Epic Spell: Planar Conduit

[-XXX-]

I don't know of any way to play around this other than switching to elementals.

I found ESF:conju + Summon creature IX to be good enough for Blackfin and Viper Monastery, but you might want to bring a party to the other places with planar turning spawns.

Divine casters have elemental swarm, obviously.

[Distant Relation]

I don't know of any way to play around this other than switching to elementals.

I found that ESF:conju + Summon creature IX is good enough for Blackfin and Viper Monastery, but you might want to bring a party to the other places with planar turning spawns.

Pretty much the only way, and part of the reason I've considered releveling out of Conduit. In groups Conduit is just a pain in the neck, huge models that block doors and cause more trouble than they're worth. Solo, they're usable in only a handful of areas worth going to, and a massive liability where things go wrong very quickly if they do get turned.


EDIT!
Yea, divine casters also have Spell Resistance. SR adds its full amount to hit dice (or half vs planar turning) on rolls to resist turning.

A typical 27/3 cleric will apply SR 39 (12 + caster level) with that spell. Halved and added to hit dice, that means the turn resist for the small summon is (15+19) 34 and (20+19) 39 for the big one.

That allows them to actually resist turning on average. In fact well above average, in the case of the tier 6 summon.

Conversely, without SR, hit dice of 15 and 20 make the conduits pretty much guaranteed to be turned by anything with a decent turning roll. Even pre-epic clerics.

[-XXX-]

I usually try not to use summons and switch into a support role on my mage when in a party - buff the party, cast mass haste (boring, I know).

If the content is more challenging, then there's the air elemental that draws aggro with its passive electrical aura allowing the party to flank, or the water elemental that has a regeneration aura - neither of these get in the way nearly as much as the conduit summons would.

And the conduit can help you solo a vast chunk of Arelith's PvE content - it really isn't just a handful of places.

[Tarkus the dog]

summons are really strong overall

conduit is currently the strongest summon available

Goodbye
And goodnight

[Hazard]

Guys, I'm about to start playing a necro so the obvious answer is to buff mummy dust. Thanks guys.
Problem solved. Not being sarcastic, just honest with what I want and why.

[Twily]

I do think Planar Conduit needs a nerf.
But I strongly feel that using Mummy Dust as the comparison isn't a great idea.

I did a series of tests, and in those tests elemental swarm beat Mummy Dust every time.
Completely unbuffed Mummy Dust vs Unbuffeed Ele Swarm
Buffed versions of both
Different ele swarm streams(even default, 1 of each), and more

Mummy Dust mummies only have 2 attacks per round(even the dread mummy), with lower AC and AB than even a greater elemental which also get 3 attacks per round.

I'll confess I wasn't able to try the vampire stream since it I didn't have that option on PGCC, but the mummies really were terrible. Especially considering Ele swarm is 9th lvl spell vs Mummy Dust as a 1/rest Epic Feat.
Undead do get healed by negative energy, but if this is that large of a factor in them being considered 'balanced', it does mean planar conduit would need noticeably higher stats than mummy dust as compensation.

I feel like Summon Creature IX should be the frame of reference for summon related balancing. It is the most up to date most widely used summon on the server.
Past that, Elemental Swarm is also very widely used as the 'multi-summon' option for a long time*.

It stands to reason an Epic Feat which is only usable once a day should be noticeably stronger than these 9th level spells.

If the intent is a multi-summon spell, it should be better than elemental swarm.
If the intent is a powerful single creature, it should be better than Summon IX.

Personally, I really like the idea of Planar Conduit being a single powerful summon(ie, long lasting Gate), perhaps with some planar flair thrown in. Celestials having damage vs evil or undead, demons having damage vs good and maybe some sort of aura or other effect. There's a lot of flexibility and flavor in the stats and abilities if the approach of a single powerful summon is taken.


My first pick though: Just do a small nerf. Hit their AB by like 3, lower their AC by 1-3, then watch and see what happens. Still too strong? Take away a tiny bit more later. I love it when things are adjusted in small amounts slowly, instead of huge overhauls every few months/year


*Although with the recent addition of -stream on ele swarm, the balance of each elemental in relation to each other might need looking at. Nobody ever uses earth, and fire is extremely common. If using it as a frame of reference, probably best to do the generic 1 of each elemental as has existed for a long time.

[Arienette]

In terms of overall Summon balance, I personally think that powerful summon spells like Conduit, Swarm, and Mummy Dust SHOULD be extremely good for PvE.

The vast majority of the time, when you play a summoning class you are making a trade off. Lvling and Gearing (as in grinding PvE for grinding materials /money) is made easy by top tier summons and related feats.

