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The summoner/Necromancer

nick10281nick10281 Member, Alpha Two
What do you want with your "Pet"?
If its humanoid id like to be able to equip it items. the whole nine yards. min maxing my character and another at the same time might be a tad much but it sounds like fun to me.
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Comments

  • DevorandomDevorandom Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I just really want to control a horde of undead, or as close to that as is possible. Equipping the summons would be interesting but I feel like that would be really hard to balance. Either it would be too strong or too weak. But it could be interesting to have a profession based around pet/summon equipment, but that sounds like an idea for expansions.
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  • nick10281nick10281 Member, Alpha Two
    i dont want the GW 2 Necromancer. honestly i want the npc creation from Overlord where you can make them and customize them as much as you want. i would make my own dungeons then. Make my crafting skill go way up high to make valid rewards. etc etc
  • VarkunVarkun Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    devorandom wrote: »
    I just really want to control a horde of undead, or as close to that as is possible. Equipping the summons would be interesting but I feel like that would be really hard to balance. Either it would be too strong or too weak. But it could be interesting to have a profession based around pet/summon equipment, but that sounds like an idea for expansions.

    Well it has been confirmed there will be barding and other equipable crafted items for mounts and I think even for pets so why not summons too it's not that far of a stretch. Mounts and pets can be summoned from your backpack so why not with a summoners creatures as well. Can a summoner have different types of summons and the ability to customize them with both gear and attributes.
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  • JjampongJjampong Member, Alpha Two
    edited May 2019
    Horde of undead here too please >:)
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  • AmistAmist Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Undead stufferton (Sufferton)

    ..

    Jk the alive one is way more frightening and immersionbreaking
  • BloodlessBloodless Member, Braver of Worlds, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I really like the idea of the way necromancer worked in Diablo 2 except with some extra spice. Kill an enemy and bring them back. That creature remains your pet for a certain period of time. Maybe you can only bring back dead enemies who were already living and are only of a certain quality. For instance, you couldn't raise a dragon from the dead because it's legendary, but maybe you can bring back a corrupted dwarf that you killed and it retains all of its abilities before death. To me, this would make summoner unique because every summoner would have a different summoned pet. I think this could be really fun in PvP, to raise the corpse of a slain PC and they're your pet for a while.
  • DamoklesDamokles Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I think that summons will be expendable most of the time....
    Equipping them would be a bit too op in my opinion xD
    Imagine, a summoner with full equipped summons would have the fighting force of a full team (depending of how many summons you are actually capable of sumoning at once)

    Also Necromancers are Summoner/Cleric i believe, so i would think that their summons can explode, healing allies and damaging enemies.
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  • Wandering MistWandering Mist Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I'm not too worried about that kind of thing. All I care about is that the pet controls are responsive, allowing proper micromanagement of the pet. This can make a huge difference in how the pet class feels.
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  • AzryilAzryil Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I would like to see the pet be the primary source of damage for summoners and have many of the summoners abilities be used for managing the pets through commands to attack and buffs to empower pets in various ways.
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  • DamoklesDamokles Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    @wanderingmist you should worry about proper pathfinding for the minions ;D
    (And what else then passive, agressive, defensive would you need for your pet control?)
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  • AzryilAzryil Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Damokles wrote: »
    And what else then passive, agressive, defensive would you need for your pet control?

    Attack a specific target, move to a specific location, player control of pet abilities rather than auto-cast.
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  • Rem_Rem_ Member
    Didn't Steven mention in the live stream that he wants you to really be able to customize your pet? I think he did~!!!! n.n He mentioned that he wants it to be pretty in depth, so if you have a really unique awesome creation you made people could recognize it's you by the pet you have. Those are almost direct words from him~!!! ^-^ I'm pretty excited honestly, having that many options for your summoner pet instead of just a few preset things...! I love it~! <3
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  • AtamaAtama Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Varkun wrote: »
    devorandom wrote: »
    I just really want to control a horde of undead, or as close to that as is possible. Equipping the summons would be interesting but I feel like that would be really hard to balance. Either it would be too strong or too weak. But it could be interesting to have a profession based around pet/summon equipment, but that sounds like an idea for expansions.

    Well it has been confirmed there will be barding and other equipable crafted items for mounts and I think even for pets so why not summons too it's not that far of a stretch. Mounts and pets can be summoned from your backpack so why not with a summoners creatures as well. Can a summoner have different types of summons and the ability to customize them with both gear and attributes.

