Summoning. Cleric VS Mages.

[AstralUniverse]

Either we align summoner classes to be equal or what was the point of the sequencer update?

Previously the issue was the large disparity in what each class can buff their summon with, and now it is the disparity in what aoe buffs each class has who also stick to summons. The point of the sequencer update was to add casters another gold sink. You're welcome fam.

[chris a gogo]

The best summoner class is a shaman with 3 barb levels, has more summons than clerics, mage's or druids, two henchmen are fully buffable plus it gets aura of vitality and mass haste.

[Purplemyst]

I don't think they should get the zoo spells. They already have so much going for them like being able to take a caster path which gives them access to bard song and with a 5 lvl dip you'd have access to numerous buffs with the many different songs.

[Zavandar]

Cleric summoners still have the advantage of prayer/bless, easier AoV access depending on domains, and can scroll mass zoo buffs (but this is, admittedly, a tedious gold sink). They can also umd/scroll mass haste, but this was true prior to sequencers.

Overall, the sequencer update was certainly more of a nerf to divine conjurers than arcane ones. The loss of aid, spell resistance, freedom, and regen (with some of these buffs still available via sequencer, but competing with other important ones like improved invisibility) hurt, but arcane never had these (at any good duration, anyway) to begin with so have functionally retained most of what they were capable of before.

Summons can't be looked at in a vacuum, though. They have to be balanced as part of their respective conjurer's kit. It is true that clerics have the option of being able to melee/shoot depending on build. It is also true that mages have the option of getting AC. I've made a wiz/monk build that gets 56 AC fairly easily with minimal sacrifices. Some changes could easily see it hit 59.

This is, ultimately, a very subjective argument because there is just so much build variety between conjurers.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

I'm not angry. Correcting you is not me being angry.

My guy, you lost the battle ->

I really have no intention in engaging in this back and forth any further.

[Kuma]

worth noting that sorcs have only theoretical access to mass zoo spells without scrolls since MH/IGMS/TS is functionally mandatory

give sorcs an extra level 6 spell slot

[Naghast]

The moment a feedback conversation is referred to as a battle is the moment some here should just take a step back and re-evaluate their life choices.

As for sequencer update feedback.
I play a wizard.
I dedicate my precious, and VERY FEW lvl 6 slots to mass zoos.
I dedicate my precious and very few lvl 8 slots to empowered mass zoos.

And ultimately, since my wizard is enchantment spec, all i lost on my summons from my own kit was...
Mage armor, ultravision, see invisibility.

Which i can apply through a sequencer anyway. On top of shield. And imp invis. For see invis i'd need to use a true seeing sequencer tho.

As a result of all of this, i don't have too many spellslots dedicated to things like... You know.
Offensive spells.

As for AC on casters, since that was brought up a lot:


My ac sits at 54. I grabbed quite a lot of dex for that, and a bard dip. Aside from that, and epic mage armor, there was no further feat investment into ac. It's purpose isn't to evade all attacks, but to reduce some of the pressure of a martial unloading a full round of attacks on me.

I cannot use a shield better than small greensteel without screwing myself over, or i can invest into still spell and autostill.

Autostill 3 is an investment of *four* feats, one being pre-epic. Then several levels of autostill. tho AS one gives 5% asf reduction on shield/armor, stacking with any previous asf reduction enhancement. It all lets one hit around 62 ish ac, i think.

Pm/monk can hit close to 70. As in, 11 wiz 16 pm 3 monk.
But you have to sacrifice quite a lot for that. Your hp ends up being at around... 330 tops? 360?

Edit
Sorry, i forgot that palemasters are a 1d6 health die class, unlike wizards and sorcerers who are a 1d4 health die.
11/16/3 would end up with approximately 374 - 404 max hp, i think.

[Purplemyst]

My guy, you lost the battle ->

Is this really necessary? This is a feedback forum not a playground. This comment is extremely childish and was clearly posted to get a reaction.

Let's stop the negative behaviour here and continue to discuss the topic of this thread instead.

[AstralUniverse]

give sorcs an extra level 6 spell slot

Wat.... Dude, no. What side are you on? no buffing sorc! Clerics go AoVs and mages got Mass Haste, and everybody can use the other side's spells from items/scrolls/harps/spears.

[Hazard]

I'm glad to hear clerics may be getting mass zoo spells in some limited capacity. I am hoping it is STR and DEX atleast, and ENDURANCE would be icing on the cake. Not having the rest is reasonable and barely impacts summoning in any meaningful way.

