Summoning Feedback
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Edit: This post was updated on 23 July, after a hotfix that fixed some summons bugs and after I did some high level testing. anything that is italicized is new/changed from the initial posting. The first reply to this will give a TLDR of the changes I made so if you already read this, that TLDR covers my new observations.
Original post:
I've about at 20 hours messing with summons now so I wanted to throw some feedback up. This was about 15 hours of starting as a brand new character with no outside help (items from my mains, etc) and then about 5 hours of testing on my main character with good gear and all the skills available. My focus has been to rely on summons as much as possible while not just standing there like a lump.I'm not going to go super into bugs here because I've posted them elsewhere. This will be feedback/suggestions
Feedback TLDR: Summons are a lot of fun so far. I do think the current iteration are a good start, but will struggle against some higher level monsters. I think a lot of people are going to want to be able to be "pure summoners" and might be disappointed, but should be able to reach rank 50 as "pure summoners. In the nearish future I'd love to see more of them and a wider ability to buff/supplement their power. Least fun part of summons: Long cooldowns.
General Positive stuff:
I'm having fun. I'm kinda biased though because I've been wanting summons for years. I really like that there is very good summon variety right out of the tutorial. It's all been fairly intuitive to me, but I am very experienced with the game as a whole so I don't know how a strait new player would feel.Feedback:
The least fun aspect of summons is easily the cooldown timer when they die or are unsummoned. There are pretty severe limitations with summons (ai, movement speed, unsummoning at distance, etc). They are not 400-800 damage nukes that you can toss out and then easily run around with while you wait for cooldowns. I'm just asking that you reconsider how long of cast times and especially cooldowns are appropriate for them.Summons not having the movement speed to keep up with you when you're running does not feel great (especially when combined with long cooldowns when they're unsummoned). The fastest ones aren't too bad, you do need to slow down for them, but the slower ones feel really bad to run around with. In my opinion, the Zombie is so slow, it's worthless compared to other options.
When using the Kill command, summons are switched to aggressive and this causes them to immediately take off trying to kill anything in range as soon as the target dies. It's nice when you're fighting multiple monsters at once, but it's not so nice when they head off screen to pull new groups/monsters. I'd like to have some kind of option that either let you use kill, but kept the same AI mode or something that kept them from running all over the place.
The current summons are solid for low and mid level play and they can handle a fair to good portion of higher level monsters when you have better healing and proficiencies. Heavy casting or offensive skill monsters are very difficult if not impossible (I need more testing to know exactly what might help to kill these monsters). I know this balance is hard, I just think the current pool needs a bit more, there should be some way to buff summons to make them more resistance to spells, or 1-2 4/5 point summons should be considered soonish.)
The range on being able to use the Kill command is very low. It's very difficult to send your summons in to attack first without facepulling the monsters on yourself. I think 50% more range would feel a lot better.
Suggestions:
You've also said there will be more summons.More summons that do elemental magic damage (or a way to make all summons do magic damage) so there are more options for hunting ghosts and other similar monsters (currently only Primelings work).
Some way to increase the healing received on summons or just your ability to heal summons. (Maybe an armor set bonus?)
Some way to increase Buff duration on summons.
Making certain "aura" skills also apply to your summons (Protection from Fire, etc). Or possibly make them apply to your summons instead of yourself.
Adding a "Stay" command option so you could have your summons wait for you while you pulled/did stupid stuff.
Besides repurposing an armor set, maybe add a specific staff that did summon specific things.
Add some way to share your own stats with your summons. % of your fort, or wilpower, or whatever.
(Some of these are obviously long term stuff, but since I was writing anyway...)
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Basically, I feel a lot better about the state of summons after doing some high level testing and talking with some other people. Maximizing your healing potential via Restoration Proficiency, increasing your Spiritual Power, and Cooldown Reduction, significantly helps you to be able to keep your summons alive. I think it's very possible to hit rank 50 with a "pure summons" build where you focus on supporting them (though it always helps if you do damage too).
The tankier summons can do very well against monsters that mostly rely on auto attacks or anything that you are able to out heal. However, summons struggle against monsters with strong magic or monsters that use a lot of magic and or attack skills.
My suggestions from the OP have not really changed, but I am much less worried about the state of summoners than I was before my high level testing.
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Hey there,
I've played the game before on and off but haven't played since summons came out so haven't tested it yet (was waiting for new server to go live).
But I have some curiosity questions
1)What is the maximum number of summon slots you can have (with talents and such)?
2)Can you have multiple of the same summon out (like 3 wolves or a totem and 2 wolves)?
3)Are Totems still limited to one in total (like can you have a fire and poison out at the same time)? If yes, can their areas overlap?
4)Can totems be healed?
5)When you heal an undead summon does it heal them or damage them (them being undead and some restoration spells dealing damage to undead mobs)?
