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Necromancers with more then 3 summons
TwoSleepy
Member
I don't know about you but in my eyes necromancers have always been the big bad with a TON of weaker minions instead of 1-3 powerful minions. I'm really hoping that the evil side of necros will be the horde masters that they truly should be! Maybe making it as simple as "You can summon 3 weak skeletons to fight for 1 summon slot to a max of 9 total," this will make your summon comp be all the more important by picking and choosing when you want mass and when you want elite (with a mix of both if you want.)
What do you peeps think about this idea?
What do you peeps think about this idea?
2
Comments
I think more than 3 makes body blocking stupid easy. Your skeletons would therefore need to be one shottable or not body block. I dont see a point to this style therefore. Three plus a fourth from battle pet is probably almost as bad but possibly easier to balance.
So since I don't understand why one would want it I will ask you @Twosleepy what do you want to achieve with your 9 weak skeles? What mechanics would you need to make this a viable build in your eyes?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
It could work with something like a kind of unit cap to control whether they can go 'swarm' or 'big and powerful' summons for each class.
I'm going to use necromancer as an example here. Let's say I have a unit cap of 10 right now.
Zombies are one point each they're slow deal minimal damage. I select a Target hit summon zombie zombie runs out and attacks the Target.
Where as skeletons can be two points each, they are still slow but better and when skeletons come out they are armed (can even have variations based off your race humans have spear and shields, elves have archers, orcs have two-handed weapons, etc)
Then we can start to get into bigger undead things three or four points for some kind of wraith. Five or six points for some kind of ghoul. and when you use the activated ability of summoning again but you're at your cap that has the summoned creature use his ability on whatever your targeting. Example I clicked summon wraith the first time and a wraith appears at my location to start attacking whatever is hitting me, I select an enemy Target and then click the button again now the wraith uses his fear ability or something. If I have more than one of that creature on the field it would give me more than one charge to use that activated ability.
Idea being you can't open with that activated ability you have to get up to steam first and then use them throughout the fight.
Then each class can also have just one big 10 point summon of a vampire or bone golem that you can only get one of, but is definitely more powerful than all your other critters.
This would allow each summoner to have different types of play styles; for the guy that just wants a zombie horde, someone who wants a few creatures with activated abilities he needs to micromanage to optimize, and the last person who just wants a second set of hands to duo with.
You could use this style of game play with every variation of summoner flavor too with all the secondaries.
Why would they need to be one-shotable? The Necro could still cast through his minions. This would allow for me to summon a meat shield wall to hide behind while still being able to throw out damage...
Yes a fighter would be terrible against a Necro with a wall of zombies, but a mage who could lob stronger spells back would be strong against him. It's just a different rock paper scissors effect.
The main advantage of a summoner is its second hp pool. The more you split, the less hits the pool can take. The more split the more effective the body block and therefore the less effective the defense on the hp pool must be. Now put that in a game with aoe moves. What's a 10 skele necro gunna do when more than half their skeles wipe from one aoe. Hence my question to our op necro.
Its not like I want it to fail. But there needs to be some sort of gameplan that makes that strat not an instant game over. There are a lot of ways to achieve that so I am interested in what ways they want that to work out for them (and I guess you too but your going brood warden 'tank' so I doubt swarm viability intersects with your own summoner gameplan.)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
Hence why I think the unit pool is the good way to go.
A swarm of skellies would be bad against an aoe spamming fire mage, but would be great against single target rogues. Where as the the big single summons would be great against a mage and terrible against a high single target damage rogue.
Giving them the option to adapt to the game play sounds right up their alley of being the true versatile class.
Side note: we don't know that 10 skellies and 1 bone giant have the same total HP. They could easily be different and be offset by abilities or other effects...
I don't believe in game design where character select is where you win or lose a fight. Ashes does, however, so we might see that yes. I just think that way of approaching game balance will totally divorces active skill from combat outcomes and creates a game that strongly incentivizes nonengagement.
That's why I asked op the specific question I did. Because if you can make swarm necro prepared for the match up against a mage a 4-6 instead of a 3-7 or 2-8 match up without making it a 7-3 or 8-2 against Rogue, it will make for a better game all around.
