Skills: Summoner

[mouse]

Ok, I'll try and keep this up-to-date. Here are the current skills with explanations where need me. Discuss & comment if desired. No skills are 100% final. This is already the 3rd incarnation of summoner skills, so there may be tweaks to come.

Tier 1 Skills:

* Twister
* Molten Boulder
* Spirit of Fear: Summon a spirit which causes all who approach it to flee
* Summon Aerial Servant: Summon weak, but fast, djinni to fight for you

Tier 2 Skills:

* Fissure:
* Heart of Pain [Spirit of Barbs]:
* Summon Fury (Tisiphone): Summons an incarnation of Tisiphone, a fury who weakens enemies
* Carrion Vine:

Tier 3 Skills:

* Ice Storm [Blizzard]:
* Wall of Flame [Fire Wall]:
* Sturdy Summons: Increase the life and defense of summons
* Heart of Health [Oak Sage]:
* Spirit of Lightning: Summons a spirit who does lightning damage to all near it
* Mulch [Corpse Explosion]:
* Summon Meat Shield: Summons powerful ettins to hold off enemies. They are slow, but very sturdy.

Tier 4 Skills:

* Tornado:
* Volcano:
* Spirit of Age: Summons a spirit which slows all enemies near it, and causes magic damage as well.
* Summon Fury (Magaera): Summons an incarnation of Magaera, a fury who boosts allies speed
* Solar Creeper:
* Spirit of Fire [Hydra]:

Tier 5 Skills:

* Hurricane:
* Comet Fall [Meteor]:
* Enraged Summons: Increase damage & attack rate of summons
* Broken Heart: Summons a spirit who causes allies to steal the life energy from enemies
* Summon Fury (Alecto): Summons an incarnation of Alecto, a fury who boosts ally damage and attack rating
* Poison Creeper:
* Spirit of Ice: Summon a hydra made of ice to blast enemies with cold

Tier 6 Skills:

* Armageddon:
* Summoner Archetype:
* Spirit of Guilt: Summon a spirit to convict enemies, lowering their resistances.
* Summon Pit Fiend: Summon a powerful demon from the nether regions.

[EDIT2: Here's a newer version of the 1.4x summoner skills:

Code: Select all

OLD:
1:Summons....................|2:Spirits................|3:Conjuring.....................|
-----------------------------|-------------------------|--------------------------------|
....HYDRA...PET......WORM....|FURY....SPIRIT...HEART...|PASSIVE....FIRE......COLD/PHYS..|
-----------------------------|-------------------------|--------------------------------|
1...-----...Djinni...........|-----....Fear...-----....|-----......Boulder...Twister....|
2...-----............Life....|Fury 1...-----..Pain.....|-----......Fissure...-----......|
3...-----...MeatSh...Bomb....|-----....Ltng...Health...|Sturdy.....FireWall..Ice Storm..|
4...Fire.............Mana....|Fury 2...Age....-----....|-----......Volcano...Tornado....|
5...Ice..............Poison..|Fury 3..........Broken...|Enraged....Comet.....Hurricane..|
6...-----...PitFnd...........|------...Guilt..-----....|Archetype..Armaged...-----......|

NEW:
1:Summons....................|2:Spirits.................|3:Conjuring.....................|
-----------------------------|--------------------------|--------------------------------|
....HYDRA...PET......WORM....|FURY....SPIRIT...HEART....|PASSIVE....FIRE......COLD/PHYS..|
-----------------------------|--------------------------|--------------------------------|
1...[pois]..Djinni...........|-----....Fear...-----.....|-----......Boulder...Twister....|
2...-----............Life....|Fury 1...-----..[BrknHrt].|-----......[----]....-----......|
3...[Ice]...[Beast]..Bomb....|-----....Ltng...[CwrdHrt].|Sturdy.....FireWall..Ice Storm..|
4...[Fire]...........Mana....|Fury 2...Age....-----.....|-----......[----]....Tornado....|
5...[Ltng]..[Saur]...Poison..|Fury 3..........[BlngHrt].|Enraged....Comet.....Hurricane..|
6...-----...[Blhf]...........|------...Guilt..-----.....|Archetype..Armaged...-----......|

What's changed?

