Summoner (and equilibrium) feedback and ideas

[necronomist]

I’ve been playing a lot of Wilders these past days and I have a number of comments/ideas I would like to share with the community, in the (not too secret) hope that they would spark some discussion on those classes and their playstyle. I’ll focus on the issue of equilibrium and the Summoner class in this post; I’m playing a lot with Wyrmics as well, but I’ll leave the discussion on them for another post.

First of all, equilibrium (EQ) as a resource is not in a very good place at the moment, mainly due to its similarities with Paradox; they do the same thing, ie give chances for ability failure, but Paradox also includes anomalies and other interesting effects and Paradox classes also offer the interesting trade between chance of failure and increased effectiveness of abilities at higher Paradox. In other words, Paradox is more interesting from a mechanics point of view.

This however is not the major issue I have with EQ. For me, the most important problem with this resource currently is that it is quite annoying to manage (ie reduce). Currently there are two main ways of reducing EQ; Meditate or taking a (long) walk in the overland map. When you Meditate, you become dazed for about 15 turns, so it cannot be used in combat; also it has a cooldown of 150, and since there is no penalty for resting (TOME4 has no food or resource clock), what you have to do in order to reduce your EQ is use Meditate, rest for 130 turns, use Meditate again, and so on until your EQ is zero (plus any Sustains). This behaviour also means that there is little reason to invest in the skill, other than relieving some of the tedium. Contrast that to Spacetime Tuning, which has a much lower cooldown and sets your Paradox to zero (or to any level desired) in one cast.

The two Wilder classes also have one talent each that can potentially reduce EQ (Healing Nexus can also reduce EQ, but situations where it can be used to good effect are very rare). For Summoner, this is Jelly and it is actually quite useful, at least in relation to the poor Wyrmic (but this is a discussion for another post). Even so, it still requires spamming Jelly 3 or 4 times to reduce EQ to 0% from about 20% in the mid game, which also means that the Summoner needs to find a lone enemy, lure it in a corridor or a quite bend and hope it doesn’t quickly die to Jelly's damage. Jelly can be quite useful in recovering some EQ in combat, but as one of the only means of reducing EQ, it is somewhat tedious.

How can we improve the situation? One simple solution would be to look at Paradox management and modify the relevant EQ-reducing talent accordingly. That would mean changing Meditate so that it becomes available to all Wilders from character creation, reduce its cooldown to about 50 and make it such that it remove all EQ in one cast, which would still take a number of turns so that the skill would not be usable in combat. Then replace the current Meditate with another skill, not necessarily one that reduces EQ. If we would go with an EQ reduction skill, it would be best to make it so that it is not too similar to Static History, to avoid further dilution with the Paradox mechanics.

Another way to go would be to adopt Zonk’s idea that turns Meditate into a passive that reduces EQ while resting, while also providing some additional benefit that justifies further investment in the skill.

Any other ideas?

Now, about Summoners in particular. Currently, I feel Summoners are in a good place, with interesting gameplay and a plethora tactical decisions in combat. However, I fell that there are a few issues that if tackled can improve the class (apart from the general issues with EQ). For me, the main issues are:

1) Lack of options to invest generic points in: Currently the only truly viable options are Call of the Wild and Harmony (locked) trees. There is Survival, but I feel this tree is generally lacking in usefulness; Combat training, which is also of limited usefulness to a Summoners, since they have very few options to build for melee combat and Combat Veteran (locked), which has two skills that deal with Stamina, a resource of limited use (at best) to a Summoner. My suggestion would be to create a new generic talent tree that uses EQ:

New generic tree

Strengthen the bond
Cost: 2
Cooldown: 10
Range: 10
Can only target Summons. Large Heal based on Mindpower and talent level and increase duration of the summon by (1/2/3/4/5).

Cloud of Fog:
Cost: 10
Cooldown: 20
Creates a cloud of fog that breaks line of sight. The effect should be similar to Cold flame, ie you select an area and it gradually fills with fog which moves and leaves some open patches. While within the fog, vision is reduced to one square. At level 3, you can see through fog.

