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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
The summoner/Necromancer
nick10281
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.
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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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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Jk the alive one is way more frightening and immersionbreaking
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.
(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.
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.
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
I mean if that came true, that would make summoner really op xD
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
glen is a whiny ***** 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
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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