Summon Buff Changes

[It Came From Beneath The Earth]

So I like to try and think of myself as pretty open minded when it comes to new ideas and changes.

But uh. I genuinely need to ask this question in as serious a way as I possibly can. I am not trying to be mean or hostile when I ask this.

What were you thinking?

Most classes who use summons rely on them in order to survive most content. This only works, when they have the means to ward their summons. You've effectively made it so that individuals who don't have the money needed to flat out buy all of these new items in large quantities, are going to suffer immensely, harming the low level or new player experience in such a profound way.

An individual will have challenges collecting the gold they need to in the first place, just to make these, in order to make gold. I am trying to understand what positives there are here.

Yes. I now have a few spell slots that I can use on other spells. But most of the spell levels don't have options that are all too meaningful. Nothing that would have changed the tide of battle to a significant extent, not enough to compensate for the inherent weaknesses that are now provided by this change.

It's good that you can still use spells on henchmen. But most of the classes whom you're hamstringing here, don't even have leadership. Add in the fact that for most of the good henchmen you also need nobility. These are also limited in number and use. If you can't find anyone around your levels to do writs at this point as a caster you've effectively become unable to do most content.

This change seems incredibly tone-deaf. If there was a problem with certain summons, it'd probably have been a better option to overhaul some of them, or make changes to certain streams rather than basically take away the ability to make them anywhere near as viable as they once were.

I get that you want people to go and find groups to go leveling together and all that jazz. But uh. I'm not sure if you've played the same video game I have. I've spent 8-10 hours before finding nobody able to level with so I've had to solo content. That was only possible at times because of my class. So now you're giving people even fewer options... and using spells that don't even last terribly long.

I know you've said before 'if you don't like the design decisions I make, then display it by leaving' but uh. I feel like somehow you had this idea as to how this would turn out. And I don't know if it's about to work the way you think. Maybe you can give some context as to why this change is being forced in?

Blackguard summons you mentioned also -guard the player. Meaning the player can get into melee combat and wreck things pretty handily while being under guard of their own creature. And scrolls and the like still worked. Sure, it had a disparity, but most spellcasters also can't pump out as much damage as consistently, as a full BAB STR build who has the option of two handing it if they wanted to.

What am I missing here that I apparently don't understand?

[With Darkness and Silence]

I'm barely managing to even collect enough loot anytime I go out between strength, and inventory capacity as a caster. This is insane to me.

[richardio]

There's absolutely no sense to be made about this; people in the Discord are going crazy. I'm afraid not many of them will take to the forums, which makes sense because who uses primarily forums in 2022? Either way, I want it to be known, I can't find a reason as to why this would be a good change by anyone's way of thinking, and it seems to me that everyone else thinks the same. How about we roll this one back and forget about it, boys and girls?

[Exordius]

I don't agree with this change, if you want to nerf summons that's fine but this... this is insanity.

[Sytic]

There is little more than I can say that:

this does not sound fun to play.

i do not enjoy grinding for decently priced materials (mold, catalyst, etc) or insanely priced materials (ancient yew, chardalyn, djinn uther). now this would be entirely fine, if there was maybe some system for customizing your summon item, making it an interesting and flavorful experie-

oh, 10 uses?

yeah I'm just never going to do that.

so in short this makes it less fun. doesn't really change anything in the pvp scene, makes leveling much harder. usually when things = not fun, they're not implemented

[dracored]

Reconsider this update.

Many classes rely on summons. Im not sure what the point of this update is.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

I don't think the change is the end of the world, I'm hoping that this is the first step in a summon rebalance, or something to help casters be less reliant on summons. I've got a few thoughts though:

- The only spell I'm going to miss casting on my summon is freedom of movement, because of spiders. If a spider webs my summon and I can't cast freedom of movement, I'm sitting there for several minutes waiting for it to wear off. Would it be possible for the duration of spider webbing to be lowered to 30 seconds?


