What to combine summoning with?

[Bullett00th]

I'm planning a summoner in my party, but to combine it with either ranger skills or mage for buffs. which would be a better combination?

[Stabbey]

Either work. A better question would be what does the rest of your party need more: Extra ranged damage, or buffing?

[Edstyles]

Tank is very good as well . At least mine was stronk

[Chaoslink]

Nothing. At least early game. Summoning works best the faster you level it. Since summoning isn’t linked to INT or anything, I’d suggest using an auto attack weapon like a bow. However I would leave it at that and still only stack summoning. Don’t bother picking up skills for said weapon. Summoning’s fundamental flaw is how it scales. Early game it’s strong, late game it falls off. If you want the best use from it, get it maxed ASAP.

[DaK]

What is the rest of your party? If it's truly a solo campaign, just about anything can pair with summoning. If your in a physical damage group, I would go kind of tanky and pair with necromancer, picking up level 2 in hydro and geo for the buffs. If it's magic damage, give him one of tje elements or make him get support skills.

Edit: Just as ChaosLink says, you want to rush Summoner level 10 to get the Champion Incarnate.

[Bullett00th]

Thanks for the advice. Kind of a bummer that summoning requires full dedication. I loved summoning in the previous DoS, and learned almost all summon spells (fire/earth/witchcraft mage + water/air mage).

If summoning requires full investment it sounds like I'm making the summoner himself useless in all but summoning and buffing his summons. Is it worth it?

Originally posted by N DaK:

What is the rest of your party? If it's truly a solo campaign, just about anything can pair with summoning. If your in a physical damage group, I would go kind of tanky and pair with necromancer, picking up level 2 in hydro and geo for the buffs. If it's magic damage, give him one of tje elements or make him get support skills.

not playing alone, myself and my buddy are reinvisioning the party for definitive edition.

we only got out of the city in the original game and didn't like the party much. I had a necro tank Red Prince, which sucked very hard due to physical armor blocking taunt and a general lack of speed and crowd control, and pure ranger Sebille, who was our top DD and I plan to get her for the new campaign, but would like something to supplement her with. Scoundrel skills maybe?

My buddy had a melee DD Fane with Polymorph but was a glass cannon and we had a hard time healing him. He wouldn't listen to my advice to take necro. And finally he had a dwarf summoner which he didn't like so I thought about giving it a shot

[Chaoslink]

The other issue with summoning is that it only scales with the skill. So beyond the level scaling that keeps it even with the enemies, it gradually loses power as you get stronger. By level 13 or so, it is basically at its peak and will gradually get weaker in comparison to your enemies. By level 18 or so your summoner could be something like 30% more effective if he went with a dedicated damage build. This is being addressed in the DE at the end of the month though.

[Pyromus]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

The other issue with summoning is that it only scales with the skill. So beyond the level scaling that keeps it even with the enemies, it gradually loses power as you get stronger. By level 13 or so, it is basically at its peak and will gradually get weaker in comparison to your enemies. By level 18 or so your summoner could be something like 30% more effective if he went with a dedicated damage build. This is being addressed in the DE at the end of the month though.

(This is more for chaos specifically, but if anyone else can give details, I'd appreciate it) I heard totems were getting some form of buff, but I did not see anything about incarnates. Are you sure, and if it's not too inconvenient, could you link it?

Addressing the OP now, If you keep roughly the same party you outlined, I would make a few changes that would help quite a bit.

-Don't make Fane (or any custom undeads) a glass cannon. While there are ways to heal them, a handful of good status cleansing powers will hurt undead, and it can be difficult to manage. If you are using polymorph, pairng it with warfare is usually a good route, as the handful of poly damage skills are strength based or blocked by physical armor, especially early on.

-Sebille is great as a ranger, since flesh sacrifice combos well with elemental arrowheads in an all physical damage party (which is what you seem to have). Really no need to change that up, whether it's you or your friend using her.

-Red Prince is a default tank, but unless you're doing a lone wolf tank run, or a party of full tanks, they are not as useful in here as they are in other rpgs. I usually use them only when I have a mod to get the power "guardian angel" from the start of the game (it's usually available at level 16) because it's what makes you able to tank like you'd expect in other games. Mix him up and try a rogue, necromancer, or any other physical based build you can think of. Even if you keep him sword and shield, it can work, it just won't be your typical tank.

As for summoning, you want to rush it to 10 and get any gear you can early on to bump it up (usually rings can be easy to get early on, but they're expensive). Once it's capped, necro combos well since you can have a backup summon (or two) if the incarnate dies, and you have some great utility powers. It also has some big attacks, but with summoning, you may not have the stats to utilize them as much. You can also just rush summoning to 10 and then grab as many skill groups as possible for all the utility powers you can accumulate. Haste/peace of mind/first aid/fortify/restoration/armor of frost all require only one point in their respective skills and can be extremely useful. Then netherswap, uncanny evasion, and teleport only require two points in aero.

