Summoner Class Design- What the people want?

ArchivedUser

This post is all theorycrafting on the summoner class design and what I personally would like to see.

First off I would like to list out the types of summoner classes you see in other games.

Zerg Summoner: Has little control over summons but is constantly summoning more and more pets. Generally rotates around a builder and spender combo system, with a goal of maintaining as many summonses as possible.

Companionship Summoner: Only has one pet in which most of the summoner's abilities rotate around. Some things you see with this type of summoner are riding pet, controlling pet through a spell or becoming the pet. Summoner generally supports pet.

Support Summoner: Generally only has a few pets. Mostly AI controlled. Pet supports summoner rather than summoner supporting pet. Support could just damage the same target or be giving buffs to the summoner for his own damaging abilities.

No ‘pets’ Summoner: Doesn’t use a pet but summons other objects or affects to help him in battle. Things such as totems, weapons, defensive tools, etc.

These four arch-types are what summoner classes fall into. I personally enjoy all of these styles and with the complexity of the Ashes class system, I think they can incorporate all four into their class system, giving a wide range of play style, making the summoner the master hybrid.

This second section I am going to talk about how a summoner with no augments should play, IMO.

• Summoner should be able to tame, learn to summon or have baseline a wide range of summons (pets, elementals, totems, etc.)

• Have a few base offensive and defensive abilities that are used as filler.

• The majority of spells should be used to enhance the summons.

• Enhancements should share CDs making the choice meaningful and not just buff bot.

• Have a very large selection of abilities that affect your summons.

Now the final section I will go through the augments and how I think they should affect the summoner.

• Fighter(Wild Blade): Support Summoner. Where the summoner’s base abilities are melee and summons a variety of weapons to help in battle.

• Tank(Brood Warden): Companionship Summoner, where you have one main summon in which you buff and heal it to maximize its duration.

• Rogue(Shadowmancer): Support Summoner. Where the summoner's base abilities are stealthy and melee, has a large range of crowd control in which the pet combos or enables.

• Ranger(Beastmaster): Zerg Summoner. Summoning a large variety of pets to crowd control enemies and put out damage from afar.

• Mage(Spellmancer): Companionship Summoner with range abilities enhancing a pet to use elemental abilities.

• Summoner(Conjurer): Companionship Summoner. Uses a variety of enhancements to meld the summon into whatever is required.

• Cleric(Necromancer): No ‘pet’ summoner. Uses totems, match with enhancement abilities to summon in fields of death and life. Uses ‘leech’ing pets to take life from enemies and spread it to his group.

• Bard(Enchanter): Support Summoner. Summons a variety of instruments and totems to enhance his party to maximize their utility.

ArchivedUser

These are first thoughts on the summoner class design on what I would like to see. Please post anything of your thoughts on how you would like the summoner to play or any tell me what about my design you enjoyed or disliked.

ArchivedUser

I'm not so sure on beastmaster being a zerg over companionship.With tamable beasts in the wild, Warcraft hunter is the closest equivalent I can think of. I'm not totally opposed to them summoning many beasts at once though, so long as we have control over the appearances used for those summons.

ArchivedUser

I would have thought wild blade would be a zerg summoner. Have 6 or 7 sharp objects flying around at enemies.

ArchivedUser

I imagined shadowmancer to summon shadow clones of itself that are relatively weak themselves but are extremely fast and the player can switch their body between clones to reposition in a fight. Something like zed from League of legends. 

Also i would prefer if summoners had a plant path instead of animals or elementals only. Something like summoning a healing tree or a thorny vine plant that attacks and can cc enemies. Maybe something complex like using plant summons in a wet environment gives the plants extra life boost or using them in a fiery climate like near a volcano gives them a damage boost but decaying health as a downside. 

Also by summoning elementals do we mean something like this? 




Maybe elemental summoners can have a fusion option and can fuse different elementals and make them stronger? Those pictures are from a browser mmo i used to play as a kid.

ArchivedUser

Nexromancer using totems sounds dumb. Don’t bring something from PoE here, totems are abstract and have nothing to do with being a necromancer.

