How to make summoner winable

[marvalis]

The first problem: Armored bosses
1) Summoners can summon many monsters to fight for them (up to 9 in my last game, could get 100++ cun if needed but 8-9 is really enough since space is a limiting factor)
2) Each of these summons can not be to strong without making it to easy
3) Many small attacks get damage reduction
That means that heavy resist and armor bosses can become a major PITA.

Possible solutions:
* Give summons armor penetration. Currently, they do not gain any armor penetration no matter what items you wield. Making your summons inherit your armor penetration would solve this and would probably make high armor bosses killable. /edit actually it turns out that AP from cun is really low, so that will not work. Summons still need some way to avoid the armor.
* Uncap the stats of summons. Right now they are capped at 100, this needs to go away! This would allow for more damage in the endgame.
* Better damage from melee summons (as suggested in another thread)

The way armor works currently in B20b seems to be a general problem not limited to summoners, so there should probably be a general solution.

The second problem: blind / stun / confuse / etc
Summons do not get any of these. The final game boss ab(uses) stun and blind. These would not harm a non-summoner who is blind and stun immune, but they cripple a summoners.

Solution: If summons inherit your stun/confusion/blind immunity percentage that would solve it.

[darkgod]

APR, blind/conf/stun/ping resistances are now inherited.
Stats can go over 100.
Jelly now has a 10% absorption shield that replenishes its master's equilibrium

[gruevy]

"Now" as in, in the next patch? Or now as in, in 20b?

[darkgod]

It's always next patch

[Marcotte]

APR, blind/conf/stun/ping resistances are now inherited.
Stats can go over 100.
Jelly now has a 10% absorption shield that replenishes its master's equilibrium

The two last ones sound quite good.
But making summons inherit APR and resistances seems strange. Why would my war hound be affected by the fact that I'm wielding a dagger instead of a sling? As for the resistance, I found that summoners are probably one of the classes that care the less about them, so this modification changes that.

But since summoners are quite lacking in talents to invest in, why not add two talents to do just that? So you could get a new talent tree with:
1- Increases summons APR
2- Increases summons blind/conf/stun/pin resistances
3- Current rage talent
4- Some other talent

[edge2054]

The APR thing feels strange to me as well and encourages some weird choices, like using a Bow over a Sling/Shield even though your stats will favor the later.

The rest sounds good but I think a tree would be interesting as well. Especially if it wasn't based off your stats but just naturally boosted your summons.

Seems like summoners are pretty short on generic trees so maybe something along these lines (which could later be given to other pet based classes, maybe necromancers).

Command/Cunning based (The player himself does not count as a friendly target for purposes of these abilities)

Battle Orders (Active): Forces friendly creatures to attack the target. Friendly creatures get a bonus to Hit, APR, and Crit that scales with the number of other friendly creatures within LOS for X turns.

All for One (Passive): Friendly creatures gain X Def and Armor for each friendly creature in LOS.

Unyielding Troops (Passive or Sustained/No Cost): Increases friendly targets Physical, Mental, and Spell saves by X.

Rally (Active): Removes 1 detrimental effect from each friendly creature within LOS and increases their resistance to all damage by X% for Y turns.