10 weeks have passed,thoughts?

[Azensor]

Whats everyones thoughts on the current summoning changes?

[Exordius]

Bad

[AlonelyBard]

I hate summons, but all around I think they were a pretty massive overstep. I had my Ranger animal companion turn from "an okay meat shield" to "something a level 10 would be able to 1 round" as a level 25 Ranger, it just feels rough.
I know that there are plenty that are worse off than ranger though, and I feel for them all. Cut the nerfs back at least a little bit, the pocket WM's from PC were annoying but we all just WoF'd them anyways.

[D4wN]

I shelved my Warlock possibly permanently due to this change as they are solely reliant on summons and I can't remake. Even spent a reward on the character.

[Subtext]

I suppose it makes sense to address the changes around summons separately. For clarity, I haven't tried everything out - I'm not going to comment on undead, I'll leave that to those that have played with them extensively. My experience stems mainly from playing a bard, wizard and shaman while playing a lot together with a rogue.
Furthermore, I understand that balancing summons has to take different classes into account since clerics, shamans, wizards etc all basically summon the same stuff. However, I do believe that especially wizards and sorcerers should have access to stronger summons than clerics, shamans or bards. That's more a class balance issue but should be kept in mind when having a look at summons...as currently the opposite is the case.

1) Nerfing Non-Epic summons

I find them to be in a very strange spot and they work better for some roles than others. Let's compare:

a) Meat shield for martial characters
Very well, especially if you can heal or the summon has regeneration. I found it to be particularly egregious on a STR bard. It wasn't an optimized character but the mere STR focus allowed me to skimp on AC and HP and still solo writs that are by all means relatively difficult (Think Lonely Heart or Singing Stones on Skal!). This certainly works better with higher level summons - Greater Planar Binding is fantastic and can be natively cast by a bard. I can see it work similarly well for divine casters who are able to conjure higher level summons and can keep them alive. The principle "Death is the highest form of crowd control" applies very much here - the faster you can butcher things, the less troublesome is keeping your pet alive.
Still great and useful for Bards, Shamans, Clerics. Possibly Blackguards but I haven't played one.

b) Support for martial characters
Bit of a fringe case. If you can manage a reasonably high AC to guard your summon, you can get decent mileage out of summons with either sneak damage or knockdown abilities (Bottled wolf remains ever popular). Other than those, they can still provide extra damage which might be an advantage for DEX characters, however, it's certainly a fairly big expense.

c) Damage source and meat shield for vancian casters
Terrible. Summons are currently too weak to stand on their own. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing in itself if you can deliver damage from different sources but especially sorcerers and wizards do not really have that opportunity in early levels. Later on they can rely on spellbound wands (which I find to be a godsend) but the genuinely useful spells are imho mostly level 3 - meaning a substantial investment that lower levels by and large cannot make.
Overall, single elementals are in my opinion too weak for epic level content and don't scale sufficiently. It could be expected to whip out a different summon if your current one gets butchered but the way it often goes is that it still isn't sufficient to complete content. It's not a solo versus party play argument either - even inside a party, people want to contribute rather than tag along and throw cantrips while the Weapon Master blender does the actual heavy lifting.
The best non epic summon currently is in my opinion the elemental swarm. Something arcane casters by and large do not have access to.

Solution: A lot of brain juice invested in proper balancing. Perhaps consider leaving the base stats lower with spell foci affecting summons stronger than they currently do.

2) Certain spells not affecting summons anymore

Certain spells have been tweaked to not affect summons anymore. Naturally this disproportionally affects classes more that rely on their summons. Specifically Wizards as they have the easiest and most reliable access to both Mass Zoos and Mass Haste and not much else in terms of enhancing their summons. Divine casters and Bards however still have plenty of other spells natively available to enhance their summons (Bless, Prayer, Battletide, War Cry, BARD SONG...)
This one also affects Epic Level summons. Specifically Planar Conduit.

a) Mass Zoo spells
I find that change to render Mass Zoo spells by and large useless. If I want to buff myself, I can use consumables or lower level spells. Consumables are not that expensive. I wouldn't want to rely on someone buffing me either because - who knows what happens? Sure, Mass zoos can provide a bit of QoL but it's not something I'd invest a spell slot in. Nor something I'd take as a spontaneous caster.

