Not A Guide: Summoner

Yalah

Day 9 Results:

TLDR: 2 hours today (51.5 hours total). 405k Knowledge, rank 49, ~10k gold. 100% to some Treehugger Ogres plus some world spawns.END TLDR

Gear: I started with the el cheapo, but switched to my imbued Steel Chain Mail and Mending Staff almost immediately.

Summons: Skeletal Knight and Skeletal Archer.

Skills:
I mostly used the skills from Day 8, but the Druid and Archdruid required my "elemental killer" setup:

Talents: No significant changes.

What Happened: I went strait to Treehugger Ogres and had to switch to my Steel Chain Mail setup right at the first monster. The Ogre Watchers do just enough magic damage that I was not able to finish it while using the heavier damage skills. I might have been ok if I swapped back to using three heals, but I had the gear so I used it.

As expected the Treehuggers were smooth sailing except for the Druids and Archdruids which melted my pets (more on these in a bit).I got all the rest of the Treehuggers to 100% and I also took the opportunity to finish my 100% on all lizards and insects in the area (which are all that spawn on Terra). Lots of nice 3-5 group spawns of these so they're quite easy here.

On the Druids and Archdruids... After I finished with the rest of the Treehuggers, I went ahead and swapped to the same basic build that I had been using to kill off Elementals. As expected, this build dropped Druids and Archdruids like they were nothing. I did not 100% them, but I got in a couple of kills on each to confirm that they were killable.

And with that, I'm going to wrap up this Not a Guide. I am very confident that with little or no changes, I can finish out rank 50 in another couple of hours of play. There's still a large chunk of world spawns on Terra, plus the volcano area, plus Acid Elementals, plus Jotunns back on Syndesia. The only things I'm not sure that I could kill, with one of the two builds I've been using, are the four large dragons and perhaps the Jotunn Stormborn. My "elemental killer" strategy has proven to be very effective against mages and I don't see any reason why it would not work on the Jotunn mages.

I will write up a conclusion that covers my thoughts on this build and any notes or advice that I have. Thanks for reading.

Yalah

Not A Guide: Druid Background (Summoner) - Conclusion

TLDR: This style of summoning build is entirely viable to hit rank 50 and to farm post rank 50, but it's not very fast at doing so. You could say that you exchange power for safety. I do think there are ways to get more power out of using summons than I have here, but if you want to mostly let your summons do their thing while you support, I think I've represented what to expect fairly well. END TLDR

Summons are new and shiny and better than I feared when I started this Not a Guide. Their weakness is very clearly magic and magic damage, but they do respectably well against most monsters. What we have, as of this writing, is the first iteration of summons and we've been told more will be coming eventually. I can't how how those, or other changes, will impact summons long term, but for now, they're solid and fun.

It's worth noting that there are still some bugs with them, but most of the bad ones were addressed early.

Different Summon Strategies

The way I played with summons is definitely not the only way that they can be used. I had a "feel" that I wanted to go for and I tried to stick to it. I enjoyed it, but, yeah, it's definitely not the only way. Also, I tested all of the summons at one point or another, but I definitely had my favorites and tended to use those exclusively over time. I could very well be missing key advantages to the others. With that said, I have four main ideas on how summons could be used.

