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!

[Dragon]

I think the intrinsic precedent you are founding your argument on is wrong.

You are not locked into using one class/weapon type/style during any part of the game, you are not forced to use only summoning weapons at any point in the game just like you don't have to use melee or ranged or magic. Starting skill bonuses are incredibly low for Core Keeper and give you basically nothing except a few percentage points of damage and some starting equipment for your first few enemies and maybe the slime boss.

Is it unfortunate that summoner seems *underpowered*, yes, but this doesn't mean its poorly designed. The minion weapons work just fine as a supporting weapon for other weapon types like melee and ranged where your mana cost is negligible for keeping a minion or two up. In this case they are purely bonus damage for fights, similar to pets, which they are obviously designed in tandem with.

I think there are some great ideas in your post and this thread in general in how to make the class idea work better/buff the existing ideas, but as it works in the game right now as a supporting skill, it works just fine.

[dragonzerox13x]

its not bad... its just work in progress...
i mean how many summoner weapons are their right now?

tho... less usable it has its uses
i used the bats to take out like 1st 2 bosses (tho somewhat using cheesy strategy as well bats used to counter the bosses healing at time or just add dps to bosses early off)

tho i do agree theirs a ton of room for improvement....
even more when the summoning build seems to turn player into a glass cannon...
from what i seen so far (just lowered the walls)

[Niwoh]

Summoner is very good for bossing and extremely strong late game, but not very good for exploring since the ai is not aggressive enough to protect you.

[Yürei]

Dragon eredeti hozzászólása:

I think the intrinsic precedent you are founding your argument on is wrong.

You are not locked into using one class/weapon type/style during any part of the game, you are not forced to use only summoning weapons at any point in the game just like you don't have to use melee or ranged or magic. Starting skill bonuses are incredibly low for Core Keeper and give you basically nothing except a few percentage points of damage and some starting equipment for your first few enemies and maybe the slime boss.

Is it unfortunate that summoner seems *underpowered*, yes, but this doesn't mean its poorly designed. The minion weapons work just fine as a supporting weapon for other weapon types like melee and ranged where your mana cost is negligible for keeping a minion or two up. In this case they are purely bonus damage for fights, similar to pets, which they are obviously designed in tandem with.

I think there are some great ideas in your post and this thread in general in how to make the class idea work better/buff the existing ideas, but as it works in the game right now as a supporting skill, it works just fine.

Except they put a "starter class" into the character creation indicating that they would like to have people go a certain path and rewards sticking with it. If there wasn't a Warlock class that starts you off with only a summon weapon + bonus stats into summoning, maybe you could make that argument about summoning being a supporting feature.

I don't know why people keep trying to say that it can be used as a supporting tool when they should know as well as everyone else that Warlock(Summoner) is suppose to be its own very build. Hell, you want to talk about using Melee or Range as attack options, but there is a trait in the summoner tree that gives you bonus damage base off your magic damage. You only have magic damage when you have a magic weapon equipped in your hand (From what I can tell with the stat section). So you can imagine the annoyance of trying to fight when the summon AI doesn't like attacking first and you can't attack with zero mana due to summon cost.

Mage also feels pretty bad too at times, but its no where near as bad as Warlock.

[Raythered]

Yürei eredeti hozzászólása:

Except they put a "starter class" into the character creation indicating that they would like to have people go a certain path and rewards sticking with it. If there wasn't a Warlock class that starts you off with only a summon weapon + bonus stats into summoning, maybe you could make that argument about summoning being a supporting feature.

Fisherman and Gardener are also options at character creation and nobody is saying that it is an indication that the game is telling your to use a fishing rod or a hoe as your main weapon.

[parent child bowl]

I don't get how people can think that summoner competes with melee, physical ranges and magic when it has so much downtime. It's damage on top of those three playstyles.

[NorionV]

parent child bowl eredeti hozzászólása:

I don't get how people can think that summoner competes with melee, physical ranges and magic when it has so much downtime. It's damage on top of those three playstyles.