Before that nerf, those who could cast Mass Zoos were better off with an Arcane Sequencer...and a Druidic if they couldn't. It made sense to carry both in case you'd whip out a new summon.
Currently, I find Druidic sequencers to be strictly superior to arcane ones. Druidic sequencers provide 0-2 AC more as well as 2-4 AB and damage more on your pets, depending on transmutation foci and whether the base stat is odd or even. Furthermore, Druidic sequencers are more reliable as neither Barkskin nor Zoo spells can get breached...and have a longer duration than Shield and Improved Invisibility. The latter is still decent for mitigating damage but somewhat unreliable with enemies who can purge it. Or have Blind Fight.
Besides, Slaad can and will cast Improved Invisibility, rendering the Arcane Sequencer completely useless.

b) Mass Haste
That one means flat out losing 1 APR and 4 AC...especially when it mattered (against bosses). Not much to say to this one. It plainly hurts.

Solution: Possibly still allow both spells to affect your summons (and only your summons) as long as it has been cast from your spellbook.

3) Conduit

I don't find conduit to be overpowered. It could be made tankier but less deadly but overall, as far as an epic summon goes, it's in a decent spot. It will clear mobs in most places without issue. It will probably not win an epic boss fight. The recent changes have quite severely made it weaker too which has been noticeable in some places. It could be adjusted...it doesn't necessarily have to imho.

What does grind my gears though is that it isn't on a cooldown but instead once per rest. This might not feel like the biggest of deals, but...take a place like the Deep Wells with certain areas having mobs that love using Word of Faith. In a big No-Rest area with only few exceptions. It takes a while to get to. And Conduit has NO defense against Word of Faith. It means that once you encounter these mobs, the probability for your conduit to get nuked is...pretty damn high. It also means that in this particular instance, if you're solo...you're probably dead. If you're in a party, your contribution has been very much diminished. If you can rest, you could possibly whip out a new conduit (until the next pack wipes it) or you work with weaker summons (that will also get wiped by the next pack) or you resign yourself to mostly being a cheerleader. And hey, that's what you picked an epic feat for.

Tldr: Mobs with WoF suck.

[Rubricae]

feels bad

[chris a gogo]

Elementalist.
Still able to solo most content using summon monster 9 and an arcane sequencer.
Also uses henchmen/golems when needing more meat shields.

Wizard.
Still able to solo everything with PC, with a slightly slower clear rate due to 2 less attacks on the summons.

Wiz/PM.
No noticeable change to the playstyle. uses both PC and necro summons slightly faster clear rate than wizard due to better death spell DC's every ten rounds (aprox).

Warlock summoner build.
Shelved due to other spell changes rather than the summon ones.

I was concerned about the change at first but hasn't really made a difference to these characters in PvE.

[CptnCandyass]

Every thought and comment that was made from the beginning of this change and up to now are still all entirely applicable.

[AstralUniverse]

Guys vote with your feet.

Play a weapon master.
(or harbinger. harbinger is pretty dope)

[Kythana]

The same as when it first came out.

It was an awful change, and it continues to be awful.

Elemental Meteor got nuked into oblivion despite already being the worse pick.

Nothing was added that solves the vanican vs infinicaster problem, so spellcasters are now just forced to rely on even weaker summons. (And babysit and invest into them even harder just to be passable.)

And if the plan is to gut summons even further, well... I'm glad I don't play a caster.

[AskRyze]

It feels awful to summon and worse to dominate as a caster. It feels weird that summons feel better as a scroll option for Loremaster WMs than on dedicated caster builds.

[Kalthariam]

I completely releveled out of most conjuration things on my Healer Cleric.

I've been almost exclusively playing Martial Characters since the change. Casters are in a terrible spot to do PvE related content (And I absolutely do not care about PvP) and the one thing they had to actually make them be able to do content was basically destroyed while plenty of other classes can just walk through end game content on their own unmolested.

I still RP on my Cleric, but mechanically she's effectively dead to all PvE content due to this change, and I still don't care about PvP So that side of the server is completely moot. Casters were already struggling, shooting them in the knee for PvE content was a poor decision.

[Exordius]

Damn right!

[MRFTW]

Mundane summer is coming

[Irongron]

My personal intention is/was for each summon tier to scale with caster levels, so (for example) Summon VII would remain viable into epics, and even Summon I-IV would have some utility (and as such not be wasted spells in ranger spellbook). I would also like a different creature in the mix (too many elementals!).

I'm informed one of our admins has taken on a project following a similar philosophy. Once this is completed, and we have an idea of the new summon utility we'll look at boosts to sequencers (my preference here would be rhat all apply mass effects (to all the users summons, not just one (time saving), and that all also apply haste. Though again, we'll see where the update leaves thrm first.

[Azensor]

My personal intention is/was for each summon tier to scale with caster levels, so (for example) Summon VII would remain viable into epics, and even Summon I-IV would have some utility (and as such not be wasted spells in ranger spellbook). I would also like a different creature in the mix (too many elementals!).

