Summoning/Shamans are pretty useless

[Infinite Probability]

They are just weak drones, with the earth one being probably the best. But the higher you go, the less effective they become. I mean you have to invest a whole line in order to control them properly. And Shaman spells are pretty useless, with the exception of eagles aim buff and heal buff. There is no reason to take a Shaman over a WP based mage, since they actually have a low cost "heal".

[Blanco Kislev]

Must gotten confused. I run a hybrid hacker/rigger with shotgun. I was mowing through enemies as well as any other gunner based character and usually only brought a close combat street samurai, shaman and a mage. And that's all that I needed. I ran a non legit (used Karma cheat just to test) mage/shaman/rifle and it was working out quite nicely.

[Cosgar]

My only complaints about Shamans is the wall spells, the support/healing they should have went to the mages and the cost for summoning is way too much. Getting rid of the -1 AP per summon or more lenient dice rolls for maintaning a summon's control could help, but I think they need more spells centered around who they commune with.
For example, rat, cat and raccoon could be debuff/DoT/status magic while bear and eagle could be healing and support. Taking it a step further these spells could be all single target or AoE depending on which totem with varying cooldowns. This would add a lot more flexibility with the class over simply being the middle of the road summoner/mage that they are right now.
But with all this said, Shaman are in no way useless, just a bit lackluster due to bugs and skewed risk/reward compared to other archetypes if you want to fully specialize.

[drake_hound]

Shaman are weak or overpowered , depending on the user and depending on the player.

Weak if you never use there summons and don´t have any other primary weapon or attack , but just use there spells , then they are quite weak .
Basically they are weak as starting class very weak .

Overpowered , if you start to use summons as throw away pets . cause there summons are overpowered .
Very overpowered if you combine there spells summons with a specialisation weapon , haste .
And extremely usefull in hardmode with walls and barriers , in crowd controlling .

But like most classes , yeah they are weak if you are thinking it is a mage .
Cause the mage is the direct damage dealer .

[chriseggroll]

Is it possible to summon two spirits at once now (and both actually do something)? I've looked at most of the bug logs and don't see anything about this.

[Vybegallo]

I played DMS with combat summoner : quickness/shotguns/dodge + charisma/summoning/control. I also installed 2 alpha legs/datajack/alpha eyes because I only used bear totem and it is unaffected by cooldown change from essence reduction. With this build I stomped very high difficulty and I barely ever used non-story runners. So yeah...

[Dorok]

Originally posted by chriseggroll:

Is it possible to summon two spirits at once now (and both actually do something)? I've looked at most of the bug logs and don't see anything about this.

It doesn't mean you can use two times a summon point?

EDIT: Yes shaman 5 allows use a summon point two times not summon two at same time.

[Agent.0.Fortune]

I found Spirit summoning to be useful in many situations. The best example was Dietriich single-handedly locking down the left entrance during the APEX fight, using nothing but Elemental pools on the Map.
He would summon and control the spirit, careful to move it to the upper room, where it would draw all fire, and when the spirit control eventually breaks, summon another spirit, now you have 2 up there bogging down enemies.
the only downside, you have to kill all the remaining spirits when you are done.

Plus Charisma opens up tons of conversation items, and synergies with conjuring.

[harlekinrains]

Let me tell you about having +2AP haste 4, +1 AP haste 3, +1 AP throgh the adrenalin pump and the racoon totem which gives you and party +2 on movement (party while in range). And all that within one turn. Its FUN. :) Have speced out handguns and pistol as well - and became a "cleaner" class by myself.

In some missions I would just start running and never stop, baiting opponents hitting and retreating. But in most missions I had my party plan their moves and then finished off targets on my own - because I would have less of a "miss" tendency and 0 AP penalty on reloads - it became REALLY fun once I had the Roomsweeper (Pistol that acts like a shotgun) - with the "shoot three targets for one AP" perk (once every three turns).

And just for those cases where you need your turns to finish off an opponent and have this pesky ork standing near you - take one AP and throw an Earth golem in front of his feet.. ;)

Some summons also have nice secondary effects like, burning, AP drain, sleepstate, and so on on their attacks. Also you really don't have to worry about healing or repairing them - but you will only use them in urgent situations, because they are expensive.

