is summoner worth it?

[ShatteredPumpkin]

feels kinda whack and weak mage was way stronger at start already

[.:Jj:.]

At this moment- not really.
Although I haven't really leveled up the skill, it might be just the weird balancing at the beginning. But honestly, it's such a slog that I'm not going to bother for the time being. Maybe it will be adjusted by number tweaking or addition or some more attacks, permanent minions, supporting items etc.

[Leahn Novash]

Currently, no. Even the best summon does not keep up with the endgame in terms of damage.

[ShatteredPumpkin]

sad hope that summoner gets buffed cause to me it seems like a good class for bosses running arround surviving while your summons deal damage but if they keep having the slow damage per hit reaction time and attack speed then its not really worth yeah ;I

[Martial Autist]

Yeah summoning is kind of disappointing. Warlock at late-game seems primarily designed to make mage stronger, and mainly through stacking magic barrier with a summon talent to then convert it to flat magic damage, which in turn gets put through your other modifiers. However if you're expecting summoner to play as it's own class beyond the early-to-mid game then unfortunately that's just not in the cards right now.

However it is do-able up until that point, I still run summons until I have access to scarlet because being able to just kite while something else attacks for me is handy when just exploring and digging. It also makes short work of the first 3 bosses, and still does fairly well against azeos if the tome is upgraded. But even at that point as a distinct class it certainly lacks any meaningful interaction with your minions. And after that point it starts noticably dropping off. The last boss I kill with it is the water slime, then by the time I'm at omoroth I'm back in my old crit setup. Alternatively that is when you transition into magelock, if not sooner.

As a summon enjoyer since the days of diablo 2 (I always play that archetype in every game that lets me) I feel that I definitely got blueballed expecting an actual summoner. x'D It would have been better to make them both distinct playstyles.

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For mage I would raise the mana bonus on sets to be in the thousands, and increase the mana cost on staves by a proportional amount, thus locking them into mage only. Then use that leeway to make a bunch of custom spells and AoE effects instead of linear pewpew. With every staff having a lmb and rmb. Utilizing the upgrade bench to keep all different spell types viable up to end-game.

Then for summoning I would add a weapon that makes minions target what you hit with it (like terraria's whip), with a rmb that returns minions to your location should they ever go too far out to protect you. Improve minion stats and summoner set bonuses to allow for a pure summoner to compete with other strong builds. Improve minion AI to be hyper-aggressive, as in respond immediately to anything non-friendly and spot enemies at medium range (not like the zombie summon lol). Then make more tomes with more summon types, for example sentries, and put a support spell that only affects your minions (or their targets) on every tome's rmb. Stuff like amplify damage, slow, etc. Basically drawing some measure of inspiration from things the diablo 2 skeleton/curse necro, path of exile's summons-based witch, and terraria's summoner.

And to ensure that there is no magelock tomfoolery to expoit the changes I would remove the synergy between minions and magic. The sky is the limit with these new classes, so I hope they take them back to the drawing board at some point. I'm not good at the numbers part of balancing but conceptually I think this is a good rough guide of what both classes need right now.

[Kussin]

Playing summoner only rn and one thing i feel like is that it takes ages to skill up.
Anyways, i feel like every class and summoner especially could need some more weapons to spice things up. Similar to terraria which is has thrown in hundred of weapons so combat never gets boring.