I'm informed one of our admins has taken on a project following a similar philosophy. Once this is completed, and we have an idea of the new summon utility we'll look at boosts to sequencers (my preference here would be rhat all apply mass effects (to all the users summons, not just one (time saving), and that all also apply haste. Though again, we'll see where the update leaves thrm first.

im guessing de-couple it from spell focus conjuration? the stat increase/whatever the spell focus currently gives.

[Naghast]

I'd love if summons (all of them) had some scaling with casting stat modifier.

As it currently stands, a martial-focused caster can have just as powerful summons as a dedicated caster.
That potentially creates... Well, issues.

[Peacelily]

im guessing de-couple it from spell focus conjuration? the stat increase/whatever the spell focus currently gives.

Add base primary casting stat bonus to AC/AB/damage, maybe?

Make actual spellcasters (wizards, cloistered clerics, SOTH bards) have notably better summons than melee with a casting edge (str bards/wizards). The Str bard with Charisma 16 for spells gets +3, the SoTH bard gets +7; a difference of 4 to AC and AB is pretty solid

Though that would still leave blackguard and warlock clerics as amazing - but, you know, I'm pretty fine with that. Evil gets perks, yo.

[AnselHoenheim]

My personal intention is/was for each summon tier to scale with caster levels, so (for example) Summon VII would remain viable into epics, and even Summon I-IV would have some utility (and as such not be wasted spells in ranger spellbook). I would also like a different creature in the mix (too many elementals!).

I'm informed one of our admins has taken on a project following a similar philosophy. Once this is completed, and we have an idea of the new summon utility we'll look at boosts to sequencers (my preference here would be rhat all apply mass effects (to all the users summons, not just one (time saving), and that all also apply haste. Though again, we'll see where the update leaves thrm first.

The best change that could be for sequencers is being able to personalize your own sequencers with your own spells, just saying if you want some feedback about that.

---

Now, on a side note, my experience with summons has been....hey, it has been good! No wonder!

The powercreep that was using gate in pvp has been properly diminished and now it's fair for other people, sure, WoF is still being used often, but at least now it's not mandatory, that's a thumbs up for the change as it did get their purpose done.

For PvE, I have three different experiences, with three different casters:

• Bard - Okay, this one is a little unfair because my bard has access to unlimited funds, but I have been using elemental swarm without any conjuration focus and it's working pretty well, the bard song buffing the summons gives them a good amount of damage, and because guarding one normally throws the aggro into the bard, gives them the free real estate to defeat creatures in a fast pace, favourite so far is combining the fire elementals with the regen from the bard song, dayum!

• Favoured Soul - This one suffered the hit very well, in middle of Skal, in early levels, and I had to adapt to it. I did literally skipped all the summoning and did rely on Animal Empathy, results? Good, pretty good, the amount of healing spells and hammer of the gods did let me adapt to each situation, and there is a lot of creatures of decent challenge rate in Skal that I could get with animal empathy. As soon as the character did reach epics I did streamlined for Planar Conduit, with some support of healing, hammer of the gods, and whatever nuke I could throw it has been enough to clear content without too many troubles in low epics.

• Warlock - HA! This one has been a blast, not because of fireball mind you, but also because of fireball, I did tried a mixture between summoner/blaster infernal pacted and it has been soo good, I did had no problem to clear content in the underdark since...literally I created the character, really, the fact that the eldritch summon I can rely on, and the undead backup I could get, did let me without much problems use the powers of the warlock freely, first case because they are immune to fire so I could spam fireballs like it's a christmas miracle, and for the second case, I could spam fear for crowd control. I did reached level 21 soloing most of the time, and rolled the character for other reasons.

So as conclussion, for my three cases, the summon update did affected them one way or another, but with the proper game plan, supporting, and adapting to the situations I did not had many troubles as we were stating when this summon update did shown up, sure, they have been NERFED, but characters have more tools than just summoning and trivializing pve content while watching your favourite Netflix series meanwhile, and I think the change for summons was needed badly to avoid this.

[Naghast]

To give some slight feedback from more recent time, i'm still in (slow) process of levelling a character that's a caster/martial hybrid. It does not have conj spellfocuses, but i do utilise a summon. It's a battleshaman.

I kinda tank for my summon (guard it) bc i have more ac and much more hp than it does.
I also hit more consistently. And do more damage.

That being said, i still get some benefit from it. It does hit often, and when it does, the damage bump is there. It's nice.

But, the hardest writs are just ahead of me. So wish me luck i guess!

[Subtext]

My personal intention is/was for each summon tier to scale with caster levels, so (for example) Summon VII would remain viable into epics, and even Summon I-IV would have some utility (and as such not be wasted spells in ranger spellbook). I would also like a different creature in the mix (too many elementals!).

