Do people find summons useful?

[magritte]

Despite the warning that "allies may be foolhardy" or something that you get as a hint, I've found that I have the opposite problem with allies. They never leave the first room. Which is a minor irritation with an ally you're given as part of the scenario, but rather more annoying with summons because it means lock up one of your cards uselessly.

[Deso]

When you summon them is very important. You need to evaluate their movement speed and enemies attacks to decide when and how to use them.

[Les White]

Summons are much different in this game than a lot of other games. You need to keep them out of trouble, and you need to weigh the amount of damage they can take/do before they die.

People also tend to evaluate summons with a mindset of another game as well, without realizing what they are - a loss card. A typical loss card (like Fire Orbs) will do 9 damage if perfectly positioned. Aid From the Ether with it's range 2 attack only needs to make 5 attacks to be a more valuable card. A lot of people come in with the mistaken idea that summons are permanent allies who are permanently going to be doing damage, and that's just not the case in this game most of the time. The times where that is the case, the summoning character has some SERIOUS disadvantages to negate such a powerful passive effect.

[The Big Nasty]

What Les said is exactly right. It takes some getting used to the fact that you can't control them at all. If you play properly, some of the summons can be pretty powerful. A quick tip in general is to go slow on the turn you summon and then go quick on the turn after, so your summons have a chance to go and attack.

All that being said, there are some bad summons in this game for sure. After playing for a bit, you'll be able to identify pretty easily which summons are worth your time, and which ones are just bad. In general, most melee summons are not good since summons don't have much health to begin with and will usually die in one hit.

[abyssalfury]

I'd say:

- Summons can be frustrating, because of the issues with movement (they won't move towards the next room unless the door is open). In particular, slower summons can be left behind very easily.
- Summons will follow the game A.I. which won't always do what you want them to do, though it is predictable. In particular activating before the summoner can be an issue.
- Summons can be punished hard by bad play (or bad luck) because of not activating on the turn you summon them. Summoning something and then having it get whacked before it gets to do anything feels really bad.
- A lot of summons are underpowered, or at least feel underpowered considering the above limitations, particularly melee summons. On top of this, a lot of the early summons are weak, so people are likely to have a bad first impression.

However, when used well and in the right mission, summons can be pretty good. Just maybe not quite worth the hassle.

[ExperimentalGamer]

Also of note, characters expected to make use of summons will have abilities that can make them more useful. The mindthief can start with the card Possession, which can let them give any ally - including their own summon - a move 4. Tinkerer's Harmless Contraption is meant to take hits and die quickly, but as the tink gets levels they can pick up Jet Propulsion which lets them relocate summons with a bonus to the move and with the player controlling that movement. And the spellweaver's summons contend with the fact that she's a spellweaver and expected to dismiss things so she can bring them back again after Reviving Ether.

Summons still have lots of problems. Melee summons will still happily attack into enemies with shield and/or retaliate, wasting their action. They also don't necessarily scale well, so that level one summon can feel as outdated as your other level one losses. But characters expected to make use of summons will have tricks of some sort or another to mitigate some of the downsides.

[Shad]

Most summons (except summoner) are there to die. If they do damage it's nice but if they can take the Attack 6 from a golem instead of you, it's better :-).
I usually don't use them for the reasons said above except if they are from an object.

[Deso]

Also Phoenix and Angry Face might be better at it.

[touchshriek]

I thought summons were garbage until I made an effort to build around them. Music note + circles + Scoundrel (poisoner) is very strong.

[pitiflauticus]

If a summon makes just one attack and absorbs one big hit that a character would have taken, right there the summon probably paid for itself already - it was a loss card that generated the equivalent to "do X damage, apply disarm to target"...

If they stay alive longer than that, even better - every extra attack is a cherry on top.

Besides that, you can play around with builds full of ranged summons - pay a bit of gold to enhance either their range, or their movement, and if you are careful you can have a companion for the full scenario (except for scenarios in which moving really fast is a necessity)

Last but not least (spoiler of high level gameplay)...