Not having Mass Haste does suck, but clerics have never had it. It's only more of an issue now, because of single target spells not working on summons, which did in the past give clerics an advantage even without Mass Haste.

Yes, it can be used by items and possibly *Shudder* Sequencers.
But I'm still of the firm belief it is better game design for things to be lore friendly, intuitive and encouraging of the characters own powers (because RPG). It is far more fun for me to be able to use my own characters spell on their own summon, than having to participate in some gadget/crafting mini-game. It may be more balanced this new way, but it doesn't 'feel' as good. And how something feels, while it is totally subjective and intangible (and sometimes difficult to rationalise), does matter in mediums of entertainment and art, both of which I think video games and roleplaying are. It is a creative endevour and should feel good. There are other games where none of these things matter, that aren't roleplaying games/servers.

I'm going to be honest, I have no interest in playing with sequencers. It's likely just something I'll be forced into, because it would be suicide not to and the game will now balance around it. I'm far from the only person avoiding the system and who has no interest in interacting with it as the sole method of buffing your summons, but that is a topic for another thread. As if this one hasn't gone off the rails enough.

[Lord Blacktooth]

Sequencers were added to, at least from my perspective, make summons more streamlined for balancing purposes. The days of ubermench summons via evang cleric buffs are over - but now we have classes with access to mass spells able to do summons better - that's not only not fair, it goes against the design of sequencers.

Either we let summons recieve buffs or we don't. My heart tells me we should just not allow any buffs to be applied to summons unless via sequencer.

Agreed on the above.
Feels strange sequencers were put into place to stop bufs working on summons but you can still AOV Mass Zoo and mass haste your summons alongside many other spells?

Personally like the way it is right now but it feels odd and perhaps not intended?

[Kuma]

give sorcs an extra level 6 spell slot

What side are you on?

the one that would love to see a sorc able to pick up a thematic spell at level 6 for once :sad_cowboy_bread:

[AstralUniverse]

give sorcs an extra level 6 spell slot

What side are you on?

the one that would love to see a sorc able to pick up a thematic spell at level 6 for once :sad_cowboy_bread:

Well, I'm sorry you cant. Because there's no separate spellbook for thematic spells and because a skilled sorc player in your shoes who, unlike you, just wants to be stronk! will take Greater Dispel. I'm not going to bore you with counter spell mode mechanics if you arent familiar with it already but lets just say it's a HUGE buff to sorc's power creep.

[-XXX-]

the one that would love to see a sorc able to pick up a thematic spell at level 6 for once :sad_cowboy_bread:

This is one of sorcerer's greatest woes.
The 6th arcane spell circle contains a lot of good spells - it'd have been a tough choice even if sorcerers could pick more of them, but they only get 3.

Haste is lvl 3, zoo spells lvl 2 - technically a case could be made for mass zoo to be lvl 5 if mass haste is lvl 6.

[Kalthariam]

Apparently I just play cleric wrong, my healer cleric has sub 30 AC fully buffed, cannot buff her summons and doesn't get access to mass spells, and can't fight on her own.

Mass Zoo scrolls are expensive especially if you have to cast two per buffing cycle, only to have the servers decide to DC you, or crash or lag you out and poof all your money's gone, part of the reason I refuse to wand buff my summons back when I could. There's zero reason to spend gold that through no fault of your own you can just lose.

I still can't even cast regenerate on my conjurations.

[xanrael]

There's zero reason to spend gold that through no fault of your own you can just lose.

This may be a bit unfair to nitpick this particular thought process out of your entire post, my apologies for that. I've just seen similar a few times in relation to consumables.

There are a few reasons that boil down to standing to gain more than you lose even if sometimes you lose more than you wanted to due to things outside of your control.

If I can make 10000* gold in an hour with Mass Bull's on, and 5000 gold with it off (due to less hits and damage over an hour's span), then even if some of those scrolls get wasted it may still be of benefit.

Also time is money, if I need to spend 10% less time grinding because I kill stuff faster I'm willing to spend some gold on that.

Gold only has value through spending it up until you go to roll your character.

*Just making up numbers for example's sake.

[one day remains]

Honestly my thoughts on this now is that it's a better idea to just stop mass haste from affecting summons.
Haste's just too much of a buff if we're trying to get sequencers to a good level and it'll allow the design team to stick haste onto summons without it becoming completely redundant later, so gives a bit more design freedom.

Clerics "can" get aura with transmutation
Wiz/"Sorc" get mass zoos and make them excessive with empower.