Used as seen in this Not a Guide. Eventually you would swap to a Cleric Set and double down on making you and your pets extra tanky. Instead of putting imbues all into Restoration, you could see about raising up the summon's ability school to increase their damage. There is definitely a balance between healing needed and damage, but without testing, I couldn't tell you specifically where that balance is. (You can also just use more healing spells than I used, which would make your pets more tanky. If you went max heals, that's a pretty tanky pet.)
Stick to a similar mage and summoner style, but focus much more on your own damage using a pair of summons essentially as more of a temporary minion to keep monsters off of you so that you can nuke them. Generally, letting your minions die and resummoning either waiting out the cooldown or using each summons in an alternating fashion so when one dies, you can pop the second and not have to wait for a cooldown.
Battlemage. Rather than a Cleric's Set, you could go with a STR/WIS/PER build while using the chain healing to keep up the bonus from the Battlemage set so that you were contributing much more damage from from your autoattacks and any supporting skills. This idea is probably the one I'm least sure of. I have not tested the Battlemage set since the changes to it (and some other skills) so I don't know just how well it would work, but I do think it could be viable.
"Don't call PETA" build. Basically this "build" is not a build so much as a general strategy that could be used with any other build. The idea is you do not support your summons at all. You keep one of them on your bar as basically a damage sponge. Want to pull a group of monsters together? Summon a bear right in the middle of them. Facing that pest mage that will nuke you right at the start? Toss a bear in there to eat it for you. The only restrictions on summons are no heavy armor. As long as you meet that requirement, you got a portable HP sponge. Use it.

Concluding the Conclusion:
I really enjoyed using summons. They're fun and felt good to interact with. As an experienced player, the way I played them is noticeably slower in terms of Knowledge gain and general gameplay when compared to more heavily damage focused builds. But... They are fully capable of doing all of the basic PvE content and might event allow you to kill tougher monsters than those DPS builds are capable of (if very slowly).

I would easily recommend a "mainly summoner" build to anyone that was looking at summons in Fractured, but wasn't sure about them. Whatever my gripes about them, they are fun.

Yalah

Not A Guide: Druid Background (Summoner) - Post Script 1

This Not a Guide was played on my main character for the Elysium server so I will definitely be continuing forward with it. I have no specific update plans in store, but if I run into anything major, I will go ahead and post it here. Mostly, I'm thinking about issues with any specific monsters that I have not already talked about.

Yalah

Not A Guide: Druid Background (Summoner) - Post Script 2: And then there were dragons

TLDR: The character from this Not a Guide was able to solo all Dragons to unlock Dragonling summons. END TLDR

Recently, new summons were released and while most of them were easily obtainable with the information already available in this Not a Guide, the Dragonlings require getting their larger versions to 100%. (Probably because these are considered "Ultimate" summons and it was decided they needed the higher requirement.)

Sticking with the overall theme of this Not a Guide (supporting your summons and letting them do most of the work), there are two main ways to go about getting your Dragon Knowledge. First, is just to find a buddy, or two, and go team up against the Dragons. Two people is enough and three or more makes it super easy. The added bonus to doing them this way is that you're done reading here and can go kill stuff.

The second way to do this is what I went with for the character I used in this Not a Guide and I'll go into details below (with some recap to avoid rereading).

Note: Dragon respawn timer is 10 minutes, double normal respawn timers.

Character: Rank 50 Erwydra. I started with the base stats of 20 INT, 18 DEX, and 18 WIS. (Stats will change later).

Gear:
Chain Mail (Steel), No enchantments, grey and green quality, imbued with T2 Restoration and T2 Mana Regen.
Mending Staff (Hardwood), No enchantments, grey quality, imbued with T2 Cooldown Reduction and (added after Arboreal Dragons) Lower Mana Cost.
Added after Arboreal Dragons:Amulet (Rabbit's Foot), imbued with T2 Cooldown Reduction and T2 Restoration.

Talents (used the whole time):

Arboreal Dragons:

Skilled used:

I started with these because they are probably the easiest Dragons to kill, have especially low weakness to fire (for a Dragon), and are even easier if you can ignore poison, which skeletal summons do. I would not call these easy to kill, but they can be reliably killed with close attention to detail to your positioning and cooldowns.

The basic strategy is to first kill off any potential adds. We're not going to move during this fight so you might be able to just pull them to the side. Next send in your skeletons, heal the Knight, and wait for it to "move in" under the center area of Dragon to what will be it's final position. While your Knight is getting in position, you need to position yourself towards the front-side of the dragon, out of the frontal breath attack, but at max possible range.

