Arelith

Classes use summons in different ways. Arguably if anyone is going to have stronger summons it should be wizards-- their playstyle is hiding behind their meat shield using spells judiciously where clerics built for combat can be joining their summons on the front line.

I just don't think there is a sweeping solution that can fix summons. It seems to me any effective balancing would need to be done class by class. Yeah that's a lot of work and still may have too many variables to be feasible but seems like a better option than what we got.

Outside of warpriests, Pathless Clerics, and now the newer seekers... most clerics are all casters, and the ones that go into melee I'm pretty sure can't summon outside of Pathless clerics. (Can seekers summon? I thought I read they couldn't. who knows) They have the same level of squishiness and lack of protections than Mages (Potentially more so since I'm pretty sure clerics cannot get Epic Mage Armor)

I know for a fact my cleric is the opposite of "Wading into battle next to their summon." the closest they get is trying to turn themselves invisible and healing their summons in melee only because I have to touch them to heal.

It seems the conversation is drifting once again to "they are strong" and "they are garbage" so let me just present my perspective once again.

In pvp, i use summons less for damage and more to buy myself up to two rounds of time to do something before a martial can charge at me. The summon's strength here is irrelevant.
Why? Because, if your summon is warded, it takes:

Breach (ground mords gem, nature's balance from grimoire of earth, several charges of lesser spell breach wand)
And
Summon removal (word of faith)
To make them gone. And believe it or not, mords gems are a prized pvp possession, plus scrolls of word of faith are an integral part of baby's first PVP'er kit. You DO NOT pvp without word of faith.
Small addition here: ANY caster can have cl 27 word of faith. It takes a lot of unicorn hunting, but 18 base int bard dip clerics with umd exist. That's how i got it.

And if i managed to actually score a kill due to the summon not being removed? Well, good for me i guess. And bad for my opponent.
Not saying it never happened; it did happened. Several times. But most of the time? It's 2 rounds, if i used charges from my very expensive greater arcane sequencer.

Now, in these 2 rounds i gain, i can still do things. I can cast my spells. Dispels, this kind of stuff.




Now, in pve, the situation is different.
Due to how powerful my buffs are (+9 to str/dex/con, +2 ab/damage +4 saves/skills, +some more saves from circles, and +4 ac +1 apr +50% movementspeed from mass haste. And if i really want to, AoV from a trinket to turn this +9 into +12), combined with even as much as a lesser arcane sequencer (ultravision for darkness cheese, +7 ac from mage armor and shield, and also imp invis for concealment) i can do a lot of content, safely. My summons can handle a lot by themselves, more if i pack a few darkness wands.

Emphasis on I CAN.
I will repeat, again, i min-maxed my wizard to make my summons as powerful as i possibly can. So do not take my summon stats as baseline, or proof that all summons are op and need to be kicked in the nuts.
I am an outlier here. An anomaly of sort.

If you really believe MY summons deserve a nerf, then nerf MY summons instead of going for nuclear option that will make everyone miserable.

An example of an option that would affect me more than others is, as even i mentioned before, making summons immune to all buffs. Even aoe.
But, i think i already said enough.

There's just a lot of roleplay stuff that is being forgotten while everyone focuses on balance.
Like, what if I'm a healer/druid and just want to put regen on my summons? That seems like a normal thing to want to be able to do. My character knows the spell. Why does it work sometimes and not other times?

What if I just want to sneak a thing past a guard by casting invis on it? I can't. I have to craft/buy something (maybe) despite having the knowledge to cast invisibility.

It's all these little things that just show to me this whole mess does not belong on a roleplaying server. It isn't the way to go about it.

WanderingPoet wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 12:43 am You're also forgetting the extra HP and AC (and thus survivability) that the mass zoo spells give. 4 extra AC isn't a small buff, especially with the extra attack and 4 AC of mass haste.

Also not all clerics have Aura of Vitality, only a few domains have the spell, so druids are fine but cleric summons when lacking AoV are definitely weaker (and who wants to use all their 1st/2nd/3rd spell slots for a tiny little buff to AB/damage anyways? The AC is far more important). Favoured Soul suffer even more, given they can't necessarily afford to even have those aoe spells.

Only the wizard can really afford to use all the mass zoo spells, but it's not really necessary - I've been using only mass bull's strength + orb cradle and the summons performed just fine in PvE so far. The extra AC/hp is largely irrelevant in PvP.