Necromancers are;
- Undead
- Immune to certain living effects
- Immune to positive healing 
- Heal off negative energy
- Use the dead around then to do their work
 
Heres my take.
- Make the necromancer reanimate mobs in the dungeon to fight for them.
- The maximum number of summons increase as they level, specialization, and gear.
- Don’t receive positive energy and instead have their own healing spells and can heal other Undead, their summons and themselves, which also damage living targets.
- Number if Summons should be lower and sacrifice a hoard over reliable, unique and fun summons.

ArchivedUser

This is my idea for the game overall an progression, but I feel like the summoner should be able to learn summons from their interactions in the world rather than leveling up and learning how to summon something bigger out of no where.

Make players go and hunt down summon spells by killing certain creatures or performing something. Have other stronger more unique summons be restricted to their secondary class too. I.e. necromatic summons. Skeleton, work, wraith exc.

ArchivedUser

@RiverBird

I ignored the names of all the augments when coming up with theories due to I didn't want to influence what I thought the design should be.

And Steven, from what I understand, is against the horde summoning style where you just have tons of AIs following you around. I'm inclined to also dislike this style of play as it generally is just too much on a screen.

I would prefer the cleric augment to give more of a leeching type summoner where the damage you output heals you and your party. Totem was just an example of how that could be achieved.

Also, the idea of reviving mobs just isn't viable in so many situations. Such as PvP single target bosses, etc. Anything where there isn't a reliable amount of mobs to kill to refresh your summons. I'm actually disappointed they named the cleric augment necromancer, due to people are going to want the DIII horde of skeletons and creature style of play, which is extremely low skill cap and just based around AI play.

ArchivedUser

So one summon at level one and progressing to 3-4 summons following you is too much...

Every individual has their taste I guess, it’s just my personal opinion that a necromancer should play like a necromancer lol.

D&D is the truest necromancer and my opinion of the two renditions of necromancers in MMO’s are EQ1’s necromancer and DDO because it’s literally D&D.

If they weren’t fond of AI then surely there’s someway to make it work. Well just have to wait for a game to come out when they do lol.

ArchivedUser

It would be cool if Necromancers have an ability that allows them to temporarily resurrect a dead player to fight as a undead minion. 

ArchivedUser

When I hear brood, I think of Starcraft's Zerg for example. The only reason why I was even remotely considering Brood Warden was because in my brain, my fantasy I was summoning hordes of creatures, which all die in one hit, but kept aggro. And I'd have to cycle through them like crazy to make sure they all have my zerg brood attacking them.

Needless to say, I prefer a many many summons type system. I always feel more like a summoner then rather than having one or two stronger summons.

ArchivedUser

whatever I say is just whatever I wanna see in “my” ideal necromancer class that may or may not align with what the developers but.

I want a necromancer with undead forms that have different buffs and debuffs. Ghost, Lich, zombie, exc. unaffected by positive healing, disease immunities and other effects on the living.

Heal via negative energy that damages goes, heals other undead allies (run a party of necromancers) and be able to heal your pet(s).

Have an arsenal of debuff as control spells that are just very oppressing in general, fears, snares, curses exc, instant kill spells.

And the only touchy subject which is the actual summon via the summoning class... I’d settle for an array of single beefy pet summons that tune to more specific play styles, maybe the pet behaves diffferently when you use certain spells on enemies. Seek out feared targets.

ArchivedUser

Anyways, to actually contribute to this post’s theory crafting, im a huge fan of these points and really want these incorperated into the game.

• Summoner should be able to tame, learn to summon or have baseline a wide range of summons (pets, elementals, totems, etc.)

• The majority of spells should be used to enhance the summons.

Just about every game on the market has vertical progression, games are more frequently coming out with horizontal progression but I want to see more progression from discovery and exploration.

The point about learning how to cast new summons. Having summons be learned by summoners by traveling the world and visiting locations where they can learn these spells. As nodes advance, perhaps new summon spells could be learned from new locations exc. and I really want this discoverable progression incorporated into all the classes.

mostly because it’s the biggest incentive to explore the world, everyone wants to make their character unique, and stronger, and nothing makes traveling the world more entertaining than embarking on the player’s own quest to obtain secret power.

