Epic Summoner Nerf

[Jontheknight]

• Grand Summoner moves to multiselect with New Tier 4 Lunar Studies, and is now part of the Destiny Mantle
• New Tier 1 where Grand Summoner was: "Moontouched: +2/4/6 Magic Resistance Rating. Rank 3: +5 Negative, Cold, Force, and Universal Spell Power"

When I first read this I was confounded, confused and confuzzled on why. Strimtom said something about people taking this enhancements because they were kind of forced to progress the tree that way but this makes summoner WAY less viable then it already is in epics.

Summoners will mainly agree that we have two epic trees we must take, Primal Avatar and Magus of the Eclipse; the slight dip into magus is enough for a epic summon and the grand summoner enhancement, then you go into primal for their mantle. The Primal Avatar mantle is stupidly good for summons as it gave (or so it says) all YOUR spell power to the minions, in addition; they had a chance to blast the target on melee or spell similarly to how you do.

By forcing grand summoner into a mantle, the summons no longer are able to get this trigger from Primal Avatar's Mantle, in addition; they will be restricted to Cold and Negative spell power and not everything. This also locks summoners into certain playstyle that only benefit from magus, while since most of these summon enhancements were not even halfway thru the enhancement tree, this gave summoners themselves a much needed versatility to their kit where they choose what spell power they really want to go for; admittedly though, I think most went storm-like playstyle because of the nature of the Primal Avatar tree, but even then you could choose fire/light/positive, electric/cold/sonic, or acid /force/poison; and magus gave us that additional cold/negative/force combination. The magus mantle did not give force additionally to summons, nor does it provide a chance on melee or spell to deal additional damage based on those types.

I suggest, instead of tying grand summoner into the magus mantle, Give "Magus: Call Upon" and additional tier and it add Grand Summoner. I would solve the problem of people taking these enhancements, in addition keep the new enhancements you plan on adding. It also allows the versatility of summoners to continue on.

 

[DBZ]

If a tree falls in a forest that already burned down does it matter

 

[The Blonde]

inb4 "yeah but summoners weak" - Edit: they're too fast

Absolutely agreed OP.

 

[Beast]

• Grand Summoner moves to multiselect with New Tier 4 Lunar Studies, and is now part of the Destiny Mantle
• New Tier 1 where Grand Summoner was: "Moontouched: +2/4/6 Magic Resistance Rating. Rank 3: +5 Negative, Cold, Force, and Universal Spell Power"

When I first read this I was confounded, confused and confuzzled on why. Strimtom said something about people taking this enhancements because they were kind of forced to progress the tree that way but this makes summoner WAY less viable then it already is in epics.

Summoners will mainly agree that we have two epic trees we must take, Primal Avatar and Magus of the Eclipse; the slight dip into magus is enough for a epic summon and the grand summoner enhancement, then you go into primal for their mantle. The Primal Avatar mantle is stupidly good for summons as it gave (or so it says) all YOUR spell power to the minions, in addition; they had a chance to blast the target on melee or spell similarly to how you do.

By forcing grand summoner into a mantle, the summons no longer are able to get this trigger from Primal Avatar's Mantle, in addition; they will be restricted to Cold and Negative spell power and not everything. This also locks summoners into certain playstyle that only benefit from magus, while since most of these summon enhancements were not even halfway thru the enhancement tree, this gave summoners themselves a much needed versatility to their kit where they choose what spell power they really want to go for; admittedly though, I think most went storm-like playstyle because of the nature of the Primal Avatar tree, but even then you could choose fire/light/positive, electric/cold/sonic, or acid /force/poison; and magus gave us that additional cold/negative/force combination. The magus mantle did not give force additionally to summons, nor does it provide a chance on melee or spell to deal additional damage based on those types.

I suggest, instead of tying grand summoner into the magus mantle, Give "Magus: Call Upon" and additional tier and it add Grand Summoner. I would solve the problem of people taking these enhancements, in addition keep the new enhancements you plan on adding. It also allows the versatility of summoners to continue on.

Was Summoner ever viable? I didn't knew (even tho I would really like a summoner kind of playstyle)
Still this is not a constructive way of answering on my part.
WHAT IF
They did a new Epic Destiny for summoners?
Clearly mostly Summoner centered, with some other stuff in it...
Clearly we need more epic destinies to satisfy our needs.