You can make the answer swap to big summon, but now you have a big summon with a master unoptimized for big summons. If that's acceptable to a swarm summoner ok. But then what do they want out of that situation other than 'not dying.' Either way there needs to be a gameplan that needs to be catered to or it'll feel bad to play and I want to know what a real necro wants.
As for your side note only true total hp matters (that is hp after accounting for all relevant defense against incoming attacks.) I actually expect by neccesity 10 skeles have more hp on paper and less true hp to make up for the body blocking. So in the rogues case its more about attack speed and access to aoe weapon abilities or augments vs necros cost (both time and resources) to summon.
I expect it to be a 4-6 match up on paper for most rogues prepared for the match up unless IS makes summoner work in a way far beyond expectations (possible but unlikely, I have a lot of possible models I'm checking against when im giving my opinion on this topic.) There are only so many ways to grate your cheese.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
Because body blocking means you take zero effective damage and prevent spacing from being optimized and getting a melee attack off entirely. Once you have enough summons to shut down attacks, the trade off needs to be fragility. Period. Melee attackers need a way to win or it isn't a fight. Fighting requires there is a way for either side to grasp victory. Otherwise its just slightly delayed slaughter.
The way to give the melee attacker a win condition is by obviously ending part of the body block so they can hit even if they are tanking damage and forcing the necro to spend time and resources on resummon.
Alternatively skeletons don't have 'real' hp and its all just the necros. This is harder to balance and Intrepid has already indirectly said they don't have a large amount of skill for balancing. So I just assume they won't go this route.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
Ok
Let me roll back a second and ask a question to clarify, what do you mean by body blocking? We may be picturing two different things.
Ashes currently has collision boxes. This prevents entity cramming. It also prevents you from walking through an entity. In most games this means you can't attack something behind said obstacle. Hence body: block.
Some one swings a sword at you and you hide behind your tank and the tank takes a hit and you don't (or the hit wiffs due to a lack of visual connection on you)? That's a body block.
Either way, body blocking limits engagement ranges. Ten is enough to garuntee a hard wall. 4 a 'soft' wall where you might get lucky and get an attack but if their spacing is good, much less likely.
There are many ways you can imagine what is happening. You can hair split about summon size vs master size etc, but I'm not here to argue imaginary numbers, just concepts. Body blocking will work in most standard models of summoning in most combat models with collision at the number of entities we are talking about.
You can argue 'well just let the attacks go through then' but that's closer to the 'skeleton hp pool isnt real' option. Feel free to discuss it but I am not interested in that half of the speculation as it would require a lot more skill at balance that I don't think IS thinks they have.
Feel free to reread my posts with this new understanding.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
I wanted to make sure we were on the same page before I theorycraft'ed into the rest of this.
But this is where the variations of secondaries could also play a huge point. The fighter for example if he doubles down on being a fighter/fighter for a monk style punch everything to death, he SHOULD struggle against a swarm of undead. That makes sense logically.
However if you have a fighter/mage and you augment the blink effect into your charge. The skeleton wall could be completely bypassed.
I feel like properly using movement or kiting abilities to manage a swarm would have to be how the enemy player adapts to swarm style summoner. You shouldn't be able to use the same approach against everyone player you come across.
Also, I don't think you could ever guarantee a hard wall as you put it. The summons aren't stationary and will follow their own AI pattern or issued commands. And even if they could get a hard wall it would take some serious micromanaging from the summoner player in which case good on them. But I can say I definitely don't want to see any summons that are just one shots, because no one would use them as it would probably end up being a wasted GCD ability (unless they're free additional effects from a spell example:*summon a gravestone in the area deals damage in Target location after two second delay a skeleton crawls out*)
Nor would I want to remove collision altogether from summons because that would make summoners way too easy to get at in PvP if part of their player power can just be easily ignored...
Again, this is all just opinion... We have no idea how summoners do anything yet.
Voluntarily becoming surrounded for one attack, maybe cc for big damage? Sure... Hope its the final blow. The 2 or 3 wins out of ten has to happen somehow right?
'I don't think you could ever garuntee a hard wall.' With enough entities you can. That's kind of my point. As is with max 4 entities I'd agree, but we were talking 9 or 10 here. Where that number is, no one has a definite answer without doing some basic geometry and pixel measurement. Im pretty confident in 9 being 'close enough'. But again it's all imaginary number hair splitting I want no part of if you really want to disagree there. We can agree to disagree in that case.