ArchivedUser

Anyways, to actually contribute to this post’s theory crafting, im a huge fan of these points and really want these incorperated into the game.

• Have a few base offensive and defensive abilities that are used as filler.

• The majority of spells should be used to enhance the summons.

Just about every game on the market has vertical progression, games are more frequently coming out with horizontal progression but I want to see more progression from discovery and exploration.

The point about learning how to cast new summons. Having summons be learned by summoners by traveling the world and visiting locations where they can learn these spells. As nodes advance, perhaps new summon spells could be learned from new locations exc. and I really want this discoverable progression incorporated into all the classes.

mostly because it’s the biggest incentive to explore the world, everyone wants to make their character unique, and stronger, and nothing makes traveling the world more entertaining than embarking on the player’s own quest to obtain secret power.

ArchivedUser

I just really wanna see different models being summoned depending on the subclass. Like a summoner/bard might have instruments, whereas summoner/ranger might have wolves

ArchivedUser

I just hope we see a healthy balance between being too dependant on the summon and the summoner not needing to utilize the summon at all.

ArchivedUser

@RiverBird your concept of traveling to discover new summons and stuff is cool and all and i would love to see it, but its extremely unfair to every other class. Other classes won't have the same exploration incentives and not to mention summoners being rather weak until they discover some things whereas other classes will just grind and level. It would be nice for every class to have some sort of exploration incentive but not at the cost of balancing issues. Like summoners can learn new things by exploring and such but it shouldn't mean a summoner early game is weak or these new things are super strong, just unique. In that same line of thought mages can find hidden spell books with the ability to teach 1 unique ability. Warriors or rogues can discover ancient and lost combat abilities (something like secret moves of martial arts) and etc. However i think this might be too problematic to implement. Maybe be a part of an expansion where every player has slots for hidden abilities but just have to find them in the world. But something like this would feel more natural and organic if given at game release which i just don't see happening.

ArchivedUser

I think that having unique summons out in the wide wide world would be a good thing. All summoners would have basic summons that they are taught in school, pre subclass, but once the subclass  is gained. Questlines would appear in locations and you would follow the quest to the locations that will exchange/change your basic summon/s to rreflect the subjob that you chose. 

All summoners should have more than one choice of summon however the amount they can control at one time would be reflected by their sub. Those who sub summoner would also gain a quest to unlock a summoner influenced skill. Like a warrior would gain a ghost blade that would attack after the warrior attacks. The bard would have a instrument that hovers beside him playing a song of the Bard's choice delivering an AoE buff/debuff. 

However the main skills and such wouldn't be weak on their own but finding such things in the wild would had Flavor to the class. Most of the stuff influencing the characters would be found in the skill trees.

ArchivedUser

@VoidShadow that’s why I mentioned I didn’t just want something like that implemented into just summoning, but rather all the classes.

All games, character progression is tied to grinding, leveling, your standard vertical progressin, your slight variety and build creation with augments or horizontal progression but lack any kind of progression souly from traveling and exploring.

EQNext had promised this concept, where certain classes could be obtained by assisting certain NPC faction. I believe certain abilities could be found in the world and in general, exploring and leaving your mark on certain parts of the world gave you something in return.

You could easily see this with obtaining spells, items, classes, maybe things such as becoming a vampire, Wearwokf, Lich exc. that provide you with build unique build trees and abilities. Leveling in certain factions earned you new valuable spells exc.

ArchivedUser

I'm a huge fan of summoner jobs and it's normally my go to job after healer.

I would love to see a variety of summonable minions (and it looks like that will happen with the range of main/sub combinations around summoner). Ideally I'd like to see pets that would level up with you, learn new skills (maybe even have skill points/stat points/skill choices of their own) and maybe change appearance as you customise them.

