I JUST HAD THE FUNNEST SUMMON TYPE IDEA FOR BARD PRIMARY SUMMONER SECONDARIES....

Rookk

ONE SINGULAR WORD SAYS IT ALL BUT I WANNA GO INTO EXCRUCIATING DETAIL ON THIS AND SAY THAT I WANT TO BE ABLE TO PULL OUT A PAN FLUTE AND HAVE A RAT ARMY RUN THROWING OUT *ALL* THE DEBUFFS AND ALSO DOING DOT DMG AS RAT SWARMS................

Taleof2Cities

Whatever Intrepid decides on summons, remember that it has to be balanced with the other classes, @Loading.

Marcet

actual genius

Demostrathe

Loading wrote: »

ONE SINGULAR WORD SAYS IT ALL BUT I WANNA GO INTO EXCRUCIATING DETAIL ON THIS AND SAY THAT I WANT TO BE ABLE TO PULL OUT A PAN FLUTE AND HAVE A RAT ARMY RUN THROWING OUT *ALL* THE DEBUFFS AND ALSO DOING DOT DMG AS RAT SWARMS................

seeing this reminds me of the story of the pied piper im not sure if its possible but i hope bards can use flutes as a weapon thinking about it now

Argonath89

Do we know yet if the summons are transient like in OP idea?

EpicHeroMan

I thought you would say he uses animated objects like drums, violins or a double bass and have them float around with weak attacks but a buff aura. And if you gather with some other songcallers, you can have a full orchestra that floats into battle with you and plays some epic tunes.

Heljy

I assume Bards should be able to summon a muse

daveywavey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiUrAVQZCjQ

Orrrrrr, a funky beat that makes all the bad guys dance with you. I loved that game

Kesthely

Nah Bard/Summoner ofcourse will summon instruments, so he can be that one man orchestra!

Sweatycup

So the rat catcher from suicide squad, just instead of the orb tool thingy a flute?

Rookk

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Whatever Intrepid decides on summons, remember that it has to be balanced with the other classes, @Loading.

i know XD i just love the idea

Summpwner

Whenever people have ideas about what the class system really means, I love to throw out the "summoner test". Many people seem to think main-class will matter way more in terms of your role in a group, however I think the secondary class will differentiate players of the same class more than some realize. My classic example is Summoner secondary. How could Ranger/Summoner play exactly the same as Ranger/Mage? Surely transforming a basic skill into one that works with a pet would drastically change the functionality both when playing and when playing against.

Ludullu

Summpwner wrote: »

Surely transforming a basic skill into one that works with a pet would drastically change the functionality both when playing and when playing against.

There's a reason why we only get a single skillset instead of secondary archetypes providing us with more skills. There might be some slight difference in effect, but I really doubt we'll get completely different rangers just because they chose different classes.

At the very least, that would create big problems for party setups and looking for new members. If there's 8 completely different rangers in the game, how would a party find the ranger they want?

TheDarkSorcerer

Why are you screaming?

Summpwner

@NiKr Why would you pick one secondary or another if the augments are "slight difference in effect"? Surely that would mean that which one you pick wouldn't matter.... so then why would the system exist? Surely the changes are significant enough that choosing one over the other will change your build's efficacy in some way.

Ludullu

Summpwner wrote: »

Why would you pick one secondary or another if the augments are "slight difference in effect"? Surely that would mean that which one you pick wouldn't matter.... so then why would the system exist? Surely the changes are significant enough that choosing one over the other will change your build's efficacy in some way.

Because there's still be that slight difference, which would just make some content easier. But the core gameplay and skillset will remain the same. A ranger will still be shooting arrows, even one arrow has fire on it, while another arrow pushes the target back a bit or maybe hooks the ranger to the target and pulls him together with the it.

I expect ranger/summoner to have changes to his self buffs that would also influence his battle pet and temporary summons, and his battle abilities to maybe have additional instances of arrows or they'd create a copy of the ranger that does the same ability on a delay, or maybe even a small summon appears near the hit target to make a secondary strike that has its own effect (though I doubt this one).

In other words, this shit
Classes with a Summoner secondary may grant augmented skills that summon weapons. These summoned weapons are not able to be equipped.[36]
There are summoned weapons that appear as a spell VFX to damage opponents for a period of time.[38]
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Augments#Summoner_augments

Summpwner

NiKr wrote: »

I expect ranger/summoner to have changes to his self buffs that would also influence his battle pet and temporary summons

Are you saying that a ranger/ might always have summons and battle pets and that /summoner would augment them, or that ranger/ would have summons that don't exist unless you take /summoner? If /summoner turns a non-pet ability into a pet ability, isn't that a pretty significant shift in function? Obviously "deal damage" probably will still be "deal damage" but now it could be tied to a targetable ally that now you need to monitor in some way. Yes the summoner augments MAY grant augments that summon weapons, but surely not all /summoner augments will function identically.