-coward heart = oak sage sprite with weakness aura, fury 1 now has the +hp aura
-broken heart = thorns aura
-bleeding heart = lifetap aura
-beast = new name and animation for the meat shields
-belhifet = new name and animation (its awesome!) for the final summons
-volcano is gone, fissure is gone
-new skill: electric serpent: shoots bolts. 3 bolts at once.....it rocks.
twister can fire more than 3 cyclones
-new skill: toxic serpent: shoots poison globs
-new skill: there will be a 3rd main summons type, i have yet to name it. you will be able to have 2 of these at a time (compared to 1 belhifet or 6ish djinnis or 4ish beasts)
-skill update: fire hydra now shoots fire balls instead of just bolts


/END EDIT2]
[EDIT3:

Pet #3 = giant lizardman with trident (Saurian). he has the same hp as a beast, but without the additional damage resistance. he also has a charged strike like attack which releases charged bolts which move at extra speed. It looks like you will be able to have 3 of these guys max. (2nd at lvl 10, third at archetype level 15 or 20ish)

I also cleaned up the defense #'s and display a little bit. Summoner is ready to go for the next beta
/END EDIT3]

[juma87]

i think mulch is a bit overpowered... maybe if u get its damage cut by half by default and someone could get 70-80 by adding synergies(not from archetype tough) it would be a bit more balanced(besides the whole summoner is a bit overpowered)

[mishy23]

Summoner is currently my main char. Level 44 Act5 Normal.

From my experiences Summoners start out real slow, and started to gain alot of momentum when they gained tier 5 and 6 skills.

Looking at the proposed new skills above, I see that summoners are going to really lack any tier 1 and tier 2 skills, and be loaded at the hgher tiers.
Would it be possible to change one of the later skills to tier 2,
HMM, looking over the skills everything would be to powerful that early on, except possibly to move sturdy summons.
Oh well once you get to access the tier 4-6 skills life gets a whole lot easier.

So far playing with Ice Storm/Hurricane with some summons, it seemed balanced at first, but when I added the conviction spirit, the monsters sure die fast.
As much as I don't want to say this, you might want to start the conviction spirit's resistance lower, as it starts at -49% and goes up about -5% a level.
Possibly start at -25% and go up -5% per level, might be more balanced.

The summons haven't seemed to over powerful. The third fury is pretty strong (does damage stated on the skill tree window include the bonus aura damage she provides already? Otherwise the fury does incredible damage) She seems to be more powerful than the final summon, (though I have a unqiue rod that is giving my furies a +4 level boost which could explain some of it.)

Icestorm seems good, not to powerful but strong enough to kill.

Hurricane seems a bit weak so far, even with synergy bonus, but I believe when I get the archtype that will change, as I believe it increases the radius.)

I wasn't impressed with any of the low level fire skills, though meteor and armageddon seem to have possibilities, but would require alot of synergy boosting. With the summoner it really seems you need to choose fire or ice.

My Oak heart is what keeps my summons alive, now that you are switching that to the first fury I'm going to have to redo some skills, but I believe the lifetap heart will be just as good at keeping them alive.

Well thats it from for now, sorry if I babble on to much.
-Mishy

[mouse]

Summoner is currently my main char. Level 44 Act5 Normal.

From my experiences Summoners start out real slow, and started to gain alot of momentum when they gained tier 5 and 6 skills.

Looking at the proposed new skills above, I see that summoners are going to really lack any tier 1 and tier 2 skills, and be loaded at the hgher tiers.
Would it be possible to change one of the later skills to tier 2,
HMM, looking over the skills everything would be to powerful that early on, except possibly to move sturdy summons.
Oh well once you get to access the tier 4-6 skills life gets a whole lot easier.