The Aura of Vitality argument - clerics have access to this spell. Clerics can also take ESF:transmutation to take full advantage of it.
We could argue about how narrow some of us think this access might be, but it still changes very little about the fact that building a summoner cleric without these things means taking the suboptimal route and therefore shouldn't be a balance concern.
Furthermore AoV also grants +4 constitution and +4 dexterity, should we actually care about the extra AC/hp.

Mass haste is a big deal - clerics are missing a means to consistently haste to their summons (using scrolls for this in PvE is unsustainable).

-XXX- wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 9:19 am

WanderingPoet wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 12:43 am You're also forgetting the extra HP and AC (and thus survivability) that the mass zoo spells give. 4 extra AC isn't a small buff, especially with the extra attack and 4 AC of mass haste.

Also not all clerics have Aura of Vitality, only a few domains have the spell, so druids are fine but cleric summons when lacking AoV are definitely weaker (and who wants to use all their 1st/2nd/3rd spell slots for a tiny little buff to AB/damage anyways? The AC is far more important). Favoured Soul suffer even more, given they can't necessarily afford to even have those aoe spells.

Only the wizard can really afford to use all the mass zoo spells, but it's not really necessary - I've been using only mass bull's strength + orb cradle and the summons performed just fine in PvE so far. The extra AC/hp is largely irrelevant in PvP.

The Aura of Vitality argument - clerics have access to this spell. Clerics can also take ESF:transmutation to take full advantage of it.
We could argue about how narrow some of us think this access might be, but it still changes very little about the fact that building a summoner cleric without these things means taking the suboptimal route and therefore shouldn't be a balance concern.
Furthermore AoV also grants +4 constitution and +4 dexterity, should we actually care about the extra AC/hp.

Mass haste is a big deal - clerics are missing a means to consistently haste to their summons (using scrolls for this in PvE is unsustainable).

Summons are largely irrelevant in PVP at all. Most don't have high enough AB to hit more than once before dying, so their AB is also largely irrelevant. If someone isn't using WoF to kill them, then that AC is quite useful. So practically summons should be balanced for PVE, not PVP, unless we want to start making them take more than two rounds to clear out by even barbarians.

I stand corrected though, wizards only get +5 dex/con over clerics (which can result in one more AB on some summons), and mass haste.

WanderingPoet wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 9:44 am Summons are largely irrelevant in PVP at all.

I don't think that long duration summons have ever been intended as a PvP tool.
Technically, we do still have EDK as "the PvP summon", but it doesn't fulfill that role very well, so people reach for conduit and dust instead.

The SR on reliquary codex seems to me more like a knee jerk reaction meant to contain the inevitable outrage coming from cleric players after the sequencer update.

I'd much rather like to see that go away and have the EDK updated for current PvP meta TBH.

Aura of Vitality is only available to War (Why?), Strength (Again why?) and Animal (So just a druid but worse?) domain clerics. Strength also gets the domain power of Mass Bull strength. No other mass buff spells are available, as per the wiki to Clerics.

These domains seem to specifically compliment builds.. that cannot use summoning anyways? (War priests and Seekers)

So effectively if you want to play a conjurer then you're pigeon holed into the Strength domain? That Seems to be what some people are implying is the only reasonable option for Conjuration Clerics, and that if you don't you simply deserve to be worse? (Fun)

The entire point of the domains for clerics was to flavor your RP towards your clerics personality and the way they express their faith, not be forced to take the specific domains just to function slightly better than awful.

As a healer cleric, I'm already effectively required to take the healing domain. :\

All optimized builds are basically solved equations that leave very little room for creative choices.

And yeah! The strength domain seems like one of the more pushed ones (why it confers +3 sail while the water domain does not is beyond me).
Why not take it?

This, and every other thread like it, goes to show that balancing is a near impossible and thankless task. I'm sure the Devs didn't need us to tell them that, either.

Really maybe when it comes to summons we should focus less on balancing them just right, and instead be content with making sure they aren't broken and are fun to use. So long as they don't steamroll, or die to a gentle breeze, and aren't boring well then that is good enough.

-XXX- wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 1:20 pm All optimized builds are basically solved equations that leave very little room for creative choices.

And yeah! The strength domain seems like one of the more pushed ones (why it confers +3 sail while the water domain does not is beyond me).
Why not take it?

