Arelith

This spell needs to be nerfed… the mechanical disparity in epic summoning feats is so great that it makes the choices moot.

I have recently played both a conjurer and a necromancer, both generalist wizards. The level of face roll that is planar conduit is a bit silly. The two feats aren’t even on the same playing field. If you set aside the RP stigmas (evil conduit is welcome anywhere whereas necromancy is only tolerated in the UD), which is a boon to conduit in my opinion, the difference in power is stunning. The only real “weakness” to conduit is in the form of fear which is relatively easily rectified.

While I love that there is a “good” option to mummy dust, I think we need to reign it in.

I would be happy to break down the mechanics if desired, but I think anyone that has played both Mummy Dust and Conduit would be intellectually dishonest to say that the two feats are remotely on par.

Buff mummy dust then, no need to nerf anything... server is far to liberal with the nerf hammer as it is.

I agree, it needs a pretty big nerf and I say that as someone who makes use of it on mulitple characters.
A buff to mummy dust instead could work too, but don't we have enough power creep as it is? I don't know. The point is these two abilities should be on par, no? That was the point of creating it in the first place.

It already took a nerf, hell look at the difference between the physical damage immunity alone... the dread mummy has 25% while the planer conduit only has 10%. It used to be 25% but they lowered it, if you want the spells to be equal then they should have equal stats. Either giving MD the same exact stats as PC or giving PC the exact same stats as MD would be the way to fix the problem fairly, otherwise one will be better then the other in some way.

a shrouded figure wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 4:19 am While I love that there is a “good” option to mummy dust, I think we need to reign it in.

The mummy dust was always ahead of the curve due to undead immunity to critical hits. I am now reading the new streams added to Conduit which look great and very powerful, but only the Neutral stream (Constructs) is likely to have immunity to critical hits, even though such an ability is not listed on the wiki.

So apparently only Mummy Dust has crit immune summons. This a very powerful thing to consider, imo.

I agree with Exordius - it's not so much that the conduit that should be nerfed as it's the dust that might use a buff - especially in the AB department.

Undead summons have weaknesses too - this becomes very apparent once you encounter the everpresent meteor spam in endgame PvE.
The crit immunity isn't such a big deal in PvE IMO as there aren't that many crit reliant monsters. Furthermore, they are still quite lackluster in PvP despite the crit immunities as their AB is doodoo.

Exordius wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 8:03 am Either giving MD the same exact stats as PC or giving PC the exact same stats as MD would be the way to fix the problem fairly, otherwise one will be better then the other in some way.

You can't do that so easily as undead summons work differently from conjuration. Most notably, you can conjure tier 6 undead through spells with multiple spellcastings, whereas the conduit is a 1x/rest ability (i.e. one WoF takes care of the conduit for good while any necromancer worth their salt will be able to casually recast their vamps in a pinch). Furthermore, dust and the animate dead line of spells ignore summon warding.
Perhaps there's design space for tier 7 undead to be buffed to tier 6 planar summon level (+2 AB, +1 APR, +7 AC, epic caster bonus)

I've detailed in another post why this spell needs to be nerfed. 48 AB, 7-70 damage, and that's on the weaker slaad form. We were concerned when warlock was summoning pocket WMs, but this is a whole new level.

Ork wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 11:59 am 48 AB, 7-70 damage, and that's on the weaker slaad form.

The Grey Slaad has has a 6d10 weapon and can't get to 48 AB. What you are referencing is the White Slaad which is the stronger of the two.

Mummy dust is already very good, how have our perceptions gotten this skewed? Planar conduit should be brought down to rough mummy dust level if anything. A mid-point between summon "ten" and gate/dragon knight (I know DK is bad, I mean ideally) would be fine for its duration.

Drowboy wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 12:22 pm Mummy dust is already very good, how have our perceptions gotten this skewed? Planar conduit should be brought down to rough mummy dust level if anything. A mid-point between summon "ten" and gate/dragon knight (I know DK is bad, I mean ideally) would be fine for its duration.