Ludullu

Summpwner wrote: »

Are you saying that a ranger/ might always have summons and battle pets and that /summoner would augment them, or that ranger/ would have summons that don't exist unless you take /summoner? If /summoner turns a non-pet ability into a pet ability, isn't that a pretty significant shift in function? Yes the summoner augments MAY grant augments that summon weapons, but surely not all /summoner augments will function identically.

We will all have battle pets. Summoner augments might just improve self buffs or abilities to apply to those pets (or at least do so to a better extent). And I don't really consider that a big change in effect.

Summpwner wrote: »

Obviously "deal damage" probably will still be "deal damage" but now it could be tied to a targetable ally that now you need to monitor in some way.

What do you mean by that? As in, my previously "just damage" ability now has an additional buff effect for my pet? I don't think that'll happen, but, even if it does, I don't really see how the core gameplay would change, because you'd still be using the ability for dmg.

Summpwner wrote: »

Yes the summoner augments MAY grant augments that summon weapons, but surely not all /summoner augments will function identically.

We'll have schools of augments. Currently we don't have info on how many or how varied they'll be, but I'd assume we won't have 32 completely different schools (4 on each archetype) and instead will have overlapping ones, with probably 1-2 unique ones. So the summoner's school would be that "you get a temporary summoned weapon" and the other could be that "your buffs/effects influence your pets/summons".

Summpwner

@NiKr interesting takes. I just read up because I didn't remember seeing anything about combat pets but I see now where you got that from. It does seem like whether or not you have it makes no difference IE 2 perfectly identical players but for the combat pet will do the exact same damage and provide the same utility.

IMO that seems like something that they could scrap, as it seem to me like a player who wants to use pets would play S/x or x/S,. Players not interested in pets won't do either and won't tame one either.

I suppose my concept of the skills would be that each primary class would have 30-40, and if there were 2 augments for each, that would expand to 60-80 skills with mechanical variation. Perhaps that's a lot to expect from 8 classes. In that light, it certainly would make sense that the secondary augments have common effects regardless of which class... eg "Sword Slash" from a fighter with mage(fire) augment makes it deal all or part fire damage, which will make the same changes to "Fire an Arrow" from a ranger with mage(fire) augment.

Previously I thought that augments like that would be boring and that's why I assumed it needed to be more mechanically interesting, but the resistances/weaknesses could make these interesting choices depending on what types of mobs you expect to fight.

Ludullu

Summpwner wrote: »

IMO that seems like something that they could scrap, as it seem to me like a player who wants to use pets would play S/x or x/S,. Players not interested in pets won't do either and won't tame one either.

Depending on what route they take with the battle pets, there's a chance that everyone will want them. Lineage2 had buffing/healing/mp restoring/attack pets and pretty much everyone used at least one of those, because they were super useful not only in solo gameplay but in pvp stuff too. And some classes (supports especially) could even reach almost-dps lvls of damage with the help of a well-lvled and geared pet. X/S would obviously make those even stronger, but at that point you'd be giving up any other potential benefit from the 7 other classes.

Summpwner wrote: »

I suppose my concept of the skills would be that each primary class would have 30-40, and if there were 2 augments for each, that would expand to 60-80 skills with mechanical variation. Perhaps that's a lot to expect from 8 classes. In that light, it certainly would make sense that the secondary augments have common effects regardless of which class... eg "Sword Slash" from a fighter with mage(fire) augment makes it deal all or part fire damage, which will make the same changes to "Fire an Arrow" from a ranger with mage(fire) augment.

Previously I thought that augments like that would be boring and that's why I assumed it needed to be more mechanically interesting, but the resistances/weaknesses could make these interesting choices depending on what types of mobs you expect to fight.

We'll also have other types of augments (religious, racial, etc), so if augments really did change a skill to be smth almost completely different - we'd have hundreds of skills on just one class, which would be an absolute nightmare to balance.

I'd prefer a less complex system, but with more chances that it won't be a whole damn unbalanced mess, cause it'll already be very difficult to pull that off. And yeah, element/resist system can be quite deep and fun, even if it's somewhat simple on the surface.