- The tier 1 buff items are really varied in their usability. The best one is the herbalism one, hands down. The resource cost is low enough that the item value will be inexpensive, and all of the spells are long lasting. I could see the herbalism one selling for maybe 3000 gold in shops. That's fairly reasonable.

The arcane one is a lot less good. Two of the spells are long lasting, and two of the spells are shorter and you'd use them at a boss. It takes a lesser catalyst as well, making it worth 2000 gold more than the herbalism one. So if you're using 2 charges of it per dungeon, that makes it really expensive. As well, a lot of enemies have invisibility purge, making gating improved invisibility behind an item like this more painful. The spell has a huge cost tied to it now.

The divine one is okay I guess. It has protection from alignment and aid, but I've never run into a situation where I'd want to cast death ward on a summon, and there's very few areas where negative energy protection on summons matters. It's fairly inexpensive to make though, which makes it more accessible than the arcane one. I'd rather have freedom of movement on this tier, there's a lot of areas where enemies slow or bind. It would be nice to have the spell available to lower levels.


- For the tier 2 buff items, I personally wouldn't use any of them, the cost for them is going to be insanely high versus what you get out of it. I imagine they're geared towards PvPers though, so they can weigh in on what they think.


- If the idea is to have more spell slots open and more variety, I don't think this helps that. Casters are now going to fill their spell slots with summons. It'll be cheaper to make a new summon, and in some cases, necessary if the summon gets bound in webs and the caster doesn't feel like sitting for several minutes for the web to wear off.


- A question: How big are they going to be and how much are they going to weigh? If they're any bigger than a wand, that's a huge inventory tax for casters, to expect that they carry 3 large items around.

[Memes at its finest]

I love having no endurance on items I am forced to use

[It Came From Beneath The Earth]

I don't think the change is the end of the world, I'm hoping that this is the first step in a summon rebalance, or something to help casters be less reliant on summons.

If they rolled this out at the same time as an overhaul of summoning, summoning streams, making it so wizard spell school specializations weren't an absolute trap, and just in general fitting the pieces together better? 100% agreed and I feel like the majority of people (Not all, people will always be salty for the sake of it) would be fine with it.

But even if there is one planned. There is still such a thing as doing an overhaul or a rebalance in a way that isn't

'We're going to make this objectively worse for everyone who uses it'.

[Scylon]

Look, I usually have an open mind about changes, but this one is just stupid.

You left Planner Conduit running rampant for months when everyone was telling you to drop the AB, damage and AC, but in place of that, the thinking is just a server wide nerf of buffing summons that crushes some classes out right.

I don't think this would have been taken as bad if you at the same time adjusted summons across the board, but that didn't happen.

[magistrasa]

This update makes me happy and I am glad that it happened. I look forward to experiencing the changes in game and watching the consequences unfold.

[dasdiddlydas]

I don't think the change is the end of the world, I'm hoping that this is the first step in a summon rebalance, or something to help casters be less reliant on summons.

If they rolled this out at the same time as an overhaul of summoning, summoning streams, making it so wizard spell school specializations weren't an absolute trap, and just in general fitting the pieces together better? 100% agreed and I feel like the majority of people (Not all, people will always be salty for the sake of it) would be fine with it.

But even if there is one planned. There is still such a thing as doing an overhaul or a rebalance in a way that isn't

'We're going to make this objectively worse for everyone who uses it'.

I would be fine with a summon rebalancing that if, as the update says, tries to fix the buffing process. Removing the ability to buff summons while at the same time adjusting their stats would be a welcomed change, but as it is, healer clerics are unable to provide their main purpose without a friend to tag along at all times. They need a chaperon or they're basically a wet noodle for most areas that they should be otherwise able to take care of.

This update doesn't make any sense. It's half-baked.

[98lbs of sad carryweight]

I mean spell components made it almost mandatory to have either Art or Herbalism for Arcane casters anyway, now they need to cover their consumables too, farm that blood, sand, coal, clay and then do the dungeons for the runic mats (1 every 2hrs).