 

[DBZ]

Sure that can get nerfed from orbit too

 

[rabidfox]

What if they actually made summons and hires nice without needing to get to epics and then invest heavily in two trees to make them only kind of work... I know I'm just a dreamer.

 

[Tonquin]

• Grand Summoner moves to multiselect with New Tier 4 Lunar Studies, and is now part of the Destiny Mantle
• New Tier 1 where Grand Summoner was: "Moontouched: +2/4/6 Magic Resistance Rating. Rank 3: +5 Negative, Cold, Force, and Universal Spell Power"

When I first read this I was confounded, confused and confuzzled on why. Strimtom said something about people taking this enhancements because they were kind of forced to progress the tree that way but this makes summoner WAY less viable then it already is in epics.

Summoners will mainly agree that we have two epic trees we must take, Primal Avatar and Magus of the Eclipse; the slight dip into magus is enough for a epic summon and the grand summoner enhancement, then you go into primal for their mantle. The Primal Avatar mantle is stupidly good for summons as it gave (or so it says) all YOUR spell power to the minions, in addition; they had a chance to blast the target on melee or spell similarly to how you do.

By forcing grand summoner into a mantle, the summons no longer are able to get this trigger from Primal Avatar's Mantle, in addition; they will be restricted to Cold and Negative spell power and not everything. This also locks summoners into certain playstyle that only benefit from magus, while since most of these summon enhancements were not even halfway thru the enhancement tree, this gave summoners themselves a much needed versatility to their kit where they choose what spell power they really want to go for; admittedly though, I think most went storm-like playstyle because of the nature of the Primal Avatar tree, but even then you could choose fire/light/positive, electric/cold/sonic, or acid /force/poison; and magus gave us that additional cold/negative/force combination. The magus mantle did not give force additionally to summons, nor does it provide a chance on melee or spell to deal additional damage based on those types.

I suggest, instead of tying grand summoner into the magus mantle, Give "Magus: Call Upon" and additional tier and it add Grand Summoner. I would solve the problem of people taking these enhancements, in addition keep the new enhancements you plan on adding. It also allows the versatility of summoners to continue on.

You make a compelling case! Grand Summoner has returned to Tier 1 and lost its Mantle requirement. It's now multiselected with the new Tier 1, Moontouched.

 

[Beast]

What if they actually made summons and hires nice without needing to get to epics and then invest heavily in two trees to make them only kind of work... I know I'm just a dreamer.

I could give 3 extremely fast solutions to hirelings to work.
It's rough, it's ugly but it could work
1)They generate less aggro
2)They are immune and don't trigger traps
3)They are immune to AoE, they get caught only by single target damage (so, if attacked directly)
It's bad, but it would work.

 

[Jontheknight]

What if they actually made summons and hires nice without needing to get to epics and then invest heavily in two trees to make them only kind of work... I know I'm just a dreamer.

To be honest the current way of building summoner is relatively okay to me, What should REALLY happen is update the summons themselves to scale with quest level like how the oozes summoned from the legendary shroud weapon does. That has been my biggest gripe of summons and one of my only complaints, that and I miss my Dryad summon something awful I despise the turret version and makes me really sad.

 

[rabidfox]

I could give 3 extremely fast solutions to hirelings to work.
It's rough, it's ugly but it could work
1)They generate less aggro
2)They are immune and don't trigger traps
3)They are immune to AoE, they get caught only by single target damage (so, if attacked directly)
It's bad, but it would work.

I'd want them to have faster movement speed. They're always playing catchup to me running around.

 

[Wizard]

I could give 3 extremely fast solutions to hirelings to work.
It's rough, it's ugly but it could work
1)They generate less aggro
2)They are immune and don't trigger traps
3)They are immune to AoE, they get caught only by single target damage (so, if attacked directly)
It's bad, but it would work.

Yeah that's kinda like hirelings and pets work in several games....the AI is too stupid to run out of AOE but they have like 90% AOE damage reduction

For DDO traps , be it either AOE or Single target traps, 100% damage reduction is better because traps bug out the AI.