What I'd like to do, either if I can find room, or if I add one mor skill to each class (maybe to flesh out spots like this), is add a poison serpent (green hydra with poison attack) to tier 2, i think this would flesh out some of the low end. Molten boulder was pretty good at one point, but it was really tough to balance..turn the damage just a little bit up and it kills everything in one hit
That being said, twister is getting a boost in the next patch - will be able to cast more missiles a la charged bolt. I'm going to try and look at all the numbers though, so some skills might get upped. The summoner is sort of my baby, so I have more ideas for him than for other classes, so I have to wait until I get more skills for them before I add more to the summoner.

So far playing with Ice Storm/Hurricane with some summons, it seemed balanced at first, but when I added the conviction spirit, the monsters sure die fast.
As much as I don't want to say this, you might want to start the conviction spirit's resistance lower, as it starts at -49% and goes up about -5% a level.
Possibly start at -25% and go up -5% per level, might be more balanced.

good point, the paladin who used to have conviction didn't have the elemental power the summoner has.

The summons haven't seemed to over powerful. The third fury is pretty strong (does damage stated on the skill tree window include the bonus aura damage she provides already? Otherwise the fury does incredible damage) She seems to be more powerful than the final summon, (though I have a unqiue rod that is giving my furies a +4 level boost which could explain some of it.)

for all pets with damage affecting auras (just that fury and the witch bone construct i think), the damage shown is _before_ the aura is added. so yeah it can rack up . Note that the final summon is getting his bada$$ometer cranked up a little bit to accompany the new animation. he will still have his AOE fire melee attack, but is also getting frenzy.
The furies are meant to be sort of tough, I found that mine still died a lot though - furies attract more aggro than most other pets. The final fury should be close to the final summon (only one tier apart) but, discounting the aura, she should be weaker. That's the goal anyway.

Icestorm seems good, not to powerful but strong enough to kill.

Hurricane seems a bit weak so far, even with synergy bonus, but I believe when I get the archtype that will change, as I believe it increases the radius.)

that's the plan at least, I don't think it will affect the graphic display, but the damage should at least be done at a greater radius, haven't had much time to test this yet

I wasn't impressed with any of the low level fire skills, though meteor and armageddon seem to have possibilities, but would require alot of synergy boosting. With the summoner it really seems you need to choose fire or ice.

armageddon is something you might want to consider...i think i doubled the meteor drop speed for the patch you guys are running - which means it could be pretty mean.

My Oak heart is what keeps my summons alive, now that you are switching that to the first fury I'm going to have to redo some skills, but I believe the lifetap heart will be just as good at keeping them alive.

Well thats it from for now, sorry if I babble on to much.
-Mishy

babbling is good, i like input. especially thought-out input! my goal with moving the auras around is to put the directly pet affecting auras on the furies - if i can figure it out, eventually those auras will only affect pets, not players - and have the damage or status affecting auras on the spirits. i'm also debating making spirits/hearts exclusive, what do you think - does having both up at one time seem unbalancing?

My first EftA char was a summoner too, i think i got to nm act 1 or so. I went pure summons with no offense spells at all. thats how im playing my witch (when i have time, which is even less now because I got in the CoH beta ! ) - 100% pure summons. its definitely an interesting playstyle that wasn't really optional in vanilla. some might call this lazy, but it requires good planning and pet summoning/management. and its no easier than any other build.

thanks for the feedback man . keep me updated as your summoner progresses through hell, i haven't made a single char into hell yet so feedback is good!

[mishy23]

EDITTED:
After playing my summoner more, I do believe you should allow only 1 spirit/heart, the combination of multiple of these guys are overly powerful.
Though I would ask maybe a HP boost for them, as even with a high level sturdy summons, they have little hp and die fast in NM so far (especially the spirits, the hearts survive better as they don't attract monsters as much as the spirits who do damage)

Though if you make it so you can only have 1 heart/spirit, I do think you should keep the auras the minions have effect everything (including you)
this lets you be able to build a summoner that melees better, as i like to get my hands dirty.