Earth Meld:
Cost: 10
Cooldown: 25
Want to simulate an ability whereby the Summoner sinks down to the ground and ‘swims’ off, as a means of escape.
For the duration of this ability you cannot be targeted by any effects, although any conditions that were applied before this ability still apply. Note however that enemies can still see you. You cannot use any abilities or attacks (this also includes infusions and runes) – the only thing you can do is move. For the duration, you can pass through walls. Duration 5/6/7/8/9.

Eartlink:
Cost: 5
Cooldown: 20
You become paralysed for 3 turns. Creates a Damage Shield that lasts 3 turns and scales with talent level and Mindpower. Also increases regeneration for 4/5/6/7/8 turns and removes one negative effect each turn for the duration.


2) Limited flexibility in terms of build (not necessarily a bad thing): Currently, Summoners have a lot of both tactical and strategic choices due to both the variability of the available summons and a few of their other abilities (mostly Detonate, Grand Arrival and Wild Summon). However, none of them require them to be at close range – in fact, there is no reason for a Summoner to be in the thick of combat. From my experience, Summoners are best played like long-range mages, ie keeping at the back and pelting enemies with spells (expendable summons). As such, the choice of giving them access to Combat Veteran and Combat Techniques is somewhat strange, especially since neither of those trees provide any solid melee-range attack options. My suggestion would be to simply remove access to those last two trees.

3) Somewhat lacking in class tree talents: Again, this is not a big deal, mainly due to the fact that the available class trees are for the most part awesome! However, it would be great if they could get access to one more class talent tree that uses EQ. My suggestion:

New class tree:

Summon Pixies:
Cost: 4
Cooldown: 7 (maybe too low?)
Summons a cloud of Pixies –weak stats except Willpower, very short duration (1/2/2/3/3, unaffected by Resilience), does elemental damage (fire, lighting, cold, acid) to ball radius 1/1/1/2/2 when summoned.
With Grand Arrival also confuses (2/3/4/5/6 turns).
With Wild summon, can do the elemental ball damage one more time.
With Detonate, Dazes (puts to sleep) all within a ball radius 1/1/1/2/2 for 2/3/3/4/5 turns.

Wall of Brambles:
Cost: 7
Cooldown: 20
Creates a wall, similar to Wall of Ice. Each segment has its own hit point pool, when damaged returns X damage as retribution damage and also poisons the attacker.

Entangle:
Cost: 15
Cooldown: 25
Ranged Ball radius 3/3/4/4/5 that creates an area effect that persists for 3/4/5/6/7 turns. Pins and damages (low nature damage, scaled with Mindpower) all within.

Unsummon:
Cost: Free
Cooldown: 15 (or possibly 20)
Instant cast
Can only target one of your summons. Unsummons the selected summon (essentially killing it) and you gain back its EQ cost plus or minus EQ depending on talent level (-2/-1/0/1/2) and puts the relevant summon off cooldown minus some turns depending on talent level (-2/-1/0/0/0) – ie at talent level 1 will set the cooldown at 2 turns, while at talent level 3 it will immediately put it off cooldown. At talent level 3 it will also reduce the cooldowns of all other summon talents by (0/0/1/2/3).

In addition to the above, some more specific suggestions:

Changes to some of the current summons:

Minotaur, Golem and Drake (to a lesser extend): They have no way to improve Accuracy. This probably was not an issue in older versions since Accuracy scaled with both Dex and Str, but currently this is not the case. Biggest issue is with Minotaur, which has 14-16 Acc on average. Simple fix – make accuracy scale with talent level for those summons.

Turtle needs something more to make it more compelling as a summon. Easiest thing to do is give it retribution (damage on being hit). Call it spiky shell and it suits the theme just fine.

I’m also not sure about Spider – it’s ability to pin can be handy, but quite unreliable. However, need more playtesting before I can offer a more informed view.

That all for now from me. What do you think of my suggestions and to the more active coders out in the community, do you think that the new trees would be easy to implement? (Not a coder myself).

Sorry for the wall of text, turns out I had a lot to say on Summoners (and Wyrmics, but I’ll save that for another post).

[lukep]

The main way for Summoners to recover EQ in combat is through the jelly summon. It returns equilibrium to you equal to 10% of the damage it takes, so that's about 80 EQ over its lifetime by the late game (800 HP). Also, Healing Nexus combined with Waters of Life (?) means that if you poison yourself, you can recover a fair amount of EQ. The Turtle grand arrival effect can also be used. I like the idea of the passive meditation addon, but have never tried it.