The Level 9 card of the Sun Class that redirects damage from allies to herself is amazing in a summon-heavy party. Be careful because the Sun class is not immortal, but the summons will SHINE for a lot of turns (you can then force the loss of the Sunkeeper card and let the summons die)

[EkoTren]

I've found item summons to be extremely useful, card summons not so much. Since the items don't require a turn, and as others have mentioned here, the summons will take hits and deal damage for you. Sometimes absorbing a poison, stun, muddle, immobilize, etc. Also summons use the attack deck of the mercenary that has summoned them, so if you use for instance the soothsinger who has amazing damage perk modifiers you can position yourself in the middle of the room, aoe stun, summon your minions and use them to do a lot of damage over 2 turns. The summons can even save your main mercenaries from having to compelte another turn before you advance into another room.

[Deso]

Originally posted by touchshriek:

I thought summons were garbage until I made an effort to build around them. Music note + circles + Scoundrel (poisoner) is very strong.

Actually, sun is a better than scoundrel - let it absorb all hits then the army stomp the enemies.

[OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle]

Summon trinkets can be fairly good misdirection, but I'd never run more than 1-2 per party. You can often get better return from other attack preventors e.g. doom powder.

Summon cards in decks that don't focus on summons are overwhelmingly bad loss cards. The fact that most cannot meaningfully improve even via enhancement makes them especially useless at high party levels. Because the decks just don't have sufficient augment or sustain for them.

The few classes that focus on them, on the other hand, love to stack summons and ally orders, so go ahead and pile them up. Some of the cards on 'ubisoft' (is Summoner even a spoiler anymore?) for instance are incredible with a field full of peabrains.

[pitiflauticus]

Originally posted by OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle:

Summon cards in decks that don't focus on summons are overwhelmingly bad loss cards. The fact that most cannot meaningfully improve even via enhancement makes them especially useless at high party levels.

The Spellweaver's level 1 summon Mystic Ally is actually quite good with a single enhancement (+1 range) and can deliver a lot of damage - until it gets eventually replaced by the awesome level 6 Burning Avatar, that doesn't even need to be enhanced to be useful :)

[OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle]

Originally posted by pitiflauticus:

Originally posted by OoOoOoooOOoOoorgle:

Summon cards in decks that don't focus on summons are overwhelmingly bad loss cards. The fact that most cannot meaningfully improve even via enhancement makes them especially useless at high party levels.

The Spellweaver's level 1 summon Mystic Ally is actually quite good with a single enhancement (+1 range) and can deliver a lot of damage - until it gets eventually replaced by the awesome level 6 Burning Avatar, that doesn't even need to be enhanced to be useful :)

I never found the mystic ally competent at keeping up with its crap move. But I can see how extra range might help. Burning avatar is great though, true.

These are kind of 'soft exceptions' since loss cards aren't really loss cards for spellweaver. Although the BA at least would probably make it into a handful of other decks even as a straight loss.

I do think it generally boils down to "the ranged ones are the only good ones." Outside of the more purposeful decks, anyway.

[Dreepa]

I made a pretty good all out summon party.


Summoner (obviously)

-Go heavy on summon cards that create more than one creature, and the best single casts like Thorn Shooter and Void Eater.

-Don't use the lava golem, but instead use the bottom side of the card to get back the other summon cards, after the creatures die.

-Summoner uses as many stamina potions and items to refresh stamina potions, and always long rest, to get the most time alive out of the summons.



Beast Tyrant

-Focus on summons.
-Also uses items to cast summons (falcon, skeleton)
-Uses summon buff cards at appropriate moments.



Brute

-To storm to the front, tanking the initial focus damage, so pets have time to build up.



Soothsinger (a game-changer for this combo).

-Buffing all allies to hell and back.
-With so many pets on the field, those buffs really scale up. Strengthen ALL. Bless all adjacent (usually 4-5 bless getting added). Shield 1 for ALL pets.




With some added summon buffs from Beast Tyrant and Summoner (even more shields that round, or disadvantage for all enemies attacking summons) the horde is unstoppable, unless you run into some specific enemies, like high shield or massive area damage. Retaliate is also a problem at times.


It's kind of a pretty mess on screen. I call it "The Swarm".
It was pretty fun. For a while.