    The question is whether or not those items are cosmetic only. I suspect that they are. So if the desire is to equip pets with gear that improves their stats, I’m not sure that’s going to be in the game.
     
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  • NagashNagash Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    The summoner is one of the must important classes to me in this game but if I was going to build be necro summon list it would be like this

    Summon grave guard
    The Grave Guard, or Wights as they are sometimes called, are the Undead corpses of long-past heroes and warlords that have been arisen from their graves with a partial flicker of the original soul trapped within, allowing the Undead to fight the enemies of the Necromancer that raised them with the skills and tools of his former life

    Summon a skeleton warrior form any corpses around you. For every ten levels, you may summon an additional grave guard

    Summon table
    Rouges- grave guard assassin. Twin dagger with high crit but low health with stealth
    Tank- grave guard spear and shield- heavy armour and tower shield but low damage
    Cleric - grave guard healer- Can heal undead or poison living enemies
    Fighter- grave guard greatsword- high damage and high health but light armour
    Ranger - grave guard crossbowmen - medium damage but can penetrate armour

    Ultimate Skill

    Summon Wight king
    Wight Kings were once ancient and immensely powerful warlords that had at one time occupied the lands of Verra. When imbued with dark magic, these ancient warlords rise from their crypts as Wight Kings, eyes glowing with unnatural life.

    You may summon a wright king to lead your troops into war. He has medium damage and high armour and high health. Give a 5% reduction in all damage to all undead and the summoner


    this is my dream but its unlikely to ever happen
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    The dead do not squabble as this land’s rulers do. The dead have no desires, petty jealousies or ambitions. A world of the dead is a world at peace
  • DamoklesDamokles Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    @nagash seems a bit op in my opinion ;D
    I mean if that came true, that would make summoner really op xD
    Nagash wrote: »
    Summon grave guard:
    The Grave Guard, or Wights as they are sometimes called, are the Undead corpses of long-past heroes and warlords that have been arisen from their graves with a partial flicker of the original soul trapped within, allowing the Undead to fight the enemies of the Necromancer that raised them with the skills and tools of his former life

    Summon a skeleton warrior form any corpses around you. For every ten levels, you may summon an additional grave guard

    Summon table
    Rouges- grave guard assassin. Twin dagger with high crit but low health with stealth
    Tank- grave guard spear and shield- heavy armour and tower shield but low damage
    Cleric - grave guard healer- Can heal undead or poison living enemies
    Fighter- grave guard greatsword- high damage and high health but light armour
    Ranger - grave guard crossbowmen - medium damage but can penetrate armour

    That seems a bit strong^^ Lets assume that max level will be indeed lvl50, that would mean that a summoner in this case could summon around 5 adds(extra classes) without them counting into the group size. That would mean that a max level full summoner group would be at max 40 man strong unit. In a raid that would be 200 players/adds. :D

    I think that a balanced skill set would be (if we are having around 5 class specific spells + the environment ability + ultimate in this case):

    Environment - Absorbing Miasma
    The Necromancer consumes the surrounding toxic fumes and converts them into a shield around all of his allies.

    Ultimate - Form: Death and Decay
    The Necromancer shrouds himself in a thick layer of miasma, enhancing his lifeforce and recieving the ability to use his hp as a mana substitute.
    Periodically pulses a wave of misama around the caster, infecting all enemies around him with a stacking sickness, and enhancing all damage done by the necromancer and his summons by a flat amount.

    Endow Life: Undeath
    Raises dead adds in the vicinity into undead minions. These minions will fight for the summoner for 1min or until they die again.
    When they die the undead minions explode into bone shards, inflicting the enemies around them with bleeding and a stacking sickness. (undead minions once killed, cant be raised again)

    Blood Well
    The Necromancer summons a well under him, slowly consuming the mana of allies standing in it, while healing them.
    All allies standing in the well recieve a resistance buff against physical and magical damage.

    Stolen Time
    The Necromancer can kill all of his minions at once, healing himself and all of his surrounding allies.

    Never ending Swamp
    The Necromancer summons a swamp at the point of his choosing within 30m around him. All enemies in reach will be pulled into the middle of the swamp and then slowed. Every second inside of the swamp infects them with a stacking sickness.

    Umbral Balance
    The Necromancer infects his allies and himself with a beneficial sickness, which balances the amount of mana with each of the inflicted allies for a certain amount of time.