It doesn't really have that much down time in my experience. I can easily keep all of my summons up and spam a magic weapon. Idk what other people are doing but it hasn't really been a problem for me thus far.

[Yürei]

Raythered eredeti hozzászólása:

Yürei eredeti hozzászólása:

Except they put a "starter class" into the character creation indicating that they would like to have people go a certain path and rewards sticking with it. If there wasn't a Warlock class that starts you off with only a summon weapon + bonus stats into summoning, maybe you could make that argument about summoning being a supporting feature.

Fisherman and Gardener are also options at character creation and nobody is saying that it is an indication that the game is telling your to use a fishing rod or a hoe as your main weapon.

No, but it encourages people to focus on that as their main star. Doing a playthrough rn and we have a dedicated fisher and gardener/cook. Thanks to them, we have plenty of buff food and materials from fishing. Every "starter class" is useful up until late game except Summoner who relies on a terrible ai with low damage + high mana cost.

[Yürei]

NorionV eredeti hozzászólása:

parent child bowl eredeti hozzászólása:

I don't get how people can think that summoner competes with melee, physical ranges and magic when it has so much downtime. It's damage on top of those three playstyles.

It doesn't really have that much down time in my experience. I can easily keep all of my summons up and spam a magic weapon. Idk what other people are doing but it hasn't really been a problem for me thus far.

Have you been upgraded your summoner weapons? Cost start to get ridiculous especially since mana isn't really increased a lot by minion armor sets

[TheClosetSkeleton]

Yürei eredeti hozzászólása:

Raythered eredeti hozzászólása:

Fisherman and Gardener are also options at character creation and nobody is saying that it is an indication that the game is telling your to use a fishing rod or a hoe as your main weapon.

No, but it encourages people to focus on that as their main star. Doing a playthrough rn and we have a dedicated fisher and gardener/cook. Thanks to them, we have plenty of buff food and materials from fishing. Every "starter class" is useful up until late game except Summoner who relies on a terrible ai with low damage + high mana cost.

Ok, two things with this.

First, no. The base role give a VERY slight boosts to specific stats, and while having dedicated players to jobs is a viable strategies, nothing in the game really pushes you to.

That's just how you play, and probably some others too.

Second is the "high mana cost" of the summoner. You do realise that late game summoner set have a minion uptime of like 1,30~2 minutes, and that's with the base 30 seconds of uptime, which is getting upgraded to 1 full minute, so double that number. You pop your minion at most 2 times in a boss fight, at the start prior to engaging, and maybe sometimes in the middle to garrantee uptime.

So the mana cost is only a problem if you don't keep an eye on the clock. Granted, I think a visual buff for the active summons would be better, as to know when they'll time out exactly, but late game armor gives you plenty of mana, especially upgraded whilst providing a big enough mana pool to use other stuff, forcing you to halt damage for 4 whole seconds of resummon once to twice in a fight.

Summoner is more finnicy, and isn't the best class raw (pairs better with a mage) but that argument just doesn't make any sense unless you are spamming your minions all the time.

And as some proof of how viable a raw summon build is, I beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of urshleim using one. It was tough, but if that's possible I don't want to hear that kind of hyperbole on the class.

Could it use a buff. Yes.
Is it the unplayable unfun nightmare described in this thread. No.

[NorionV]

Yürei eredeti hozzászólása:

NorionV eredeti hozzászólása:

It doesn't really have that much down time in my experience. I can easily keep all of my summons up and spam a magic weapon. Idk what other people are doing but it hasn't really been a problem for me thus far.

Have you been upgraded your summoner weapons? Cost start to get ridiculous especially since mana isn't really increased a lot by minion armor sets

Yeah, I've kept it current. Not end of the game ye - I'm in sunken sea - but I can still get out all my minions pretty easily.