1 Fury + 1 Summon (djinn/meat sheild/balrog) + 1spirit/heart
is a pretty good combination. (Though sometimes I wish I could summon my djinns at the same time as the balrog, too bring back the feeling of having an army, like old skellimancers)

If you worry about team play and the auras being to strong, you can make the aura radius smaller for the fury's aura and the balrog (if you add fanatacism). Though I don't think they are too huge as it is.

I know you said Summoner is your baby, and you have tons of ideas already. But I had to add one cool skill idea I had.
Preserve Master - All summons return to your side to defend you, you could do this by letting this spell make your summoner teleport, but to the same spot he is in when he casts this spell, but it would cause all your summons to teleport back to you. Possibly have a secondary effect like slight healing of minions, or a shout that goes out a small radius causing knock back to enemies.

One last thing, with all the classes having minions now, I think the Ancients (act5 quest5) seemed a bit weak, I remember this battle being epic in nature, and truely a battle. With my minions to occupy them, they feel too quick sadly. Didn't even use one potion.
I know some people will complain, but I would love to see them boosted (HP/Damage) to make this battle worthy of legend again.

Oh yeah it does seem like chimera's appear alot throughout all 5 acts, but It could just have been my luck with them appearing. Their magic seemed weak too)

Well thats all, until later...

[potemon(tt)]

my magi had a {filtered} hell vs the ancients even with my golem

[BrotherDog]

Mishy, how did you get by the Ancients so easy? They took me 45mins, or so, and I even had the benefit of the "Stoneskin" unique armor (which let's me summon an Earth elemental). My fury (the highest) never lasts long at all, neither does my spirit (usually lightning, the only one that does damage). I'd just finished turning off "/players 8", due to constantly being raped by shadows, then they weren't so bad, but it still took quite awhile to beat the Ancients. Sure, one of them died quickly, but the other 2 took forever. However, I still can't get 1.43 to extract, so I'm still using 1.41, maybe that's it.

As far as, spirit & heart being out simultaneously, leave them be. They don't unbalance things in my opinion. They rather, compliment one another. I'd love to see that "poison serpent" , as no one has any real poison skills. If you don't make it a class skill, at least add it as an oskill. (maybe even as an emerald based gemword) . I also like that "Preserve Master" idea he had, but I was think more like a rally point skill for his minons, perhaps as a skill for the highest fury, since she's always right in it. I was also curious about the skels that the furys make. Are they supposed to just wander aimlessy, doing nothing useful?

Keep up the great work. I can hardly wait to see the new summons you have planned for next release .

[mouse]

poison serpent is in, volcano is out

the skeletons furies make are the same ones made by items that have %chance to reanimate. they are slow but will attack stuff nearby.

[mishy23]

I took a break from my summoner but he's in NM Act 3 Level 62.
I play players 1 usually. In single player the xp gained keeps up at a good rate and items drop enough that I havent felt the need to increase it in this mod (Okay I played players 4 a few times just to see if i can handle it.)
For the summoner it seems my pets survive decently, I am playing with:
All totals with eq-

Final Fury:27
Balrog ~lv12
Convict Spirit ~12 (Kicks total @$$!)
Oak Heart ~22 (This and a level 10 sturdy minions keep smy pets alive well)

Icestorm: 27
Hurricane: 22
Ice Hydra: 12 (synergy)
Archetype: 6

With my summons tanking, maxed icestorm devastates monsters, with alot of synergies pumped it is doing ~1500-1600 ice dmg.
Hurricane is constantly going doing another ~700-800 every few seconds,
and conviction spirit is stripping most immunes so far (some bosses still are cold immune, need to work on another skill before hell.