[Pyromus]

Also, I'm biased an reccomend finding a way to fit Lohse into your party for her story. I like red and sebille, but their early game stories conflict with each other a bit, and I find Beast kind of boring, but for sure keep Fane if only for his OP source skill.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by davemytnick33:

(This is more for chaos specifically, but if anyone else can give details, I'd appreciate it) I heard totems were getting some form of buff, but I did not see anything about incarnates. Are you sure, and if it's not too inconvenient, could you link it?

You'd have to ask someone around here like Stabbey if you want specifics. I don't generally keep up on these things ahead of time and only learn about them through conversation. I've seen him post stuff about it though (while I was busy ranting about summoning being bad because reasons). So he'd know. I do know (from him) that they're changing how summoning scales in an effort to fix the drop off it currently has. I also heard something about totems specifically, though what I don't really know. The only use I really have of them is water/air totems for applying wet and shocked for chain stuns. If done right, the totems will stunlock anything without magic armor for their duration.

[Stabbey]

My information comes from the Larian Kickstarter update and the Fextra Life interview.

Totems will now gain intelligence as they grow in levels. This will help their damage output scale better towards the end game.

Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/larianstudios/divinity-original-sin-2/posts/2207876

I don't know anything more about changes to Summoning other than "Totems will gain increased Intelligence as they level up" which I believe is intended to keep them useful as the player levels up, instead of ceasing to be great after Summoning 10.

From what I've heard though, the super-Incarnate you get at Summoning 10 is considered good enough to be useful for the rest of the game (I imagine because it continues to scale with player level). I haven't played a full-on Summoner to the end-game, personally, so I can't confirm it.

***

Unrelated, I plan to run a 4-Summoner all-custom party on Tactician difficulty in the DE, each Summoner a slightly different build, getting different secondary schools and secondary summons (A dual-wielding melee STR summoner, a single-dagger Scoundrel Summoner, a ranged Huntsman Summoner, and a caster summoner). As such I will be reaching level 10 summoning slightly slower on most characters than the earliest possible level (level 9, not counting All Skilled Up, I believe).

[Pyromus]

Thanks chaos.

[Bullett00th]

dam, I'm about to reconsider getting summoning at all. I liked it better when it scaled with the elements in DOS1. And there seemed to be way more diversity in the types of creatures you can summon.

Originally posted by davemytnick33:

-Sebille is great as a ranger, since flesh sacrifice combos well with elemental arrowheads in an all physical damage party (which is what you seem to have). Really no need to change that up, whether it's you or your friend using her.

I know she works fine as is, and she was probably the most effective member of our party. But I felt bored just shooting different types of arrows every battle.

Originally posted by davemytnick33:

-Red Prince is a default tank, but unless you're doing a lone wolf tank run, or a party of full tanks, they are not as useful in here as they are in other rpgs. I usually use them only when I have a mod to get the power "guardian angel" from the start of the game (it's usually available at level 16) because it's what makes you able to tank like you'd expect in other games. Mix him up and try a rogue, necromancer, or any other physical based build you can think of. Even if you keep him sword and shield, it can work, it just won't be your typical tank.

I went with warfare+necro and his build was borderline useless(

[fragonard]

Is this for a 4-man or LW? With the nerf to LW, I believe that a summoning hybrid 4-man party will be the highest damage possible. I'm pretty sure Stabbey has the optimum combo planned. Trying to simulate the new DE builds with respeccing a current charater, a summoner hybrid should do about 30% more total damage than a dedicated build after the first turn. It looks like a LW will be just about equal to 2 normal non-LW characters and slightly behind two summoner hybrids. Of course, with any rebalance some non-obvious synergies may pop up for a one-trick pony build but summoner hybrid sure looks like the winner now.

[Bullett00th]

4-man. 2+2 coop.

ok, so summoner hybrid, but what to combine him with?
I'd like to partake in battle as a summoner and not just spend every encounter only micromanaging my summons.

[Chaoslink]

Something that doesn't require skillpoints. Again, you can get quite a bit out of an archer. Elemental arows means you can create surfaces to spawn your Incarnate from, and a bow is a powerful weapon even if you don't have skills invested. The range also negates the need for abilities that require you to close the gap.

Once you have summoning at max, then you start to gain other abilities to truly open your possibilities. Remember that you can still find gear that gives skills or abilities and make use of those while you're still pumping summoning. A ring with Pyro or Hydro can allow you to get access to buffs or heals while other skills like warfare or huntsman can allow you to unlock skills for whatever weapon you go with. Or just use spells and dump INT. You have to realize that no matter what secondary thing you want to do with the summoner, its going to be simple and weak since you're gaining the benefit of your summons. If you try and build your character while keeping summoning on the side, the summons will be too weak to justify having it.

No matter how you look at it, your character is going to be weak on their own until the later stages of the game. Though by those stages, summoning is better off being dropped for a dedicated build anyway.