Summoner feedback

[nukularpower]

This is just a bit of feedback on the Summoner class. If this isn't the right place, feel free to move it to wherever it should be.

Anyways, I've played quite a few summoners lately. It's a pretty fun class, strong for obvious reasons in some situations, but not ridiculously overpowered by any means (as it lacks most of the offense of say, a Necro.) As part of that, it is also quite boring, mostly because the few real abilities you get (by this, I mean non-summon spells) aren't worth using. Here are my thoughts on a few.

Detonate - This is a really weird talent. The damage is very low, the cooldown is huge, and levelling it only seems to increase the already-massive range. On top of that, it's friendly fire, so using it not only hurts yourself (practically unavoidable due to the massive range) but your other summons as well - which tend to have way less life than enemies, and so suffer much worse for it. I really feel this talent would feel a heck of a lot more usable with a much shorter range, like 1-2 at level 1, so you aren't killing off your entire swarm every time you use it, or maybe just remove the friendly fire entirely. A bit more damage wouldn't hurt either, whether a straight buff or by tying the damage to a summon's remaining HP, or something like that. As a side note, the description of the talent doesn't indicate if levelling it increases the damage (which is VERY low at level 1) - so if it does, it would be cool to indicate that.

Grand Arrival - this is a passive, but still - the friendly fire effects from this can seem a bit silly (ie, the Hydra poisons itself with its arrival cloud.)

Wild Summon - Like Detonate, this feels totally useless, though it sounds awesome on paper. In practice, however, an individual summon almost never lives long enough to actually use the extra talents they can get past level 20, and most of those talents are useless anyways. One particular annoyance is the Wild Golem's AoE attack, which is friendly fire for some reason, and more of a penalty than a benefit, usually - it will quickly kill off your other summons (and you too if you are standing close for a Leaf Wind or w/e.) As there is no point complaining without useless suggestions to go with it, here are a couple: Add 50% to HP and primary stat instead of the talents, but reduce lifetime by 1/3rd; or activate the bonus talents immediately upon summon as part of the summon action = ie, have the drake use it's silencing roar immediately.
As another side note, the War Hound does not seem to actually get a rage ability from this talent, as the description says.

[donkatsu]

By "rage" apparently they mean Total Thuggery, because that's what a wild summon War Hound gets. It's actually pretty good if the hound actually decides to use it.

And yeah, Summoners are in a weird place where they're really powerful, but have many talents that are almost completely useless.

[SageAcrin]

Wild Summon has some distinctly useful options(Minotaurs are notably more useful when Wild Summoned, Fire Drakes give you radial silence, that sort of thing.). The main issue I see with it is that leveling it is fairly useless-you get one guaranteed turn for L1, and then one guaranteed turn and one 50% turn for L2, etc., so it actually gains less than one extra summon per turn on leveling.

Detonate just needs to mindcrit. For some reason, it doesn't. It still makes for a decent shield spell anyways(Detonate turtle), though.

Grand Arrival Hydra is pretty silly, it's odd that it has an ally-hit effect but none of the others do.

[Phoenix1]

I actually find the stone golem's Wild Summon to be the really good one. You have to be somewhat selective about it, sure, but not only is it good for sending the golem in against swarms or to clear a hallway, I believe the area effect also applies to the original target, making it a substantial damage boost (and better still if its targets have been hit by Warhound Grand Arrival).

For me, Mindblades go a long way to making summoners less boring. You can wade in against basic enemies pretty effectively. If the enemy is strong enough that you don't want to engage, chances are you'll be busy enough summoning and maneuvering.

[SageAcrin]

Oh, yeah, that was part of etc. because I couldn't recall at the time the summons I used with Wild Summon.

Definitely a good boost for Golems.

[HousePet]

Grand Arrival with Hydra has caused me to fail a few protect the npc quests by itself.
Damn you friendly fire and grumpy npcs!

[Laerte]

Add to the list that the hydra poison breath is almost useless. It almost never poisons NPCs and the damage is way lower then said in the screen.

[nukularpower]

Good point.. the poison breath is far worse than the other 2. Same goes for the spider's poison