Its probably not fun to lose 10% of your consumable stack to one of the many, many mobs and now recently added traps with dismissal.
Or the ones with Save or Dies which can kill summons too. Summons also can just spontanously die but thats always a risk.
A lot of mobs also have invis purge and dispells so its not like the consumables couldnt just poof anyway or run out in time too.

Mass zoos are not really an option, 6th level spells need 35 lore and are 1.5k to scribe (or something, correct me).
Like I get that it was literally 0 maintenance for summoners to level before but now leveling a mundane or half-mundane seems like a breeze.

I think the scope of most people is like 4 hours to level and finding a party can be fun but it can also be your entire day where you cant really do anything but look for partners, this is kinda tough and never been fun for those builds that had to from the get go.

Spontanous casters with access to mass zoos (and the other buffs) are also just dead because they get 4 or 6 so spells to know on that level and most of them would end up being said buffs.
Naturally you can cheese that with -relevel or delevel or swap them at the last level but that seems to range from unintenational forced cheesing to just a bit lame. Very much reinforced the idea that you only REALLY start playing at level 30.

Naturally undead are fine for the most part.

However this is great for mundies as now we can religiously drain the casters leveling out of their money to fund our endless potion, scroll and wand addiction, but atleast those are buyable off NPCs or craftable with ease. People can make 100s of charges for spells per rest, I dont think spamming out catalysts, glass and scrolls out will be equally as nice to do.

Higher level sequencers take runic mats which you can only farm a finite amount per day and its random.
So you need to craft something that covers 4 trades (art, herb, alchemy, smithing) to buff 10 summons, or 5 if you have planar conduit, for an hour.
And these are STILL at risk of spontanously dying to Save or die, dismissal or trap spam.

On cooperative:
Timezones are hard.
Writs are now more spread out, which is great! I gotta travel, see the world, its not so cool sitting in sib, minmir, hub or shadovar with a LFG note so I can find a group to do writs I couldnt possibly do myself.
Or I get OOC friends to buddy up with me, that solves that too.

TL;DR
Why suffering?

[Party in the forest at midnight]

I think low level summons need the biggest buff. They're really squishy, and new characters can't afford heal kits to keep them alive. And new characters start with 25 rest which means you can't even rest to resummon easily without AFKing.

[DarkHollow]

Wizard was already delegated to a RP build at worst and diet bard at best, sorcerer has the benefit of being able to spam a lot of IGMS but it's not doing so hot either. This is a nerf to a lot of classes but these two suffer the most and unjustly.

[It Came From Beneath The Earth]

Wizard was already delegated to a RP build at worst and diet bard at best, sorcerer has the benefit of being able to spam a lot of IGMS but it's not doing so hot either. This is a nerf to a lot of classes but these two suffer the most and unjustly.

As much as people talk about nerfs to clerics, this will always hurt me more. Wizards, who were in the worst place among pretty much all casters, are now even worse of than previously. Which is -really- saying something...

[Luingar]

So I play a healer path cleric. I have healing spells, regeneration, and like. Three cast of slay living, and two of storm of vengeance. Literally every other spell I prepare is a support spell, a fair amount of curatives, but mostly wards to prevent the enemies from hurting my allies.

The change you are proposing will make my character entirely unable to do any level appropriate writs, since I can't protect my summons from instant death, or even reduce damage so my healing can keep up

This will not make healer path clerics seek parties more, they're already doing that as much as they can stand, it's way better and more fun to support a player than an NPC.

Instead, this is gonna make people stop playing healer clerics. Or support wizards. Or any other class or concept that can't survive direct combat well enough to handle at least one fight without any help.

If you want to nerf summons, please use a MUCH lighter touch. Might I recommend removing the tier increase from gsf conjuration? The +1 to stuff that the other feats do to summons is sufficient, imo. Then you can just tweak the summons as desired.