I recall Conduit was underperforming when it was first released, and was clearly inferior to Mummy. Now it appears the introduction of the new Conduit streams have made it very good, dwarfing the mummies and vampires. I don't see how buffing mummies is the solution here. I think those streams of Conduit which are overpowered should be nerfed - summons are very powerful already

The greatest weakness of the 'new' planar conduit is the low hit dice coupled with no spell resistance. They're exceedingly easy to turn with turn undead / planar turning, which every cleric npc seems to have.

It's hard to appreciate from the outside looking in, but when you get obliterated by viper monks because one of the priests at the back managed to land a turn on both of your slaadi, you'll understand the new planar conduit has limitations too. Pretty serious ones.

Ork wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 11:59 am I've detailed in another post why this spell needs to be nerfed. 48 AB, 7-70 damage, and that's on the weaker slaad form. We were concerned when warlock was summoning pocket WMs, but this is a whole new level.

I am actually surprised that Planar Conduit (PC) was allowed to exist in its current state, for as long as it did.
We did some testing the day after the update, and quickly came to the conclusion, that PC was horribly overpowered. Since then, the summons have now been fixed to actually use IKD and such - making them even more potent.
I wholeheartedly agree with Ork - these things need a down-tuning. Especially in the Damage / AB department.

Nurel wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 12:35 pm I recall Conduit was underperforming when it was first released, and was clearly inferior to Mummy. Now it appears the introduction of the new Conduit streams have made it very good, dwarfing the mummies and vampires. I don't see how buffing mummies is the solution here. I think those streams of Conduit which are overpowered should be nerfed - summons are very powerful already

That's not the case. The original planar conduit summons were very tanky, while rather medium in their offensive aspect. The dust could outdps them when pitted against low AC targets, but that didn't really make the conduit inferior to dust. Conduit summons could tank things that the dust would fold to actually.
The update to the conduit made the summons much more glasscannony. They got a lot of resistances and immunities outright removed and their AC was lowered, but they've been given a little bit more oomph with better AB.

I really dont want to see mummy dust buffed because it's really so damn balanced we should actually tone down planar conduit to be a bit more in line with the mummies/vamps. The way to do that, I think, is simply to remove the epic caster cl scaling in the same manner that mummy dust doesnt have epic caster scaling. That'll already shave off about 2-3 ab/ac/saves/etc. On top of that, I think we should also then tone down the ab further by 1-2 (so it's still a bit higher than vamps) and the damage by 10~. Also keep in mind that vamps got 2 apr.

-XXX- wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 1:40 pm The update to the conduit made the summons much more glasscannony. They got a lot of resistances and immunities outright removed and their AC was lowered, but they've been given a little bit more oomph with better AB.

That was a bad idea as we now know and should be reverted, tbh. Summon should actually be tanky and offer the unskilled players access to more content, rather than be major threat in pvp and hard to operate in pve.

A fully buffed vampire count has 39 AB (combat log tested). That's taking into account +12 STR from stuff like NE burst + bull's str. Tier 6 vamps have 3 less AB.
However, for practical purposes in most PvP scenarios the actual AB will be 33-36, because nobody is going to wait 8 rounds for you to fully buff all your summons and they'll hit you with a WoF the moment you show up to PvP with vamps dressed to the occassion.

So yeah, I wouldn't consider summons that actually need to roll natural 20s to hit 2-hander shotgun builds as "pretty damn balanced".


If anything can be considered a PvP balance offender with regards to summons, then it's the divine Spell Resistance spell, so maybe addressing that instead of nerfing all summons into the "PvP irrelevant" status might have been a better idea.
We can get away with having actually useful summons if there's no way of cheating around the natural counterplay to them.

AstralUniverse wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 2:56 pm That was a bad idea as we now know and should be reverted, tbh. Summon should actually be tanky and offer the unskilled players access to more content, rather than be major threat in pvp and hard to operate in pve.

It wasn't and really shouldn't. They've had DR, reg and resistances comparable to pre-nerf EDK, but with 62 AC (so they used to be actually tougher than pre-nerf EDK!!!). The current conduit summons do require more micromanagement and aren't straight up unkillable.

There was a lengthy thread about this before. Planar Conduit is quite a bit stronger than other summons. Other summons are broadly fine.