But this should (and usually does) result in a trade off. Less top end PvP capability.

A blackguard/knight makes it very easy to grind PvE to get to lvl 30 and fully geared. But once you are there you wish you were a CoT/F/BG

Same with a Conjuration Battle Cleric/FS. But once you have “arrived” you probably wish you went with Abjuration.

Same with high CON ranger compared to one who goes all-in on STR.

And so on.

If the top tier summons are giving such an edge (and evidence presented in this thread seems to indacte this is the case), then it sort of seems like it’s letting certain builds have their cake and eat it too (Conjuration/Trans FS).

That said, I think lowering the AB of Planar Conduit generally seems like a really good idea. Along with some of the other ideas presented (Dracolich solution) is sort of a no-brainer.

Most PvE content doesn’t NEED summons with 45+ AB to be solo-able. Planar conduit summons are pretty tanky and can grind through most PvE content with low 40s AB.

Hopefully a balance can be found that allows summoner-heavy classes to keep some of that PvE edge without having an hours-lvl PvP tool at hand.

I’d just hate to see Conduit go the way of EDK.

[AstralUniverse]

I do think Planar Conduit needs a nerf.
But I strongly feel that using Mummy Dust as the comparison isn't a great idea.

I did a series of tests, and in those tests elemental swarm beat Mummy Dust every time.
Completely unbuffed Mummy Dust vs Unbuffeed Ele Swarm
Buffed versions of both
Different ele swarm streams(even default, 1 of each), and more

Mummy Dust mummies only have 2 attacks per round(even the dread mummy), with lower AC and AB than even a greater elemental which also get 3 attacks per round.

I'll confess I wasn't able to try the vampire stream since it I didn't have that option on PGCC, but the mummies really were terrible. Especially considering Ele swarm is 9th lvl spell vs Mummy Dust as a 1/rest Epic Feat.
Undead do get healed by negative energy, but if this is that large of a factor in them being considered 'balanced', it does mean planar conduit would need noticeably higher stats than mummy dust as compensation.

I feel like Summon Creature IX should be the frame of reference for summon related balancing. It is the most up to date most widely used summon on the server.
Past that, Elemental Swarm is also very widely used as the 'multi-summon' option for a long time*.

It stands to reason an Epic Feat which is only usable once a day should be noticeably stronger than these 9th level spells.

If the intent is a multi-summon spell, it should be better than elemental swarm.
If the intent is a powerful single creature, it should be better than Summon IX.

Personally, I really like the idea of Planar Conduit being a single powerful summon(ie, long lasting Gate), perhaps with some planar flair thrown in. Celestials having damage vs evil or undead, demons having damage vs good and maybe some sort of aura or other effect. There's a lot of flexibility and flavor in the stats and abilities if the approach of a single powerful summon is taken.


My first pick though: Just do a small nerf. Hit their AB by like 3, lower their AC by 1-3, then watch and see what happens. Still too strong? Take away a tiny bit more later. I love it when things are adjusted in small amounts slowly, instead of huge overhauls every few months/year


*Although with the recent addition of -stream on ele swarm, the balance of each elemental in relation to each other might need looking at. Nobody ever uses earth, and fire is extremely common. If using it as a frame of reference, probably best to do the generic 1 of each elemental as has existed for a long time.

That's exactly the point. The more people look at mummy dust the more they realize it's actually pretty low in stats compared to the fact it's an epic spell, but as myself and plenty others have said, summons in general are just too strong and therefore the logic that using mummy dust as a reference frame makes sense.

[Kalthariam]

Isn't the reason that the Conduit's Powers are stronger than the Nercromancer's version, is because it only summons 2 units instead of 3?

Also I noticed someone saying the sheet was inaccurate earlier in, but I believe the conduits in that case are just getting flanking bonuses (+2 ab) because there are two of them attacking the same creature, I can be wrong as the screenshot literally only shows the combat log, but it's possible.

As a level 30 Healer path cleric, Conduit is literally the only thing I have if I want to try to do something on my own, I'm quite glad to have them, seeing how healer path clerics have been put in a position that they literally cannot function alone anymore.

I'm also not really sure why people are saying these summons are stronger than players. I regularly see players reaching 50+ AB on various builds and reaching ridiculous AC's if they are wanting to. I do not see how these summons are remotely scary to a prepared player whom is active in the PvP scene.

I'm running around as a sun / healing domain cleric, and sure I can buff my summons and make them quite strong, but there's plenty of situations I've run into that my summons just get wiped out if I do not maintain a steady hand in making sure they don't die.