I agree the equilibrium could use some more mechanics, and anomalies (corrupted/mutated summons?) and backfires (hostile summons) could work for it.

I also like your proposed trees is general, but haven't taken a very good look at them. Spiders damage scales very quickly, making them (IMO) the best summon at talent level 5. I also agree with you that accuracy is a problem, but I would link it to Willpower, character level, and talent level instead of just talent level.

I've coded a few other things, and nothing that you've proposed looks very difficult to implement (except EQ anomalies/power boosts).

[tromboneandrew]

I typically play random characters to start, and the generator has given me some summoners lately. It's a fun class, and I have some similar observations.

Concerning meditation, I think that it's interesting that it may require special consideration when equilibrium starts to get high, that it's not just a matter of resting somewhere and spamming meditation/rest. Perhaps tie the cooldown to damage done by your summons in combat?

I also think that the equilibrium costs of the ranged attackers are a bit off, especially the flamespitter. Yes, it is low on HP, but that thing for me always deals out way more damage than a wolf simply because I can position it away from enemies and it's still effective.

Concerning hostile summons, I managed to do this once by summoning while encased in ice, while being attacked by Rantha The Worm. Obviously, I died.

[Rectifier]

Some news from the tome git: Meditation is going to be a sustain that grants equilibrium regeneration, healing mod, and mental save; but while the sustain is active your character will have a 50% penalty to damage output.

Meaning you turn it on for when you need to regen your resources and off to switch for combat.

[Aquillion]

Some news from the tome git: Meditation is going to be a sustain that grants equilibrium regeneration, healing mod, and mental save; but while the sustain is active your character will have a 50% penalty to damage output.

Meaning you turn it on for when you need to regen your resources and off to switch for combat.

Gah.

While I don't want to criticize it before I've tried it, it feels to me like that misses the point completely. The problem is that making people micromanage the recovery of their primary resource is generally not fun, since it discourages them from using their fun powers on account of not wanting to have to go through the whole process of dealing with the recovery system.

In general, resource recovery ought to either be integrated into the rest button (mana, stamina, psi), work automatically via something you'd do anyway for the class (hate), or represent serious decisions in combat (positive / darkness, though that overlaps with the above). Forcing people to constantly micromanage their meditation state doesn't seem to me like it'd be much better than the current system.

Basically, the key point is this: When the player is in a situation where they could trivially regenerate all their resources at no other cost, pressing the rest button should do so with one button press. Adding more button presses (for something, remember, that the player will have to do after every fight) for something that doesn't involve real decisions is bad.

So unless an actual reason is added why a player wouldn't want to almost always turn on meditation before resting, hitting the 'rest' button should generally recover their equilibrium automatically with no other button presses necessary.

(And I presume canceling the sustain takes no time, so there doesn't seem to be any reason why a player would ever rest without putting it up first -- that means that forcing them to actually go through the steps of activating it each time just becomes fiddly.)

[bricks]

"Use on rest" would be a nice auto-use option.

Anyway, I'll give it a try before I judge it. I think more vital is evaluating whether skill failure is a good mechanic. I'm generally not a gambler, so I find it frustrating, opposed to challenging. Paradox I don't mind because it's got a lot more going on for it.

[donkatsu]

While I don't want to criticize it before I've tried it, it feels to me like that misses the point completely. The problem is that making people micromanage the recovery of their primary resource is generally not fun, since it discourages them from using their fun powers on account of not wanting to have to go through the whole process of dealing with the recovery system.

In general, resource recovery ought to either be integrated into the rest button (mana, stamina, psi), work automatically via something you'd do anyway for the class (hate), or represent serious decisions in combat (positive / darkness, though that overlaps with the above). Forcing people to constantly micromanage their meditation state doesn't seem to me like it'd be much better than the current system.

Basically, the key point is this: When the player is in a situation where they could trivially regenerate all their resources at no other cost, pressing the rest button should do so with one button press. Adding more button presses (for something, remember, that the player will have to do after every fight) for something that doesn't involve real decisions is bad.

So unless an actual reason is added why a player wouldn't want to almost always turn on meditation before resting, hitting the 'rest' button should generally recover their equilibrium automatically with no other button presses necessary.

