses near always an element type, excepting the Phoenix. The Phoenix is only useful for full plate users (Excluding people with the Obsidian Armor) since those users are unable to cast those summonings unless they switch to a gear with much less fizzle for using it, and since they don't have additional things than just attacking and having a full resist to a certain element, maybe that thing is completely useless for non-melee users.

But if I could consider the worst summonings of the game, those ones are the Earth Elemental and the Ice Elemental. They're all the same in all aspects. Yes, both have got more HP than the other summonings since they're melee ones. But the Skeleton or even the Lich are much better than it. Melee users generally use that summoning because the low fizzle of both, especially the Earthen one. But they don't have special effects like slow, stuns, and a long etceter which is even more enough to write here than the wild versions of the summonings are much better than the summonings, although the summonings have got more health than the wild ones because they don't offer both, damage and exclusive features for being useful as a mage user.

I won't count the Daemon because the Daemon is completely broken, and talking about it is the same than talking about a bugged thing.

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In other words, summonings are generally too weak for high-end content. Many users will use the Water Element and the other ones are rarely used for the others.

 

Hey Sakarisei, thanks for taking the time to get them all to 80 and offering up feedback. As you mentioned I only use the water summon myself for the 100hp heal. I threw this idea out in chris' blog discussion thread, but I'll drop it here for input and brainstorming. Basic idea would be give the summons a deck, maybe only a single slot and you can pick a skill from their magic tree for them to cast. Mastery could allow for 2 slots or faster intervals between casts. This would allow all the summons to be relevant and although a bit of extra work, uses existing systems and spells already in place.

 

@Sakarisei - your analysis of the various elementals is so spot on. My ice elemental has stayed on the shelf for a long time since it can't tank, can't do significant damage and can't even slow the NPC mobs headed my way.

At least the water elemental and wisp have their uses.

 

@Sakarisei, thank you so much for leveling to 80 each of the summons. I'm leveling the Lich and Daemon (and ick the Ice Elemental eventually) to 80 for Attunement reasons.

Would it be possible to report the HP, MP, and Focus drain for each of the summons at 80 and also report what your attunement is when you summon them? I'd love to see how things vary.

Also, I wasn't quite clear what the difference is between the summoned Skeleton, Skeleton Mage (if you have Juxtapose up to 80), and Lich are. Do they have different attacks (which I guess the Mage does) and defenses?

 

Agree
Water elemental heals are nice and mesmerizing if the Wisp also saved me sometimes when i was low HP and the Opponent luckily was mezzed.

 

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...chool-of-magic-they-are-in.98177/#post-865274
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...eys-are-still-not-working.102757/#post-894949
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...pets-they-could-be-better.102171/#post-892219
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/question-about-summons.95534/#post-847398
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/elementals-suck.89591/#post-848286

Just showing how long these have had issues and how weak they are.

There is so much that can and should be done to make them more viable

working them all up to 80 is a noble endeavor,

masteries are prob gonna kill that ability like attunement was supposed to do making training of opposing school something to consider now irrelevant.