Often dps or healers hires in other games draw almost no aggro or they have enough defenses to survive it.


Just give make grouping easier (no lockout, all possible to redoor, bigger level ranges) and give bonus xp % and bonus drop % per group member.

Then people will still group unless they really only want to solo. (follower dungeons have NOT killed grouping in FFXIV at all for example)

But with functional hirelings players are no longer hampered if their LFM remains empty.

 

[RobShow]

Summoners build Receive

1 Item every two years
Nerfs every year
Worst scion of all and completely useless

Good job on diversity SSG!

 

[Oliphant]

They're nerfing summoners now? This is becoming satire.

 

[Kimbere]

They're nerfing summoners now? This is becoming satire.

Someone posted a video of a stormsinger soloing R10s with 5 hires. That's not SSG approved gameplay.

 

[Lazuli]

Someone posted a video of a stormsinger soloing R10s with 5 hires. That's not SSG approved gameplay.

But but but charms are evil and unbalancing and should never work in epics. Why will summons work? The only thing that should work is direct damage by the character himself, anything else is an exploit.

And don't forget, using terrain and playing smart is also an exploit, using CC is nerf-worthy, and healing is OP.

 

[Celtic]

To be honest the current way of building summoner is relatively okay to me, What should REALLY happen is update the summons themselves to scale with quest level like how the oozes summoned from the legendary shroud weapon does. That has been my biggest gripe of summons and one of my only complaints, that and I miss my Dryad summon something awful I despise the turret version and makes me really sad.

Theyd need to scale with difficulty too - otherwise theyre totally useless beyond the difficulty theyre balanced for. That in itself is awkward to do - strong enough to be of some use in most difficulty levels but not so strong or tough as to make them as good or better than players who'd run that level. And I dont think they should ever really be of use in high tier.

 

[Jontheknight]

Theyd need to scale with difficulty too - otherwise theyre totally useless beyond the difficulty theyre balanced for. That in itself is awkward to do - strong enough to be of some use in most difficulty levels but not so strong or tough as to make them as good or better than players who'd run that level. And I dont think they should ever really be of use in high tier.

Well it's the same thing, Difficulty is Quest Level, Elite is +2 and Hard is +1; if your talking about Reaper, sure it would nice if monster scaled with that, increased health and melee/spell power alongside the mobs in the dungeon but I feel that might get out of hand personally. As much as I would love it.

 

[vryxnr]

Well it's the same thing, Difficulty is Quest Level, Elite is +2 and Hard is +1; if your talking about Reaper, sure it would nice if monster scaled with that, increased health and melee/spell power alongside the mobs in the dungeon but I feel that might get out of hand personally. As much as I would love it.

When reaper was first introduced, this is how it worked. Charmed enemies would keep their reaper scaling... however iirc hireling/summons had your reaper penalties, so were still useless.

The first r10 completions back in the day were done by charming enemies and having them kill each other. This is also how some were able to do stupidly fast r10 LHoX runs. Charm a reaver, it kills the illithid, grab stone, charm the puppies, puppies OBLITERATE mommy, win.

Sadly, this resulted in LHoX having it's thread count lowered into painfully absurd values ("r10 in 2-5 minutes, that must be the norm for this raid, so it's thread count will be abysmal now"), and having reaper difficulty for LHoX turned completely off for a while until they changed all reaper scaling to no longer apply to charms anywhere.

 

[seph1roth5]

Summon/pet/hireling's main issue is AI. They spend most of their life running around trying to get into position. They're all just slightly different versions of flaming spheres.

Giving more stats, HP, fort, whatever, really doesn't fix the underlying issues, just prettying up a flaming pile of garbage. Now, the primal avatar summons at lv30 are the best ones, because they DON'T MOVE.

 

[NightHiker]

Someone posted a video of a stormsinger soloing R10s with 5 hires. That's not SSG approved gameplay.

Well, just one r10, really, and an old one at that. But I heard hirelings and summons were useless...

Kidding aside, I'm glad Jontheknight's case was more compelling to Tonquin than mine (thanks for listening, Tonquin) and this is getting reverted. The Storm Summoner breathes on. I might even get back to the game now...

Cheers everyone,
NH