Summoning needs a rethink.

I really enjoy playing summoners in games, but in SOTA they fall flat, even with the addition of the new summoning passives. The reason is that the whole philosophy behind their design is wrong, and doesn't capitalize on the strengths of being able to summon creatures.

When you play something like D&D summoning is an immensely powerful tool in any spellcasters arsenal. Besides being extremely versatile, a summoner creates what essentially amounts to disposable hitpoints in the form of creatures the enemies have to chew through. Especially in something like D&D a well placed summoning spell is usually a significantly more powerful tool for preventing damage to your party than a healing spell, because you don't need to wait for someone to be hurt if you offer up a disposable creature to take the hit.

In SOTA summons don't work in that role at all. They are just another secondary source of damage you create, and as such have to be pretty weak because they stack with all other damage you can do. They last for a really long time, but they rarely ever make a decisive contribution to a fight. Most importantly, they don't function as a distraction for your enemies. The whole point of disposable creatures is lost when you can't get the opponents to attack your summons instead of you.

So summoning could really use a general rethink. Instead of permanently summoning a creature that doesn't really help much, and in fact can't ever be a genuine force to be reckoned with since it stacks with everything else you do (aside from a small focus penalty) it would be a lot more useful if you could summon a creature that actually distracts the enemy for a short time. If the duration of summons was cut down to something like 30 seconds, but a summoned creature would taunt the first enemy it attacked, forcing it into a confrontation, it would actually be a very powerful defensive tool, both in solo and group play. Their damage could also be increased to more meaningful levels.

Make it so that summons have to actually go in your combat deck, so that there is a reason to make builds without summons. Maybe allow different kinds of summons to be called up simultaneously, so now you have a reason to make a build with lots of summons. Sure, you'll have to cast them a lot more often, but then that is the point of actually being a summoner, creating disposable creatures that fight on your behalf. You should be calling lots of creatures, and they should be your primary means to fight.

 

Yea summons are def dumbed down,
I loved in UO when you summoned a EV or a blade spirit they just went on a rampage attacking what ever was near including your self. I’d support a summoning revamp!

 

ohhhhhh blade spirit! man, i miss that. i'd love to see that here.

Fenris

 

Yea, berzerker summons were a blast in UO. Generally UO had pretty fun summoning, except a lot of creatures could zap your summons with a single hit.

My favorite summoning implementation ever is in Pillars of Eternity. It has this class called a Chanter, who is bsiascally a bard who tells tales of terrible monsters and ghosts, and then they come to life and attack for a short time. You first have to use a number of phrases that are some short term buffs, and then you build up into unleashing some seriously powerful creatures, like full grown dragons at high levels.

 

Maybe you're wrong.

 

If you want to play an actual summoner the creatures can't just be a bit of background noise. I think it's pretty straight forward which games do summoning in a way that actually makes it fun and effective.

 

I heard fzols earth ele was hitting 500+ on crits.

 

It’s true I charted with sota tracker. His Earth Ele is sick, It was with in 5% total damage to my fully spec and artifact geared obsidian destroyer in over all damage. Where as my pimped out phoenix hits for 15


Im pretty sure the earth elemental and the lich fighter are the only dps pets worth using and both with a crap ton of xp into them, where as the water elemental is still a pretty epic healing pet.

 

Simply having very strong pets doesn't automatically make for good summoning gameplay though. If using it is completely passive but the payoff is huge it just becomes a no brainer and thereby a balance issue rather than a playstyle.

 

Interesting idea @Aetrion
I would like to see some summoners with multiple "pets" too but as summons are just a bonus with no downside I think there is no intent in changing the numbers you can summon or their usage...the only thing I can remember is that Chris said a while ago in one of his stream that the skeletons are way too weak and that he might add a second summoned skeleton if you reach a set lvl.
As we are generally bound to one elemental I generally would like to see instead adjustments like a change of the typ depending on your skill lvl. E.g.
At a set lvl the normal elemental stays the standard but there is a chance to instead summon an elder elemental with additional abilities and stats and a different visual look and at an even higher lvl the elder elemental is getting the new standard and you get the chance to summon an ancient elemental that is again stronger and looks different.
An example could be the water elemental (normal) that is turning into a ice elemental (elder) that is turning into a steam elemental (ancient).

Thinking about it...If you take a look at your summons contrary to the natural elementals there is a runic bound and I think the lore is that this bound is keeping the summons friendly. In this context it would be reasonable that also some of the elemental powers are sealed. Why not adding a spell to remove the runic bound of your elemental and release its uncontrolled power?
Basically the elemental would start to rage and attack everyone in range with increased stats.
Maybe we do not even need a new spell instead the summoning of a new elemental would free the old one.

 

I think the main thing for me would be making the different summons strong in different situations, so that changing them depending on what you face makes sense. I had this come up in a game of D&D just the other day. Our party was being attacked by an enemy wizard who used fly and greater invisibility to lurk above us in the sky and rain down ice storms. My druid had summoned wolves to deal with her mercenaries, but they were quickly sent back to the feywilds by falling icicles and we were struggling to find ways to get at her. Then I summoned a swarm of giant bats, who can fly and have blindsense. They immediately spotted the wizard, and took her down in a single turn. That's the kind of thing that sticks out in my mind as very satisfying summoner gameplay. The wolves were great at blocking enemy mercs from getting to us on the ground, but to confront an invisible flying target an entirely different animal that would have been weaker in every way to stall fighters proved incredibly effective.

