[Suggestion] Dedication Rant, and Suggestions to buff it.

[ZKaagelnaodsa]

(Sword, Rank 15) Dedication Rune: If you have exactly 1 summon, gain Summon Damage and Summon Attack Speed +10% per rank (Max 50%)


Here are some issues with Dedication:
1.) By taking it, you don't have Ethereal or Cadence.

Ethereal and Cadence are entire game changers. Cadence can a game with a ♥♥♥♥ early game like Batgun into Batgod, and Ethereal really can help you clear waves and allow you a moment to breathe when things aren't going your way. These 2 skill tree selections are incredibly strong, so to take dedication means to NOT take one of those 2 skills.

I know this one sounds almost nitpicky, but it's actually one of the more important ones. Cadence is such a powerful rune that it almost feels mandatory sometimes, and vice versa for Ethereal. Scarlet without Ethereal just can't pull off the 360 firestorm, and Lilith without Cadence struggles in the early game so hard that it causes her midgame to be problematic due to the lack of exp from the early game. These two runes almost define a playstyle, and Dedication more supplementary. You don't "define" your playstyle from a single summon, it's more supplementary in that aspect. Because of this, sometimes you literally forget you have it because of how little it impacts your gameplay.

2.) 50% summon damage and summon attack speed, but only one summon.

There are 2 main issues with this

[ 2a ] There are 7 things that count as summons in the game: Ghost, Knife, Knife 2, Scythe, Electro Bug, Dragon and Magic Shield. This means, once you take one of those, every time these appear on your selection screen they are a dead selection because by taking it you are ruining your build.

[ 2b ] Secondly, and this is very important, Ghost and Dagger increase your stats way beyond what this skill tree gives you. When fully built, Ghost gives you: 65% Summon Attack speed, 30% Summon Damage. Likewise, Dagger has Sharpen, which is 40% Damage. When taken together and maxed out (Magic Knife 2 + Shotgun Ghost) you unlock Summon Mastery, 35% summon Damage and 35% summon attack speed at the cost of 35% Bullet damage.

When you grab all of these upgrades, you gain: 100% Summon Attack speed, and 105% Summon Damage.

Granted, with Dedication, you get 50% Summon Attack Speed/Damage, which means with Ghost alone you can get up to 115% Summon Attack Speed, and 80% Summon Damage, or with Knife you can get 90% Summon damage... but Sharpen is the only unlock you can take while the other 2 are dead spots.

3.) Requires you to grab the summon you want, and reasonably only works with Ghost or Dragon—maybe Magic Shield.

So lets check every summon.

Dedicated Ghost: Single summon the whole way through, many buffs, and gets buffed heavily from the Dedication Rune. Can grab every upgrade.

Dedicated Dragon: Single Summon the whole way through, many buffs that increase its own attack speed and damage, and then gives 10% of its damage (which has been buffed by 50%) back to you.

Dedicated Magic Shield: Single shield that gains 170% Damage through things going through the shield, though it's quite small forcing you to only shoot through a very specific direction, but gives 4 bounces and burns everything to make up for that.

Note: I don't know how the calculation of Magic Shield works. It says it gives 35% damage, increases with Summon damage, and then that doubles with magnify. Is it truly 170% more damage? I don't know, and I tried to test it out but the numbers I got were muddy at best.

Dedicated Magic Knife: You have a single knife flying around dealing 90% more damage than your bullet damage, but you cannot pick up the scythe or magic dagger pick-ups or else the buffs will go away, causing you dead pick-ups when you level.

Dedicated Electro Bug: I honestly don't know why you would gain this perk simply for this bug, especially when Ethereal lets you shoot infinitely allowing you more lightning procs.

Dedicated Magic Knife 2: Cannot be done, though if you're using Guardian I suppose you could grab it if you died, and then lost your knife?

Dedicated Scythe: In order to even do this, you'd have to take, take the Rank 15 Shield: Guardian Rune, grab Magic knife and then die, losing the knife to pick up Scythe after. I don't know why you would do this, or go through such loops and give up a perk like the Rank 15 Shield: Growth Rune, but you can do it. Not worth the trouble, is like a magic knife that loops around you.

Because of all of this, only 2-3 summons are even viable with it, and referring back to my first issue, every other summon at this point end up as a dead pick up, because they completely remove the buff that this rune gives.

On TOP of that, you have to actually grab the Summon. Which means, in the early game, you may not even see it if you're not lucky enough. Cadence and Ethereal are given to you right at the start, meaning this one has to be EARNED and is not GIVEN, unlike the other 2 runes you have access too right at the start with no level up rng to get in your way

4.) It's BUGGED

So, remember when I said there are 7 Summon types? I lied, there are 9.
Hina's shadow, and Lilith's Ghosts. Edit: Also Seismic wards?? Really????

Let me explain to you how this skill works.
When you level up, the game first gives you the upgrade (If it's a summon, you get the summon) and then does a check.

How many summons do you have?

1? You gain the buff.
0 or 2+? You don't get the buff.

So, if you dash with Hina and then level up without a summon, you'll get Dedication for that level.. If you level up without Hina's summon on the field, you don't get dedication for that level.

Likewise, if you have a summon, and level up with Hina's shadow on the field you don't get dedication for that level. If you have a summon, and level up with Hina's shadow NOT on the field you then DO get dedication for that level.

It's awkward, and stupid.