This, this, a thousand times this. Celestials have the same problem (solved thanks to an addon, but still annoying in the main build), as do Chronomancers, but neither of them have had it as bad as Wilders did before the new Meditation. Actually, I'm quite satisfied with the change, as 3 keypresses per rest really isn't all that bad, but it could be even better. Auto-cast on rest would be pretty neat if done correctly, reducing resting down to 2 keypresses for Wilders: 1 to rest, 1 to turn off Meditation. It would also have the effect of allowing players to use heal/regen infusions to "rest up" their health faster.

On a side note, the thing that immediately sticks out to me about the new Meditation is that it's much more useful for Summoners than Wyrmics: just toss out a bunch of summons, then switch on Meditation for all of the benefits and none of the drawback, since summons inherit your +/- damage at the time of summon. I am not sure if this was meant to be a buff for Summoners and if so, I am not sure that Summoners really needed it.

[Aquillion]

"Use on rest" would be a nice auto-use option.

Anyway, I'll give it a try before I judge it. I think more vital is evaluating whether skill failure is a good mechanic. I'm generally not a gambler, so I find it frustrating, opposed to challenging. Paradox I don't mind because it's got a lot more going on for it.

What if, instead of failure, higher equilibrium increased the cooldowns on all your nature talents? This would have to be done carefully, though... I could see it having awkward effects, hurting some talents more than others depending on how it's calculated and how fast it kicks in.

[tekrunner]

As a summoner I felt like equilibrium was fairly different from paradox : you can let it run a bit high without too much risk (I found that 20-25% failure chance was often still acceptable), and jellies are an interesting way to manage it, as you have to place them carefully for them to be hit without preventing your ranged summons from attacking. That said, meditation can probably be improved, and I have no idea how well equilibrium management works for wyrmics.

[necronomist]

Good discussion on equilibrium so far - Darkgod must be watching because he made a lot of changes regarding Meditation in the git. At the time of this post, Meditate is a sustain that grants equilibrium regeneration, healing mod, mental save and 50% damage reduction. It also allows you to passively regenerate equilibrium when resting, even if if deactivated and lastly, it takes no action to activate and deactivate.

Overall, I think these changes will go a long way to removing the tedium of reducing equilibrium for both Wilder classes between combat encounter, while also offering some tactical options in combat (ie hiding behind a corner for a few turns with Meditation on-this is possible to do now that activation and deactivation of the sustain takes no turns). I will agree that the new Mediation seems better suited for Summoners relative to Wyrmics. However, this is not so much an issue, since I feel that Wyrmics need a lot more love than a simple change in Mediation - but that is a topic for another post.

As for equilibrium mechanics in general, I don't think natural anomalies are the way to go; that would only make the resource more similar to Paradox, which is something that should be avoided if the goal is to have resources that are as distinct as possible from each other. Aquillion's suggestion that EQ increases cooldowns is actually quite interesting, but somewhat difficult to fit in the current game, since some talents are designed to be used once in combat anyway and have large cooldowns -eg. if equilibrium increases to cooldown of a talent from 20 to 25, that is hardly a noticeable cost to the player. I would see this mechanic working for a new class that focuses on short cooldown talents, with a special mechanic that would allow two talents to be used in a turn (talent strength would of course be balanced around that).

What do you guys think about the other suggestions for the class and the new talent trees?

[donkatsu]

Agreed that there aren't really any good places to spend generics. The new Meditation will help a bit, but more options are always welcome.
Can't say the same about class points though, especially once melee summons get fixed. But as long as the new tree takes a category point to unlock you could really add as many trees as you want with no real adverse effect..

Cloud of Fog: There's something weird about the AI and LOS-affecting abilities right now. Often I find enemies shooting me just fine through Sticky Smoke, or Creeping Darkness. Good idea, might not actually function the way it's supposed to in implementation.

Summon Pixies: The numbers will need serious tweaking for the Grand Arrival effect. You could triple the cooldown and it would still be one of the best talents in the game, due to the overwhelming power of confusion. Maybe make the Grand Arrival have a fixed duration, and instead increase confusion power with talent level. I really do like the short duration thing though.

