Strength issue

[MKSchmidt]

I have tried builds where I focus on willpower and summoning things. This makes the early game very easy up to a point. But then I've found it nearly impossible to pass the first or second boss at most. It seems having strength and some potent physical attack is almost always necessary to pass this area.

It this by design?
Or am I just not putting enough thought into my build?
Or sis it something you would like to have but maybe not optimized enough yet?

[Timmcd]

I've made it to the void with summoning builds. It can totally be done, especially as you unlock more specialized cultures/classes/gods. I'll try to beat the first cycle today as a summoner, I'll let you know what I build.

[Ulfsire]

Originally posted by MKSchmidt:

I have tried builds where I focus on willpower and summoning things. This makes the early game very easy up to a point. But then I've found it nearly impossible to pass the first or second boss at most. It seems having strength and some potent physical attack is almost always necessary to pass this area.

It this by design?
Or am I just not putting enough thought into my build?
Or sis it something you would like to have but maybe not optimized enough yet?

some of us (myself included) were only meant to play as warrior :)

haha, that aside, a BIG gap in the game is the presence of "non-swarm big guys summons" -- the only ones that really fill this role rely on swarms to power up (the Brogha and Grave Idol) -- definitely an area I want to build up some more

[JackThejil]

Blood Link can take out lower cycles by itself, heh. Arcvasti managed it with War Chant, too, and there might be others.

Summoning is definitely less directly powerful than other builds, and probably less generally consistent, but it's certainly not weak; I have 6th (largely used them to propagate toxokinesis) and 8th cycle (summons as a pain cleric damage engine more than anything) wins with summoning heavy builds so far, and died in the final boss fight with one 10th cycle (that one was by far the purest summoner, an arba druid/ice shah with psychomorphism/serpent idol and 20 points in invigoration that just absolutely blanketed the map in summons, only dying 'cause a violet demon spawned too close to me).

I do think there's room for improvement on their handling (some ally specific itemization would be grand, and so far there's roughly a grand total of one (1) item that does that that I've noticed), but you can certainly take them quite far with a little bit of finagling.

Allies are very useful as distractions or scouts even with limited investment, and psychomorphism especially opens up a lot of interesting possibilities in regards to Hit synergies, before you even get into interactions like everything with druid, pain cleric, or like half the death and blood powers. You can 100% get through lower cycles in particular with a more or less pure summoning focus, too.

===

For an easy lower level run, just take blood link, psychomorphism, then blood link again and a kinesis spell of your choice (probably vine, cyro, or toxi; vine benefits from more investment, the other two are good one-offs), and just put another level or two into blood link and whatever you have left over on whatever you want. The core build is 2+ levels of blood link, psychomorph, and something useful that triggers on hit, and barring some remarkably bad starting spawn luck, that's more or less all you need for a lower cycle win.

Race/class/god are mostly irrelevant, though choosing for speed is always helpful and eresh is usually pretty okay for summoners. Get a nice weapon (the scythes are great, the summoning weapons are probably better) and cruise on through.

Stat wise, well, willpower's obvious, but don't underestimate the rest of it. Some strength and vigor is good to not get immediately blown up if something manages to tickle you (I like to have at least 1k hp and 10+ str by the end of the game), speed, while less vital for a summon-heavy build than most, is still really helpful (especially if you're leaning on summon on stand still, ala arba or druid) both for damage and survivability.

Originally posted by Ulfsire:

haha, that aside, a BIG gap in the game is the presence of "non-swarm big guys summons" -- the only ones that really fill this role rely on swarms to power up (the Brogha and Grave Idol) -- definitely an area I want to build up some more

The other big gap I've noticed is anything that sacrifices minions to power up you. I wanna be the Brogha :D

[Timmcd]

Originally posted by Timmcd:

I've made it to the void with summoning builds. It can totally be done, especially as you unlock more specialized cultures/classes/gods. I'll try to beat the first cycle today as a summoner, I'll let you know what I build.

This Paragon stand-still build was plenty powerful[imgur.com], died on last fight of first cycle because I got cocky and wanted to stand close enough to watch the boss melt. Woopsies.

[Mike]

Here is the summoning build I used to beat difficulty +8 with:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973814060
(leftmost column is summoner)
I didn't have enough defenes until I took War Chant which gives me and my minions armor.
Warchant also unlocks a prestige class which gives all minions within 3 every buff you get. Which makes warchant even better.
1 rank in psychomorphism is huge too because it means all your minions proc your "on hit" triggers. So then you look for more on hit triggers, especially ones that give buffs, which are then shared to minions within 3.
1 rank in innervation is huge because it means your minions don't take damage from you.
Starting as a druid class is huge because you pass to summon minions and start with some minions and praying gives you minions. My for my race and god I just picked ones that had the most speed, pick anything you want but keep in mind speed is always great.

Vondr weapon was huge here because it gave me and all my minions tons of bonus damage.
Psychomorphism triggers it on all minion hits and then the buffs get copied to everyone within 3. I just passed mostly, never attacked.

[MKSchmidt]

I did get to the end with this build which had a focus on summoning. It still needed some strength for those projection attacks, but it was all a stand still approach so I think that was satisfying.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973834398

[Darloth]

Wait... Summoning wasn't -meant- to be easy mode for the first half of the game? But it's the first class on the list...

Oh well, it worked anyway! It was a fun build, though I did have to pivot midgame to relying more on the on-hit entangle into blunt damage, as the summon damage fell off. They got good again once I unlocked Paragon, but then bad again once we started getting deep into the second half. By then I regretted not just going for a plain Life Mage for consistent summons that also added entangle stacks. Even so, it worked out in the end, although the paragon wasn't useful in the final fight at all and I eventually just had to sit there hoping for lucky hits to proc entangle-scaled-slash-damage.

War Chant seems to be an almost vital part of it though as it shores up all defenses for both you and your allies, not to mentioning summoning more allies who are resistant to quite a few things and just have a good chunk of HP.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973887495

[JackThejil]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2973910054

Posted a bit more commentary over in the YAVT, but for further proof summoners can go a good distance, that's a 10th cycle win that was almost 100% summoning. No psychomorphism, little to no personal damage, just bodies, bodies, and more bodies, until it was done. Arba Druid of Humbaba (for stats, the prayers were never used).

... though I'm less sure how much commentary that is on summoning, as it is on Hungry Graves. Turns out they're one of the best end boss killers in the entire game, if you can get them in range of the critter.