The reason for this is that it's Entangle ability has a very large AoE and will basically cause too much damage to yourself for you to be passively out healing it. The problem is that your Life Link has barely longer range than Entangle. The easiest way to explain it is to say that once you cast Life Link on your Knight, you want your character to have to move closer to the dragon to get into Life Link range. This will naturally put you outside of the Entangle range, but still allow your Life Link. (If you're getting rooted, you are too close.)

You can ignore your Skeletal archer because their range is longer than the Entangle and they're immune to the poison. If they do die, just resummon them behind you (farther away from the dragon than you are) and they will engage from a safe range.

Once you've got this set, you're golden. All you need to do is manage your cooldowns, maintain Life Link, and you will drop the Arboreal Dragons. You will need to pay attention, but it's not hard from this point on.

After Arboreal Dragons: I had a lot of time to stare at my character sheet while finishing these off. Originally I took DEX because I wanted the Cooldown Reduction and thought I would be letting my summons do most of the work so I could ignore the other stats. What I realized was that I had pretty limited imbues that I wanted for this style of play and that I could drop all of my DEX and still maintain the 40% cap on Cooldown Reduction.

I decided to replace DEX with PER because that stat would help the most with the 2-3 attack abilities that I was using. Specifically, the Accuracy would greatly improve the debuffs that I was applying myself. My new stats are now 20 INT, 18 PER, 18 WIS.

Mountain Dragons:

Skills used:

On these skills, I chose lightning because that is the element Mountain Dragons are least resistant to. Shock stacks also help lower their Cooldown Recovery and that effectively makes my shiny new Arboreal Dragonling tankier. I chose Cloak of Lighting, Thunderbolt, and Thunderclap because they offered the most stacks of shocked and would be the easiest to maintain if I needed to focus more on healing (or anything else).

I did want to work in Word of Power: Heal instead of Healing Wave, but Life Link and the Arboreal Dragonling are Ultimate abilities and you can only have two of those on any skill set. Note: There's almost certainly better damage skills out there, but this was my reasoning.

Outside of their breath attacks, Mountain Dragons have two skills to watch for - Epicenter and Aura of Oppression. Both of these should be ignorable if you stay at max Life Link range, but I was relying on three fairly short distance abilities (Healing Wave, Cloak of Lightning, and Thunderclap).

Basically, I positioned myself in a similar front-side position out of their breath and then I tried to stand just outside of the Aura of Oppression, but close enough that all my short ranged stuff would land. Every time there would be an Epicenter, I'd have to reposition, but the fights were not hard. I probably had too much healing and would have needed even less if I had chosen abilities that I could stay at range with. There's really not too much more with them.

Ember Dragons:

For these, I actually did them on my way to Mountain Dragons so my skill setup is the same, and less optimal than they could be since Embers are weaker to ice than to shock. I intended to just try killing one to see how it went, but ended up just finishing them (and was too lazy to change my skills).

The strategy I used was the same as Mountains. The only ability you need to worry about with Embers is their Fireball which will hit you if you're standing close (which I was because of the aforementioned skills). But you should have plenty of healing to top both you and your Dragonling off with.

Conclusion: And that's it. I would comment more about the new summons, but I have not had time to actually test them. The Arboreal Dragonling is a clear step above all prior summons and I would expect the other Dragonlings to be about the same, but with different specialties.

Yalah

Today, 31 AUG, I finally got around (remembered) to check to see if the original set of summons got any changes when the new ones were added. They did. Almost all of the original set got 50 to 150 buffs to various resistances (a few did get minor nerfs to resistances). These were mostly in the various magic resistances making them all a bit tankier than they were when this Not a Guide was first written.

The most notable buffs were probably given to the various Primelings which should tank a lot better than before - especially magical damage. (These also got a big HP buff.)

I'm not going to go back through and update this Not a Guide with these new stats because these kinds of rebalancing changes can happen often and it's a lot of work to retest and the update all of the posts. The big thing to know is that most of the summons I talked about will be tankier.