How to make Support classes (Bard and Summoner) unique, viable and needed in every group?

The most basic thing is that Other classes should not be able to do what the support classes do. But what this includes?
Every class (or almost every) should have some self mobility (be it charge, teleport, move speed increase or ect). Also most will most likely have at least 1 cc (stun/silence/slow/sleep/freeze and ect). So if there is DR on cc - in a 8v8 fight, if every dps uses 1 cc - then the Bard/Summoner using cc on the target will be with 1/20 of the time (if not complete immune).

So 1 way to solve this is give supports cc separate DR than non support spells. For example all dps classes share DR of their stun spell. So if Mage freeze stun you, the next stun you get from rogue will be with half duration. BUT Bard stun will share DR with other bards and summoners, so after mage freeze, Bard can stun for full duration, but if another bard or summoner stun the same target the duration is halved (which dont affect dps stun duraion)

Other thing is that in PVE most bosses will be immune to CC, and as a whole utility like increase ally move speed, or grip ally to your position and other like this wont be very useful in PVE. So their buffs/debuffs should be good enough to compensate in pve situations.

Maybe they can be the only classes with cleanse spells as a unique mechanic.

What do you think and do you have other or better ideas?

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Githal

Noaani wrote: »

I am the one not making arguements when there is no one to argue with.

Again, the most recent useful part of this thread was stating that you assuming a class based on buffs was an afk buffbot was incorrect.

I'm quite happy to go back to that point if you want.

Sure go back to the point. So now is the perfect time to make your EMPTY WORDS in to not empty words by saying why you think the buffing class in EQ2 is not boring to play

Noaani

Githal wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

I am the one not making arguements when there is no one to argue with.

Again, the most recent useful part of this thread was stating that you assuming a class based on buffs was an afk buffbot was incorrect.

I'm quite happy to go back to that point if you want.

Sure go back to the point. So now is the perfect time to make your EMPTY WORDS in to not empty words by saying why you think the buffing class in EQ2 is not boring to play

Because the class is built around many incredibly powerful, short duration, generally single target, long recast buffs that your friends absolutely love getting cast on them, but that give them immunity to said buff for a duration after recieving it, meaning the class is about communication within your group or raid more than anything.

These buffs not only make your friends more powerful, they make their gameplay more interesting by offering them up optoins that they simply don't have without you there.

Basically, it isn't the class you thought it was.

A big part of the reason your whole line of "EQ2 is about rotations" bullshit simply isn't true is because of the buffs cast by bards. You can't have a rotation when both your spells cast and reuse timer is changing.

Now, an argument could be made that a buffing class is boring to play if you don't have friends, but the bigger issue there is not having friends.

Githal

Noaani wrote: »

Because the class is built around many incredibly powerful, short duration, generally single target, long recast buffs that your friends absolutely love getting cast on them, but that give them immunity to said buff for a duration after recieving it, meaning the class is about communication within your group or raid more than anything.

These buffs not only make your friends more powerful, they make their gameplay more interesting by offering them up optoins that they simply don't have without you there.

Basically, it isn't the class you thought it was.

A big part of the reason your whole line of "EQ2 is about rotations" bullshit simply isn't true is because of the buffs cast by bards. You can't have a rotation when both your spells cast and reuse timer is changing.

But isnt this an argument of "why other classes are not boring in EQ2"?
From what you said the Buffer still feels boring as fk. You just have to know from a guide when exactly to use your long cd spell and thats it. And by this you make the gameplay of the other players interesting. But i am talking about the Buffer gameplay.

Noaani

Githal wrote: »

You just have to know from a guide when exactly to use your long cd spell and thats it.

Unless by "guide" you mean talking to the people that are valid targets for your buffs, then no. You want to give them these buffs when it suits them, not when it suits some random person (probably me, if not then definately someone like me) on the internet.

If you are following a guide, you are at best an average player. If you are a bard in a group or a raid and you are following a guide, you are limiting that group or raid to being average at best - because a good bard makes a bigger difference than a good healer or a good DPS.

There is a reason raids in EQ2 with 24 players, in a game with 24 classes, would try and take along 5 bards.

But i am talking about the Buffer gameplay.

Different classes appeal to different people.

If you are the kind of person that enjoys helping your friends, then a bard may well be the class for you.

If you do not enjoy that, then a bard may not be the class for you.

