Summoner is so bad, I question why it was even added in this state.

[Yama]

So, I just got done with the 9.9.9 content, killed all the bosses multiple times and the map is fully explored. I played all of it as summoner and I have some feedback.

First of all, what in the world were you thinking giving the minions a lifetime? Almost every fight, where my pure mage, fighter or archer could dive right in, my summoner gets to stand behind a corner for 10 seconds taking a little casting break, pooping out bat after bat, even waiting for mana to refill to the point where I can summon the last of them because the sets give mana regen instead of max mana for some reason. All that is the opposite of fun.

Then, when you finally have all your minions and you go and attack something it takes what feels like a leap year for them to join the fight because they only attack what you are already in combat with and the summoning book has a melee primary attack? Ok, if you are making me open the fight with another ranged weapon then I might as well just use that and save myself the time sitting around summoning. Give the summoner book an attack command for left click!

Best of all, if you play with say a fireball staff of bazooka as secondary, chances are you are gonna one-shot the first target and that makes the bats instantly leave combat again.. did nobody test this?

The only way to play summoner that's even remotely fun is to summon the bats as you are running in, trying to avoid enemies like a headless chicken while poking and prodding everything around just to make sure the bats stay in combat. It's dumb.

Finally, there is the lack of summons variety. I don't think it's asking too much to have maybe 1 or 2 more summon weapons before the wall comes down. I looked everywhere and killed every boss multiple times. If there is one, I couldn't find it. If you pick summoner you have no choice but to hold on to your starting weapon.. the bats.

Wanna improve the bats? Get one of two armor sets and a jewelry off-hand combo and go grind summoning skill. And oh boy does it take a long time to grind summoning skill.. No chance of finding an upgrade in the field. No crafting one at the workbench. Progression isn't fun.

Summoner feels like it wasn't just added last minute, it feels like it was designed last minute too. This class needs to go back to the drawing board. Cheers!

[KaossoaK]

I tried the summoner class and hated it. I picked up a crossbow and was easily averagely doing more damage than my two bats. Not to mention, there are... Three total summon weapons in the game? Two beyond the bat summons you start with? I love the summoner class, just not in this game.

I still think they should be infinite, not a minute. Which ever, I will just ignore the class.

[Tantamau]

Easy fix, either make summons not have a duration OR make them worth more than just attacking. Give summons buffs per minion active (Like the barrier minion buff in leveling, only tied to the Tome used to summon instead.) Something that fits the play style of the summon, like Bats boost your MP/HP regen per bat or give you dodge. Undead boost attack speed or give you life per hit. Jellyfish boosts your defense and the more of them you have summoned the more status immunities you have (Immune to slime slow > slippery > acid damage > burning > and last level with max summons gives you trap dodge). Fits with the playstyle of ranged magic > fast melee > beefy boy.

The timer being 30s is too short, by the time I can get minions attacking all together they start to unsummon. BUT having them worth more than just an attack creature would make it more worth it. More fun. Especially if these buffs are Aura based, and make warlock a heavily loved multiplayer friend.

[Terran]

Summoner is really rough in this game...I'm not much of a fan of Mage either. Doesn't feel very magical.

[Lasagna]

Been playing around with warlock in the 1.0 and I've gotten sick of it by the time I got past the wall, the fact that there are only 3 summons, and the bats are somehow the best of the three despite being slow and clunky.

Mage and summoner seem super tacked on at the last minute. Mage can end up being good (fireball staff by beloved) with enough investment but summoner is just awful.

[Frog Soup]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Lasagna:

Been playing around with warlock in the 1.0 and I've gotten sick of it by the time I got past the wall, the fact that there are only 3 summons, and the bats are somehow the best of the three despite being slow and clunky.

Mage and summoner seem super tacked on at the last minute. Mage can end up being good (fireball staff by beloved) with enough investment but summoner is just awful.

likely tacked on so they could say "1.0, full release with TWO new classes!"

[Fulano]

An interesting take on the summoner/magic classes, I haven't noticed anyone call for a nerf yet.

Opprinnelig skrevet av glass zebra:

Really hope you take a look at summoning and magic soon and nerf summoning skills. It is pretty ridiculous that summoners buff magic dps much stronger than the magic sets do (50% dmg, 50% attack speed, 375 shield?!). Killing hard bosses in half a minute on range is really not interesting. Azeos does like 3 attacks before death on hard with 5 bats + arcane staff.

[Best Boi]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Fulano:

An interesting take on the summoner/magic classes, I haven't noticed anyone call for a nerf yet.

Opprinnelig skrevet av glass zebra:

Really hope you take a look at summoning and magic soon and nerf summoning skills. It is pretty ridiculous that summoners buff magic dps much stronger than the magic sets do (50% dmg, 50% attack speed, 375 shield?!). Killing hard bosses in half a minute on range is really not interesting. Azeos does like 3 attacks before death on hard with 5 bats + arcane staff.

