Summons are too weak

[Neko]

The melee summons need a decent health buff, so that they can atleast take 2 hits. I understand you don't want them too tanky, but always 1 hit is not fun. Also the shadow minions at lvl 15 do maybe decent damage considering they are ranged I guess, but my friends just murder stuff outright. But the ranger bird for example does half that damage.

I really love summoning, but I would deal way more damage being a different build. And the summons can't take a hit so it is not like they are OP in that way.

[Malitias]

Summoners only come live when they have both the Lich (no AP cost for summoning) and both CD reductions in the ranger tree.

And do yourself a favor with the Bounty Hunter's Mark as well.
Summoners rely HEAVILY on quantity over quality, so getting all the CD reductions you can get is what makes it viable to play.

But even then, I don't think it scales well into higher difficulties.

[Second Batch]

They don't front line at all. They can be mediocre damage adders if you control the enemy's movement. But, yes, overall they suck.

[SpiralRazor]

Originally posted by PghDave420:

do you have armor with summoner buffs? my bear,wolf and skel knight last more than 1 round ,unless its a some boss doing ground slam . also i put skel archer away from the fight they last whole time unless some crazy aoe happening.

On veteran + ? Nope, they wont last one round. Some bosses have mechanics where the entire map gets swept with damage.

Summons scale to low, and mobs scale to high. Theres no massive power spikes in SR like there is in Grim Dawn etc. The devs at crate realized you need scaling in the hundreds of % on higher difficulties, not these measly 10-20%.

[SpiralRazor]

Originally posted by PghDave420:

yea im not on hardest difficulty yet.i figured it has to be rough lol

No one is.

[Nightmare]

I'm still early in the game only level 10 but summons seem plenty strong to me, while their health is lacking yes the skeleton knight can take 2-3 hits while doing 50/70 base damage a hit with 120+ on crits and the skeleton ranger is dealing base 80 and 140+ on crits and they scale off your stats rather then weapon damage so you're able to ignore dmaage and just use items with most amount of stats

[SpiralRazor]

No amount of stat scaling is going to get you past adventurer and the higher the lvl you go, the worse it gets. Some bosses are for all intents, not doable even with a well outfitted summoner. On adventurer, my mage hits for around ~500 and its still not enough to overcome constant summoned adds, int over 100 and might around 60.

[Admiral Hamfist]

Agree with a lot of this in general. It seems summoners struggle in two main ways though. Firstly, as everyone has been saying they're just too weak. They can handle lower difficulties, certain fights and even bosses well, and I personally think they're a great part of any party helping bolster other players, but they don't stand well in the late game, or the early game at all.

The other issue, which I think ties into this, is the fact that the purest summon build always has the same core to it. As in, it requires two specific skills to function its best. Lich Lord (tier 5 in Shadow) for no AP cost on summons, and Call of the Wild (tier 4 in Ranger) for a 1 cooldown reduction (also Endless Quiver if using the Rangers summons for an additional 1 cooldown on them). There's a lack of summon skills everywhere else.

The only two classes that have ANY summon skills are those. Sure, grabbing Light's Strength to boost your Might does have knock effect on your summons but that's boring. I'd love to see some mid tier skills across the board have a bonus to summons as well, even if it's very simplistic.

Add a skill to fire, lightning & cold that make it so your summons spawn with an Enchant Element skill on them as appropriate, have Berserker's Blood & Into the Fray also effect summons, Contaminated Wound should apply for the Bear's and Skeleton Mage's bleed effects etc. I just want a reason to try other things with my summoners rather than 13 points in Shadow and 8 in Ranger just putting whatever change I've got left elsewhere and having most of my summoners feeling so similar while also feeling not particularly strong.

[mqpiffle]

Maybe the new nature class will have summons? Also I personally would have expected the elemental classes to feature at least one summoning skill, if not more. It would definitely add more build variety in the long run.

[SpiralRazor]

Well...if the scaling is the same for the "nature" class, it wont make a difference. You run into the summon limit quickly anyway.

[MisinformedOwl]

I love my "tank" skeleton warrior being one shot by a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mage doing the same damage as a player but having 4x the health.

[Joleme]

Originally posted by MisinformedOwl:

I love my "tank" skeleton warrior being one shot by a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mage doing the same damage as a player but having 4x the health.

Just wait til your'e doing 'endgame' stuff and the non boss mobs have 50-125k hp. The only summon i've seen survive a round on it's own is the bear with 2500hp, and that's with like 150%+ summon health.

[xDim]

Lmao, now i lost interest playing summoner

[davidbrims]

I don't think the criticisms in this thread are really valid anymore. They put in massive bonuses for summoned creatures on Tiered items now. I haven't tried it, but I suspect high-level summoners with the right gear are WAY stronger now.

[Neko]

Currently playing summoner, but only started getting tiered items, I use all necro minions and summons from fortunes. They are decent. Have not used the ranger summons for a while now because they (perhaps used to) die to fast.

[craig234]

As I consider buying the game, funny, I prefer summoners, and liked seeing OP 'like playing that' - sounds fun - then seeing they are not strong, eh... then the latest posts... hm.