Githal

Noaani wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

You just have to know from a guide when exactly to use your long cd spell and thats it.

Unless by "guide" you mean talking to the people that are valid targets for your buffs, then no. You want to give them these buffs when it suits them, not when it suits some random person (probably me, if not then definately someone like me) on the internet.

If you are following a guide, you are at best an average player. If you are a bard in a group or a raid and you are following a guide, you are limiting that group or raid to being average at best - because a good bard makes a bigger difference than a good healer or a good DPS.

There is a reason raids in EQ2 with 24 players, in a game with 24 classes, would try and take along 5 bards.

But i am talking about the Buffer gameplay.

Different classes appeal to different people.

If you are the kind of person that enjoys helping your friends, then a bard may well be the class for you.

If you do not enjoy that, then a bard may not be the class for you.

Ok so instead of guide it is a player spamming "buff me now". OK got it.

And yes while i agree that different players prefer different classes, i still think that unless a class is engaging enough it wont feel right. And just because players play them because they are needed also doesnt meant that they are having fun playing them.

I remember in Lost Ark, Where btw there is no true healer and tank, There is tanky class and support class. but the trinity is lacking.
So there on game release you would see that bards and paladins (the 2 support classes), are like 1% of the population only coz they were not fun enough like the other classes. But then the demand of them in harder raids was so big, that you would see so many players playing them, just because they would enter groups without being gate kept. (by gate kept i mean that only the p2w would get in groups fast, and the rest would be playing with randoms and fail bosses in simple mechanics, and the bosses there had 1 of the hardest mechanics in any MMO, so you can imagine how the pugs were doing)

Noaani

Githal wrote: »

Ok so instead of guide it is a player spamming "buff me now". OK got it.

Sure, if you let them do that. Most bards would refuse to buff anyone that did that otherwise that is all they would get for the entire duration of the content piece.

The thing you should be taking in here is that bards as a buff class are a thing, they are not what you think they are at all, many people enjoy them, but you may not be one of those people.

You do not have the intention to understand any more than that, so just stick with trying to understand that. Any time you come up with a "so it's just" in a way where you are saying the idea doesn't work, make the assumption that it is simply your ignorance on the matter shining through, and the class is indeed enjoyable to those that, well, enjoy it.

Githal wrote: »

So there on game release you would see that bards and paladins (the 2 support classes), are like 1% of the population only coz they were not fun enough like the other classes.

The class split in the early days of an MMORPG has more to do with the names of those classes than anything else.

It has almost nothing at all to do with how fun a given class is, because most people have no idea how much fun each class is.

Githal

Noaani wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

Ok so instead of guide it is a player spamming "buff me now". OK got it.

Sure, if you let them do that. Most bards would refuse to buff anyone that did that otherwise that is all they would get for the entire duration of the content piece.

The thing you should be taking in here is that bards as a buff class are a thing, they are not what you think they are at all, many people enjoy them, but you may not be one of those people.

You do not have the intention to understand any more than that, so just stick with trying to understand that. Any time you come up with a "so it's just" in a way where you are saying the idea doesn't work, make the assumption that it is simply your ignorance on the matter shining through, and the class is indeed enjoyable to those that, well, enjoy it.

Githal wrote: »

So there on game release you would see that bards and paladins (the 2 support classes), are like 1% of the population only coz they were not fun enough like the other classes.

The class split in the early days of an MMORPG has more to do with the names of those classes than anything else.

It has almost nothing at all to do with how fun a given class is, because most people have no idea how much fun each class is.

Well tbh i mostly play heal classes, but in other games this includes both the heal and support in 1 class. This includes healing, cleansing, cc, buffs, debuffs, mobility support and ect. Here in AOC the heal and support will be separated. This means that the responsibilities of each will be a lot less (tho from first impresions a cleric will have a lot bigger part of those responsibilities and thats why i made the post). So it just feels for me that the support will need more responsibilities in the battlefield, or else it wont be engaging enough. But guess there will be few people who will enjoin playing even a boring class as long as their friends enjoy the game coz of their buffs.