Either way what this really comes down to is you don't want one shotable summons. I agree with you. And with 4 entities I don't expect that needs to be the case. But balance needs to happen and at a certain point the only reasonable trade off for a vast swarm is complete expendablity. A trait I know many necros agree for the trade off for and even relish in. That's why I asked op the question I asked.
It sounds like you don't have an answer for what you would want to happen for the swarmers bad match up. So lets wait for the experts (swarm summoners) to answer and we can maybe take this theory crafting further from there hmm?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
Like this;
My opinion mirrors @SirChancelot opinion quite closely, 9 skeletons are trash and should be (not one hits but maybe able to tank 3-4 ability hits before dying imo) but its more of the mixing and matching of the different summons that I find interesting. Thinking up new combos between your different summons, trying to stay alive when your opponent jumps right to you and tries to burst you down, seeing what summons are objectively better then others in different matchups, THATS the kind of thing id love to do. The body blocking is an issue that I didn't think about but wouldn't be a problem with movement abilities like blink and lunge to get over the wall of bodies and get right to the summoner or push abilities that can move mobs around. Honestly the system that @SirChancelot originally put forth of the unit cap would be my ideal system (Although having a cap of 10 is beyond broken lol so id say more like 6-7 at max) with the player being able to make their own little party of undead friends.
Added to personal data. I'll update the post's data if the conversation leads in that direction.
If anything I suggest something simpler, namely, having a swarm all take up one summon slot and act together with a hivemind anyway. That way, the mix and match can still work. If you want 9 skeletons, then that, in ITSELF, is a specific ability that always summons 9 (or maybe 3 groups of 3, but at that point I'm just thinking about the specific design suggestion I had).
I still feel like you're picturing zombies literally standing in a square around a player so no one can reach them?
I hope my zombies start shambling towards a target, not just stand there and be an object in the way.
For me to be that protected I would have to be focusing on achieving that, which would probably severely drop my DPS, etc...
What I want for a bad match up isn't really a thing in ashes
They've said they won't be balancing for 1v1
That it will be rock paper scissors 'y
And any balance should be done for 8v8 scale
I don't have a solution, because I don't think there will be the solution you're looking for?
I could totally get behind the swarm acting as a single entity as long as it still keeps the feel of being a Necro with a bunch of minions. But that could be set up to where someone can't stand in the middle of the swarm.
But if you get 8 summoners together they could probably still summon enough guys to get that body block wall @JustVine is talking about. If there is unit collision, I don't think you'll ever get rid of that potential problem.
I leave such concerns to her, as she is 'my Summoner'. She has the biggest reason to be concerned because in general, anything that is abusable that is overlooked, that makes a class strong, is balanced against, then the abusable ability is nerfed anyway leaving the class underpowered and frustrating.
But as you know, I've already given as much suggestion/analysis as it would be reasonable to give, so if Intrepid wishes to allow Summoner Body-blocking, then we'll just work with it and hope that she's allowed to remain strong or rebalanced properly if it causes the expected issues.
Ideally like a 50/50. And then you can summon as many as you want
Yalls argument was entertaining, but moot. A melee fighter being body-blocked is a part of a rock-paper-scissors combat system. Rock always beats scissors (or like 90% of the time for video game logic). The ones that can effectively trounce Summoners should be the archetypes with ranged and/or aoe abilities.
Introducing a summoner class that can "steal" an unproportional number of render slots from other players would either lag out the battle, or significantly limit the number of people able to sign up.
From what I understand, a summoner can summon a single pet - but they can choose to have either a tank, or a dps, or a healer - summoned. Not all three at once. This makes things easier to balance, it makes the pets more impactful, and more importantly - it makes sense considering the aforementioned issue.
Not that it isnt cool, interesting and deserves a place among the classes. But it just seems to need special treatment to be done right compaired to everything else.
i'd be ok with choosing the number of pets, from 1 to 2-3 for each type (melee-ranged-debuffer/healer). the more u have the weaker they are.
Now imagine a party of 8 summonere with 100+ mobs following them around.... now imagine a seige with 50 summoners involved with 600+ mobs.....
Like, for it to be in the game, is would have to become a novelty, thats just there for flavor, it couldnt be useful in combat or it will get out of hand very quickly.