    (All of these spells are flipped abilities from the Cleric that we have already seen ingame in demonstrations, all of these are most likely not in the game anymore but oh well^^)
    https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Cleric
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  • NagashNagash Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I did say It would never happen
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    The dead do not squabble as this land’s rulers do. The dead have no desires, petty jealousies or ambitions. A world of the dead is a world at peace
  • I presume that we will see mix of permanent and temporary pets. On top of that it would be nice to have short summons which are more like spells, and maybe some summons could possess the caster.
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  • Wandering MistWandering Mist Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Damokles wrote: »
    @wanderingmist you should worry about proper pathfinding for the minions ;D
    (And what else then passive, agressive, defensive would you need for your pet control?)

    Over the past couple of months I've been playing the summoner class in FFXIV and I eventually gave it up, as micromanaging the pet was too much of a headache. Each summoner pet has 4 unique abilities, but you can only control 3 of them (1 is always done automatically). The problem is that the pet AI is programmed to always finish whatever ability it is casting before it can cast the next spell. This means that if say you want your pet to use any of their other abilities, you have to wait until it has finished the auto casting spell first (there is a 1 second time window to do this in).

    This is very frustrating to do. For example, the tanking pet has a stun ability that I like to use to interrupt enemy spell casts, but it very rarely works because by the time I can use it, it's too late. This delay also happens if you want to change your pet's target. If the pet is in the middle of casting one of its abilities, it will finish the ability before it changes targets.
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  • AtamaAtama Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I’ve played pet classes in a lot of games. For me the most successful implementations have always been the ones that required the smallest micromanagement. You set things like aggression level, what skills you want them to use, then they do it all on their own once combat starts. You just control your own character, the pet then just has simple “attack”, “stay”, “follow” sorts of commands. That’s what I’d like to see in this game too.
     
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  • Wandering MistWandering Mist Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Atama wrote: »
    I’ve played pet classes in a lot of games. For me the most successful implementations have always been the ones that required the smallest micromanagement. You set things like aggression level, what skills you want them to use, then they do it all on their own once combat starts. You just control your own character, the pet then just has simple “attack”, “stay”, “follow” sorts of commands. That’s what I’d like to see in this game too.

    That's all well and good but when dealing with harder content, being able to get your pet to use their abilities at the right moment is very important. If for example the only CC your class has comes from your pet, you need to ensure it uses that CC at the correct time (AI very rare does this).
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  • AtamaAtama Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Atama wrote: »
    I’ve played pet classes in a lot of games. For me the most successful implementations have always been the ones that required the smallest micromanagement. You set things like aggression level, what skills you want them to use, then they do it all on their own once combat starts. You just control your own character, the pet then just has simple “attack”, “stay”, “follow” sorts of commands. That’s what I’d like to see in this game too.

    That's all well and good but when dealing with harder content, being able to get your pet to use their abilities at the right moment is very important. If for example the only CC your class has comes from your pet, you need to ensure it uses that CC at the correct time (AI very rare does this).
    The very simple solution to that is that you don’t give the pet any abilities that need to be used “at the right moment”. That includes never giving a pet a CC or interrupt. That’s a big part of the whole “no micromanagement” part of my request. Let the summoner have the skills that need strategy. The pet can be a simple, dumb tank/damage dealer/buff bot/whatever. Plenty of games have successfully pulled that off.
     
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  • Wandering MistWandering Mist Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Atama wrote: »
    Atama wrote: »
    I’ve played pet classes in a lot of games. For me the most successful implementations have always been the ones that required the smallest micromanagement. You set things like aggression level, what skills you want them to use, then they do it all on their own once combat starts. You just control your own character, the pet then just has simple “attack”, “stay”, “follow” sorts of commands. That’s what I’d like to see in this game too.

    That's all well and good but when dealing with harder content, being able to get your pet to use their abilities at the right moment is very important. If for example the only CC your class has comes from your pet, you need to ensure it uses that CC at the correct time (AI very rare does this).
    The very simple solution to that is that you don’t give the pet any abilities that need to be used “at the right moment”. That includes never giving a pet a CC or interrupt. That’s a big part of the whole “no micromanagement” part of my request. Let the summoner have the skills that need strategy. The pet can be a simple, dumb tank/damage dealer/buff bot/whatever. Plenty of games have successfully pulled that off.

    You could do that, but then I would argue that the pet is largely pointless outside of RP. For example, let's say you have a pet that deals a certain amount of dps to your target that you had no control over aside from assigning a target. If you got rid of that pet and put all the pet's dps into the player's base abilities, the gameplay would be exactly the same.