Unsummon: Needs to not be instant cast, as Summoners have little to spend their turns on anyway. Most of the time I find myself actually just sitting and waiting for my summons to finish killing things, throwing in the occasional reinforcement. This could become a nice turn sink with fun tactical implications, especially if it had a low cooldown. I'm thinking in the range of 8-ish. If the low cooldown makes it too good, take away the equilibrium refund and tack on an equilibrium cost, since jellies make equilibrium trivial for summoners anyway.

The other talents look nice.

Turtle is one of my staple summons, along with Flamespitter and Rimebark. It's basically invincible, arrives with a solid AoE heal (which becomes a totally off-the-wall self heal when combined with Healing Nexus), and thanks to Taunt it confers its invincibility to other summons, in a way. I would not add anything to it.

[necronomist]

Thank you for the feedback.

Regarding Class trees, Summoners currently have three open and two locked (excluding the two Technique trees, which are also locked). As I said in my original post, the options provided in all three unlocked trees are quite strong, but flexibility in build is relatively limited, at least compared with other 'caster' classes (ie clasess that rely on their talents rather than bumping enemies to death). For comparison two of my favourite 'casters', Anorithil and Paradox Mages, have 4 and 5 unlocked class talent trees from the start.

On Cloud of Fog - I admit I haven't played around a lot with LOS-breaking spells, so I can't really comment on how effective this would actually be. I included it because it is thematic, does no damage (I feel that Summoners should do all their damage through their summons) and I don't want to include any additional summons apart from Pixies, since a single summon gives so many tactical options when the interactions with Grand Arrival, Wild Summon and Detonate are taken into account. If LOS-breaking talents are actually, well, broken currently, we could replace this with another utility option - maybe a talent that would teleport one of your summons to your location.

On Pixies - if Confusion is too strong, maybe we replace it with Blind? If also too strong, how about a debuff that reduces elemental resistance? That last option would synergise well with all other ranged summons. If this is a problem, the debuff would cover both elemental resists and physical, so that the skill can also synergise with the melee summon tree.

On Unsummon - I put it down as an instant cast so that it can serve as an immediate repositioning tool - eg. you unsummon your Rimebark because no enemies are in the Icestorm radius and immediately summon it again in a position that is more convenient. The talent as it stands cannot have a small cooldown due to the fact that new summons will come with Grand Arrival effects and all their talents off cooldown; if you could use unsummon every 8 turns, some effects could become abusable.

I do agree however that Summoners have in some situations some 'empty' turns, ie turns where they have nothing worthwhile to do. I'll try to think of a low cooldown talent that could be used in such situations; one with a relatively small effect that would still justify its equilibrium cost.

On Turtle - I like Turtle quite a lot, but as with Spider, I find it rather inconsistent - namely it doesn't use Taunt when it should (ie immediately). I tried messing with the AI a bit to give larger weight to this talent, but it doesn't seem to stick. However, if people feel that it is OK as it stands, then that's fine with me.

Can I ask, what are the fixes for melee summons you are referring to?

[donkatsu]

Hey neat, Meditation got updated again so now it's perfect and nobody can complain about equilibrium management anymore.

The problems with LOS and confusion affect a lot of other talents too, so hopefully they'll be adjusted anyway and the talents you suggested will be fine as-is.

An extra Grand Arrival every 8 turns or so doesn't seem too over the top to me, but maybe it is for Turtle and Golem. Hard to say. I really do think some kind of rapid unsummoning, or a duration reducing talent is needed though, otherwise the increased duration on some summons is actually a bad thing, and that's counterintuitive. In fact, I wouldn't even mind if Unsummon went ahead and reset the cooldown to its full duration; I'm just tired of Hydra and Drake sticking around for so long, eating up my summon slots and being useless after their initial barrage of good talents. The fact that so many things increase summon duration just makes them even worse.

The AI thing is weird; I think summons use their bump attack even if you tell them not to, and it'll often take priority over their actually useful talents. It might help if you summon them away from melee range of enemies? So yeah, Turtle is kind of unreliable but when it works it's pure gold.

The melee summon fix I was referring to was purely hypothetical, but we both know something's gotta give eventually with regards to their accuracy. A tier 3/4 talent that's only useful against trolls is kind of sad, and no doubt unintended.