[Yürei]

TheClosetSkeleton eredeti hozzászólása:

Yürei eredeti hozzászólása:

No, but it encourages people to focus on that as their main star. Doing a playthrough rn and we have a dedicated fisher and gardener/cook. Thanks to them, we have plenty of buff food and materials from fishing. Every "starter class" is useful up until late game except Summoner who relies on a terrible ai with low damage + high mana cost.

Ok, two things with this.

First, no. The base role give a VERY slight boosts to specific stats, and while having dedicated players to jobs is a viable strategies, nothing in the game really pushes you to.

That's just how you play, and probably some others too.

Second is the "high mana cost" of the summoner. You do realise that late game summoner set have a minion uptime of like 1,30~2 minutes, and that's with the base 30 seconds of uptime, which is getting upgraded to 1 full minute, so double that number. You pop your minion at most 2 times in a boss fight, at the start prior to engaging, and maybe sometimes in the middle to garrantee uptime.

So the mana cost is only a problem if you don't keep an eye on the clock. Granted, I think a visual buff for the active summons would be better, as to know when they'll time out exactly, but late game armor gives you plenty of mana, especially upgraded whilst providing a big enough mana pool to use other stuff, forcing you to halt damage for 4 whole seconds of resummon once to twice in a fight.

Summoner is more finnicy, and isn't the best class raw (pairs better with a mage) but that argument just doesn't make any sense unless you are spamming your minions all the time.

And as some proof of how viable a raw summon build is, I beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of urshleim using one. It was tough, but if that's possible I don't want to hear that kind of hyperbole on the class.

Could it use a buff. Yes.
Is it the unplayable unfun nightmare described in this thread. No.

My point is that the game has stuff in the game that points to a pure summoner build with a magic weapon as a build.

You shouldn't have to go through a terrible time of early-mid game (one could probably argue late game to a degree) just to feel like a somewhat viable build. Also, I don't think saying that something is viable cause you can clear Urschleim. With enough time and prep, you could do almost anything with a summoner build. The problem comes when you start to compare it to every other combat build and realize that summoner is terrible. The amount of damage, the summon's ai, the mana cost(soon to be fixed), and the minion lifespan (being doubled is good). Lifespan that can only really be truly be extended with armor/accessories. Hitting minimum 80 in summoning before allowed to get that trait isn't exactly fast or fun. Its only somewhat easy to cheese thanks to the armor mushroom. So yea, I think its warranted for people to think this way.

[Yürei]

NorionV eredeti hozzászólása:

Yürei eredeti hozzászólása:

Have you been upgraded your summoner weapons? Cost start to get ridiculous especially since mana isn't really increased a lot by minion armor sets

Yeah, I've kept it current. Not end of the game ye - I'm in sunken sea - but I can still get out all my minions pretty easily.

I'm going to assume you're using bats that haven't been upgrade too much yet. By late game, you'll probably have mana cost around 100 per bat (seriously who thought this was a good idea). So at best, you'll be summoning around 2-3 per mana bar with a minion cap of 5-6.

[NorionV]

Yürei eredeti hozzászólása:

NorionV eredeti hozzászólása:

Yeah, I've kept it current. Not end of the game ye - I'm in sunken sea - but I can still get out all my minions pretty easily.

I'm going to assume you're using bats that haven't been upgrade too much yet. By late game, you'll probably have mana cost around 100 per bat (seriously who thought this was a good idea). So at best, you'll be summoning around 2-3 per mana bar with a minion cap of 5-6.

I am using skeletons that are as high as I can feasibly level them with available materials - they have been a lot more effective than bats so far.

And yeah, I have to run two bars to summon them already, but they last for ages and destroy anything that gets near me. So I'm good with it.

[Tanyon]

Yea my skeletons are doing crazy damage.. I'm sure there are stronger builds but I feel pretty powerful as is. My guys last like 65% longer, do more damage, quick attack. The leveling seems slowwwwww I've been using them for hours and hours and I'm only lvl 6 in minions/summoning.

They definitely need more staves and minion types.. for sure..