6)When you heal summons does it trigger the cleric set and/or the Healing Conversion and Life Shield talents?
7)When you have summons out, are you considered a party leader for the Righteous Commander/Heroic Endurance and Inspiring Commander/Heroic Resolve Talents?
8)Summons reserve mana like sustained abilities, are they considered sustained abilities? Do they benefit from the Concentration and Abiding focus Talents?
That's it for now, anyway thanks for having read till now and hopefully you can help me get some clarity on this.
I've been looking forward to summons since development and can't wait to walk around with my army of minions.
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- 3 base points and +2 (5) with talents. Each summon has it's own point cost.
- Nope, 1 of each summon.
- Totems are summons and use the summon points. I'm actually not certain if you could have two different totems at the same time, but I think no.
- Not sure. I know they're not intended to be tanky or take hits.
- You can heal all summons with normal healing spells - undead or not.
- It does.
- I have not tested every "party leader" option, but the ones I did try, did not work with summons counting as your party members.
- Concentration did work before the new summon specific mana reservation talents were added (Summoner and Warlock have been changed). I did not test it after this last patch because I only had a few hours to test a bunch of things. Abiding Focus does not impact summons and summons to not impact the toggle ability limit of 1. So by default you can have 1 normal toggle and as many summon skills active as you have points/slots for.
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Okay, thanks a lot for the quick reply.
Did Totems get nerfed stat wise that you know? Because I used them as meatshield before the summon patch and they did a fairly good job (against ogres, dragonlings and weaker mobs at least). Admitted it was with the 60% increase from summoner talent.
Currently, Skeleton Archers are the only ranged summon, right? (Apart from Totems)
Final question, are summon slots separate or are they incorporated in your 8 slot skill bar?
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I recall Jacopo saying something to the effect of totems were nerfed and not meant to tank. I honestly never used em before because of the aggro reset bug (which is no fixed yet, but being worked on).
Archers are the only ranged, yea.
They're not separate, they'll count towards you 8 skills.
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Okay, thanks again.
To bad for the totem nerf.It's going to be fun figuring out which summons to combine and what other skills to use too.
In your opinion, which is the better tank: Bear, Sproutling of Centurion?
Also, are the Primelings worth it? Do they build up elemental stacks quickly enough (if they are the only source of stacks)?
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Bear and Skeletal Knight are bold solid tanks. The short answer to the rest of it is that I didn't have enough time to test everything with summons. They've been around less than a week so there's still lots of testing to be done.
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I'll tinker around a bit with them this evening trying to figure it out.
I'm looking forward to seeing your updates on tour "non-guide" of the Druid you're writing.
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Me again.
Another quick question.
I saw you used Burning pillar in your 'not a guide' with summons.
According to the wiki Burning pillar deals friendly fire damage, did you notice it hurting your summons too?
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It does not. (It might when you are PvP flagged though - I've never tested it in the new PvP rules.)
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With another week of summons play/testing. The movement speed of Ghouls/Primelings feels like it should be the minimum speed of all summons. They are still slower than a player running, but they don't lag so far behind you that you have to resummon them between every camp at a hunting grounds.
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Also like the summoning. Only downsides atm are movement speed of them, bear on enemy leaves you almost no room to target the enemy with a spell and the Woodland Being somethimes just stands there while bear is fighting (command defend or atk wo't help).
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Another thing I've thought of is that summons tend to stack on each other making it difficult to impossible to target a specific one with a spell. It would be nice if they would "spread out" from one another a little both in and out of combat.
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Update as of August 5th:
I'm just short of hitting rank 50 now and I just wanted to update my thoughts on Summoning.
Basically, they are much more viable than I had worried from my initial testing. They are many times weaker to magic and elemental damage than they are to physical, but outside of magic heavy monsters, they do well enough that I don't think they're objectively too weak.
In terms of farming speed, they do not match pure DPS builds that can blow stuff up and quick rest.
Cooldowns with them are not fun (and I'm saying this as someone that has 40% CDR).
Please consider a base movement speed of 400 or 450 for all summons either by default or by some kind of buff we could choose. It's incredibly not fun to kill a camp and have your pets despawn while you run to the next one 2-3 screens away (and then usually have to wait for the cooldown to reset).
I would like to see some pets that handle magic better.
I have mixed feelings about the elemental Primelings. They do not heal from, are not immune to, and do not at least take greatly reduced damage from their matching element. This means they don't serve as very good magic tanks for that specific element and because they only deal their matching damage type, you cannot even use them to counter their matching elementals. They do have some nice debuff resistances, but their primary use seems to be stacking their elemental debuffs on enemies and I'm not sure they're good enough at that for you to want to swap them out for another option. (i.e. if you are heavily specced into fire, you should be stacking fire buffs very well on your own and would rather have a pet that does more damage or tanks better rather than more warm debuff stacks that you don't really need.)
