Necromancers with more then 3 summons

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?

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CROW3

I think it would be funny if there was a non-zero chance for idle summoned zombies to get bored and try to eat their necromancer.

PenguinPaladin

CROW3 wrote: »

I think it would be funny if there was a non-zero chance for idle summoned zombies to get bored and try to eat their necromancer.

Ideally like a 50/50. And then you can summon as many as you want

Murdach

The most feasible comment I have seen here is a having a slider or choice between quality or quantity of minions. Let's not forget that Necromancer is not a base archetype, Summoner is. All Summoner abilities will have the same base, regardless of the augments applied.

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.

PenguinPaladin

I mean, its fun in concept... and like a slider for quantity vs quality is a possibility. And i dont think body blocking is a major issue with it really, utility skills like teleporting, and aoe's would sove it pretty easily. But as you say, it would have to be every summoner type thats capable of selecting quantity... and 8 summoners in a party walking around with 100 mob entities between them is just too much. Id be more interested in gear with a permanent summon tied to it, so those with certain rare drops can have a larger summon pool, over every person who picked summoner has 15 things following them around

Sjelden

Intrepid are building tech to enable large scale player vs player battles.

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.

Ironhope

I hope necromancers are able to pseudo-revive fallen allies into undead equivalents for short period death rattles.

PenguinPaladin

In my personal opinion, the summoner class is an outlier among mmo roles, and those interested in playing it always have such "flavor over function" ideas of how it should function that i would perfer it be removed entirely and a third "support" role added...

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.

Imonuall

I hope in a system highly customizable for pets/summons. a nice touch from vanguard necro would be items for the permanent pets (armour/damage/type of damage/damage shield... to harvest from mobs)
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.

Green_Lantern

I prefer to have a horde of pets. I am ok if there is a point pool that determines the number of pets I have. I just want to create a swarm of pets. Weak or not. That is the feelI want. I want to be able to use my pets as meat shields as I do damage behind them. The thought behind a necromancer is to overwhelm/distract your opponents. Giving you time to damage from a distance. Our downfall is the inability to take physical damage. Just as a mage can put out crazy amount of damage. We need to have a dynamic that allows our pets to either do the damage as we hide or tank for us as we do moderate damage from a distance.

PenguinPaladin

Imagine a single summoner with a horde of weak pets. Eh, whatever. Is fine.

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.

PenguinPaladin

If the classes are perfectly balanced and chosen equally.

Summoners are about 12% of the player base.

In a fight of 100 vs 100. There would be about 16 summoners. With summons limited to 3 per summoner as they are right now, you are already looking at 50 extra mobs involved in a fight like that. So its actually 125 vs 125.

See how quickly the numbers can get out of hand?

PenguinPaladin

No one ever wants to address this... and the anser in always one aoe should wipe them then....

Ashes doesnt have an aoe damage limit, its strickly just how many targets fit in the circle. And so aoe sizes cant be all that massive because you would be able to hit say 50 targets with one attack all to easily.

To balance a horde with just aoe's would bloat aoe's potential so high that those two things would be the meta alone. Amount of summons vs nuke spells.

PenguinPaladin

Perhaps limiting a hordes action? Maybe a quantity of summons cant attack at all, they function more as a mobile wall or something. Idk. I understand the want of a horde. I understand the summoner flavor. But the game needs to work well also. I would prioritize function.

JustVine

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

Imagine a single summoner with a horde of weak pets. Eh, whatever. Is fine.

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.

This is a very good argument. The game is large scale PvP focused. The more entities that are involved, the larger a strain it puts on various things.

SirChancelot

I'm sorry but saying that summoners having too many summons or being able to bring more bodies to the party makes it a strain so they shouldn't be able to is on the shelf next to
"Action combat is better for melee than ranged so rangers shouldn't have bows" or "large spell effects clutter the screen so mages shouldn't have AOE"

A necromancer should be able to have a mini horde to his name, if they avoid doing that then they are just gutting the class and will disappoint people.

And I've said before, making them a one shot hit would be lame too. If they are that frail and weak nobody would bother summoning them.

tautau

A cleric could learn different types of banish spells, one for undead and another for demonic, for example. The cleric could level them up so that they could banish more (and stronger) summons in battle. Though learning these spells, of course, would be at the cost of learning other healing or attack spells.

