Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase III testing has begun! During this phase, our realms will be open every day, and we'll only have downtime for updates and maintenance. We'll keep everyone up-to-date about downtimes in Discord.
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
🧙♂️ Development Update Livestream Discussion Thread
Greetings, glorious community!
Our latest Development Update Livestream was packed with Summoner goodness!
We explored the gameplay and visual design of this versatile archetype, dove deep into its three Vessels, the Guardian, Hunter, and Mystic, and showcased some of their key abilities in action. Then, we took the Summoner for a spin through the wilds of Verra!
Now we’d love to hear from you! 👇
💭 What did you think of the Summoner’s design and playstyle?
⚔️ Which Vessel (Guardian, Hunter, or Mystic) resonated with you most and why?
✨ Did the Summoner’s abilities feel unique compared to other archetypes?
🧩 What kinds of party or solo playstyles do you think Summoners will excel at?
🐉 If you could summon any creature in Verra, what would it be?
Your feedback helps us fine-tune this archetype for testing and beyond. Let’s talk all things Summoner!
🎥 Missed the livestream? Watch the full replay here.
Our latest Development Update Livestream was packed with Summoner goodness!
We explored the gameplay and visual design of this versatile archetype, dove deep into its three Vessels, the Guardian, Hunter, and Mystic, and showcased some of their key abilities in action. Then, we took the Summoner for a spin through the wilds of Verra!
Now we’d love to hear from you! 👇
💭 What did you think of the Summoner’s design and playstyle?
⚔️ Which Vessel (Guardian, Hunter, or Mystic) resonated with you most and why?
✨ Did the Summoner’s abilities feel unique compared to other archetypes?
🧩 What kinds of party or solo playstyles do you think Summoners will excel at?
🐉 If you could summon any creature in Verra, what would it be?
Your feedback helps us fine-tune this archetype for testing and beyond. Let’s talk all things Summoner!
🎥 Missed the livestream? Watch the full replay here.
1
Comments
Vessel - These summons didn't speak to me in the way you are asking.
Abilities - The class did not feel particularly unique compared to other archetypes, however there were some notable exceptions. The ability to teleport my summon with my projectile was definitely up there in things I found above my expectations. I also liked the over all animations of the spells (the summon animations were quite lacking on the other hand.) I especially liked the tentacle pit and void vfxs.
Abilities 2 - Overall this Summoner felt very distant and uninvolved in the combat. There was no real incentive to move, the spells the summoner used did not bring a large visual impact to the over all battle, and the group combat itself felt very 'turn off my brain and not pay too much attention.' There was emphasis on the Summoner needing to pay attention to DoT to perform bursts of damage, but I just don't find that engaging at all. My personal class fantasy for summoner involves team work with my summons and my teammates to do big bursts of damage. This summoner design does not seem to have that interaction type at all. Over all I felt like I was watching a mage and there just happened to be a pet around that took up half my bar.
Role and Playstyle - Im not answering the 'what kind of solo or party play styles will the summoner excel at' because quite frankly you built such a monotonous form of combat that I can't be bothered.
Summon Request - Stone golem copies of myself because so far that seems to reflect what is really going on here more accurately than any other creature so far.
Stream Feedback - I'm grateful the team clarified so many aspects of the current design and what to expect going forward. I found the stream very informative.Thank you to the artist for letting me know who made the design decision regarding Spirit damage type. Thank you to the artist who clarified a lot about the design language and asked us about coloring the different summons and spells (yes please give our summons unique colors per summon type.) Thank you to the person who clarified we are not getting dual summons any time soon despite this being what appears to be a direct riff off PoE2's Witch.
Final Word - You can take the Witch out of PoE but you can't take the necromantic hordes out of the Witch. 4/10
On the topic of the Livestream I'd like to loop back to the communication issue. I know the team is busy but a lot of the current feedback community feels like they aren't heard and doing a live Q&A this dev stream didn't help. There have been a lot of feedback threads with questions that could have been answered in a prepared maner instead of live questions that were answered for ease.