He has a good point if i wanna do magic why the hell do i have to level summoning or ranged to get passives that actually let me do damage/ have a usable amount of mana.
It already takes way too long to level any of the combat skills in the game anyway so at that point you might as well just use ranged the whole game and not even fuss with mana its not like the staves are actually more fun or interesting than the ranged weapons.

[EᗪΘΜΛΣ]

+1 I'm too don't see a point to use this. Also AI sometimes forgot to attack enemy.
Grinding lvl on this will be nightmare.

[Martial Autist]

Summoner as an archetype certainly got a rough deal here. I put together the best summon loadout I could make focussing on the actual summons, and compared it with my normal build from the same tier. It was very weak. Though admittedly that's not how you're supposed to play it as it is actually a mage hybrid of sorts. But that's part of it's current problem imho. You don't really feel like- or are a summoner if you have to effectively be a regular mage to make the summons work, and mainly as a way to buff your magic via skills.

The summons for damage output are okay at the start if a bit clunky due to AI, but from the moment you finish with the wilderness there is not really much incentive to use them over some of the better sets if you actually want to lean into the summoning aspect of it. I wrote some small suggestions, and listed a few games they could use as a kind of 'cheatsheet' to build a proper summoner archetype and separate it from the mage. Will copy from the other thread and add it below.

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Opprinnelig skrevet av valorknight:

Yeah, it was pretty heart breaking to see summons get kinda shafted this way, I get why they did it since they want to make it their own thing and make summoners more active during combat, but it just feels so bad to play them since you're always re-summoning things just to deal damage.

Yeah I definitely feel that it needs a bit more time at the drawing board as this was obviously a relatively late addition. Still I am cautiously optimistic for the long term since this is only 1.0 and I am sure it will be rebalanced and reworked as time goes. I've seen a good amount of discussion surrounding summons and I'm sure they are taking the feedback onboard.

As for my 2 cents worth; if they want to make a summoner active during combat I think it would be a good idea to look at concepts like diablo 2's skelemancer (skeleton/curse build) or path of exile's summon-based witch (minions and sentries build) as an example. They could even use the currently empty left-click on tomes to provide support spells such as 'amplify damage', 'slow', and more. While using a weapon or tool (like how terraria has the whip) to mark a target for your minions, and put a 'recall minions to summoner' on it's rmb.

Ideally that is where the mana resource should go towards, and how to keep a summoner active. They are the weapon, you are the lifeline. Your time should be spent actively supporting your minions and keeping yourself safe/alive. This would have an additional benefit as well; as without the need to double dip into regular magic as a summoner, it could be purpose-made for the mage to give that class a more distinct personality and presence as well. I've got a couple of ideas of how that could be done as well but that's a different thread lol.

Otherwise they could go the same route as terraria, it was a simplified version of the concept but it worked fairly well for this type of game, and might be the easiest to implement. As that requires the least amount of adjustments. Just brushing up the AI and adding a weapon that directs minions on hit. From there it would just be balancing the base minion damage and summoner sets' bonuses so they don't lag behind the better sets and weapons at mid-to-end game.

Otherwise 1.0 is great so far.

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All of this said, I know it's a new and last-minute addition so I'm curious to see what they do with it in the long term.

[glass zebra]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Fulano:

An interesting take on the summoner/magic classes, I haven't noticed anyone call for a nerf yet.

Opprinnelig skrevet av glass zebra:

Really hope you take a look at summoning and magic soon and nerf summoning skills. It is pretty ridiculous that summoners buff magic dps much stronger than the magic sets do (50% dmg, 50% attack speed, 375 shield?!). Killing hard bosses in half a minute on range is really not interesting. Azeos does like 3 attacks before death on hard with 5 bats + arcane staff.

The bad point in that is though that the summoner is really really strong (much too strong imo).. as a mage. Not in the "my summons kill things". Getting a corrupted warden helmet (or just witch doctor) + chief chest and legs and then taking the 3 mage buffing summoning talents + mage talent that converts barrier to flat damage to get 50% speed, 50% dmg and 188 flat damage (that one is the biggest) onto your 70 dmg arcance stuff. You can do over 10k dps with the ranged auto crit talent with that combo. With level 10 gear, on range, with a giant barrier to protect you, minions that shoot down most projectiles and a staff that shoots more than 5 times per second (and therefore also stuns really reliably with ranged skills and grants infinite mana from the crits).

It matters little which minions you take for that though, since almost all of that damage comes from the arcane staff. They do add some damage, but you are just a mage at that point and take the minions to buff. Those buffing talents are so much stronger than the left branch in the summoner tree. Summoner does need a nerf, but not so much on the summonings itself. The right tree is just ridiculous.

Imo the big issue people have is that summonings are basically like DOTS. They do amazing damage, but only if you consider their cast time + total possible damage. When you run around the wild, that matters little when you can just kill things quickly with instant damage. The good part is that you are not exempt from that as a summoner though and non-weapon gear choice generally buffs less early on than skill levels do in this game, so summonings are just "addition".