And dont forget the hellfire barrier - that one room full of about 7 enemies I baitet through this one door trapped with hellfire (stuns) into my team waiting in ambush arround the next corner... Good times.. :)

But yes, there is no "one" thing the shaman actually excells at - they should add one in the next expansion.. ;)

edit: But I have to say that I imported my character from DMS, which I finished mostly with the AP buffs and a handgun - and I'm told its scaling is quite easy..

[drake_hound]

Well since you can nowadays dismiss the Summon , before putting in the AP points .
You can now control when the summon will go haywire .

In the past it was a forgone conclusion when the Summon would go haywire and turn on your team , Shaman summon are beter in this patch or version , cause the terrain provide you with free summons , aside from your summoning from items .

They are quite good , if you buff up early 4 AP when the changes of losing control are less .
Then next turn they are moved far away from you . try again for 4 AP or keep a steady 1-2 ap tanks . before dismissing or losing control .

[Elysion]

the creator totem lasts 3 turns and has a 3 turn cooldown, so if you have a powerful ranged summon you can basically keep it for the entire fight.

It still doesnt seem worth such a massive point investment though. Summon controll should just not exist and be an inate part of the summoning skill, then maybe it would be more appealing.

[Dorok]

For me summon control is a good point and even feel it as a nice originality. But to temper a bit the random effect impact the control should be recalculated at each turn even when you lost control. Eventually there's a countdown of lost control and after 3 you can't control it back anymore.

What isn't good is there's no free summons, you should have some with a long cooldown and not as strong than those that are consumed. The second bad point of shaman is to not have shooting ability beside the basic conjurer spell.

Yeah heavy invest on summons seems a bad idea but for a pure shaman, no mage, no weapon, no rigger/decker, no Biotech, only summons+conjuring it let not many spells to buy, no weapons to buy, no Biotech to buy, so it let a large amount of money to buy many summons scrolls.

I have doubt on the creator totem I noticed many enemies will attack the shaman instead of the summon, but worth a try.

I decided made my first replay with shaman summons/conjurer/riffle and Eagle totem. The weak point of Eagle totem is it is canceled if a character has the Aim spell on him and despite the Aim bonus is weaker. Was a very bad point to notice that. Also the 2 rounds duration is a bit tedious. That's a general problem with totems is they don't improve.

[shadowkit]

Originally posted by gofortheko:

I mean you have to invest a whole line in order to control them properly. And Shaman spells are pretty useless, with the exception of eagles aim buff and heal buff. There is no reason to take a Shaman over a WP based mage, since they actually have a low cost "heal".

I didn't put any points in spirit control and went creator idol. If i needed some help I popped out a rank 5 spirit (air for range to stay near my shaman who used rifles) or used the ones on the maps.

[harlekinrains]

Haste 4 and Haste 3 do not stack - just tried it. :) But they can be put on other party members.

Haste 4 and racoon still is very usefull though, I just finished the final fight of Dragonfall again, not using any totem or medpack, or hacking, or venting at all. It is very much a positioning game, but if you are on the right spot, are buffed in accuracy and have that many APs, things arround you drop from gunfire like flies.

The final action (grabing the keycard and activating the terminal) took 3AP (with racoon active) from being behind cover, so essentially half a turn.

In the end I was waiting about 5 group APs (half a round) doing nothing, because a cloaked katana wealder hadn't shown up yet. I thought the game had bugged out on me... ;)

[talt]

Originally posted by harlekinrains:

Let me tell you about having +2AP haste 4, +1 AP haste 3, +1 AP throgh the adrenalin pump and the racoon totem which gives you and party +2 on movement (party while in range). And all that within one turn. Its FUN. :) Have speced out handguns and pistol as well - and became a "cleaner" class by myself.

Haste is conjuration, not summoning

[waxx66man]

One nice tip I read was to force your spirit to keep recasting powerful spells, even if it causes the spirit damage. That makes it cause more meyham before it goes down, and if it breaks then killing it soaks less of your actions.

That said, if you're going to be using high CHA for haste/etiquitte/dialog, you almost might as well take some elemental skill along for the ride. Going GunShaman adds 3 requirements: Quick/Ranged/Specificweapon. That's a lotta karma, and you don't HAVE a lot of karma in Dragonfall (compared to DMS). You almost might as well go full shaman and use your AP's to sling the new shaman damage spell, then you'll have the spare karma to do the summon/control.

Edit: That said, I'm doing a gunshaman right now so hypocrisy oozes from this post.