Githal

Example is the Disc Priest in WOW. Where you have :
* heals
* shields
* cleanse/mass cleanse
* 2 spells for move speed increase (single target)
* 1 grip that pulls ally to your location (single target)
* fear (cc)
* debuff enemies
* Dot dmg over time spells to help dps (and the dps is not that low btw)
* Buff that increase a single target ally cast speed by a lot
* spells to reduce dmg taken by ally (single target)
* drain mana from enemy
* reduce enemy attack range
* mind control (something like cc where your character also cant fight)
* also big cd spell that converts healing enemy target receives into dmg for short duration

As you can imagine there is always something you will have to be doing in every group be it PVP or PVE. And sometimes you have to sacrifice doing 1 thing to do something else (making choices). This is what i call engaging gameplay.

Azherae

Githal wrote: »

Example is the Disc Priest in WOW. Where you have :
* heals
* shields
* cleanse/mass cleanse
* 2 spells for move speed increase (single target)
* 1 grip that pulls ally to your location (single target)
* fear (cc)
* debuff enemies
* Dot dmg over time spells to help dps (and the dps is not that low btw)
* Buff that increase a single target ally cast speed by a lot
* spells to reduce dmg taken by ally (single target)
* drain mana from enemy
* reduce enemy attack range
* mind control (something like cc where your character also cant fight)

As you can imagine there is always something you will have to be doing in every group be it PVP or PVE. And sometimes you have to sacrifice doing 1 thing to do something else (making choices). This is what i call engaging gameplay.

Why wouldn't the same gameplay type happen with just buffs alone, then?

The thing that makes you change buffs is the variety in the situation faced. If the situation has enough variety, then you're always making choices and sacrificing doing 1 thing to do something else.

WOW tended to not have so much variety of that type at first, so the Disc Priest also had time to heal/shield (or really, needed to have that responsibility too or it'd be less engaging).

So any game where the Bard has that many choices to make is fine, right?

Githal

Azherae wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

Example is the Disc Priest in WOW. Where you have :
* heals
* shields
* cleanse/mass cleanse
* 2 spells for move speed increase (single target)
* 1 grip that pulls ally to your location (single target)
* fear (cc)
* debuff enemies
* Dot dmg over time spells to help dps (and the dps is not that low btw)
* Buff that increase a single target ally cast speed by a lot
* spells to reduce dmg taken by ally (single target)
* drain mana from enemy
* reduce enemy attack range
* mind control (something like cc where your character also cant fight)

As you can imagine there is always something you will have to be doing in every group be it PVP or PVE. And sometimes you have to sacrifice doing 1 thing to do something else (making choices). This is what i call engaging gameplay.

Why wouldn't the same gameplay type happen with just buffs alone, then?

The thing that makes you change buffs is the variety in the situation faced. If the situation has enough variety, then you're always making choices and sacrificing doing 1 thing to do something else.

WOW tended to not have so much variety of that type at first, so the Disc Priest also had time to heal/shield (or really, needed to have that responsibility too or it'd be less engaging).

So any game where the Bard has that many choices to make is fine, right?

Yes thats right. So in my initial post i tried to explain some of my ideas how the pure support non healing class can have more responsibilities, and also a way that his responsibilities cant be overtaken by other classes. Since if the Bard loses his uniqueness then he will be replaceable and may even not be needed in groups.

Githal

And also for me the word "support" does not mean "buffs".
For me it means filling gaps where the group is lacking. Like support the team in different situations by different ways so the group go forward. So a support should be a jack of all trades

Noaani

Githal wrote: »

Example is the Disc Priest in WOW. Where you have :
* heals
* shields
* cleanse/mass cleanse
* 2 spells for move speed increase (single target)
* 1 grip that pulls ally to your location (single target)
* fear (cc)
* debuff enemies
* Dot dmg over time spells to help dps (and the dps is not that low btw)
* Buff that increase a single target ally cast speed by a lot
* spells to reduce dmg taken by ally (single target)
* drain mana from enemy
* reduce enemy attack range
* mind control (something like cc where your character also cant fight)
* also big cd spell that converts healing enemy target receives into dmg for short duration

As you can imagine there is always something you will have to be doing in every group be it PVP or PVE. And sometimes you have to sacrifice doing 1 thing to do something else (making choices). This is what i call engaging gameplay.

Hate to break it to you - that isn't support.

All of that is what would be standard on most PvE MMORPG healers that aren't trying to be WoW clones.

WoW doesn't have a support role.

Noaani

Githal wrote: »

And also for me the word "support" does not mean "buffs".
For me it means filling gaps where the group is lacking. Like support the team in different situations by different ways so the group go forward. So a support should be a jack of all trades

This isn't what the support role is though.