Let's just tone down Planar Conduit to match Mummy Dust and then we're fine, right? (could even make Planar Conduit 3 summons and copy the stats)

Naa~ let's buff dust and leave conduit instead. Conduit is fine, that thread pretty much confirmed it.

Let's not be dishonest now, the people who are calling for the conduit to be pulled down to dust's level the most aren't probably using either and know all too well that the dust summons struggle to land a hit against their toons in PvP and so they can just blatantly ignore them (same applies to summon IX).
It's not the same with conduit summons, which I suspect is the real pet peeve here.

-XXX- wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 5:55 pm Naa~ let's buff dust and leave conduit instead. Conduit is fine, that thread pretty much confirmed it.

Let's not be dishonest now, the people who are calling for the conduit to be pulled down to dust's level the most aren't probably using either and know all too well that the dust summons struggle to land a hit against their toons in PvP and so they can just blatantly ignore them (same applies to summon IX).
It's not the same with conduit summons, which I suspect is the real pet peeve here.

any summon that can hit 55+ ac reliably, is too strong.

Absolutely bonkers to me that people are suggesting mummy dust needs a buff.

Xerah wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 7:02 pm Absolutely bonkers to me that people are suggesting mummy dust needs a buff.

That's only being said so that conduit can stay OP.

I was not aware we're taking votes. In that case, I agree with the dust buff. Let necromancers be actually terrifying again.

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

Idk if it has been mentioned in this thread (I haven't read every post) but the CG summon can also be hit with magic vestments because it actually has armor.

I've been in 1vX pvp where the conduits were a greater threat than the rest of the players. Critting for 100ish, very good AC, and let's not forget.. there's an actual caster backing them up, too.

Right now, not taking conduit feels really crappy. Gate is *okay* in their absence. Also, regarding mdust not realistically being fully buffed in PvP.. that's just blatantly ignoring one of the major strengths of an hours/lvl summon (being able to buff it beforehand). A strength conduit shares but also has much better baseline stats.

Half the mages I see with mummy dust do that thing where they hide their extremely fully buffed, stealthed vampires in a corner or something. That's like half the point of the vampires. Pretending they aren't swinging for "good enough" AB, on three bodies with collision, and backed up by a mage? Come on.


edit: I didn't bulls str the other two, ab should be a few points higher. easy to test on your own.

So, real talk, this was on an FS, but, fun thing about that: FS both has spell resistance to help with WoF and Deafening Clang, which does work on any summon with a weapon.

The planar conduit guys use weapons, no?

Let's not try and shift the summon overton window to Mummy dust, a spell that has a heads side that says "farm to 30 effortlessly" and a tails side that says "gank anyone unprepared or at least body block them while they try and get rid of them/get to the caster." as somehow underpowered.

When someone observes that mummy dust is weaker than conduit, it should not be taken as a statement that mummy dust is too weak.

It is a statement that conduit is too strong.

Zavandar wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 7:27 pm Also, regarding mdust not realistically being fully buffed in PvP.. that's just blatantly ignoring one of the major strengths of an hours/lvl summon (being able to buff it beforehand). A strength conduit shares but also has much better baseline stats.

It's not and I've explained it. But even then, fully buffed tier 6 vamps still struggle to hit most current melee builds as they'll have AB 36, mummies have even lower AB. The count is pretty much the only undead summon that can get AB on par with summon creature IX pets (!).

Which brings us to the following argument.

Memes at its finest wrote: Mon Apr 11, 2022 7:01 pm any summon that can hit 55+ ac reliably, is too strong.

Any summon that cannot is simply irrelevant in any PvP scenario. Most melee builds aim to get their AC to mid 50's which coincidentally puts the dust summons in a spot where they need natural 20's to hit, at which point they can be pretty much ignored altogether (lol, why even bother with some counterplay if we don't have to, right?!)

The last major tweak to undead summonning took place in 2018 and it's been largely left unchanged since then (with the exception of the WoF removal from the dread mummy).
Let's consider all of the excessive power creep that we've experienced since then in both class changes, builds and gear. Pretending that the dust aged well in the context of all that like a good wine... now THAT's bonkers.