--SUGGESTIONS --

1.) Reduce it to 6% per level, and make it apply to summons.

That way you get a 30% Summon damage and attack speed buff right out the gate when maxed out. This doesn't make it OP, but it does make it decently strong and hold its own passively when comparing itself to its 2 contenders by making all of your summons stronger and is a end-game rune 100% dedicated for Summoner builds.


2.) Make it to where once you grab a Summon, no other summons appear upon level up; unless you lose that summon through the Guardian Rune, then you can pick up another.

This actually gives you a hidden buff, where you can wipe out all the summons in the game from the level up pool, you also then get a strong summon at your side because you don't need the other buffs. Plus, once you fix the bug about the Lilith's Skulls and Hina's shadow, having this rune maxed out along with them will allow you to thin out your build for similar benefit, and for your level ups to not be watered down by literally summons that you literally should not take.

If it did give the dragon a passive buff, it should be "At ten minutes, your dragon shoots 5 shots" Since right now it shoots as much as ghost does (3) but ghost pierces infinitely, making it stronger in the long run when enemies bunch up incredibly close.


3.) [As Suggested by Nine] Just scrap it, replace it with dragon tamer which lets you start the game with a dragon egg and then buff dragon stats based on rank.


Personally, the I think this would work is a perk like this

[Dragon Tamer]
Starts the game with a hatched pet dragon. After the dragon has been hatched for 10 minutes, gain +2 projectiles. Rate for dragon tree upgrades increases per rank.

What that "Dragon tree upgrades per rank" means at rank 5, you're almost guaranteed to see one of the Dragon "Increases attack speed/damage every minute" when you level up, so you can take them as soon as possible.

[ZKaagelnaodsa]

Update: Seismic wards are also counted as summons! If you grab that perk you literally cannot benefit from dedication! Ahhhh!! Why!!!!

[Nine]

Just scrap it, replace it with dragon tamer which lets you start the game with a dragon egg and then buff dragon stats based on rank.

[174 cm]

Originally posted by ZKaagelnaodsa:

Update: Seismic wards are also counted as summons! If you grab that perk you literally cannot benefit from dedication! Ahhhh!! Why!!!!

Yes, Seismic Wards count as TWO summons, and you can break one with Guardian to benefit... nothing from it

[174 cm]

Dedication should work with Hina's Shadow Clone without taking any other summons

[ZKaagelnaodsa]

Originally posted by Enanan:

Dedication should work with Hina's Shadow Clone without taking any other summons

It does, but it's bugged. You have to make sure the shadow clone is out when you level. If you level, and the shadow clone is out while you have no summons, it will work.

Honestly, with how good the other 2 are, it should just work with character passives without having to sacrifice a summon to make it better.

Originally posted by Nine:

Just scrap it, replace it with dragon tamer which lets you start the game with a dragon egg and then buff dragon stats based on rank.

Okay, I actually like this, but seeing how strong dragon is now I think getting early scaling rank 2 skills + passive scaling might make it go overboard. I think what would be better is simply giving you a hatched dragon right at the start, and the dragon upgrades are guaranteed to be in the level up pool. This comes as a slight debuff because you get less options per level for the first few levels (because if you didn't want to take them first they will water down your choices,) but a heavy buff because you can start off with the most powerful dragon without praying to RNG.

If it did come with a "passive buff to the dragon" I think "After 10 minutes, your dragon gains +2 projectiles."

This makes it shoot 5 rounds per volley, because I always found it odd that ghost shoots 3, can follow your cursor, but every shot infinitely pierces. Sure, dragon does more damage, but in the long run ghost will do WAY more. Plus, if you rock magic shield, you can make ghost bullets deal an absurd damage and make the bullets HUGE and what they don't kill they burn. Dragon gets 4 bounces, which is still good but it's nothing near the SUN SPHERE that you can turn a ghost shot into.

[Xxanno]

All my yes for the dragon egg idea.

[pseudo]

Don't scrap it. Just make it apply to multiple summons. No, that would not be too strong, take one look at your alternatives in that tier. If it really must be nerfed drop it just by like half or something, but seriously you're competing with infinite bullets or practically infinite piercing, and both happen enough to have really good uptime in the late game. Every gained hit from those is a 100% buff to your power. Compared to that the 50% on ASPD and Attack for summons STILL looks paltry to me even if they applied it to all of my summons.

Having dragon right from the bat wouldn't be competitive either. If it evolved your summons somehow I'd say that would be worth it instead.

[SammanthaAkaKda]

i do like the dragon tamer idea there, only other solution i see would be to actually move it up to say, the second level of the sword tree, since a lot more builds can forgo that little extra damage/atkspeed from the talents there

[Toriel]

And it doesnt work for the bat gun! WTF?

[Sir Hasserfüllt]

Bump.
I am still taking Dedication from time to time because after getting every achievement I only play casually on Darkness 1, so I don't need to minmax every single bit, however:
It feels incredibly weak, and honestly I don't really understand if it even works at all.
I took it as Dasher. It wasn't applying the bonus to the deer. I took a scythe upgrade. It didn't apply the Dedication bonus still. Then I also took the Spear summon because at this point I couldn't be bothered with playing for Dedication anyway, and suddenly it provided the damage bonus...until I leveled up again.
It seems underpowered, poorly worded AND bugged.

[Sunbleached Angel]

Another suggestion, make it only apply to the first summon you pick up. I think it would be pretty cool that way