Summons in DDO

[Aragadi]

Currently summoning monsters in DDO isn't effective at any level of gameplay. Apparently, AI issues will not be improving any time soon given the insistence of the devs on punishing players with ever-increasing dungeon alert penalties rather than doing AI work. So I had a thought today on how to improve the situation as I was playing a wizard alt of mine.

I was thinking of how I was utilizing the summoned skeleton and what the goals of a summoner build are. I would send the skeleton in to engage a group of mobs, drawing their aggro, then I would use AOE spells to destroy them while their attention was diverted. During boss fights I would position myself opposite the skeleton so it could attack from behind adding a moderate amount of DPS to protracted fights. The goals of a summoner build are thus:

1. aggro management
2. damage over time

In order to improve the general playstyle of summoning in the game while avoiding AI issues I had the idea of changing summons from actual AI-driven creatures into short-term debuffs on monsters.


I will use 2 current in-game spells to explain how this would work.


1. summon monster I - celestial dog
target: one creature
range: standard
duration: 10 seconds
saving throw: none
spell resistance: no
cooldown: 10 seconds (puts all summon monster spells on cooldown)
effect:
You summon a celestial dog at a target's location. It deals 10 physical damage/caster level (max 5) every 2 seconds for 10 seconds (scales with spell power). The target attacks the celestial dog for the duration of the spell.

2. Summon Monster IX - elder fire elemental
target: one creature
range: standard AOE
duration: 10 seconds
saving throw: none
spell resistance: no
cooldown: 10 seconds (puts all summon monster spells on cooldown)
effect:
You summon an elder fire elemental at a target's location. It deals 10 fire damage/caster level (max 20) every 2 seconds for 10 seconds (scales with spell power) to a target and all targets around it. The targets attack the elder fire elemental for the duration of the spell.


Neither of the spells would need to actually create a physical game object. They could simply use the current game animations of these creatures attacking and the monsters would effectively be "dazed" for the duration of the spell.

This would maintain the functionality of "summoning" gameplay without having to actually deal with the AI problems currently plaguing the game and would allow for scaling of "summoners" throughout the game.

Don't get too hung up on the numbers above, I didn't do any math to try to balance the spells, I was just throwing out the idea. If the damage/duration is too high/low then the numbers can change. Enhancement trees can be reworked to increase damage/duration or even allow multiple "summons".

 

[Zuldar]

The simplest solution would be to just make them act like FvS's lantern archon where they're more off a buff than a creature. They can't be attacked but you get any aggro they generate.

 

[seph1roth5]

The summons in primal avatar work similar to that, and actually WORK lol. Having them not be mobile cuts down on all the awful AI issues.

 

[comfy]

I am a big fan of the idea and flavor of a summoner class or archetype, and like your idea. My best take was to make a summoner act similar to the way Falconry does, where you have a non-targetable companion who you can command to do attacks. Instead of a summon that is always persistent, targetable, buffable, and makes its own decisions, it would be one (or more) that you directly command and control via spells/abilities.

 

[Aragadi]

The simplest solution would be to just make them act like FvS's lantern archon where they're more off a buff than a creature. They can't be attacked but you get any aggro they generate.

I currently use my summons to keep monsters from hitting me, not to try to make them want to hit me more, while I think the archon summon has a place in the discussion, it does not really solve all of the issues that draw people to the "summoner" archetype.

The summons in primal avatar work similar to that, and actually WORK lol. Having them not be mobile cuts down on all the awful AI issues.

I have not actually ever tried any of the epic summon abilities. If they are effective then I guess changing all summons to this type of spell would be sufficient. Modifying enhancement trees to better support them would be nice. currently I don't think summoning enhancements do much at all for the game.

 

[Summoner]

There is a drawback to your idea and the summoning from primal avatar. You loose time casting the summoning. Id rather they just fixed the AI.

 

[droid327]

In this implementation, do the summons actually have HP and defensive stats? Can they be killed before their duration expires? Can they lose aggro? Can they draw aggro from multiple mobs, or only the target?

