Curse

Sniper22 · Jun 27, 2006, 06:47 PM // 18:47

Umm ya so much for the minion master. Bad idea. Let's just have a party with 8 summoners and have 10,000 little creatures running around everywhere. Think about it, it will totally be unbalanced. These seem even more powerful than a necro and they don't even require corpses.

nugzta · Jun 27, 2006, 07:09 PM // 19:09

Each summon must reduce energy pip like maintained enchantment. Some summons cause the summoner to lose energy/health or longer skill recharge penalty if the summons die/take damage/infilct damage etc.

Ian Savage · Jul 23, 2006, 07:34 AM // 07:34

Wow, been a while since i checked back here. plenty of new ideas going through peoples brains, some of which are similar to mine.

going back to my original concept, i like still like the whole idea of summons being divided into groups based upon the type of dmg/element they are based upon.
Primeval King, i love the way you think. pretty much everything you put down there fits with my idea, and works better, at the same time. a round of applause to you for being awesome. the one thing that i would add/change is to have some summons be spellcasters as opposed to direct damagers. that might fit in differently with certain attributes, or it could work something like this.
Lvl 1 Summon - Passive Effect. Spirit Type Effect that will effect enemies, allies, or both.
Lvl 2 Summon - Direct Damage. A physical attacker that Deals all Damage through direct attacks
Lvl 3 Summon - Spellcaster. A mobile summon that casts supporting/offencive spells as well as attacks physically, but deals less damage with attacks than the Lvl 2.
Lvl 4 Summon - Elite Skill - Unique - This summon has an effect that is unique to the summons associated attribute. For example, holy may be a spellcaster/passive cross that buffs and heals party members.

Trylo, not all neutral damage ignores armor. if you read the skill description of Judge's Insight, then you will notice that if specifies that "target allies attacks deal holy damage AND have +20% armor penetration"
as a result, assume that not all holy, dark and chaos damage ignore armor. that could be an effect, and as a result, the summon dealing holy/dark/chaos damage has less health, or less armor. something to balance the effect.

Sniper, as much as the idea sounds overpowered, there would be something that prevents it from being exploited. say that a summoner can have no more than 4 summons in effect at any time, no more than 3 1st level, 2 second, 1 third and 1 fourth, and in addition, as Nugzta suggests, there is a penalty. in order to summon a dark attribute summon, you are required to sacrifice health. There is then a continued health degen while the summon remains on the field. energy degen, summon health degen, set summon duration, and long cast times/recharge times are all more ways to offset the ability to have additional allies on the field. even so, there must be some way to prevent a party from bum rushing with 8 summoners and 24 lvl 1 summons. either use the above suggestion (lvl 1s are mobile rit/ranger spirit type effects) or say something like the following.

Lvl 1 summons range in level from 1-10
Lvl 2 summons range in level from 3-15
Lvl 3 summons range in level from 8-20
Lvl 4 summons range in level from 14-25

as a result, the most powerful summon party would consist of 8 summoners who each have only one summon fighting for them, and are paying some kind of a constant penalty. There are ways to balance this profession, even if they dont jump off the table at you.

curtman · Jul 24, 2006, 12:01 PM // 12:01

What about organizing the Summoner's Attributes by attack type(melee, ranged, casting) instead of element type? Doing so would allow for adding Summon Enchant, Sheena in Tales of Symphonia has the ability to enchant the weapons of allies. I am taking the original idea, adding something, and changing the organization. I do think they should have only 1 Active Summon though. I agree that Lvl1-4 would increase in energy required, cast time, and skill recharge time with skill lvl. I say nuke the health degen on the Summon, if only one is allowed to be active, then it will not live long, no saftey in numbers for it. The MM's minions do not survive long by themselves. As ya'll noted, there should be a -1 energy degen when a Summon is active.