Well, to be frank, because cleric domains should be tied to your deity, and not everyone wants to play a cleric of a small handful of strength related deities (Talos? Orc gods? I can't even think of many).

I know that it's not mechanically enforced, but I think the DMs might raise their eyebrows if they see a cleric of Eldath with the strength domain just to buff their pets more.

You could argue that 'well, then you choose to limit yourself and be worse at summoning', but this is an RP server so I would hope the focus would be on making unique concepts (like being able to choose any deity) over being forced to take the most mechanically viable route just because you're shooting yourself in the foot if you don't.

WanderingPoet wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 7:17 pm Well, to be frank, because cleric domains should be tied to your deity, and not everyone wants to play a cleric of a small handful of strength related deities (Talos? Orc gods? I can't even think of many).

There are 30 deities with strength domain alone - all across the alignment spectrum, most of them fairly mainstream too. There's even more with the aforementioned war domain (44) and almost the same number with the animal domain (29).

I mean... if somebody wants to go the optimal route, it's not that difficult to pick something that actually fits.
From a design perspective this would be a really clever way of ensuring that mainstream deities remain... well... mainstream.

WanderingPoet wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 7:17 pm You could argue that 'well, then you choose to limit yourself and be worse at summoning', but this is an RP server so I would hope the focus would be on making unique concepts (like being able to choose any deity) over being forced to take the most mechanically viable route just because you're shooting yourself in the foot if you don't.

I disagree. IMO less mainstream concepts should come with a "footshooty" tax, so that people think twice before they choose to go that route and they remain more rare.

Keep in mind that we're still talking about waiving an effect that can be literally substituted with the use of the propper lesser sequencer.
Srsly, who really engages PvE content using exclusively the greater divine sequencer?!

We're drifting off topic at this point, getting into an argument over whether or not creativity shouldn't be allowed to be mechanically strong compared to whatever is "Meta" feels like a completely different topic.

The topic was the accusation that summons are overpowered.

they infact, are not overpowered, they are remarkably squishy and easily gotten rid of through a massive plethora of means, both undead and outsider summons. Further there is only 1 or 2 classes at most going through very specific builds that remotely approach the levels of power people are frustrated over. As most other conjurers cannot remotely approach the levels of power that wizards can make their conjurations reach.

Nerfing summons across the board because one build can manage to buff them better than anyone else is a rather dumb idea as this makes the have-nots get shoved into an even worse position.

Also people still hate sequencers despite being stuck with them for months now, and they didn't fix any of the problems they were originally said they were designed to fix.

My non-optimized cleric could have up to 7 elemental swarm casts I think, so never even bothered to buff them, just some healing circles now and then mixed in with recast. Made pretty much all PvE trivial when including zen archery. For PvP those elementals were great for buying time, their AB isn't great but they are good blockers and between them they will do some damage most rounds just with 20's. Enough to be a bother when chasing a healer around them. Then of course there was -fetch, which I will say nothing further about other than its a console command that can present quite a surprise at times!

This gets implemented on admin level, everyone's angry, and then we move on. I don't think we'll ever see a scale back and summons will get nerfed again as soon as people stop talking about sequencers.

Unless the server's on the cusp of dying it won't be reverted. There'll just be duct-tape placed around these admin-level decisions and that'll be the new meta.

But hopefully I'm wrong because it's not really fun to add 10 Berries, 10 Nuts, 10 Clay, 10 Fruit to something I could just do with rest and bull's strength previously.

TurningLeaf wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 9:49 pm My non-optimized cleric could have up to 7 elemental swarm casts I think, so never even bothered to buff them, just some healing circles now and then mixed in with recast. Made pretty much all PvE trivial when including zen archery. For PvP those elementals were great for buying time, their AB isn't great but they are good blockers and between them they will do some damage most rounds just with 20's. Enough to be a bother when chasing a healer around them. Then of course there was -fetch, which I will say nothing further about other than its a console command that can present quite a surprise at times!

You are not supposed to be using fetch for anything other than getting your summons unstuck, unless something has changed?

Hiding summons and -fetch'ing them to you in PvP is a good way to get your arse banned and the command disabled. This is why we can't have nice things. Don't ruin it for the rest of us, please.

Kalthariam wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 8:58 pm We're drifting off topic at this point, getting into an argument over whether or not creativity shouldn't be allowed to be mechanically strong compared to whatever is "Meta" feels like a completely different topic.

