Mage Summons (Again)

Are you actually trying to compare this to the hours and hours it takes a Tamer to train the Taming skill......you got to be kidding.

Not even close to the same amount of work to get a Summons compared to a Tamed pet.

I agree 100%, you said it Best right there, Thank you.

Well yes, Summons when compared to Tamed Pets are 1/4 the effort, and 100% less the cost of a Tamed Pet, Remember Taming cost 1000s in silver, and other mats. Summons are a reward for playing a Mage and leveling up any Mage tree, making your Avatar very powerful along the way.

Ok 1st Yes we are all painfully aware of just how useless a Summoned pet currently is. So lets not make any misunderstanding there, that's why this thread is here.

2nd Do not try to make any one believe that training a Mage skill to Make your Avatar Elite, in any school, is the same as Training up the Taming Tree which only benefits Taming and your pet, and absolutely does nothing for the Avatar, that is a completely false statement. designed to Disgustingly mislead players.

@Chris

And I agree with you totally. And will also agree that the Taming System IS BROKE for allowing this to happen, and needs to be fixed. You should not be able to Summon a Tamed pet if your are not high enough skill to Tame it your self. I would consider this a URGENT fix to game balance.

I totally Agree with this.
Just remember though as you go though a Magic tree, you are at that point investing into your own Avatar, once you get to the Summon pet skill , then you start investing into your Summon.
That's why I made the XP example, a Summon is a split between a Powerful Avatar and a Summoned pet, a Tamed Pet is All in the Pet at a MUCH MUCH higher cost (when Fixed correctly as mentioned above)

But I feel its correct to say there is definitely a BROKEN system, that no one wants no matter what and any type of fix is a good thing for the future of the game over all!

 

How about we make summons and tamed pets equal effort and cost, don't forget summons cost reagents (silver) to cast. Magic users just want summons that are equivalent to tamed pets so they can run a summon rather than a tamed pet, it's that simple. They should be that same amount of investment as a tamed pet. Hell make the tamed tree also affect summons, but you have to unlock the summon through the school of magic then buff it through the tamed passives so it's the same xp investment.

 

@Nolove 0369 I completely agree that if taming was fixed to require investment to be a pet owner in some kind of skill (not necessarily current taming, but perhaps something like handling) that required at as much effort as gaining summoning then yes it would make more sense.

Until then the current system makes no sense as literally one person could climb the taming tree while everyone else in the game goes and gets silver, wood, and leather for them and a month or two from now everyone in the game will have a top level pet with only one player invested in taming.

That is the problem.

Also "gathering" a pet is nothing compared to building a set of armor. Good crafted armor affords nothing like a good tanking pet does.

I am in NO WAY asking for a nerf to pets. I want to see some kind of investment needed for the pet handler and/or correction to summons. Even if that investment is just growing other skills such that the owner demonstrates a competency to lord over that pet. Higher intelligence, great strength, high dexterity (able to tire out the owned pet), "level", or dps/defense adjusting to the owner's current capabilities when called. Something that keeps it from being the great grinding beast of my dreams.

 

Damm, I think you might be on to something here. This could actually be pretty cool to combine Summon creature with Tamed pet in 1 Tree.

(And I'm unaware that Summons cost silver to cast, yesterday it cost me 3 regents, that's all)

 

It would fix some other weird passives like death tree buffing skeletons as well, put all the pet/summon scaling in one tree and equalize them all a bit. The reagent point is only that although I'm aware collars cost a lot, reagents do add up as you pay them every re-summon which includes every rezone so it's not like it's free, collars you pay a large sum upfront, summons you bleed out over the entire life of the game.

 

@Nolove 0369 I like pretty much all of your statements above. Especially the point that if you can't tame it, you can't summon it. Hell, even UO did that to an extent, you had to be a certain taming skill level just to be able to trade a pet to someone. @Berek @Chris So, any way we can get more information on this besides it will get cheaper to cast in the future? That's great and all, but those of us going down the pure mage route kind of want something a little more substantial for the time we're going to invest in this. Me personally, that is my route, and I don't want to go down the taming path; I don't want to just grind, save up, buy a ferocious best in the game spider. I want to be able to summon whatever magical entity I want (granted I skill to that of course), have it be viable and not lose to a 3 year old face rolling his keyboard. Just saying, but we've got quite a few people that would like to see something from yall or hear about improvements to this.

 

Well, I uses summons mostly as cool party pets. Sadly, they fail horribly on two fronts. They do not roam in the scenes killing everything that moves like Ferrocious spiders, they just agro things and die... That is not really bad thing though, some pets are way too good for balance reasons.
On the other hand, when I am harvesting resources, they hardly last enough for me to harvest a node without being attacked. They certainly cannot defend themselves, let alone defend me. When some NPC runs a long distance to get me, they might attack it but they never stop it. It is way more effective for me to cast AoE spells and distance oens trather than to hope my pet will be of any use. And in combat it mostly just gets in the way.

I would not mind decay on summons (as long as I can heal them by playing actively) as long as it means they decay slower (more hp?) the higher level they get, but they should be actually usefull in combat. Though for parties I do not mind weak but scene permanent summons.