Seems fairly balanced as aura only needs 1 cast for all 3 buffs, emp zoos still require 3 spell slots for a slightly* better buff.
If we're unhappy about mass zoos giving +9 to summons (which, let's be honest, is excessive) just stop it from being meta'd and it's affectively the same.

While we're at it though, buff stone bones - I want barkskin-esque scaling on my niche spell.

[Kalthariam]

There's zero reason to spend gold that through no fault of your own you can just lose.

This may be a bit unfair to nitpick this particular thought process out of your entire post, my apologies for that. I've just seen similar a few times in relation to consumables.

There are a few reasons that boil down to standing to gain more than you lose even if sometimes you lose more than you wanted to due to things outside of your control.

If I can make 10000* gold in an hour with Mass Bull's on, and 5000 gold with it off (due to less hits and damage over an hour's span), then even if some of those scrolls get wasted it may still be of benefit.

Also time is money, if I need to spend 10% less time grinding because I kill stuff faster I'm willing to spend some gold on that.

Gold only has value through spending it up until you go to roll your character.

*Just making up numbers for example's sake.

Okay. Here's the problem.

On other classes, you spend consumables, you have to die to lose them. Getting DC'd by random server instability doesn't make you lose your consumables.

As a conjurer, if your spending consumable charges on your summons, one disconnection or desync, anything that boots you from teh game, completely dismisses your summons and all your consumables are gone.

I can drink 10 buff potions / scrolls on a martial class, DC for 15 seconds, log back in and keep going without issue, my consumables are not gone.

I DC at all as a conjurer and I've spent any consumable items on a conjuration? It's gone. They don't stick around, they are immediately fully dismissed the moment you disconnect. Not to mention you either have to spend spell slots to be able to summon again. (Assuming you aren't using something that's just 1/day) and then you have to spend all your consumables again on your conjurations and hope the DC doesn't happen again. If you didn't have extras prepared, you get to either leave the dungeon and start over, or risk resting to get your spells back, and hope you don't get jumped without conjurations.

The consumable scrolls do not give enough of an effect to justify their usages, especially with the chance the server just randomly decides "Nah, your getting disconnected for no reason."

You might not put a ton of value into gold, but not everyone feels the same way. I want to save gold, I have zero interest in spending it on a whim.

Clerics "can" get aura with transmutation

I mean, only if you select the Aura through domains. Which not everyone picks that domain. Nor should every cleric feel they are forced to pick a specific domain if it doesn't fit with their theme just to make their conjurations better.

Was that not part of the justification earlier for clerics in making haste baseline for them? Because everyone felt compelled to have to take the travel domain because it had haste?

[xanrael]

Okay. Here's the problem.

On other classes, you spend consumables, you have to die to lose them. Getting DC'd by random server instability doesn't make you lose your consumables.

As a conjurer, if your spending consumable charges on your summons, one disconnection or desync, anything that boots you from teh game, completely dismisses your summons and all your consumables are gone....

Do you DC often enough where this is a persistent issue? For me I DC/crash/etc maybe once in a 4 hour session, and not all of those spots are where buffs matter (zoning from A to B in town with no PvP in sight etc).

I've played pet focused PCs before and know the pains of disconnecting, though if it is happening often enough where I'm consistently wasting consumables then it's also eating up my spell slots at too high a rate to resummon without excessive resting. If I was consistently DCing very often I'd probably avoid a pet reliant class altogether.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

I DC multiple times per hour and only play pet classes normally.

Adapt. evolve. ascend.

[Sytic]

A monk dip does not compromise spellcasting ability. Auto Still means losing one ESF for unflatfootable AC and DI. Pale Master arguably is the only one of the things there that impacts spellcasting ability, but since we're talking only about summons and their strength, you barely lose anything at all. Improved Expertise drops on spellcast but you are not going to be being hit 90% of the time. It is a very wonderful feat for when things get out of hand. The build is only as boring as you play it. You have infinite cantrips and a whole repertoire of offensive magic to control your foes.

On point: in this new bizarre sequencer meta, and since I have to take it seriously since its content we have added, Wizards have it too good. Mass Haste is ridiculous. Mass Zoo spells (I have no idea why we allow this but not single zoo spells or what the logic was behind this) are ridiculous and if you want to make a summoner specifically then it is easy to choose the right ESFs and metamagics and specializations to have them become nigh indestructible. Clerics do not have these options available to them, barring spending exorbitant amounts of coin on scrolls. Lore 35 is reasonable and easy to attain, but the cost of sequencers AND those scrolls makes it unattractive at best and unfeasible at worst.

I play 95% wizard. In terms of summons, it has it too good. I loathe sequencers but if we have to put up with them then parity has to be achieved one way or the other.