The topic was the accusation that summons are overpowered.

they infact, are not overpowered, they are remarkably squishy and easily gotten rid of through a massive plethora of means, both undead and outsider summons. Further there is only 1 or 2 classes at most going through very specific builds that remotely approach the levels of power people are frustrated over. As most other conjurers cannot remotely approach the levels of power that wizards can make their conjurations reach.

Nerfing summons across the board because one build can manage to buff them better than anyone else is a rather dumb idea as this makes the have-nots get shoved into an even worse position.

Also people still hate sequencers despite being stuck with them for months now, and they didn't fix any of the problems they were originally said they were designed to fix.

You are still memeing around PvP, in fact summons are not squishy. My undead T6 can tank PAUSH with ease, they are squishy??? And even some mobs in dungeon can cast dismissal or wof, you just spam another Create Undead, get undead removed is not any issue.

The fact that you can solo all content on server without using brain, just sit behind Summons means they are overpowered in PvE. And who cares if they are or not in PvP?

Helsing wrote: Wed Dec 14, 2022 1:56 am

Kalthariam wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 8:58 pm We're drifting off topic at this point, getting into an argument over whether or not creativity shouldn't be allowed to be mechanically strong compared to whatever is "Meta" feels like a completely different topic.

The topic was the accusation that summons are overpowered.

they infact, are not overpowered, they are remarkably squishy and easily gotten rid of through a massive plethora of means, both undead and outsider summons. Further there is only 1 or 2 classes at most going through very specific builds that remotely approach the levels of power people are frustrated over. As most other conjurers cannot remotely approach the levels of power that wizards can make their conjurations reach.

Nerfing summons across the board because one build can manage to buff them better than anyone else is a rather dumb idea as this makes the have-nots get shoved into an even worse position.

Also people still hate sequencers despite being stuck with them for months now, and they didn't fix any of the problems they were originally said they were designed to fix.

You are still memeing around PvP, in fact summons are not squishy. My undead T6 can tank PAUSH with ease, they are squishy??? And even some mobs in dungeon can cast dismissal or wof, you just spam another Create Undead, get undead removed is not any issue.

The fact that you can solo all content on server without using brain, just sit behind Summons means they are overpowered in PvE. And who cares if they are or not in PvP?

What build are you running that undead summons can tank paush? genuinely want to know.
my undeath clerics summons could barely tank a single balor/dragon.

Seeing as you mention simply recasting not being an issue, I assume you also aren't using sequencers? Otherwise it would be a huge issue.

Hazard wrote: Wed Dec 14, 2022 2:28 am

Helsing wrote: Wed Dec 14, 2022 1:56 am

Kalthariam wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 8:58 pm We're drifting off topic at this point, getting into an argument over whether or not creativity shouldn't be allowed to be mechanically strong compared to whatever is "Meta" feels like a completely different topic.

The topic was the accusation that summons are overpowered.

they infact, are not overpowered, they are remarkably squishy and easily gotten rid of through a massive plethora of means, both undead and outsider summons. Further there is only 1 or 2 classes at most going through very specific builds that remotely approach the levels of power people are frustrated over. As most other conjurers cannot remotely approach the levels of power that wizards can make their conjurations reach.

Nerfing summons across the board because one build can manage to buff them better than anyone else is a rather dumb idea as this makes the have-nots get shoved into an even worse position.

Also people still hate sequencers despite being stuck with them for months now, and they didn't fix any of the problems they were originally said they were designed to fix.

You are still memeing around PvP, in fact summons are not squishy. My undead T6 can tank PAUSH with ease, they are squishy??? And even some mobs in dungeon can cast dismissal or wof, you just spam another Create Undead, get undead removed is not any issue.

The fact that you can solo all content on server without using brain, just sit behind Summons means they are overpowered in PvE. And who cares if they are or not in PvP?

What build are you running that undead summons can tank paush? genuinely want to know.
my undeath clerics summons could barely tank a single balor/dragon.

Seeing as you mention simply recasting not being an issue, I assume you also aren't using sequencers? Otherwise it would be a huge issue.

It’s irrelevant about builds, I think paush has planar rift on hit which can easily remove conduit, but it’s DPR is not high, and since undead are crit immune, tanking it is not an issue from my experience.

