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Summoner endgame problem
Anub
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
Hello everyone,
this might be a question targeted to class design team, but anyones ideas and opinion are welcome of course!
Anyone who in Lineage 2 played any of the summoner classes (I myself was a PS guy:) ) will remember the painful realization that eventually they will never be on par with other classes, because they summons didn't scale of gear, but of skill level only, compared to other dps classes which had dmg scaling of both gear and skill level.
I wonder how devs plan to address this problem in ashes, to ensure summoners are still competitive in endgame content when other players start to run around with best is slot gear.
this might be a question targeted to class design team, but anyones ideas and opinion are welcome of course!
Anyone who in Lineage 2 played any of the summoner classes (I myself was a PS guy:) ) will remember the painful realization that eventually they will never be on par with other classes, because they summons didn't scale of gear, but of skill level only, compared to other dps classes which had dmg scaling of both gear and skill level.
I wonder how devs plan to address this problem in ashes, to ensure summoners are still competitive in endgame content when other players start to run around with best is slot gear.
4
Comments
Maybe summons will scale with gear.
I have no idea. Good question!
Probably a good question for the next Livestream. They will have one next friday. Keep an eye out for the QnA thread that should be popping up soon and ask your question in there.
Summoners only work in PVE if their minions are RDPS, and buffers.
For example Warlock in WoW.
And in PVP summoner minion/minions should be based on skills they use to stunt players and so on.
Maybe you could take power from dead creatures and give it to your summon if you're a necromancer or maybe you could create some sort of Build-a-bear Monster out of the parts of dead creatures you've taken?
Maybe you could take the best part about each creatures and keep breeding them to create more and more powerful beasts to have by your side as a beastmaster?
It might be difficult to implement some of these ideas and it might be venturing away from the class fantasy of summoning random powerful minions but it would be a pretty cool RPG experience imo.
You can't really respec out of summoner skills, as summer is a core class. So if you want to summon, you are a summoner, and your skills will be based around summons. There's plenty of examples of summon/pet systems working both in PvE and PvP. Using Warcraft as an example, Fel Hunter and Succubus pets had among the highest player kill counts in the game because of how powerful they were in PvP.
Yea I wanted to tell that.
There are three main ways I've seen it tackled.
The first is to alter pet stats based on a percentage of the summoners stats. This is the easiest way to do it, as the pet gets stronger as the character gets better gear.
The second way I have seen is for pets to have their own gear slots. This is significantly more fun for the summoner, but does mean they spend more on gear than other classes.
The third is for the summoner to be able to upgrade their summon ability directly, so it summons a more powerful pet. This gives the summoner another upgrade path which can be annoying, but works well in games where all players have similar ability upgrades.
Any of these three work, though there may well be other ways to do it as well. I am sure Intrepid will come up with something.
Probably streaming EverQuest...
50lv summons skills upgrade.
Also, nobody likes summoners for raiding. Why would I want my screen clustered with your 'friends'?
You made to conscious choice to pick a class that is GREAT for ez solo or small group progress. Why should you be rewarded in all ascpects of the game?
As a fighter I know I wont get a raid slot since archers and nukers can outdps me.
I dont complain, Ill join the PvP group that guards the raid party from other guilds.
This is... excuse the french, a pretty shitty attitude, in my opinion.
And doesn't really have to be the case besides.
First, in the majority of MMOs I can remember, melee dps outDPS'd ranged dps due to the danger of actually being in melee range. It's a balance of safety at that point.
Second, summoner doesn't have to be pants-on-head levels of safety leveling. And besides that, with subclass augmentations, summoners could play as much a support role as anything else, leading to a perfectly valid raid slot.
Does that mean the standard group size is 8? Lots of games anything more than 5-6 is a raid.
Yes. He specifically said that the content is geared for groups of 8, 16, and 40(5 groups of 8) and everything will be balanced with that in mind.
You are not excused. Your choice to feel attacked.
Seriously, learn to disagree without thinking that some1 has a go at you.
And no, brawlers (classes with PvP survival abilities and CC tied to dmg) aren't good dps, unless you talk about homogenized class systems like ESO, in which the devs toss a coin on who's gona be a good DPS every 3 months.
It's not really up to you. If you think the raiding content is going to be as handholdy and toxic as WoW, as to even allow you to be like "No. You're a summoner, leave." .. You have another thing coming. With an attitude like that you will be targeted by everyone and their dogs (haha, get it?)..
I never thought you were personally attacking me, nor am I personally offended. I'm quite capable of thinking someone has a shitty attitude without thinking it is being directed at me.
Nor was I talking about ESO, I'm thinking more classic wow, where fury warriors and rogues are top dog by a huge margin, or EQ, again with rogues and monks as well. Saying "Fighter" doesn't specify that you mean a "class with pvp survival abilities and CC tied to damage," so sorry for not understanding your implied "bruiser" role.
Post this in the dev stream thread. They may answer it on Friday if they see it.
Edit: I copied it over for you in the discussion thread, maybe they will see it and get you an answer.
I want to point out that @Healawin is correct when he/she says that it's too soon to discuss what a class's role in party/raid will be since we dont even know the end game design for content and classes will look like
The point that I originally wanted to raise is that there were games in the past where summoner type of class fell of in dps in the end-end-game scenarios, either because of general lack of dps or utility, and I just wanted to know if there were already any ideas on paper how to prevent that.
The argument that you picked a class and now have to deal with the fact that nobody wants to play with you is silly, and overall poor design in general, which really creates buff pet classes that nobody actively plays. imho.
I agree this would be a good question for the next stream. I would assume that all of the classes have at this point a general concept that is in works, which devs could share.
I think there should be a reference somewhere about Summoner's Summons scaling from the players power, not the level of the skill or anything like that. So if a caster Summon scales from the players intelligence and wisdom stats or whatever then the more the player has and is stronger, the stronger the summon.
I'm sure they will think of a way to make the class and it's most important skills (the actual summons) relevant in all parts of the game.
It seems really bizarre to me that such a thing wasn't fixed in a patch or something.
The second thing is, based on secondary class. and what the Nodes unlocked would grant obtainable elit mobs. For necro a Lick, or DK, for beastmaster like a chimera etc...
ofc I think for Spellmancer/ Conjurer you'll alwas be needed in end game for sieges. Based on the video revealed so far, there is a summoner type that can summon portable walls as defffens for the attacink side. I guess it's one of them.
Also i think the Enchanter will be a support class with buffs for a groups, s if not a must have, but a valid support for endgame.
As for the others idk yet.
There will be high level content, but that is just a scaling decision.
That's just your opinion and not a good one. Everquest and Everquest 2 (specifically 2) did summoners right.
I would assume, that these abilities scale with your most prominent attribute.