However, I feel that that may prove difficult to balance for combat. But I love the idea of not being stuck with just one pet and having the ability to change pets on the fly to suit the situation I'm in at any givene moment.

For example, maybe I specced one pet to be more tanky for solo purposes and one for buffing when I'm grouped. 

ArchivedUser

Summoners are seriously boring in most games where they simply summon some pets/monsters and let them fight, I would really like if summoners could summon 'parts' e.g. a huge fist from the sky would be instead of summoning an entire giant it only summons a 'part' of it's body for a quick attack. 

ArchivedUser

Some of the Arts on this page are amazing, and i really am interested in what the summoners pets would look like.
I hope we get a chance to see something soon.

ArchivedUser

ArchivedUser

The EQNext design had a spell called Unsummon, so I was hoping to be the world's greatest Unsummoner.
Being the bane of the world's greatest Zerg Summoner would be a blast.

@AutumnLeaf has me thinking of RWBY. 

ArchivedUser

ArchivedUser

Summoner could be real bland, with the second class only determining the type of abilities and look of the pet(s) of the class.  For example, Guarding as a sub, the pet can tank, Bard as a sub the pet can support, Cleric as a sub pet can heal, etc...  This makes the Summoner like they said, the class that can fill in any hole, but sounds kinda bleh. 

Instead, I want a Blade summoner incorporating melee into their abilities versus the pet simply becoming a melee dps pet.  Example, the pet gains some melee stuff to their abilities and so does the summoner's abilities.  So you have a summoner that has a slightly greater focus on melee dmg by switching a ranged spell to a melee ranged ability that does more dmg and a pet ability that now causes a rend.

ArchivedUser

I'd definitely like to see the summoner pulling from their adventures, discovering the secrets behind particular summons, and gaining powerful buffs/debuffs from the presence of these summoned beings. I really like suggestions in this thread where the summoner can also summon and manipulate objects in the world. I think this would add some very interesting dynamics and utility to the class - perhaps a form of telekinesis?

Above all, I think it needs to feel completely distinct from the other classes. There's no point having a wizard sat behind a pet, or a warrior with a tiger at his side if that's all it is. The summoned pets need to have interesting abilities, offer unique buffs/debuffs, and create a combat environment where both player and pet are of value.

ArchivedUser

Necromancers are some of my favourite kinds class. That said, I found it has only really been done well in EQ2. 

ArchivedUser

Your idea of:

• Companion Summoner 
• Support Summoner

Sounds very " Themepark-like MMO " - it doesn't leave much room for creativity. Specifically, the Companion Summoner reminds me of BDO Summoner. Maybe change it to ... " Multi-Companion Summoner " ? 

The other two seems more SandBox-like MMO - which could lead for more lee-way for creativity.

All-in-all, the categories seems a bit narrow-minded, and i personally think it should be more broadened. In other words ...

if you only suggest 4 Categories to branch out with, then there won't be that many choices. And then the Summoner class will be stale.

ArchivedUser

I believe that the Summoner should have alot of forethought put into the design in order for it to be more robust & up to the player individually

Rather than it being decided at the Character Creation Screen... let the Journey unfold, and you can choose which ever path you want along the way - making tweaks that'll even further add diversity to your gameplay style.compared to others

• From what i can tell, you idea seems that they'll be far less diversity. And other players will only " look different " as opposed to " mechanically different " gameplay-wise. Or course why not both ?

I'm not sure if you ever saw my version of Summoners, but it's REALLY worth taking a look into - in my opinion the Build-up for an Archetype plays an important role into this too. And nice to have an idea as to how everything could tie into the Archetype nicely

https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/33995/how-do-you-imagine-the-summoner/p1


Only problem is that, we really need to see the first iteration of the Summoner Archetype as opposed to imagining it. 

Hope devs remember 

ArchivedUser

I'm hoping the Summoner has more uses than just having a pet.  Most classes have some type of CC ability that affects humanoids.  I would like the Summoner to be able to Fear/ Slow / Confuse NPC animals. 
Also it would be cool if only a Summoner could heal the the Beast races (Tolnar?)
That's just a weird thought.