The support role in MMORPG's has been a specific thing since the 90's. You don't get to just make your own defintion up.

By your definition, if a group doesn't have a tank, then a tank is a support role as it is filling a gap that the group has.

Jack of all trades is also a role that a small number of MMORPG's have had since the 90's, and is distinct from the support role. The jack of all trades is often filled by a pet class in the very few games that have it, though not always.

Githal

Noaani wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

Example is the Disc Priest in WOW. Where you have :
* heals
* shields
* cleanse/mass cleanse
* 2 spells for move speed increase (single target)
* 1 grip that pulls ally to your location (single target)
* fear (cc)
* debuff enemies
* Dot dmg over time spells to help dps (and the dps is not that low btw)
* Buff that increase a single target ally cast speed by a lot
* spells to reduce dmg taken by ally (single target)
* drain mana from enemy
* reduce enemy attack range
* mind control (something like cc where your character also cant fight)
* also big cd spell that converts healing enemy target receives into dmg for short duration

As you can imagine there is always something you will have to be doing in every group be it PVP or PVE. And sometimes you have to sacrifice doing 1 thing to do something else (making choices). This is what i call engaging gameplay.

Hate to break it to you - that isn't support.

All of that is what would be standard on most PvE MMORPG healers that aren't trying to be WoW clones.

WoW doesn't have a support role.

i already said this: "but in other games this includes both the heal and support in 1 class. " . And thats where my concerns for the support class comes from. Because the responsibilities will be split between the 2 classes

Azherae

Githal wrote: »

And also for me the word "support" does not mean "buffs".
For me it means filling gaps where the group is lacking. Like support the team in different situations by different ways so the group go forward. So a support should be a jack of all trades

I agree with you, and I see your point about why it would need to be based on the things you suggested in Ashes, given the game type Ashes is.

But I also agree with Noaani in the sense that if just buffing turns out to be 'boring', it will be moreso because of the game style not matching with the Bard design, than 'because just buffing is boring'. There are games where just buffing is interesting and people love to play that.

There are styles of game where that works, and styles of game where it doesn't. So, if you happen to like the game type where just buffing would be boring, I can see why you'd want to add more stuff. We don't know for Ashes, though.

Githal

Noaani wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

And also for me the word "support" does not mean "buffs".
For me it means filling gaps where the group is lacking. Like support the team in different situations by different ways so the group go forward. So a support should be a jack of all trades

This isn't what the support role is though.

The support role in MMORPG's has been a specific thing since the 90's. You don't get to just make your own defintion up.

By your definition, if a group doesn't have a tank, then a tank is a support role as it is filling a gap that the group has.

Jack of all trades is also a role that a small number of MMORPG's have had since the 90's, and is distinct from the support role. The jack of all trades is often filled by a pet class in the very few games that have it, though not always.

Well a jack of all trades means that you cant fill a missing role completely. Like a summoner cant be main tank, But he can be off tank. You cant be a DPS, but you can help with doing dmg. You cant be a main healer of the group, but in some situations you will stop doing anything else and heal the party and help the cleric

Githal

and this same would apply on the Bard.
You cant tank, but can buff a party member so he can off tank for limited time. You cant be dps, but can buff the dmg of the party to help with dmg, you cant heal, but can put some dmg reduce buffs to help the cleric.

But these all are just PVE examples.. so when you include the pvp scenarios you will need CC, mobility cleanse , debuffs and ect in order to fill in the "jack of all trades" position that for me should be equal to the "support" position

Halae

Githal wrote: »

Well a jack of all trades means that you cant fill a missing role completely. Like a summoner cant be main tank, But he can be off tank. You cant be a DPS, but you can help with doing dmg. You cant be a main healer of the group, but in some situations you will stop doing anything else and heal the party and help the cleric

I feel the need to note that this might not necessarily be true. Summoner in AoC is meant to be the Jack, yes, but because of the way Steven has commented on them, and the way they'll be accepting the class system, they'll apparently be almost all the way to being a full option for the role their class gives them, whether that be healer, support, DPS, or tank. Testing is necessary to see if that bears out, of course, but you can't 'fill a hole' in a party structure without being capable of actually handling that role, and buildcraft helps with that sort of thing. A summoner tank might be able to legitimately play the tank; we just don't know yet how far it'll go, but summoner would be a pretty useless archetype if it couldn't fulfill the role it specializes itself towards. The math still has to work out such that there's never a point where summoners are being turned away from groups just because they're summoners.