But if all you wanted from this change was to try to convince players to party up better, this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. Instead, might I offer another option? When you go to the writ agent and select a job, how about you show the names of any players that have selected the same writ recently (10 minutes? An hour?). This would let players recognize each other as being on the same job, and join forces.

Whatever you do, please rollback this change, either fully or partially.

Suggestions for compromise. I don't like these but they'd be better.

Dramatically increase the number of charges for the crafted sequencers, probably somewhere around the number wands get.

Specifically and exclusively block the zoo buffs. The stuff of outsiders may be less suspectable to enhancement, and this would reduce power while still letting players protect themselves (and a summon definitely counts as an extension of a character), and accounts for the bulk of the "entire spellbook is summon buffs" thing you mentioned.

Make the sequencers more open. Let players pick at least one or a couple spells they can cast on their summon with no issue, whether that be death ward, stone skin, protection from energy, similar to high level stuff comes with a free rune.

[Edens_Fall]

It seems to me this is just the first part of a grand rebalance of summons. As such I'm not terribly upset, in fact I'm looking forward to the day summons have descent AB/AC to match the current state of things without needing a dozens buffs to make them usable.

My personal opinion. Let's give it some time and see how it goes. This isn't the first update to cause backlash nor will it be the last. Let's focus on the end results rather then the steps to reach it.

[Hadals]

This doesn't sound fun to play at all. I'll likely be putting in a request for level 1 feat changes to drop Conjuration since I'm pretty reliant on single-target buffs as a Favoured Soul, and having to outright farm runic materials for sequencers to do any content seems restrictive.

[It Came From Beneath The Earth]

It seems to me this is just the first part of a hrand rebalance of summons. As such I'm not terribly upset, in fact I'm looking forward to the day summons have descent AB/AC to match the current state of things without needing a dozens buffs to make them usable.

My personal opinion. Let's give it some time and see how it goes. This isn't the first update to cause backlash nor will it be the last. Let's focus on the end results rather then the steps to reach it.

Even if this were the first part of a rebalance of summons. This should have been rolled out at the same time as that. There wouldn't be a down side, to waiting to implement this change, until the summons have been rebalanced, and everything has been reworked and sorted out.

Doing it this way either shows that

1) They didn't intend to be doing a summoning overhaul

or

2) They don't understand the sort of damage this does for absolutely no reason

The question that needs to be asked is 'What purpose is there for doing this before everything else is ready? What benefit does it serve?' If it causes this much of a backlash, it's actually for good reason. Sometimes, people just get it wrong. It doesn't make them bad people. It means they made a bad decision.

There is no 'positive' side to this decision as it was currently handled. And it's also dangerous to blindly back anything people do. You shouldn't also shit talk anything people do blindly. There are some people that do both. It's unhealthy. Surrounding oneself with yesmen and yeswomen and yesthem's just means people aren't willing to point out when you do something genuinely problematic.

That's why I made this thread.

[Peachoo]

Hello!

I have to agree with a majority of these statements.


It's like the team is now expecting everyone to be build-savvy and to build Min-Max builds meant for pvp/pve.

This does not help anyone who is a casual player and does not know how to build properly. Which is the majority of the server.


Most castor classes rely on conjuration and summons because ALL dungeons are designed for melee based builds that are mechanic savvy.

RP builds cannot survive in dungeons without summons period.

Caster builds cannot survive in dungeons without summons usually. And that's even with having people with you!

And this has been a consistent thing to do with summons whenever people start using summons in pvp situations.

Long ago, Dracoliches and greater mummies/vampires used to be scarey.
Dragon Knight used to be scarey.
Even ancient elemental summons were good at one point.
Even Planar Conduit isn't good enough to solo some of those dungeons. At leas the majority of summons for this one, depending on your alignment.

All of those got nerfed into the ground, all because they could 'solo' a few epic dungeons. But.... SO can melee builds!

All Melee builds can solo dungeons like that. And you see that time and time again! So all you've done is made it harder for casters to exist period.