Say:
Types of Summoned Creatures:
Melee (Appearance style of Ice and Stone Golems and the Fire things in the final Ring of Fire mission), which do element melee damage. (Attack speed of Flesh Golems).
Ranged (Appearance style of Fire, Ice Imps), which do ranged elemental damage (normal attacks like Fiend).
Elemental (Appearance style of small Ice and Stone Golems.)

Classification of Elementals:
Fire
Earth
Ice
Air
Light
Dark

Summoner Attributes:
Primary: Pact Lord - reduces the time to use summoning skill and reduces energy cost of summoning.
Melee Summon - increases the level of a Melee Summon. Points also have an effect similar to beast mastery on Melee Summon skills. (attack Similar to Flesh golem but do x element melee damage
Ranged Summon - increases the level of a Ranged Summon. Points also have an effect similar to beast mastery on Ranged Summon skills. (attack Similar to Fiend but do x element ranged damage instead of piercing)
Elemental Summon – increases the level of a Elemental Summon. Points also have an effect similar to beast mastery on Elemental Summon skills. (Cast similar to Fire/Ice Imps).
Enchantment Summon - skills which summon enchantments for the weapons and armor of allies or provide a status effect around target ally.

Description:
Summoner would be able to only have one Summon active at a time and summoning skills using energy cost only (without requiring a corpse like a necro). Summons are not stationary like Ritualist’s spirits, they are mobile like the necro's minions. When the Summoner dies, the Summon pact breaks and the Summon fades. The Summon attacks like Flesh golem, Imp, or Fiend (depending on whether it is Melee, Elemental, or ranged), and does element damage, when the Summoner is not using an Attack skill. Since the Summoner can only have one active Summon, they do not threaten the MM.

Does this appear better arranged?

Ian Savage · Aug 03, 2006, 09:36 PM // 21:36

yes and no. the classification of melee, ranged, elemental is both excellent and meh at the same time. under this classification, you can broaden the damage types you work with, seeing as how all are in every category, but you lose attack type. i actually do like your classification better, but have it work again, with all 10 dmg types. i've listed them over and over, but here we go again. Slashing, Bashing, Piercing, Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Dark, Holy, Chaos. the only problem with limiting to one summon per summoner is that there'll probably be fewer summon skills. im thinking 30 total, instead of 40.

however, as much as i would like weapon spells, (ala sheena from ToS. Loved that game) the ritualist already yoinked them. i suppose that we could ignore that, and make them more like the conjure spells that elementalists use, except maybe more available and with better effects. your arrangement is nicer, but i do prefer, the A) 10 Summon Types, and B) more unique skins. not just a blanket: This type looks like elemental golems, as much as i like the creativity.

The only thing that I'm worried about now is a party of 8 summoners. instead of a simple 8v8, its now 16v8. which is a little one-sided. solutions? the first one that comes to mind is to make summons one-time-cast, like a rez sig, and recharge with morale boost, but then the summoner is nulled in GvG unless he/she brings 2-3 summon skills. i suppose then, the summoner would need skills that heal summons based on certain circumstances. like if you're using a fire elemental, it could be something like: Heal Target Fire Summon for 20...75 points. For each foe within 33' (aggro circle. I think.....) that is on fire, heal that summon for an additional 30...54 points.

I'm just throwing things out now, and i've managed to stray farrrrrr from the original idea. the one thing that we always have to keep in mind is that b/c the game is highly PvP oriented, balancing the class is a MUST. we'll see how this works out though, eh?

curtman · Sep 06, 2006, 12:00 AM // 00:00

Been a month since your last post, any more thoughts Ian?

If ANet decided not to create a summoning profession, and say putting the concept in this topic in Rit class. They could link Spawning Power (Primary) to the health and active time of the Summon and Communing to the attack and level ability of the Summon. Treating a summon as a type of spirit, and only one summon can be active at a time. The Rit might actually be worth using then. I would rather have a Summoner profession, but if it came to no summoner or the Summoner profession integrated into Rit, I would rather have it integrated then not exist.

Alaris · Nov 27, 2006, 06:17 PM // 18:17

Clearly, people want to see a summoning class that would be balanced.