If the mummy dust has fallen behind that poorly, then I'd personally prefer they buff Mummy dust, over nerfing the conduit.

Heck a level 30 fighter with just standard stat increasing buffs can reach 50+ attack bonus without doing anything fancy, I'm fairly certain most of the more fancy classes can probably do more.

[-XXX-]

Also I noticed someone saying the sheet was inaccurate earlier in, but I believe the conduits in that case are just getting flanking bonuses (+2 ab) because there are two of them attacking the same creature, I can be wrong as the screenshot literally only shows the combat log, but it's possible.

No, it's bard song on the evangelist. Virtually everything that might seem off balance about this is a part of the divine spellcaster kit:

Spell Resistance - grants PvP utility to summons that clearly were not meant to have it by design (as someone intentionally gave them 0 SR so that they'd fold to WoF scrolls). SR as a spell should be either made range:self or just cease to exist.

Aid, Bless, Prayer, Aura of Vitality - these are all divine spells offering a stackable bonus to AB and damage. While technically available to everybody through various items and consumables, they have a short duration, which implies an excessive wind time up under normal circumstances.
Cleric kits were designed to elimitate this wind up - some cleric paths even arbitrarily recieve increased or extended duration for some of them by default.


It's kinda difficult to align opinions on the matter when some builds can achieve Conduit AB that's 10 higher when compared to an average user who merely went ESF: conju + Planar Conduit.

[AstralUniverse]

You're kinda missing/dodging the point XXX.

When you compare summons under the same empirical conditions (with/without a *specific* set of buffs on the summon) You'll always see that Planar conduit is like 10 ab higher than mummy dust, has over more attacks (cause 4 apr outsiders vs 2 apr vamps). that alone justifies nerfs.

[-XXX-]

I'm not missing or dodging the point. I actually addressed it several times already.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with summons having low to mid 40's AB - they frequently end up fielded against AC 60+ monsters and the low end of AC for PvP viable builds tends to be in mid to high 50's.
Once you get below 40AB, you'll end up fishing for natural 20s to hit alot of the time. The problem's with mummy dust having too low AB, same applies to elder elementals.
We wouldn't consider 40AB as viable for any build, why insist that summons need to have straight up unviable AB values for them not to be considered OP? Keep in mind that most of the summonner builds function basically as summon proxies at this point.

The APR situation is 4+3 for conduit compared to 2+2+2 for dust (note that Dust makes 3 APR at their highest AB while the Conduit makes only 2).
The APR for both evens out at 9 under mass haste, which I believe was the idea. And before someone starts screaming about how that's a lot of APR - it translates into an estimated average of 46 damge dealt every other round for vamps if they need to fish for natural 20s to hit.

[AstralUniverse]

We wouldn't consider 40AB as viable for any build, why insist that summons need to have straight up unviable AB values for them not to be considered OP?

So your idea is that summons should be comparable to entire melee builds? This is ridiculous. Summons should offer reliable frontline via DR/DI% and some help in spawn clearing. They really *should NOT* reach anywhere near the ab/damage/ac of an actual pc build. So I'll leave it at this, and I can only hope that we'll get this nerf despite your opinion against it. Also? I've leveled and soloed epic content on tanky builds with 44ish ab, it's quite a lot for pve in this server and you know it.

[Drowboy]

I'm not missing or dodging the point. I actually addressed it several times already.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with summons having low to mid 40's AB - they frequently end up fielded against AC 60+ monsters and the low end of AC for PvP viable builds tends to be in mid to high 50's.
Once you get below 40AB, you'll end up fishing for natural 20s to hit alot of the time. The problem's with mummy dust having too low AB, same applies to elder elementals.
We wouldn't consider 40AB as viable for any build, why insist that summons need to have straight up unviable AB values for them not to be considered OP? Keep in mind that most of the summonner builds function basically as summon proxies at this point.

The APR situation is 4+3 for conduit compared to 2+2+2 for dust (note that Dust makes 3 APR at their highest AB while the Conduit makes only 2).
The APR for both evens out at 9 under mass haste, which I believe was the idea. And before someone starts screaming about how that's a lot of APR - it translates into an estimated average of 46 damge dealt every other round for vamps if they need to fish for natural 20s to hit.

give PC meleers 7d10+1d12 weapons and in exchange leave planar conduit alone. good?

[-XXX-]

So your idea is that summons should be comparable to entire melee builds?

Yes. The PvP meta has been warped into a state where the overwhelming majority of spells are highly unreliable. Most endgame monsters have 500+ hp. Spellcasters are literally being shoehorned into the role of summon proxies - they need good summons.

This is ridiculous.

No comment.