I always loved blizzard, that 1500-1600 dmg is every shard, really rips apart crowds, and the pets are good and forming crowds.

the cold damage a constantly do, especially with hurricane is almost a slowing effect on all monsters.
I rarely see my pet's HP drop significantly, and if they die I recast, not to hard. The spirits are staying out of the fray better for some reason lately. (Conviction lowering defense by ~80% lets teh fury connect on her hits and with her life leech she stays at full hp, though a few stunning monsters take her down, she does massive damage also, favorite summon so far.)

Oh yeah I am also running with a defense merc from normal, maybe its defense boost is doing more than I thought.

Also I found one single item that seems to have made life much easier.
Some unique helmet, adds level2 redemption aura and had 3 sockets, not much else.
But that redemption aura really refills the mana and hp back fast, after I kill a crowd, if I would have went fire it would have been even better with less corpses exploding in ice shards.
Each corpse is refilling about 15hp/mana and that adds up fast.
The sockets were filled with Thul's (+3 cold skills, baby!)
Does redemption effect party in this mod? If so that could explain my pets staying healed alot.

And now that archetype is making my hurricane radius larger and larger I still see my build getting stronger and stronger, though hell might make me meek one day.

I guess I just happen to make a cookie cutter build..
Oh well with new skills in next patch, i'm gonna remake so I can have better feedback for this board, I feel i'm giving unreliable feedback since I am playing a strong build.

I think I'm gonna try a tri-elemental hydra build next patch

-Mishy

[Xcolibri]

The poison vine's damage is scary. With about 25 points in synergy skill á 15% more damage and at a skill level about 12 it makes more then 10 k damage over 4 seconds.
It's not the kind of uber what the heroine was, though. I can't kill at will, still need to wait for the vine to pop up. But please lower the damage, I suggest by about the half.

[mouse]

The poison vine's damage is scary. With about 25 points in synergy skill á 15% more damage and at a skill level about 12 it makes more then 10 k damage over 4 seconds.
It's not the kind of uber what the heroine was, though. I can't kill at will, still need to wait for the vine to pop up. But please lower the damage, I suggest by about the half.

yeah, this is a problem with poison damage scaling, hard to track. rabies is like this as well right now (in the patch you guys have), can get like 10k damage with it. its definitely turned down.

[djpyre1]

Hmmm... the Summoner seems to be more of a caster than a commander class. Not really into point & click monster killing myself, but I gave him a run in solo anyways (v1.45) - I still prefer my Summonmancers

A few simple observations:

1.) My djin move like they have lead tails. I can always count on them to be lagging way in back while my fury and merc get pummeled by a hoard of monsters (particularly in areas with doorways). Even the spirits seem to reach the frontlines before the djin. The Beasts can't even fill their role as tanks since monsters can just walk safely away from them (usually straight at me). So maybe some speed is in order here?

2.) Elemental skills = whoa! Damage big! Heh, mana cost also big... maybe I should've leveled that solar creeper.

3.) Minion damage will need rebalanced. If minions aren't capable of killing, they are only meat. And from what I've read about the other classes - there's plenty of that already going on. The Suarian and Furies seem to have the damage, but they aren't exactly an army.

4.) Minion diversity is lacking. A fury and some djin are about as complex as I could form an army. Like I said, he's a caster more than a Summoner. Though the hydras seem to fit, they aren't going to take hits for me or require maintainance (can they be made into stationary creatures?)

5.) Again, there is no command. My minions were kept alive by auras that I hardly needed to pay any attention to... and all the killing was done by me past norm... I missed my skellies... my magi... my attract, amp and lifetap... I felt like some kind of weird sorceress with floaty creatures around me Replacing the casting skills with minion-enhancement spells (not masteries, I mean real spells that need directed towards minions/allies) would make me one happy dude... but that's just me, probably.

Then again, I'm not a modder myself, so I have no idea if it would even be possible for skills to charge minions.

It was still worth the time though, in fact... it's actually the most promising mod I've tried. Everything looks like it could easily be balanced real soon - even if you pursue a casting summoner and leave out the commanders