JustVine

SirChancelot wrote: »

I'm sorry but saying that summoners having too many summons or being able to bring more bodies to the party makes it a strain so they shouldn't be able to is on the shelf next to
"Action combat is better for melee than ranged so rangers shouldn't have bows" or "large spell effects clutter the screen so mages shouldn't have AOE"

A necromancer should be able to have a mini horde to his name, if they avoid doing that then they are just gutting the class and will disappoint people.

And I've said before, making them a one shot hit would be lame too. If they are that frail and weak nobody would bother summoning them.

Entity lag has an effect on all aspects of combat. Combat designers have to design around how much lag a player may experience relative to how fast they need to react to do something. So while I don't agree with the argument, it's still a very valid argument.

That being said even if we do not increase the number of entities currently available you can have: A battle pet, 3 summons, a regular pet, and yourself. 6 entities. To me, that's not a mighty horde, but it is certainly up there. How big does a horde have to be to satisfy the necromancer in question?

PenguinPaladin

JustVine wrote: »

SirChancelot wrote: »

I'm sorry but saying that summoners having too many summons or being able to bring more bodies to the party makes it a strain so they shouldn't be able to is on the shelf next to
"Action combat is better for melee than ranged so rangers shouldn't have bows" or "large spell effects clutter the screen so mages shouldn't have AOE"

A necromancer should be able to have a mini horde to his name, if they avoid doing that then they are just gutting the class and will disappoint people.

And I've said before, making them a one shot hit would be lame too. If they are that frail and weak nobody would bother summoning them.

Entity lag has an effect on all aspects of combat. Combat designers have to design around how much lag a player may experience relative to how fast they need to react to do something. So while I don't agree with the argument, it's still a very valid argument.

That being said even if we do not increase the number of entities currently available you can have: A battle pet, 3 summons, a regular pet, and yourself. 6 entities. To me, that's not a mighty horde, but it is certainly up there. How big does a horde have to be to satisfy the necromancer in question?

You also have your mount, that is suposed to become its own entity in later development. It shouldnt vanish when you dismount it should stay and help you fight

PenguinPaladin

SirChancelot wrote: »

I'm sorry but saying that summoners having too many summons or being able to bring more bodies to the party makes it a strain so they shouldn't be able to is on the shelf next to
"Action combat is better for melee than ranged so rangers shouldn't have bows" or "large spell effects clutter the screen so mages shouldn't have AOE"

A necromancer should be able to have a mini horde to his name, if they avoid doing that then they are just gutting the class and will disappoint people.

And I've said before, making them a one shot hit would be lame too. If they are that frail and weak nobody would bother summoning them.

Define your mini horde? What do you want?

At the moment, 3 permanent summons, a battle pet, a mount, a cosmetic pet, and yourself.

And potentially skills in the shape of summons. Summon Phoenix to do a ranged fire pool as an example. Swarm of insects as a dot.

When does it become enough to be a mini horde?

PenguinPaladin

PenguinPaladin wrote: »

SirChancelot wrote: »

I'm sorry but saying that summoners having too many summons or being able to bring more bodies to the party makes it a strain so they shouldn't be able to is on the shelf next to
"Action combat is better for melee than ranged so rangers shouldn't have bows" or "large spell effects clutter the screen so mages shouldn't have AOE"

A necromancer should be able to have a mini horde to his name, if they avoid doing that then they are just gutting the class and will disappoint people.

And I've said before, making them a one shot hit would be lame too. If they are that frail and weak nobody would bother summoning them.

Define your mini horde? What do you want?

At the moment, 3 permanent summons, a battle pet, a mount, a cosmetic pet, and yourself.

And potentially skills in the shape of summons. Summon Phoenix to do a ranged fire pool as an example. Swarm of insects as a dot.

When does it become enough to be a mini horde?

Because again. It is one thing for a single player to summon some bodies.

What if a summoner only guild comes into town. 50+ players with 600+ mobs following them around, how do you @SirChancelot think a town will function with that going on?

Give me some concept of balance for this happening. Tell me why it should be okay

Summoner also being the one role that can somewhat "jack of all trades" this risk of a full party of summoners is higher for this class than any other

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