So what is the end game play here? It feels like you're just encouraging and supporting the pvp/mechanic heavy builders here, and punishing people who don't know how to build or want to play an rp build.


I specifically, personally, chose a role play build despite knowing that it would be mechanically horrible. Mostly because I didn't plan to get into pvp, but also because I felt that I had good rp reasons for making my character that way. The ONLY way I got through levelling through your dungeons both alone and with others, was my summons.

I have exactly 2 conjuration spells in my characters spellbook as a favored soul that are actually useful. And this update basically means three of my feats are now absolutely useless.


I remember that this was attempted before, years ago. I hope this is reversed again. Or something like weavemaster is reintroduced. because it is impossible to play any single dungeon on this server without conjuration.


Usually, I am on board with the teams changes. But... Respectfully, I disagree heavily with this change. This will do nothing but drive players away. - And it already has, sadly. I can't see this change being fun for literally anyone.

[AstralUniverse]

Lets all take a deep breath and remember:

Planar conduit was going to be nerfed and was already announced to be on the hammer list.

Warlock summon needed a nerf as well.

Mummy dust does not deserve this nerf, but we already know now that there are like 9 new undead streams incoming.

Casters in general definitely deserved a nerf in regards to economy (gold income and spending).

Lets wait a bit and see how it unfolds.

[Subtext]

I really like this change on principle although I would think some things need tweaking. But that is something that remains to be tested.

What I don't really like:

1) The cost, on a first glance. While I like that some of the "useless" runic materials now see some use, there's still the overall scarcity and it relies on high level players to provide them. For people on Skal, this might be a problem.

2) Being limited to one sequencer. It might be more fitting to separate sequencers with long and short duration buffs and allow one of each for example.

3) I'd still personally allow round per level buffs like Haste.

But that's it with what I don't like and that's just on a first impression.

Let's be real, the disparity between casters and mundanes is real and it's the most egregious when leveling. I can solo the same content as a caster without any real need for gear and supplies where I struggle to complete it at all as a mundane character. It's a lot easier, cheaper and incredibly more comfortable.
Likewise, your summons aren't gone. You can't make them as strong anymore as you used to but you still have them and they still pack a punch when leveling. But yeah, you can't quite solo content to the same extent as you used to, that's correct. And I personally think that this is a good thing.

There are also alternatives to summons. Buffs will keep working fine on henchmen. Which both include hireable NPCs as well as dominated creatures. It gives a lot more leverage to those where you could previously just go "Dominate? Conduit, lol."

And that's just from the top off my head. I'm sure there'll be tweaks to that system but overall I think it is a step in the right direction and I am excited to see where it ends up.

[Levefre]

Previous posts have already said some things I was going to mention but what I will say is that I really don't agree with giving familiars and animal companions the same limitations. These are part of the class toolkit, not a summon spell. They're supposed to be able to assist you and with money being tight at low level they're often all you have at the beginning unless you can cast Summon Creature I.

As a ranger of level 7 I can't even buff my own bear to protect me against the weird and wonderful enemies in Skal, but I can buff random Animal Empathy'd animals. This doesn't make a lot of sense. As a Spellsword of level 5 I can't summon anything so I rely on scrolls and now I can't buff my familiar or those summons and in the Underdark it can make a big difference.

My bard? Well take a guess. I may not be doing the caster EDR bard but I still need that tank to keep me alive.

I'm mostly a solo player as I can't always find people to play with.

[Eyeliner]

I don't like the change either and I can pretty much guarantee my answer to this is going to be figuring out what I have to do to avoid having to deal with these items altogether.

I'm also really curious if anyone uses the ice/flameberry recipes that were introduced as it seems like a similar philosophy. To me that just said "well, no more ice or flameberries" because I'm not spending an hour a week prepping a minor buff.

Yes I am kind of lazy, but lazy in the way a person with a family and full time job who has at most one or two long sessions a week is lazy. I have time for Arelith but I don't have time for arbitrary in-game busywork.