Bolded the point I wanted to talk about: I play, solely, a utility wizard. They double as a summoner-focused wizard, abjuration, a few shenanigans. I've accepted this character isn't super viable, it's fluffy, it's sweet. (Not even a wizard, they're a wild mage. So double-bunk.) But if your argument is, "spend an amount of money to be equally viable to Wizards", you're forgetting the disparity in the money sink.

For most martials, you need spells from Level 1 to maybe Level 5 for absolute maximal shenanigans. If you want Mass Zoo's, which will pop with your summon when you cross a transition, can be dispelled or will have to be recast on dismissed summons, etc etc, and that's not even counting Mass Haste being cast repeatedly, then you need to fork up for Level 6 scrolls, buddy.

I'm all for maybe Wizard having a more powerful niche. Instead of that niche being "can cast Zoo spells on Summons without the Druid Sequencer", how about it be "can cast empowered versions of Zoo spells for your summon", "can cast Mass Haste for a collection of a group". Because not being able to cast Haste on a summon sucks.

Overall, for balancing consideration, my main concerns (without crossing over into Suggestion territory, which I had a huge spiel loaded here for, which I won't put now that I'm re-reading this post) fall on Haste (the single-target one) not affecting Summons and Zoo Spells only being available by the Druidic Sequencer. (which admittedly that sequencer's kinda poggers as hell)

Summoning should not be the dividing gap between Clerics and Wizards. They should be perfectly viable ways to play, if a LITTLE different, for each. I think the balance team will be working away to fix it, as Sequencers were obviously the first step in that, and I wouldn't be too worried.

[Kalthariam]

Okay. Here's the problem.

On other classes, you spend consumables, you have to die to lose them. Getting DC'd by random server instability doesn't make you lose your consumables.

As a conjurer, if your spending consumable charges on your summons, one disconnection or desync, anything that boots you from teh game, completely dismisses your summons and all your consumables are gone....

Do you DC often enough where this is a persistent issue? For me I DC/crash/etc maybe once in a 4 hour session, and not all of those spots are where buffs matter (zoning from A to B in town with no PvP in sight etc).

I've played pet focused PCs before and know the pains of disconnecting, though if it is happening often enough where I'm consistently wasting consumables then it's also eating up my spell slots at too high a rate to resummon without excessive resting. If I was consistently DCing very often I'd probably avoid a pet reliant class altogether.

It happens often enough to be a major aggravation, That's not counting the number of times I've spent consumables on my summon get maybe 5 minutes into my venture to suddenly get the server restart announcement, and just end up stopping, because I'm absolutely frustrated with the whole situation, because I've once again wasted a bunch of consumable items.

Further, I'm not purposely playing a pet reliant class, I'm playing a Healer Cleric, whom is fun from an RP perspective, but aggravating to play from a mechanical perspective, because they end up wholly reliant on conjurations. (Or team mates, however you don't always have people around that your character will travel with about to do things)

It's not like I picked a summoner class specifically, I picked the fact I wanted to be a healer, whom excels in healing arts and magic (Even tossed in a bunch of heal skill because themes), and is super scary to undead, whom just happens to be completely reliant on conjurations, and all the frustrations it comes with.

[TurningLeaf]

Now seems like a good enough time to point out Mass Aid is a spell in the 3.5 Spell Compendium.

[AstralUniverse]

Now seems like a good enough time to point out Mass Aid is a spell in the 3.5 Spell Compendium.

Oooh nice. Because cleric Evangelist with bard levels doesnt quite give the party enough AB yet?

Real talk tho... it's basically Bless but for Turns. It's basically Aid but for everyone + summons. I dont know if cleric needs that kind of buffs.

Over all, I think mages gaining mass haste spellbooked and diviners getting easier access to easier applications of AoV, bless and prayer, which each of these spells can be used by the other caster through items. Seems quite alright to me.

[TurningLeaf]

Now seems like a good enough time to point out Mass Aid is a spell in the 3.5 Spell Compendium.

Oooh nice. Because cleric Evangelist with bard levels doesnt quite give the party enough AB yet?

Real talk tho... it's basically Bless but for Turns. It's basically Aid but for everyone + summons. I dont know if cleric needs that kind of buffs.

Over all, I think mages gaining mass haste spellbooked and diviners getting easier access to easier applications of AoV, bless and prayer, which each of these spells can be used by the other caster through items. Seems quite alright to me.

If Mass haste is fine because scrolls, I don't see why Mass Aid should fall under a different analysis