Personally, I would like to see summons that do not die with time, and can be summoned ahead of combat (unlike the necro's).

The penalty is this: add a maintenance cost. I'm not thinking of pips of degen or long casting time (though long casting time is still a good idea), but rather a % of your max energy is removed while your summon is alive (could also be a fixed amount of energy instead). So after casting yourself a small army, you find yourself with little energy left for other purposes - thus you constantly have to choose between more minions and more energy for other uses.

Different summons would have different % of max energy removal based on their usefulness. The summon primary would reduce that maintenance cost to permit building a larger army or casting stronger summons, or alternatively to free up some energy for other purposes.

Alaris · Dec 11, 2006, 04:13 PM // 16:13

More ideas on balancing the summoner.

On the issue that the summoner would be unbalanced because of numerical superiority, you already have 3 other classes with different types of "summons": ranger, necro, and ritualist. The summoner's summons would actually be somewhere in between: lasts as long as a pet, but doesn't tank as well, can't have as many as the necro's but they require less maintenance, etc.

1) Energy maintenance cost. Again, as said above, your max energy is decreased by some amount, which remains removed as long as you have the summon alive.

2) Blood maintenance cost. Same as above, but some summons might share life, taking a % off when being cast.

3) Summoning attribute. Points determine the number of summons you can have.

The nice thing about ideas #1 & 2 is that summoning weakens your character, so that you can't cast other spells as often (or you're easier to kill).

Summons vary in strength but similarly in cost. You can have many weak summons or few stronger summons. Elite summons might use up most of your summoning power.

I also think that 1 or 2 attributes dedicated to summoning is enough, the other attribute(s) should be dedicated to support functions, attack spells, etc. Perhaps a tree for shape-shifting or symbiosis would be nice as well.

moomoo12321 · Jan 05, 2007, 04:35 PM // 16:35

Honestly, didn't read all the posts regarding this build. But I'd like to post my opinion, whether or not someone posted it or not ><

Love the -1ep, limiting the summoner to about 4 summons at most. Don't know if this was stated before, but maybe if you had "stronger" monsters, they could take up 2pips instead?

So say like a Greater Demon of...Fire. yeah. fire. Standing beside that lil Ifrit of yours :P So that's 3pips gone, but only 2 summons. Say the Greater Demon carries an elite aswell, and is say, lvl 20+

Or, maybe that could be another thing? The higher the attribute, the more skills the summon gets? Maybe recieving its elite at maybe attribute 10+

Was also thinking if you were thinking of this from a FF view(you used Ifrit, so I guess you know what I'm talking about), maybe have like an elite that takes 2pips, but negates all summons after that?

So you have some super summon, but can only have one.

I don't know, but ritualist summons were a very big disappointment to me, they were more like a "ok, set down and hunker down around my spirits".

Bringing in a summoner like this would bring alot more diversity to this game I believe.

Good luck with this =D

moomoo12321 · Jan 05, 2007, 04:41 PM // 16:41

Honestly, didn't read all the posts regarding this build. But I'd like to post my opinion, whether or not someone posted it or not ><

Love the -1ep, limiting the summoner to about 4 summons at most. Don't know if this was stated before, but maybe if you had "stronger" monsters, they could take up 2pips instead?

So say like a Greater Demon of...Fire. yeah. fire. Standing beside that lil Ifrit of yours :P So that's 3pips gone, but only 2 summons. Say the Greater Demon carries an elite aswell, and is say, lvl 20+

Or, maybe that could be another thing? The higher the attribute, the more skills the summon gets? Maybe recieving its elite at maybe attribute 10+

Was also thinking if you were thinking of this from a FF view(you used Ifrit, so I guess you know what I'm talking about), maybe have like an elite that takes 2pips, but negates all summons after that?

So you have some super summon, but can only have one.

I don't know, but ritualist summons were a very big disappointment to me, they were more like a "ok, set down and hunker down around my spirits".

Bringing in a summoner like this would bring alot more diversity to this game I believe.

Good luck with this =D