And before a comment about that comes up, Summoners are going to be specialists, just like other archetypes. That's the nature of how they interact with the class system; if a summoner becomes a Summoner/Cleric to be a necromancer, they'll get death magic and healing abilities, per the cleric, which will buff up what healing capability they already have. Choosing Summoner/Tank to become a Brood Warden means your already tanky pet option is going to become even more so, maybe capable of actually holding aggro and doing CCs. A summoner also can't swap their class on a dime - a brood warden is stuck as a brood warden, and can't swap to being a DPS class without a lengthy trip back to town and, likely, a costly respect. If you have a brood warden, you have a tank, full stop. You might have a DPS and Healer pet option for when you're not using your tank pet, but you ARE playing a tank at that point, it's just whether you're in tank stance or DPS stance.

Githal

Halae wrote: »

Githal wrote: »

Well a jack of all trades means that you cant fill a missing role completely. Like a summoner cant be main tank, But he can be off tank. You cant be a DPS, but you can help with doing dmg. You cant be a main healer of the group, but in some situations you will stop doing anything else and heal the party and help the cleric

I feel the need to note that this might not necessarily be true. Summoner in AoC is meant to be the Jack, yes, but because of the way Steven has commented on them, and the way they'll be accepting the class system, they'll apparently be almost all the way to being a full option for the role their class gives them, whether that be healer, support, DPS, or tank. Testing is necessary to see if that bears out, of course, but you can't 'fill a hole' in a party structure without being capable of actually handling that role, and buildcraft helps with that sort of thing. A summoner tank might be able to legitimately play the tank; we just don't know yet how far it'll go, but summoner would be a pretty useless archetype if it couldn't fulfill the role it specializes itself towards. The math still has to work out such that there's never a point where summoners are being turned away from groups just because they're summoners.

And before a comment about that comes up, Summoners are going to be specialists, just like other archetypes. That's the nature of how they interact with the class system; if a summoner becomes a Summoner/Cleric to be a necromancer, they'll get death magic and healing abilities, per the cleric, which will buff up what healing capability they already have. Choosing Summoner/Tank to become a Brood Warden means your already tanky pet option is going to become even more so, maybe capable of actually holding aggro and doing CCs. A summoner also can't swap their class on a dime - a brood warden is stuck as a brood warden, and can't swap to being a DPS class without a lengthy trip back to town and, likely, a costly respect. If you have a brood warden, you have a tank, full stop. You might have a DPS and Healer pet option for when you're not using your tank pet, but you ARE playing a tank at that point, it's just whether you're in tank stance or DPS stance.

Q: When it comes to tanking, will it be primarily the tank archetypes that will be able to tank, or can other people tank?
A: Other people can tank. It really depends on the setting. If we're talking high-end raiding or dungeoneering and playing in these areas that require a main tank, that role and responsibility lies to the Tank archetype. Now tank archetypes can obviously take secondary archetype selections and they can hybridize across different roles. That'll give them a bit of horizontal utility or horizontal progression to the augment system; and the best tanks are going to be the tanks that double down in that role.

Also: Cleric classes are the only classes that can fill the role of a primary healer.[9] Classes with Cleric as a secondary archetype will have self-healing benefits as well as limited healing benefits to other players.

NO ONE IS GOING TO FILL THE ROLE OF A PRIMARY HEALER OTHER THAN THE HEALER ARCHETYPE; but there will be secondary class options that you can select, which will provide you with some level of sustainability under restoration, most of that will be centralized to yourself, especially in the case of a Paladin

This is per the AOC WIKI. So i am pretty sure that you wont fill Main role as summoner. you will be supporting role that fills the gaps and help where its needed.

And no summoner wont be useless even as such, because even tho during a single boss fight you wont do enough dmg as dps, nor heal as cleric nor tank as tank, or support as a Bard. You will be doing all 4 at the same time (or 2 or 3 of those things). So if main healer has 5k heal per second, and main dps has 5k damage per second, you as Summoner may have 2k hps and 3k dps (just example).

