Late game Summon build

[zylvanbane]

Hey everyone. My friend and I just started Act IV. He has Sebille as a heavy archer and Beast as a geo/war battlemage. I'm running prince as War/Necro build and Ifan as a Hydro summoner. I found a good rhythm with Ifan from Act II to the near end of Act III, but I feel the summons are just falling off. The Incarnate is decent but situational and I'm finding totems to not be worth the AP anymore. This is making me rely more on my hydro spells and and healing. I use a wand/ shield on him, heavy intelligence. I have some geo/war/scoundrel skills for buffs, mobility, and big shield throw attack. Anyone have any advice to offer? Wondering if I should just scrap summons for a caster or healer/support build.

[Chaoslink]

Summons do fall off since you don't have any scaling attribute. This means they peak in effectiveness by level 8, the earliest you can invest the skill to 10. You can't be end-game strong by level 8, so it has issues scaling. In the DE version, they rebalanced it and made the infusions have that 25% damage scaling since two infusions are locked until later game. This helped slightly, but because Summoning doesn't follow the same "rules" as other skills, ultimately it falls off.

That said, you're already running an inefficient "summoner" build theoretically. You want Summoning 10, Pyro2/Geo2/Hydro2/Aero2. This is so you can craft together the elemental skillbooks with summoning ones, specifically using at least one source spell in there to get the source infusions like Cursed Lightning infusion. This gives the incarnate a Source spell to cast for more power. You can also recast a new element onto the incarnate this way, changing their element and therefore the element spells as well, giving you new powerful cooldowns to use. This works with non-source spells as well, letting you reset to new regular elements.

This build can't invest into anything else effectively (I recommend you *never* build a Summoner/anything setup. Always go dedicated summoner). As a result, you should not invest Intelligence or anything damage related, taking just what you need for armor. Instead, go full Memory for a massive spellbook so you can play support as well as alter the battlefield at will. Clear surfaces, create beneficial ones like blessed poison or blessed fire, things like that. You also will have the CC spells needed for any given scenario. Cast Soul Mate to mirror healing/armor restoration to the target and spam such spells on yourself to keep your ally topped off. Your incarnate will do moderate damage, boosted slightly with the source spells, but it will never compete with proper builds. The battlefield control and support can help offset that a bit.

This is Summoner at its best, which still is the weakest end game skill, somewhat offset by being arguably the strongest early game (mostly because gear is hard to get early on and you don't need any for summoning to work).

Note: You'll lose healing power due to the low Hydro investment, but typically speaking just having healing available is better than capped healing simply because of the heavy skill requirement to cap it for somewhat mediocre gains compares to what you can gain by investing those points elsewhere.

Also note: I'm not recommending one way or the other. Summoning is not good late game comparatively, but that doesn't mean it isn't viable still. This is just my recommendations on making Summoning the "best" way possible in my experience.

[Boiledteabag]

Only way to make summons work past lvl 8 is using mods that allow you to summon more then 1 or adding new summons(an actual creature is better then a totem).

I personally use the mod that lets me summon 3 at a time added more summons so the summoner is actually a summoner the whole run, the best part is you can then spec into whatever else you want as the only stat that affects summons is summoning.
So you can either pivot into a buffer build or off-tank etc.
You'll want at least one member running max leadership though, so the summons get that boost too.

[Spicy Camel]

Summoner fall off because people stop increasing summoning. You can reach 20+ summoning with items and runes. Its nothing special, but obviously much stronger than 10.

Big summoner damage comes from explosive traps. The way explosive trap damage scales (from pyro and generic damage bonus of whoever detonates it) means its ideal for summoner -- passive damage % from Summoning skill and 100% damage from Supercharger are generic damage increases.
To put a long story short combo of deploying mass traps and detonating them with overcharged fire slug's lazer ray will oneshot most things not immune to fire.