I worry that having them be infinite-hate aggro sponges may be far more useful than anything they actually *do*

Also...this just effectively makes them DOTs. Casters already have DOTs. Considering how many different damage types there are, I would expect that there's only one summon that makes sense for a given caster at a given level - Fire casters would summon a Fire elemental, e.g., since thats what they have spellpower for. I dont know if that really defines Summoner gameplay, especially when you're limited to 1 at a time. For the other 9 seconds, you're still just going to be slinging Fire spells like a typical Fire nuker.

 

[Aragadi]

In this implementation, do the summons actually have HP and defensive stats? Can they be killed before their duration expires? Can they lose aggro? Can they draw aggro from multiple mobs, or only the target?

I worry that having them be infinite-hate aggro sponges may be far more useful than anything they actually *do*

Also...this just effectively makes them DOTs. Casters already have DOTs. Considering how many different damage types there are, I would expect that there's only one summon that makes sense for a given caster at a given level - Fire casters would summon a Fire elemental, e.g., since thats what they have spellpower for. I dont know if that really defines Summoner gameplay, especially when you're limited to 1 at a time. For the other 9 seconds, you're still just going to be slinging Fire spells like a typical Fire nuker.

The intention behind the idea was that the initial daze at the beginning of the spell would simulate the effect of sending in the wizard/druid/arti pet to draw initial aggro. I was not suggesting an actual physical game object, just animations of creatures attacking to simulate the feeling of a summoned monster. Obviously you draw aggro from these pets fairly quickly thus when you attack it would break the daze.

Yes it makes them into DOTs, I mentioned that in the op, the current state of DOTs in the game is quite sad, this idea simulates the feeling of sending a summoned creature in to initiate combat, while adding a dot element to casters that could be customized to your build and scale well.

If a Fire caster were to slot in a summon effect that dealt physical damage it could be an alternative damage source to Fire immune mobs, giving an effective option to replace the immunity stripping effects 1/2 the player base seems to hate. Especially if the spells scale well into epics.

I don't think daze effects are especially broken anywhere in the game, but the small amount of time it can buy you in tight situations could be very useful. I highly doubt it would completely replace a tank in right reaper or raids though in that is where you see infinite hate sponges being problematic. At best it would be a time buffer that would allow a heal to go off I think.

 

[Blunt Hackett]

The Shard of Xoriat clickie has a mindflayer and a chaos beholder that both have some nice cc. The render isn't bad either, tanky especially when buffed with spells, feats, and certain abilities in the Primal Avatar ED. Their's also the Epic and Legendary Wolf Whistles with good summons. The old Dryad Elder was awesome because she could heal you. I'm bummed they nerfed her to stay in one area. We need better options for summoning, not the good ones nerfed in their usefulness.

I wish they'd revamp spell summons to be better balanced and useful. They really suffer from the power creep. They shouldn't require clickies, feats, Primal Avatar, etc to be viable. I don't expect them to contribute to the kill count much, but they should be able to take a beating and contribute to the battle better without relying on buffs and character builds that support summons at the expense of the character improvement. I doubt they will ever be worked on though.

 

[NightHiker]

Currently summoning monsters in DDO isn't effective at any level of gameplay. Apparently, AI issues will not be improving any time soon given the insistence of the devs on punishing players with ever-increasing dungeon alert penalties rather than doing AI work. So I had a thought today on how to improve the situation as I was playing a wizard alt of mine.

There's a bit of ambiguity in your post as you speak of summons but use the pet skeleton as an example.

I think the pets can be managed well enough with a bit of experience on how to handle the hire bar (pressing "ctrl + command gives the order to all hires/pets at the same time, for example). Sure, better AI would be great, but they're generally alright if you put the effort into learning how to micronanage them - not a play style for everyone, though.

The summons biggest issue in my view (aside from being too weak at level outside of a few options from clickies) is that you cannot unsummon them once they're out. We need a "unsummon" button the same way we have one for ending charms, as not being able to control them makes even the useful ones only good situationaly (mostly when you don't need to be stealthy and/or worry about aggroing mobs and at end fights).