Summons should offer reliable frontline via DR/DI% and some help in spawn clearing. They really *should NOT* reach anywhere near the ab/damage/ac of an actual pc build.

We have that, it's called Summon Creature IX. What you're doing here is literally asking for spellcaster classes to be capped at lvl 20 power level and delegated to cheerleading support duty for melee builds forever.

give PC meleers 7d10+1d12 weapons and in exchange leave planar conduit alone. good?

I'm pretty sure that melee builds can outdps a White Slaad. Point?

[Red_Wharf]

Planar Coundit is going to be nerfed, there's no point fighting it, it's a waste of time. Now, what I think is actually helpful for the team here is posting suggested adjusted stats and numbers for the Planar Conduit summons to bring them in line, if anyone feels like doing that.

[AstralUniverse]

The PvP meta has been warped into a state where the overwhelming majority of spells are highly unreliable.

This is factually incorrect.

Most endgame monsters have 500+ hp. Spellcasters are literally being shoehorned into the role of summon proxies - they need good summons.

but why does the summon have to be so threatening in PVP? Why does it kill PVE *faster* than a mundane character? I agree that it should hold up to be a good tank for the end-game content but it should most certainly not have that kind of ab and damage and ac. It should not be a braindead pvp-win button against mundanes right? So with respect to your argument that it should hold it's own ground in pve end-game content I really dont see why it should also be simultaneously replacing the power of none-casters in their high ab/damage and making it so there's no reason to play mundane characters at all and no reason for a summoner to ever party with anyone. There's no logic in what you're saying.

[Tarkus the dog]

So your idea is that summons should be comparable to entire melee builds?

Yes. The PvP meta has been warped into a state where the overwhelming majority of spells are highly unreliable. Most endgame monsters have 500+ hp. Spellcasters are literally being shoehorned into the role of summon proxies - they need good summons.

A great majority of melees can't do late game content without mages/clerics, but mages/clerics can do late game content because of the summons. There's one non-caster melee that can solo late game dungeons on their own that I can think of currently, but almost every caster with conduit can do late game dungeons without too much of a difficulty.

It doesn't take a NWN expert to notice that:

Blind Fight
Improved Knockdown
DR 15/+7
Regeneration 10
10% Physical Immunity
100% Mind Affecting Immunity
100% Paralysis Immunity
100% Sonic Immunity
100% Electrical Immunity
DR 15/- Acid
DR 15/- Cold
DR 15/- Fire
DR 15/- Electrical


55 AC, 46 AB, 550 HP ( effective HP way higher with 15 DR and 10 DI ) from basic cleric buffs.

Is overpowered.

Conduit is absolutely too strong. It is better than a lot of players.

The conversation should have ended right here. It's really not necessary to go into an endless argument about spell DCs, mages this and clerics that because what is quoted above and what the message entails.

[-XXX-]

OK, so assuming fresh out of the box stats for a lvl 30 spellcaster with respectable ESF:conju/nec here:

Dust:
Vamp count +33 AB, weapon: 5d6 +2d10 +21, 2x Vamp +30 AB, weapon: 4d6 +2d8 +19. If we take median rolls for these, the damage output from one "wave" (i.e. one hit from every vamp) would average at 137 damage*

Slaadi:
White +42 AB, weapon: 7d10 +1d12 +18, Grey +40 AB, weapon: 6d10 +17. Again, accounting for median rolls, average damage output from one "weave" of attacks sits at 106 damage*


Now, had we been trying to derive the conduit summons from the dust, we'd likely give them 5 higher AB to account for the fact that dust summons are making 3 attacks at their best AB. That'd mean the conduit'd be doing two attacks at +5 AB and two attacks at the same AB when compared to the dust (this might seem weird at first glance, but otherwise the conduit would have been simply worse than the dust).

So yes, currently the Conduit summons have cca 4 to 5 AB more than they're supposed to, had we been deriving them from the vamp stream this way.
IMO the max AB to aim for would have been something like 43-46 for the conduit, 38-41 for the dust and locked in by soft buffs, because we could straight up remove 5 AB from Conduit summons right now and evangelist builds would still be running around with AB 50 summons.


Also reiterating - nerf/remove the SR spell - give everybody a fair and equal counterplay.


*I'm totally disregarding crit ranges and crits here. Doing that would favor the dust even further in this example.

[Alyxnia]

[Zavandar]

Also reiterating - nerf/remove the SR spell - give everybody a fair and equal counterplay.

sr is on the breach list.

[Scurvy Cur]

This is a pretty puzzling conversation.