    Similarly, if you have a pet that passively buffs the party all the time whenever it is in combat, you aren't adding anything to the gameplay.

    Effects that the player have absolutely no control over are, in my opinion, terrible game design. That's why the azerite system in WoW has been such a failure for many people. Most of the azerite traits are completely passive and the only way you can tell they are doing anything is by looking at a damage meter.
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  • DamoklesDamokles Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    @wanderingmist
    The trick is to give yourself the ability, and then use the pet as a medium to use them^^
    The pet itself should not have the ability to cast any significant spells or abilities on its own (lets take abilities like swipe or bite etc out here ;D), give them to the player so he can choose when and how the pet will do them.
    I think a specific pet should have specific abilities bound to it, but the player should have total control over them, as if they where his own abilities. :D
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  • Wandering MistWandering Mist Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Damokles wrote: »
    @wanderingmist
    The trick is to give yourself the ability, and then use the pet as a medium to use them^^
    The pet itself should not have the ability to cast any significant spells or abilities on its own (lets take abilities like swipe or bite etc out here ;D), give them to the player so he can choose when and how the pet will do them.
    I think a specific pet should have specific abilities bound to it, but the player should have total control over them, as if they where his own abilities. :D

    That's exactly how most pet classes work in the games I have played, and you're right it works very well. The problem is that if you are going to do that, the abilities that are channelled through the pet need to be as responsive as your normal abilities.
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  • NagashNagash Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I really wanted to give Dave the best armour and weapons :'(
    nJ0vUSm.gif

    The dead do not squabble as this land’s rulers do. The dead have no desires, petty jealousies or ambitions. A world of the dead is a world at peace
  • DamoklesDamokles Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    @nagash Only Glen deserves the very best of armour and weaponry! And if not Glen then at least Steve, both fought bravely on the field of battle! :D
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  • NagashNagash Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    edited May 2019
    Damokles wrote: »
    @nagash Only Glen deserves the very best of armour and weaponry! And if not Glen then at least Steve, both fought bravely on the field of battle! :D

    glen is a whiny ***** and Steve is always rattled for some reason
    nJ0vUSm.gif

    The dead do not squabble as this land’s rulers do. The dead have no desires, petty jealousies or ambitions. A world of the dead is a world at peace
  • DamoklesDamokles Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Nagash wrote: »
    Damokles wrote: »
    @nagash Only Glen deserves the very best of armour and weaponry! And if not Glen then at least Steve, both fought bravely on the field of battle! :D

    glen is a whine ***** and Steve is always rattled for some reason

    Oh yeah? Dave is always leaking on the floor!
    a6XEiIf.gif
  • NagashNagash Member, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    Damokles wrote: »
    Nagash wrote: »
    Damokles wrote: »
    @nagash Only Glen deserves the very best of armour and weaponry! And if not Glen then at least Steve, both fought bravely on the field of battle! :D

    glen is a whine ***** and Steve is always rattled for some reason

    Oh yeah? Dave is always leaking on the floor!

    to be fair that my fault by giving him red wine
    nJ0vUSm.gif

    The dead do not squabble as this land’s rulers do. The dead have no desires, petty jealousies or ambitions. A world of the dead is a world at peace
  • lunarskylunarsky Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
    I'd like to see abilities work through the pet as others have described. Meaning, the pet only does basic attacks on its own. The summoner has to instruct the pet to do anything of significance and those pet skills exist on the summoner's bar (With the skill bar changing with every pet summoned to avoid having 56 skill bars clogging up the screen). The "pokemon" model more or less. I think Aion did something like this but I haven't played in a while so I may be remembering that incorrectly.

    Another model for summoner skills I have seen and liked was in Lost Ark where the skill summons a pet it does a unique skill then vanishes. There are some semi-persistent pets but they only do basic attacks.

    Some combination of the two could work. You have a persistent pet (something undead for necros, humanoid elementals for conjurers etc) that a significant portion of your skills work directly through then additional skills (perhaps the ultimate as well) that summon a pet that does something (CC or massive AoE dmg) then disappears right after so it doesn't require further micromanaging or pathing AI.

    I do not think pets should be able to equip armor/weapons they should come summoned with them (when appropriate like a LV50 Necro wight king) and get progressively stronger or more savage/powerful looking as you level up. The additionally balancing that would need to occur if they would actually equip weapons and armor would be rough as well as the all of the extra artwork that would be required seems like too much to ask for at this point. It'll be good enough if we can customize some of their base aesthetics like with animal husbandry.
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