I again come back to the need a more sttructured Q&A option so players can feel like there feedback actually has communication. I made a short suggestion in the discord on how to do that but I think anything of he sort Intrepid comes up with would be a welcome change.
No, your access will still be through the Intrepid launcher. You can add the game via shortcut to your Steam library, but you will not be able to play through the Steam install without making a new purchase.
It will be, yes.
1 - Spit shred: The spell casting animation itself looks very boring. In the sense that the character makes a hand movement from below. If it's a curse, then he has to cast it. I didn't like the 3 claws either. It looks really bad. I would like it more if it was a green flame that swirls around the enemy and starts from under his feet, and the activation of the cast with two hands from bottom to top in combination with Hex when the caster's hands remain somewhere below. Maybe I didn't like the book weapon.
2 - Mortal Blast: I really liked this spell. Both the spell cast itself and the explosion itself, as well as the fact that you can detonate 3 times. Just great! Very gorgeous! The description of the spell talks about necrotic damage. Thanks for making necromancy green. I even once created a theme on what color necromancy should be in the game. Thanks for the green!!! I love you)
3 - Disintegrate: Another spell from the school of necromancy. It looks very good. Great sound.
4 - Hex: The animation of the cast is not bad, as is the spell itself.
5 - Dimensional Bolt: Looks OK and that's it. Nothing special. It is only needed for pet teleportation.
6 - Mass Affliction: I liked the spell, but it looks very cheap.
7 - Suppression Ray: I didn't understand what this spell does.
8 - Void: Looks good. I like.
I hope when I take the necromancer class, Suppression Ray and Void will be green
9 - Soul Flare: The animation of the cast looks boring.
There were also other spells. They are all more or less beautiful.
Pets: Liked it. The tank is tanking. DD deals damage. Heal a healer. Considering that when choosing a second profession, their appearance will change, it doesn't matter what they look like at the moment.
Overall, everything looks good. I liked that summoner doesn't have many spells with periodic damage. Considering that in all games such classes specialize in periodic damage, this is quite annoying and I want to see more of a combat mage.
💭 What did you think of the Summoner’s design and playstyle?
Seemed lame, also feels like it took a lot of stuff that 'offensive Clerics' have been hoping for or talking about into its kit, which just feels doubly meh considering the approaches Ashes intends to use for Secondaries/Augments, etc. 100% 'not my thing', especially now that I can play a game that 'proves' it works fine when not done this way, so it's obviously a design choice. 1/10 if even that.
⚔️ Which Vessel (Guardian, Hunter, or Mystic) resonated with you most and why?
All lame, for a person who thinks abstractly and doesn't care too much what they look like. The Guardian is the one that 'didn't look too generic'. The other two, if you told me that they were retextured UE5 store assets I would nod in understanding (it's not that I'm against this at all, I just don't understand the point of the question, probably due to FF11). 2/10 if reskins, 0/10 for creativity if not. I would give 1 point for the Guardian's shield stance but considering that it doesn't make sense as a vessel conceptually in the first place, it seems very amateurish/shoehorned in the base form. I'll give the point later when I see a different golem/bug do it.
✨ Did the Summoner’s abilities feel unique compared to other archetypes?
Sure, unique in the sense that I felt like other Archetypes should have them and might not get them now that they got thrown onto Summoner. If I compare outside this game though, nah. It feels like everything I feared would come forth for this Archetype based on your miserable combat system came as expected but worse. Everything is even lower quality than I expected in terms of abilities/ability choices and from my own perspective my bar was LOW. It's impressive to fall short of even that, for me. 0/10
🧩 What kinds of party or solo playstyles do you think Summoners will excel at?
Based on experience of FF11, TL, BDO, etc, none. Dead-on-arrival implementation.
Your PvE would have to be so frighteningly low quality for them to ever have a solo playstyle that is in any way distinct, that I don't want to think about it. Party play? No chance as is now or even what I can imagine based on the probable progressions. Maybe I'm not imaginative enough due to that FF11 SMN and Throne and Liberty Orb-user observation bias. Just seems utterly disappointing. PvP? Literally no way this will be good starting from this basis. I normally filter my takes on these things more and I might be overly negative but I'll stress again that the reason is that I had low expectations and y'all could not even hit those.
