Incarnate champion?

[felixsimon]

Was wondering if the "evolution" is just a visual candy, or does the summon gets actual power spike at summoning 10?

[Kindra]

I just tested it summoning at 9 skill, then at 10, and it doubles it's base Physical Armor, Magical Armor, Health, and gives a 50% increase to it's base damage. Very Effective

[Lampros]

Do they keep getting better stats as you level into high 10s? I read somewhere Incarnates become significantly weaker end-game?

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Do they keep getting better stats as you level into high 10s? I read somewhere Incarnates become significantly weaker end-game?

You can only get summoning up to a point with gear past 10. So its much harder to keep that skill on the rise. The issue is that once you get it to its max, thats about as good as it'll get. It stops getting more powerful long before your character does. I just feel that it falls off in the later game as it just doesn't keep up with a focused character with another build. That isn't saying that they become useless, you're just more powerful on your own. The incarnate's ability pool is limited as well, as a focused character would have a massive spellbook the incarnate only gets one or two abilities with limited power. While some of the infusions make them more powerful, it just isn't worth the AP to summon and buff them compared to a focused character.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

You can only get summoning up to a point with gear past 10. So its much harder to keep that skill on the rise. The issue is that once you get it to its max, thats about as good as it'll get. It stops getting more powerful long before your character does. I just feel that it falls off in the later game as it just doesn't keep up with a focused character with another build. That isn't saying that they become useless, you're just more powerful on your own. The incarnate's ability pool is limited as well, as a focused character would have a massive spellbook the incarnate only gets one or two abilities with limited power. While some of the infusions make them more powerful, it just isn't worth the AP to summon and buff them compared to a focused character.

Thanks for the explanation. But for clarification:

I assume normal characters continue to get stronger mainly because of two things that the Incarnates cannot access - 1) continual progress through gear progression and 2) continual progress through multiple skill/ability progression?

Anyways, all that makes me even more reluctant to play a Summoner. I am not understanding why so many people recommend a Summoner.

[Cody]

i boosted summoning to 10, and had every peice of gear i wore have a summon + point. try summong a bone spider with that high summoning. 3600 health, hits for like 800 lol

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

You can only get summoning up to a point with gear past 10. So its much harder to keep that skill on the rise. The issue is that once you get it to its max, thats about as good as it'll get. It stops getting more powerful long before your character does. I just feel that it falls off in the later game as it just doesn't keep up with a focused character with another build. That isn't saying that they become useless, you're just more powerful on your own. The incarnate's ability pool is limited as well, as a focused character would have a massive spellbook the incarnate only gets one or two abilities with limited power. While some of the infusions make them more powerful, it just isn't worth the AP to summon and buff them compared to a focused character.

Thanks for the explanation. But for clarification:

I assume normal characters continue to get stronger mainly because of two things that the Incarnates cannot access - 1) continual progress through gear progression and 2) continual progress through multiple skill/ability progression?

Anyways, all that makes me even more reluctant to play a Summoner. I am not understanding why so many people recommend a Summoner.

Yeh, they just don't scale like player characters can. They can't use talents, so they lose out on the free movement from the pawn that melee generally use, or executioner for those extra hits. They can't reduce AP costs using elemental affinity. They soak up an entire turns worth of AP and their first turn of damage is nothing like that of a proper built mage/melee. By using all that AP without much to show for it, the enemy has time to attack. So while the incarnate can soak up damage for the team, its the reason you had to soak that damage to begin with.

I spend hours and hours at work on my own doing mindnumbing things, so I generally keep myself entertained by browsing the forums on my phone and when things are quiet, I'll think about various topics or simply imagine cool strategies/builds to try out. And in all that imagining I do, I never once consider summoning as a part of it. On rare occasion the totem gets mixed in, but other than that, I don't really consider summoning when planning builds. I can simply never justify it over something more focused.

It can be a useful skill for newer players that are still getting used to what attributes and skill to put into, or learning the ins and outs of the armor system and use that flexibility of summoning to assist them with whatever they're lacking.

[Pyromus]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

You can only get summoning up to a point with gear past 10. So its much harder to keep that skill on the rise. The issue is that once you get it to its max, thats about as good as it'll get. It stops getting more powerful long before your character does. I just feel that it falls off in the later game as it just doesn't keep up with a focused character with another build. That isn't saying that they become useless, you're just more powerful on your own. The incarnate's ability pool is limited as well, as a focused character would have a massive spellbook the incarnate only gets one or two abilities with limited power. While some of the infusions make them more powerful, it just isn't worth the AP to summon and buff them compared to a focused character.

Thanks for the explanation. But for clarification:

I assume normal characters continue to get stronger mainly because of two things that the Incarnates cannot access - 1) continual progress through gear progression and 2) continual progress through multiple skill/ability progression?

Anyways, all that makes me even more reluctant to play a Summoner. I am not understanding why so many people recommend a Summoner.