At least for the elementals that makes sense. If someone wants to play a necromancer it would be dumb to force them to summon elementals instead of letting them focus on skeletons and liches. The elementals we have would already fill different roles pretty effectively with some balancing. I could see:

Fire - Does AoE damage, good against swarms.
Earth - Grounds out enemy spells, making allies near it more resistant to magic.
Ice - Slows enemies near it, making it difficult for melee enemies to maneuver.
Water - Heals or has regeneration aura, provides support.
Wind - Absorbs arrows fired at allies near it.

The Phoenix I would leave relatively weak, but change it so that it doesn't initiate it's rebirth once it is killed, but instead starts to intiate its rebirth when it attacks. After 10 seconds it explodes violently, dealing huge amounts of damage. It then turns into an egg which enters trans am after another 10 seconds, spawning another phoenix and healing allies near it when it rises from the ashes. The way to defend yourself is to take it down quickly enough to interrupt its cycle of reincarnation.

Will o' Wips, hmm, don't know a lot about this thing, but a pet that casts confusion spells sounds nasty in PvP. Something along those lines definitely has a niche.

I'd really like it if the life tree had a summon as well. I'd design it as a spell that builds on the idea of an infectious disease or spore contamination, showing the destructive side of life and nature. Maybe you'd summon one of those giant mushrooms, and when it's at 100% health it opens up and puffs out a huge cloud of lethal spores that poison living beings near it, but loses 20% of its health in the process. The life mage can then heal it to trigger another spore release (can trigger once every 10 seconds or so).


I actually really like the idea of an unbind spell, but I would change it slightly, to where it doesn't just unleash the elemental uncontrolled, but instead this would be a focus line spell that allows you to make a "deal" with the elemental. You remove the bindings, and the elemental becomes much more powerful, but you also take -100 to attunement to it's element as it feeds on your power. This would be meant for people who actually want to play as a summoner, so this wouldn't be effective for someone who is a specialist in a specific element. You don't want to feed the elemental your attunement to empower it if you actually want to cast spells from that school. This effect would last maybe 20-30 seconds, so it would have to be renewed periodically. It would also have a substantial focus cost to drive home the idea that it's for mages who invest their power into summoning creatures rather than casting spells.

 

Specialization helps a lot, and the Chaos Daemon can dish out a nice deal of damage too! I'm pretty sure that a high spec high daemon level Chaos mage can have a daemon that is close in DPS to Fzols Earth ele, it just needs the same investment!

But I agree, add in summoning specific artifacts and maybe a spell or 2 to increase its potential, or even open up a school dedicated to summons with a spec involved and Summoning could become an actual school worth it!

 

It seems really counterproductive that specializations have a big impact on summons IMO, because summons are scattered around as it is, which makes the idea of a character who specializes in that sort of thing tedious. The only specialization that really makes sense for a summoning boost is IMO Focus spec and maybe Death spec, because that's where the summoning passives are. For everything else the elemental seems like an afterthought, not a gameplay defining feature.

 

Truthfully I forgot the demon, but in my Phoenix example I’ve sun spec to 125 most my sun skills are 130-140 with some 150s and I have to focus stuff to 100 and it still hits for 15-16 and half the speed of the earth ele. My unspec lich fighter hits for 80s 90s and has cleave (aoe) and the lich has a faster attack speed.

Back to the topic though I’d love a EV or a Bladespirit type pet.

 

It would be really cool if we could summon a swarm of bees that acts as a slow. Right now we have fireflies but I would love to see actual fireflies swarm around the enemy.

Also, maybe our current summoned creatures could have some versatility, like the phoenix could have a few distinct attacks with cool effects and damage the enemy in different ways. Like the water elemental attacks but it also heals you. I used to use my fire elemental as a distractor. I think it worked pretty well but it would be fun to have more versatility.

 

Or dogs with bees in their mouths, and when they bark, they shoot bees.

 

Based on information from Devs the plan is to expand the pets in the magic schools to lesser and eventually greater elemental etc. If you want to be more a pure summoner to get different pets you would have to train up each school as well the focus pet abilities. I understand through what you are saying when comparing to other. I still think summoning and pets as they are now are only partially expanded to where they will be. As the team is small they have been each month focusing on different parts and doing passes on each system one at a time. So I am sure at some point it will be summons on that list to expand them out further. Who knows with the new mannikin equipment that maybe a prequel to pet armor's and weapons and or other options like slotted abilities to collect... <--- something that could happen at some point Which would allow one to do quests for specific pet abilities. They are slated to revamp the pet interface to give us one to control pets better. the sky is the limit if we put our ideas out there.

 

I think the most important thing is that summons need to be able to take aggro better. In basically every single game where summoning is powerful and fun to use the primary benefit is being able to distract enemies with disposable creatures. Having creatures that can soak up damage and distract enemies that need to be summoned often would make being a summoner a real practical role in the game, that is both useful and requires more input than just hitting one button before the fight starts.

 

There is an effect that looks like fireflies around your target's head. The head of some creatures is too big and the effect doesn't seem to scale, so you don't see it.

 

Yeah it's not super noticable unfortunately But honestly there ARE quite a few really good effects. Like Blind is one of my favorite ones and meteor shower is pretty awesome. I miss the earth shaking with the big fireballs that could break down walls. That would be nice if they brought it back.