I like to solo with hires and summons at level cap, and they hold up reasonably well up to r8s and sometimes even 10s. But you do need to build for that. With both summons and hires/pets, if you use the Primal destiny mantle and hire/summon enhancements, plus the Magus boost and enough threat reduction, the legendary ones can be quite useful - just summon them when needed, at the harder fights. They'll even tank bosses for a while and actually keep the aggro so you can concentrate on the nuking without worrying about getting hit. That's only really feasible at levels 30+ though.

Having some universal support for summons, though, would be great - Maybe a Universal enhancement tree, so more types of builds can have them be useful thru the whole leveling process - that would make them great tools for solo players or duos/small groups, even without an AI pass.

Cheers,
NH

 

[seph1roth5]

I don't think it's possible to fix summon/pet/hireling AI without a massive overhaul of AI in general, and I don't know that that's feasible. They can clearly tweak things like how far they follow you and when they notice you, but not sure they have anyone that can actually make a whole new system.

The primal avatar summons are nice because they go off your stats. I think they use your spellpower and add your stat (modifier?) to their dcs or something? So if summons worked that way, they'd scale as you leveled and wouldn't be complete crap.

Another option would be to have multiple roles summons could play while still being short duration. So say...summon monster 5. You could summon an earth elemental that would draw aggro and only try to earthgrab stuff, or a bearded devil that functioned like an aoe damage spell. Every 2-3 sec it would teleport and poke something, but wouldn't be targetable. Or you could summon an umbral warg that...uh...umbral stuff sucks lol, but I guess it could...do lower damage than the devil but do some sort of debuff.

Or maybe they could be reworked to be like the falconer bird. They're "active" but don't actually do anything until you get in combat. Still leads to AI and pathing issues, so I'd mix it with the more specific role-type summons I just suggested. But this would let them have long durations.

option 3 would be to have them be bigger and shorter, ala final fantasy. More like the primal avatar ones with bigger damage and spells, but not quite as sustainable, so longer cooldowns.

I'm talking about completely changing the way they work but not really needing to mess with AI much, since few will actually be targetable. And the ones that are would just be like an arti turret

 

[droid327]

Here's what I think is what it'll take:

- separate summons and their bonuses from hires and pets. It needs to be built in its own ecosystem for balance.

- one persistent summon only. Number of summons can't be a major force multiplier or the whole thing falls apart. Can be attacked and killed.

- temp summons (~12 sec), with a cap that increases as you level up cores (but only to like 3 maybe), having different effects/damage. Cannot be attacked.

- various short term (~6 sec) boosts to summon efficacy, which would be the actual rotational skills in between summoning

I don't think people who want summoner would be satisfied with only falconry style cosmetic minions, and I don't think dot caster is a mechanic that will be rewarding to play in ddo. You need one "real" pet style summon, but no more than that. Balancing force multipliers is the one big issue that comes before everything else.

 

[Memnir]

Currently? They've always been hot garbage.
They'll never be fixed enough to be relevant, beyond a self-punitive flavor build. The game devs have had since 2006 (2005, if you include all the complaints about them being bad on the closed beta forums) to fix Summons - and they've never done so. And they won't now. Summons will never be meta. Never even be good, for that matter.

 

[Misadventure]

The Shard of Xoriat clickie has a mindflayer and a chaos beholder that both have some nice cc. The render isn't bad either, tanky especially when buffed with spells, feats, and certain abilities in the Primal Avatar ED. Their's also the Epic and Legendary Wolf Whistles with good summons. The old Dryad Elder was awesome because she could heal you. I'm bummed they nerfed her to stay in one area. We need better options for summoning, not the good ones nerfed in their usefulness.

I wish they'd revamp spell summons to be better balanced and useful. They really suffer from the power creep. They shouldn't require clickies, feats, Primal Avatar, etc to be viable. I don't expect them to contribute to the kill count much, but they should be able to take a beating and contribute to the battle better without relying on buffs and character builds that support summons at the expense of the character improvement. I doubt they will ever be worked on though.

The old dryad needs to shut UP man.