Hazard wrote: Wed Dec 14, 2022 2:28 am
What build are you running that undead summons can tank paush? genuinely want to know.
my undeath clerics summons could barely tank a single balor/dragon.

Seeing as you mention simply recasting not being an issue, I assume you also aren't using sequencers? Otherwise it would be a huge issue.

I was in team with Helsing. Before we start, I burnt over 40000 golds to scribe scrolls of create greater undead, and spent the same amount of gold for gonne and slugs. We both are undead summoners and we started with wights, then wraiths, later on skeletons because they have enough attacks to drag Paush from us. I don't recommend you to solo this boss because Helsing can barely solo a succubus archer, while I'm taking all the cost for that adventure.

Helsing wrote: Wed Dec 14, 2022 1:56 am

Kalthariam wrote: Tue Dec 13, 2022 8:58 pm We're drifting off topic at this point, getting into an argument over whether or not creativity shouldn't be allowed to be mechanically strong compared to whatever is "Meta" feels like a completely different topic.

The topic was the accusation that summons are overpowered.

they infact, are not overpowered, they are remarkably squishy and easily gotten rid of through a massive plethora of means, both undead and outsider summons. Further there is only 1 or 2 classes at most going through very specific builds that remotely approach the levels of power people are frustrated over. As most other conjurers cannot remotely approach the levels of power that wizards can make their conjurations reach.

Nerfing summons across the board because one build can manage to buff them better than anyone else is a rather dumb idea as this makes the have-nots get shoved into an even worse position.

Also people still hate sequencers despite being stuck with them for months now, and they didn't fix any of the problems they were originally said they were designed to fix.

You are still memeing around PvP, in fact summons are not squishy. My undead T6 can tank PAUSH with ease, they are squishy??? And even some mobs in dungeon can cast dismissal or wof, you just spam another Create Undead, get undead removed is not any issue.

The fact that you can solo all content on server without using brain, just sit behind Summons means they are overpowered in PvE. And who cares if they are or not in PvP?

This is irrelevant to the discussion.
You're simply using the Summon as a distraction / utility or meat shield as opposed to the discussion of attributes.
It's not considered a tank because Undead summons are often taken as meat shield instead and they're incapable of having high AC to dodge attacks. Consequently, their attacks are rather feeble to attribute to this discussion and does not in any way, falls under overpowered.
While, i agree that they get recompense, by actually having more than just multiple casts.

And no, you can't solo the most of the entire epic dungeon with just pure undead summon, without yourself making the necessary arrangement.
It's not possible to do it without brain per se.

And i still stand by my earlier post, this discussion will not get us anywhere except listing out the grievances that many of us, encountered. It's good to read and use this thread as a form of reference to adjust or counter however.

There is also a massive difference in summon strength between classes.
Something Kalthariam mentioned.
And i mentioned.
My wizard's summons, with my cheese tactics, let me solo majority of Arelith.
Kal's summons die in a dungeon i am convinced is a lvl 18 one.
Both of us are lvl 30 summoners.
I am a wizard.
They are a healer cleric.

Maybe address that?

Aura of Vitality and Mass Strength are not spells clerics have. You need a certain domain for those, and expecting people to only be summoners if they will follow certain gods with certain portfolios, is imo BS.

Mass Haste makes the biggest difference, and if that is given to clerics it's also likely to be locked behind yet another domain.
We can only choose 2, and they need to make sense RP-wise.

Let's say you want your summons to be undead though. So you need to choose undeath domain. This leaves you with 1 domain option left, keep in mind this is Arelith so you're already kind of wanting trickery/illusion so you can protect yourself from -scry for more than a few minutes at a time. So you're already sacrificing self reliant scry protection by choosing anything else, but here we go.. Let's say you're not worried about scry, or content to spam wands for hours of meetings like an idiot, good for you. What ONE domain will you pick? Hmm. There's only 1 that gives AoV and a mass zoo (str), so you must pick this one. Strength. How do you justify this pick if your god does not have strength as a part of their portfolio?

You know what would help? It just came to me. Clerics have baseline zoo spells that aren't mass. If only there was some brilliant way to code things so that spells your character knows, could be cast on the things they summon. That sure would solve a lot of these problems the server is having.

Technically you can take any domain as long as its not diametrically opposed to your god or another domain, its preferred to take ones that sync but its not an actual rule last i checked so could easily take strength if one wanted to.