Summoner is amazing on fort joy. The maxed out incarnate champion will crush a lot on the first island. From there, it's best to respec out of summoning around level 13 when you get another talent and get a more complete build.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Cody:

i boosted summoning to 10, and had every peice of gear i wore have a summon + point. try summong a bone spider with that high summoning. 3600 health, hits for like 800 lol

Yeah, but a properly built character can have that much health with the armor needed to block CCs and ability bar to capitalize on that damage with CCs of their own. No summons have all of that without heavy AP usage from the summoner. And its still less than a dedicated build would have by a massive margin.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by davemytnick33:

Summoner is amazing on fort joy. The maxed out incarnate champion will crush a lot on the first island. From there, it's best to respec out of summoning around level 13 when you get another talent and get a more complete build.

My recommendation exactly. Use it early game, when mages aren't that strong, then respec later once the mage outpowers the summons.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Yeh, they just don't scale like player characters can. They can't use talents, so they lose out on the free movement from the pawn that melee generally use, or executioner for those extra hits. They can't reduce AP costs using elemental affinity. They soak up an entire turns worth of AP and their first turn of damage is nothing like that of a proper built mage/melee. By using all that AP without much to show for it, the enemy has time to attack. So while the incarnate can soak up damage for the team, its the reason you had to soak that damage to begin with.

I spend hours and hours at work on my own doing mindnumbing things, so I generally keep myself entertained by browsing the forums on my phone and when things are quiet, I'll think about various topics or simply imagine cool strategies/builds to try out. And in all that imagining I do, I never once consider summoning as a part of it. On rare occasion the totem gets mixed in, but other than that, I don't really consider summoning when planning builds. I can simply never justify it over something more focused.

It can be a useful skill for newer players that are still getting used to what attributes and skill to put into, or learning the ins and outs of the armor system and use that flexibility of summoning to assist them with whatever they're lacking.

Thanks for the detailed explanation! For the record, I tried a Summoner in my very first half-arsed run, and I hated him. I was shoe-horned into just pushing Summoning the first few levels; and the Incarnate seemed rather ineffective, and it was exhaustingly boring to just summon Totems every turn.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by davemytnick33:

Summoner is amazing on fort joy. The maxed out incarnate champion will crush a lot on the first island. From there, it's best to respec out of summoning around level 13 when you get another talent and get a more complete build.

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

My recommendation exactly. Use it early game, when mages aren't that strong, then respec later once the mage outpowers the summons.

On respecs: Can you do it with non-custom characters who follow you?

Either way, I feel it's too "gamey" to abuse it (e.g. I heard some people respec every time they barter or steal or what not) at least for my gameplay.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Thanks for the detailed explanation! For the record, I tried a Summoner in my very first half-arsed run, and I hated him. I was shoe-horned into just pushing Summoning the first few levels; and the Incarnate seemed rather ineffective, and it was exhaustingly boring to just summon Totems every turn.

It gets worse. You need the infusion abilities to give it armor and new attacks, but those animations take forever and its annoying once done to realize your summoner is next to pointless afterwards. Their power comes from getting summoning to max, so wasting skill points to learn abilities from other schools slows your race to power. So the summoner themselves are basically waste at that point. Scroll eating buff machines before you have the money or resources to get scrolls. By the time you get new infusions for them, they're basically too weak to matter.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Lampros:

On respecs: Can you do it with non-custom characters who follow you?

Either way, I feel it's too "gamey" to abuse it (e.g. I heard some people respec every time they barter or steal or what not) at least for my gameplay.

Yes, you can respec any character at pretty much any time by visiting the mirror on the bottom deck of the ship. You won't have access to it until after act 1, unless you get a mod to put one in act 1. You can fully customize appearance (save for a few features on certain characters like skin color for the red prince...), attributes, skillpoints, and talents. Tags and race/gender are locked. Otherwise you have nearly everything you had access to at character creation.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Yes, you can respec any character at pretty much any time by visiting the mirror on the bottom deck of the ship. You won't have access to it until after act 1, unless you get a mod to put one in act 1. You can fully customize appearance (save for a few features on certain characters like skin color for the red prince...), attributes, skillpoints, and talents. Tags and race/gender are locked. Otherwise you have nearly everything you had access to at character creation.

Got it. Thanks much! I wish we had it at Fort Joy though. Bizarre we don't...

[meiam]

I wouldn't say there useless, you really only need 3 AP to summon the incarnate and make it useful. For most of the game it does equivalent or higher damage than your character, afterwhich the summoner can do other stuff (mostly support or CC). The big problem is that 1) the summon doesn't scale from stats (int and such) so there's limited return from gear and 2) you can only have one summon at a time, doesn't matter early game when you have few summon spell but late game almost everyone has at least one summon ability, at that point summoner kinda lose there special one ability (they can still summon totem but those are unreliable as far as damages goes and there main purpose is just to soak random attack). They really should have given summoner an ability to have multiple summon at the same time, maybe instead of the source skill that makes summon imortal (which... meh).