Some Summoner ideas

DrMiller

There is a lot of potential for the summon class and I hope that they will get some freedom to do some crazy things.

The obvious thing to do with them is give each summoner a pet and have it balanced around that, which is fine and appropriate in certain situations like raiding, but honestly kind of boring.

I would love to really be able to change the world as I go as a summoner. Imagine getting a group of summoners together and literally changing a biome, creating rituals and shrines that summon certain unit types to the area. The summons can be hostile to everyone and as a summoner you must try to capture one. If these rituals are left uncheck they can even spread or level up. This could be elementals burning down a forest, or freezing a lake, corrupted animals running around spreading disease, or undead armies rising up.

Mechanically I would like summoners to have the option to invest time in order to get stronger or multiple summons that when lost you must take the step again to resummon. So you spend time preparing rituals in biomes and while these biomes are under summoner control they can be used obtain these stronger summons. This could encourage teamwork from the summoner as well as conflict from any nodes that they may be in.

I would also like to see some cool undead mechanics. Imagine if as a necromancer you could raise up player characters and that player can willingly follow you around as a zombie. You can have multple zombie players and they will be balanced around the number you have. The zombie players can respawn at any time and if they leave the area of the summoner the zombie would become a npc.

I'm a big fan of player driven story and world building and stuff like this would be awesome to see.

Taleof2Cities

Stronger and multiple summons are fine as long as it's not unbalanced compared to the other classes, @DrMiller ... remember this is an MMO and not a single-player RPG.

There was a recent thread that talked about raising undead armies of player-characters.

Many forum-goers noted that you don't need special game mechanics for that.

Start finding like-minded players, form a guild, and swap roles between Necromancer and player-character pet.

It's not like there isn't a lot of time between now and the Ashes release date.

tautau

Maybe give a Summoner's pet a summons.

Like the pet, a cat or a dog, could summon a raccoon (which could pickpocket another player when not in combat) or a skunk (which could do poison damage in combat).

DrMiller

@Taleof2Cities Yea there definitely needs to be balance with them, like 1 big bad is about as strong multiple smaller, but what if multiple people summon a big bad, or unleash a group of mobs onto the world. I do think balance should come first but I just hope that they open up the possibilities for player driven world event.

Its honestly more of a world mechanic than a summer thing. Imagine a group of mages make a college where you can learn unique spells, or a thieves guild in a city, a coliseum for bards or fighters, a cathedral for clerics. I think it would be cool for groups of players among the same class to be able to expand upon there class by accomplishing certain thing within the world that may temporarily give them an edge as long as they can hold it.

@tautau I just imagined a rouge with his pet monkey that pick pockets someone and rides away on a dog lol. It would be cool to have summons that do stuff other than combat, like a bird that circles over resource nodes or something.

Asraiel

for raids it was mentioned to have groupesummoning for siege only creatures. how it is implemented dont ask me.

Bullvinne

I just pray that the Secondary Archetypes (Classes) actually have unique and different feeling from each other. I would hate for each flavor of Summoner to be a re-skinned version of the same class.

The only reason I haven't dropped $250+ so I can join in Alpha 2 and beyond is I have no real info on how that is going to work. As soon as Summoner info and how secondary archetypes ACTUALLY change your primary archetype exist, I dont want to fully invest.

MadCowCrazy

In Age of Conan I used to play a Necromancer, it had a really cool mechanic. You could lower your max HP to summon more mobs.
I made a video about it like 10 years ago. If I remember correctly you could get up to 7 more mobs but your HP was reduced from around 7000 down to 100.

When I play a summoner I want the summon to be the main source of everything I do. I'd love for a way to reduce my own HP and/or damage to boost the summon/s.

I prefer the mass mob summoner instead of just one powerful one. Problem is this can cause a lot of problems in an mmo if many people do it.
Then again in Age of Conan you could have 21 summons at the same time and that game is like 10 years old or something.

Age of Conan had another mechanic as well, you could summon an altar and people could click it to help you power up spells. You took damage when doing it so healers were needed but it would be cool if 10 summoners could summon a really big monster or something like that.

Or if you could power up spells by having players of the same class channel their power into another player to unleash a really powerful spell or ability.

Army of the Dead

Bullvinne

I would love to see the Summoner and its 8 classes (to feel unique and different) each have different kinds (mechanically different) of summons

Maybe one version of the summoner has one powerful summon that it can customize and control its actions (most of the summoners abilities is the summon doing things at the command of the summoner), while another might be a mass mob summoner like MadCowCrazy stated above that all 20 minions are on autopilot and just attack what the summoner is attacking. While even another might have multiple medium-sized/powered summons that are more or less effective in specific situations (Summon an Ice or Water elemental to fight a fire enemy, etc)

Maybe one version of the summoner summons walls/terrain as crowd control, and hurls conjured boulders from the sky down on its enemies for damage.

And even another could summon its own ethereal armor and weapons and be a more melee-centric summoner.

THIS is how I HOPE the secondary archetypes can change up and make your primary archetype different.

If the main difference between a necromancer and a brood warden is that the summons look different, one has a bite instead of a swipe attack, etc then I would be greatly disappointed.

EDIT: I hope ALL Archetype/Classes are like this. Its just that I am partial to the Summoner classes in other games so that is what I am most passionate about.

EDIT2: Too bad they dont have a Psionic Archetype, I would also be all over that in a heartbeat. I wonder what the Enchanter is going to be like... might be the closest to a psionic character we might get!

Veeshan

I just wanna see the Necro summoner one be able hide there pets underground to act as a trap

Imagine walking down a road only to have a bunch of skeletons bust there hands out of the ground and pull there head up give you a creepy skeletal laugh and then they rip themselfs out of the ground and charge/rush you :P

DrMiller

MadCowCrazy wrote: »

Age of Conan had another mechanic as well, you could summon an altar and people could click it to help you power up spells. You took damage when doing it so healers were needed but it would be cool if 10 summoners could summon a really big monster or something like that.

Yea this is a cool idea. I could see a version of this where everyone who clicks the alter gets a debuff. the more people that click it the better creature you summon and as long as that creature is alive the debuff remains. It would be awesome to see this kind of thing during a siege, watching some giant undead troll or golem charge the gate.

Veeshan wrote: »

Imagine walking down a road only to have a bunch of skeletons bust there hands out of the ground and pull there head up give you a creepy skeletal laugh and then they rip themselfs out of the ground and charge/rush you :P

That is such a cool idea. I could see that as a crowd control ability that slows people down until they are fully out of the ground allowing your group to charge in.

angelicshiya

I want to be a summoner main, but also a healer (necromancer). You stated that summoners can have three out at one time. I have literally zero interest in having a tanky summon or dps summon. Say I want to invest my summoner stats/point or however your summons get stronger in my heal aspect. Am I allowed to summon for example three light fairies that throw out different heals, or am I going to be forced to spec into a tanky, dps, and one heal summon?

Uniqueness and variety is what players want, not cookie cutter playstyle where every class is almost the same.