We're well past the point where "the weakness of the summon is/should be wof" is a valid point to begin with, because anyone with access to WoF scrolls also has access to a way to remove spell resistance. And anyone that can't use a breach scroll has to deal with the 50+ AB summon while getting a caster's spellbook unloaded on them.

A whole slew of Arelith summons have been reworked/nerfed to acknowledge this very fact, because many of our old summons were expressly balanced around the assumption that any player who wasn't panicking would be able to remove those summons within 2 rounds, having access to both mords and wof. It's this lack of a universal unsummoning option that has most summons limited to low-mid 40s AB under the most favorable circumstances possible. Conduit is an outlier, and it is an outlier for a reason.

The first sane and rational step for the present situation should be to undo about half the buffs that conduit summons were given in their most recent rework, to place them at the midway point between the (admittedly pitiful) original launch stats, and their current condition.

[Exordius]

The idea that PC is equal to or greater then characters is pure BS and a delusion, most characters optimized for pve and especially those made for pvp will easily outdo PC. People really should stop spreading misinformation...

[-XXX-]

This is a pretty puzzling conversation.

We're well past the point where "the weakness of the summon is/should be wof" is a valid point to begin with, because anyone with access to WoF scrolls also has access to a way to remove spell resistance. And anyone that can't use a breach scroll has to deal with the 50+ AB summon while getting a caster's spellbook unloaded on them.

We could use the same "but that's on you" argument when a character doesn't have enough lore to read WoF and breach scrolls as we could say "but that's on you" when a character doesn't have enough discipline to resist knockdowns*
There's the same argument of "so stay out of their melee range" when that's the case.

Having to deal with AB 50 summons is still less frustrating than just... watching your toon eat dirt until they get transported to the fugue.


*you need 50 lore to read WoF and breach scrolls and a hell of a lot more Discipline to reliably resist KD attempts.
There's even an alternative in the Celestial grimoire. One needs to be actually going out of their way not to have a build eligible for gearing toward either lore or UMD

sr is on the breach list.

I know, but it still forces non-cleric builds to spend 3 rounds to deal with a cleric's summons instead of just 1.

[Zavandar]

This is a pretty puzzling conversation.

We're well past the point where "the weakness of the summon is/should be wof" is a valid point to begin with, because anyone with access to WoF scrolls also has access to a way to remove spell resistance. And anyone that can't use a breach scroll has to deal with the 50+ AB summon while getting a caster's spellbook unloaded on them.

We could use the same "but that's on you" argument when a character doesn't have enough lore to read WoF and breach scrolls as we could say "but that's on you" when a character doesn't have enough discipline to resist knockdowns*
There's the same argument of "so stay out of their melee range" when that's the case.

Having to deal with AB 50 summons is still less frustrating than just... watching your toon eat dirt until they get transported to the fugue.


*you need 50 lore to read WoF and breach scrolls and a hell of a lot more Discipline to reliably resist KD attempts.

sr is on the breach list.

I know, but it still forces non-cleric builds to spend 3 rounds to deal with a cleric's summons instead of just 1.

opening your toolbox and seeing the wrench labelled "wof" and saying to yourself, "i'm just going to leave this at home," and then pikachu facing when your problem is a bunch of bolts isn't exactly a good argument. it would be like leaving "blind fight" at home when you are dealing with concealed people, or tumble when you need ac, or to use your own argument, leaving "discipline" at home when you know people have knockdown. trying to reduce this argument to "don't be in melee" is a slippery slope that can be ridden all the way down to the bottom of "just don't pvp". but that's not really productive or useful in this conversation.

when you start to deliberately forego tools at your disposal that would help you be a better combatant, you have no excuse to be surprised that you're.. not as good at combat.

regarding SR, as I said before, different casters have different tools. you deal with them differently. summons don't exist in a vacuum and are backed up by different builds.

i would personally be okay with maybe giving conduit an innate 22 sr (it would help vs pve and could help arcanists vs wof), but i think that should come at the cost of more ab. the 44 i threw out earlier was assuming w/ cleric ab buffs. i'd be for reducing it more if they were given SR.

also, another important note, conduit and mdust have the same collective apr when they are hasted:

big conduit: 4 apr +1 from haste, small conduit: 3 apr +1 from haste for 9
mdust: (2apr +1 from haste)x3 for 9

one big difference is that conduit summons, when hasted, will flurry. this means that when they do connect, they will do 2 swings each. mdust will never flurry because each summon only has 3 apr. this is a big point in conduit's favor. while this means that mdust has more swings at max ab (the first attack and the hasted attack, so 6 max ab swings collectively), those hasted attacks come at the end of the round and may never go off if the target isn't stationary.