🐉 If you could summon any creature in Verra, what would it be?
The obligatory hype question for people who settle for fluff has no real answer for me, but I can give a specific, possibly scathing 'warning reason' why.
I would never, at this point, trust that any creature I summoned would have sensible or flexible abilities. I wouldn't even assume that their appearance would be anything more than cosmetic in terms of design language to communicate likely/possible abilities. If I say I would summon a Bear, I'd assume it would just be 'Bear model, but does what the Guardian vessel does and looks somewhat jank doing it, with maybe one animation/ability Bears have'.
This is why I'd say 'Nightmare Horse/Unicorn' just to see what would happen, if this was a sort of 'hey let's give the players a vote/submission for creature summons'. I'd definitely vote 'Horse' on the off chance something awesome would come out.
Overall score F/FF11
I'm not at all sold on the DPS summon being a sort of winged Goblin model, but that's personal taste. They all shine very much too brightly, can we tone it down?. The Heal and Tank summon look good.
It would be neat if Alchemists (or Scribes or Farmers or something) could make colors to apply to your summons, so you could easily customize them for yourself and not loose your summon in a pile.
I feel like all the summons lack a skill. I would like a fourth skill that doesn't cost pet-power, and is a long-ish cooldown (1 minute +) tailored for each of the summoning type:
- Disintegrate Beam for Golem would be nice and congruent with mobs in the world. Good for control and snap aggro of bigger crowds in a pinch, plus OK-ish damage. The fun-o-meter on this one is off the charts though.
- Rally for DPS Goblin because why not, if we're going to use a goblin anyway. Get a nice dps buff going every now and then to really sell dps support.
- Mana Replenish or similar for Mystic. Something that's much less effective than Bard, but can be used in a pinch when there's no one around for mana regen.
⚔️ Which Vessel (Guardian, Hunter, or Mystic) resonated with you most and why?
They were all pretty nice to work with. Obviously Mystic needs to work with mouse-over targeting for party/raid but other than that they all resonated pretty well with me, aside from previous point, which would be a huge caveat: All summons lack a skill.
I feel like the DPS summon had low AoE potential but I might have missed something in my testing.
✨ Did the Summoner’s abilities feel unique compared to other archetypes?
Quite, yeah. However, when you get into the rotational bit and upkeep play, there seem to be something missing. I don't know if my suggested Pet Skills would solve that, or if there's something else that I can't put my finger on.
🧩 What kinds of party or solo playstyles do you think Summoners will excel at?
No idea, this is all very speculative while you're still developing and tuning.
🐉 If you could summon any creature in Verra, what would it be?
Grem. Having a bouncing glowing ball of fury and teeth bear down on you chomping would make me laugh so, so much.
In closing I feel that the Summoner is almost fully complete, and can't wait to get back on to test more.
Perhaps there can be a way to spend pet-power when there's no pet out?
However Summoning Sickness should be reconsidered. Having the means to swap out a summon to take on a different role in the party feels like punishment. It should be the other way around! Perhaps introduce some way to set up so you can summon a different pet quicker, if the conditions are right. Like sacrificing a summon that has full pet-power gives 80% cast speed reduction to summon for X seconds. Can be used every five minutes or something like that.
I would also like to see some of the "summons" power go back to the Summoner if it's not out. Not having a pet increases your damage by X% or something along those lines. It should generate less damage than having a pet out, obviously.
Bugs aside, it's very nice to play so far. But please stop punishing Summoners for changing pets depending on situational need. Being dynamic as a Summoner should be encouraged, not discouraged.
Seconding this. As a person who likes switching summons out a lot in my main summoner game, the fact that I am stuck with one summon feels like the biggest blow to my class fantasy out of all of the other changes. If you won't let us multisummon at least let us quick summon with some amount of build commitment to prevent that from being in all summoner builds and making them annoying to balance.
Sounds like a cash grab... again.