I'm informed one of our admins has taken on a project following a similar philosophy. Once this is completed, and we have an idea of the new summon utility we'll look at boosts to sequencers (my preference here would be rhat all apply mass effects (to all the users summons, not just one (time saving), and that all also apply haste. Though again, we'll see where the update leaves thrm first.

As it stands right now, not even Summon IX or Greater Planar Binding are viable in epics unless you can use them as a meatshield for a damage dealer. And those DO scale with caster level already. Elemental Swarm works somewhat better due to essentially providing twelve attacks per round and dealing significant damage that way. And the gap between the swarm summons and Summon IX summons is low enough to not particularly be an issue.

Furthermore, different build concepts currently benefit very differently from summons as I've outlined earlier. If you can deal significant damage on your own -consistently-, summons still provide a significant boon. it allows playstyles that aren't otherwise possible - like skimping on your AC and focusing everything on damage in early levels to plainly breeze through writs.

Classes that actively have to rely on summons for consistent damage have a problem! This is primarily a sorcerer and wizard issue - warlocks have their blast as means of dealing consistent damage. Cleric, Favored Soul, Shaman? All of them can work very well in melee while still having access to the entire summon suite including conduit - and a whole range of buff spells on top of it! In between Bless, Prayer, War Cry, Battletide, Aura of Vitality that's up to 6 AB more than your comparable arcane caster.

In essence it is a balancing issue between classes and not so much a summon issue.

If you treat summons the same across the board, I think it would also require looking at the classes that are currently falling far behind as a consequence. Alternatively you provide those classes with the means to actually go further with their summons and make them proper summoning classes. Sequencers and Epic Level Scaling aren't going to do that.

The suggestion to rely on the casting stat is in my opinion a good start.

I still believe that a "quick fix" (I have no idea how quick something like that would actually be) would be allowing mass zoo spells and mass haste to apply to your own summons gain. At least while you work out a better system.
I generally like sequencers and I think it's great not to be compelled to spend my entire spellbook on summon buffs. But mass spells with an overall utility? Come on. It was one way to achieve some level of parity in that regard between divine and arcane casters.

[Texan_Man]

I would like to play a caster again.

[silverpheonix]

My personal intention is/was for each summon tier to scale with caster levels, so (for example) Summon VII would remain viable into epics, and even Summon I-IV would have some utility (and as such not be wasted spells in ranger spellbook). I would also like a different creature in the mix (too many elementals!).

I'm informed one of our admins has taken on a project following a similar philosophy. Once this is completed, and we have an idea of the new summon utility we'll look at boosts to sequencers (my preference here would be rhat all apply mass effects (to all the users summons, not just one (time saving), and that all also apply haste. Though again, we'll see where the update leaves thrm first.

I routinely lose elemental swarm summons in the Spider Nidus. Which is nowhere near an epic dungeon.

[chris a gogo]

Unread post by silverpheonix » 22 May 2024 12:29

Irongron wrote: ↑22 May 2024 05:13
My personal intention is/was for each summon tier to scale with caster levels, so (for example) Summon VII would remain viable into epics, and even Summon I-IV would have some utility (and as such not be wasted spells in ranger spellbook). I would also like a different creature in the mix (too many elementals!).

I'm informed one of our admins has taken on a project following a similar philosophy. Once this is completed, and we have an idea of the new summon utility we'll look at boosts to sequencers (my preference here would be rhat all apply mass effects (to all the users summons, not just one (time saving), and that all also apply haste. Though again, we'll see where the update leaves thrm first.

I routinely lose elemental swarm summons in the Spider Nidus. Which is nowhere near an epic dungeon.

That would be because they all pierce DR, also it has always been like that this has nothing to do with the change.

[silverpheonix]

Unread post by silverpheonix » 22 May 2024 12:29

Irongron wrote: ↑22 May 2024 05:13
My personal intention is/was for each summon tier to scale with caster levels, so (for example) Summon VII would remain viable into epics, and even Summon I-IV would have some utility (and as such not be wasted spells in ranger spellbook). I would also like a different creature in the mix (too many elementals!).

I'm informed one of our admins has taken on a project following a similar philosophy. Once this is completed, and we have an idea of the new summon utility we'll look at boosts to sequencers (my preference here would be rhat all apply mass effects (to all the users summons, not just one (time saving), and that all also apply haste. Though again, we'll see where the update leaves thrm first.

I routinely lose elemental swarm summons in the Spider Nidus. Which is nowhere near an epic dungeon.

That would be because they all pierce DR, also it has always been like that this has nothing to do with the change.

I think it does, seeing as I was never in any danger of losing any there before the change.