In many other games with summonings your gear can make or break a build more easily or you at least have to decide if you want to level up summonings OR damage, but here you get so much power from skills or food that you can just stack and stack with no choices to be made between the build. You can just be mage AND summoner. The bad part is that outside of boss battles or to shield you from enemies the summonings struggle to be more than just "addition". It is a bit better on hard, because enemies have more HP, but not a lot. One can take that as a design choice and to have some pro and con.. but I would really like to be able to focus more on being a summoner instead of just "I am an mage/ranger, but summonings also exist".


Summoner faces the "problem" of Core Keeper the most that you can be everything you want - at the same time. There is no "I ditch all my other damage boosts, because I focus on summonings". You can use your mage weapon and to a degree your other ranged weapons at almost full (or more?) strength while summoning. At least the other "class" choices can not use 2 weapons at the same time, yet you can swap around melee and ranged freely still and even use one to boost the other. In Terraria and the other games people mention in this thread, you have to decide: Either I boost my minions damage greatly or another type. You do not in Core Keeper, except for you gear. You get all the other power from all classes combined at all time and that can already add over 100% bonus damage or even 200% bonus DPS with no gear worn.

With that design it is hard to buff minions, since there is nothing to keep the other stuff in check while they are up in place. That +80% purely additive damage or so of a high level mage set has too little influence in this game. You can already get over +250% form skills and food (so that 80% additive becomes close to a measly 20% multiplicative). You can not just do it like Terraria does, where almost all your damage comes from equipment and specific damage bonus also has a much bigger influence because of the additive armor system on enemies.


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The most hope bringing piece of equipment right now to oppose that design a bit is imo the skull necklace: much stronger boost to minion damage than other damage boosts you can get on that slot and an actual (albeit more symbolic) downside added because of that. This is imo the best way right now to enable strong minions without overbuffing the character in general. If that would be e.g. for other damage types instead of HP, they might have a path open to a dedicated summoner with strong DPS from summonings. That would probably bite the general game design too much though.

[Firephoenixx456]

I feel that summoner verges on being overpowered but it's biggest flaw is target acquisition. also the mana drain on upgraded minions is a bit of a problem yes but overall I'm finding my summoner/ranger build to be the strongest build I've had since using super upgraded slime sword to lock enemies in place. (seriously maxing out a slime sword in the older builds could effectively freeze enemies in place as if they were stunned)

[CaptainPOCK]

I hate to say it, but Core Keeper suffers the Terraria Syndrome where ranged and Melee weapons are just the best, mage work kinda well and Summon is conditional based on progression. But as people already mentioned, Core keeper doesn't put too much focus on one class when using class specific armor, so any weapon can be good so it kind of balances out.

But if you were to do "only class X" run, I think the clear winner would be melee or ranged. Likely melee.

[Best Boi]

Terraria's magic took a little while to be in a good spot but its saving grace has always been spectacle, even from the early stages of the game the weapons are diverse and interesting enough to be fun. Then in later stages you get lots of interesting things to use that can make you change your playstyle while using them or work as a bit of a toolbox for different situations.

Core keeper doesn't have that yet and may never have it the most interesting weapons for magic in terms of flair are a staff that shoots teamkilling exploding balls and a sword that does magic damage. Honestly thats one of my major issues with the whole game all the weapons feel pretty samey between every "class", that should make summoning's weapons shine but they feel nearly worthless with how targeting currently works.(also there only being 3 of them doesn't help either)

Both feel halfbaked with no non optimal way to use them and have them be fun the only option is to min max into 3 combat skills to use them or just be very bored while you wait on mana regen and bats that barely want to attack.

[NorionV]

Magic and Summoning were added right after 1.0, so I'm sure they'll do more with it. Definitely going to add more summons; no shot they don't.

Both skills are less than a week old. We're basically testing them right now.

That being said: as finnicky as the AI can be, summons are pretty busted if you combo magic with them properly. I'm steamrolling as I move into the second outer biome today. No sign of slowing down.

[CaptainPOCK]

Opprinnelig skrevet av NorionV:

Magic and Summoning were added right after 1.0, so I'm sure they'll do more with it. Definitely going to add more summons; no shot they don't.

Both skills are less than a week old. We're basically testing them right now.

That being said: as finnicky as the AI can be, summons are pretty busted if you combo magic with them properly. I'm steamrolling as I move into the second outer biome today. No sign of slowing down.

To which I will say: If they're not refined, why release the game in an 1.0 state with these included? Not that it impacted the game much if we're being honest, the reviews are great and people enjoy their time. But to me, an 1.0 version should be the fleshed out experience with everything considered, plus potential patches to fix some oversights.

I have said that 2 days after 1.0 release, the 1.0 update added a lot of great things, but things like the Passage or the new classes feel unrefined and rushed.