Halae

The trick here that I'm getting at is a math one. Basically, a simple question; do you want [Role], or do you want a summoner? Based on the answers we've had so far... the answer will be that no group will ever actually want to bring a summoner along.

That's bad design. If a class is utterly undesirable in high-end content because there's always someone better at that role, the class is going to feel bad to play at high levels because it's literally just a worse version of something else you could be playing. For all that Ashes of Creation is trying to avoid catering to everyone, the eight archetypes are a core pillar of the gameplay space. If over 10% of your gameplay space feels bad, you have an inadequacy of design. There are three ways to tackle this problem.

Option 1: double down on the versatility inherent in playing a summoner. Summoners get three pets, as far as we're aware; a healer, a DPS, and a tank pet. If you want to lean into the versatility offered by being able to swap like this, you need to lean on a stronger ability to swap on the fly - if the tank goes down, you can hot swap to a tank pet and give the healers some breathing room to rez the tank. then once the tank is doing their job again, you can swap back to DPS, no muss or fuss. That's a good position for a "versatility" class to be in.

The problem with Option 1 is that if you have a good team, a solid Static group, a group of people capable of high-end content? They don't need a summoner. Never did, never will, because they don't flub their roles, so they don't need someone to hot swap and fill in. The healer won't die, so the summoner won't need to be a pseudo-healer to cover for them. The healers and tanks will be good enough to not go down or run out of mana. And if all the summoner is doing is DPS, then it's better to just bring along another DPS, since the summoner wouldn't have good enough damage output to replace a more dedicated DPS class.

Which leads us to Option 2: Specialization. If You cannot expect the "versatility" playstyle to work adequately within the framework of Ashes, specialization is the next best bet. And it's already structurally supported; choose cleric secondary to get more healing ability, choose tank secondary to get more aggro management and tankiness, choose Fighter secondary to get more DPS, and so on. The problem with saying "it won't be as good as a dedicated archetype" is that that creates the position where there's no reason to do it. You need two tanks for this boss? Just bring a pair of tanks, a Summoner/Tank is useless for that. You need more than one healer? No reason to bring a summoner when you could grab a pair of clerics. you want DPS? There's many options, no need for a summoner. That means that if a summoner wants to be a contributing member of a team, a specialized summoner needs to be capable of operating on the level of output that other classes within that role are putting out, or else there is, mechanically, no reason to ever have them in your party in high-end content.

And it's not like you can just hot swap your class. If you could swap your secondary archetype any time you're out of combat, it'd create a meta of having two or three different "builds" that you how swap between whenever an encounter calls for a change. We need mobility? Everybody swap to mage secondary for the teleport effects! So if that can't happen, if you need to head back to a node to swap your secondary archetype as has been implied, then a summoner is stuck in whatever role they've specialized themselves for for the duration of the dungeon run. That means, mathematically, they need to contribute as a full member of their role, or they'll be ditched by every decent content group, and pick up a stigma for being a trap option for new players who aren't mechanically inclined.

And then there's Option 3: Solo Play. Petmaster classes have, classically, been a better option for solo adventuring in video games because their displaced health bar and ability to heal their pet create a tank/healer dynamic that effectively allows you to play with a companion despite being alone. Even if you can't hit the highs of other classes in a given role, you're capable of operating on your own much more consistently, with far less of a hazard from PvE enemies.

The trick with this option is that Ashes isn't being designed to cater to solo play. It'll be allowed, you'll be able to do things while playing solo, but it's not something they want to go out of their way to encourage. Making it so that one of your only eight archetypes is specifically built for that would be a truly bizarre choice for the directives they've laid out.

So what's the answer? Frankly, I'm absolutely certain that Intrepid has written themselves into a metaphorical corner with the summoner. The structure of the class system means that they have already chosen Option 2; a summoner gains the ability to specialize at level 25, the same time every other class gets a secondary archetype. If the summoner can't match the output of a dedicated archetype, the summoner will be unwelcome in high-skill groups, and therefore it'll either be a mechanical necessity for players to pick Summoner/Summoner and thus double down on the versatility of their summons (thus running afoul of the problems of Option 1 and still being unwelcome in high-end groups) or they have to math up and make the specialized summoners actually capable of output that matches their role.

The alternative is a mathematically broken game, and something tells me they don't want that. Steven can say what he wants about the intention for the Summoner, but what he's saying leaves summoner in an undesirable position from a game development standpoint.

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