[1.5.0] Sheila's Insane Anime Summoner Guide

[Snarvid]

Playing on Nightmare, decided to try the Halfling/PES/Superpower stacking with Antimagic, figuring that would give me the strongest summons and scaling defenses. One thing I noticed is that, though Resolve and Elemental Harmony both say that "hit" is their trigger, Resolve triggers when your Antimagic Shield blocks all the damage while Elemental Harmony does not. This may mean that you either a. still want to avoid the new, buffed Antimagic, or b. that Elemental Harmony doesn't belong in a build with Antimagic Shield.

Since I'm already in, considering max Resolve and max Antimagic shield in place of Harmony, just to facetank magic.

[ster]

avoid Antimagic

yes

[Snarvid]

A few things I've noticed in a Nightmare run-through with Antimagic/PES/Superpower here (having some trouble with my pre-Steam login on Steam so started a new account to try Summoner again). These may already be common knowledge, but given that this is the most up-to-date Summoner guide and the guide notes that Antimagic may be worth it, it seems worth mentioning them here.

1. Antimagic Shield is running around 123 points absorbed while walking around normally and 71 retaliation damage, up to 150 absorbed/89 retaliation with full PES - Heroism - Lightning Catcher (managed 11 stacks, not sure how, may be an artifact of Grand Arrival with Drake) - Militant Mind.
2. Resolve can crit, which means that while the talent description says it adds 52% in practice it's often adding between 70-80% resistance, or, practically speaking, whatever your cap is.
3. Resolve's % reduction happens before Antimagic Shield's flat reduction.
4. With Resolve 5, equilibrium regenerates while standing in Devouring Flame, while Rimebark's Winter's Fury breaks even on equilibrium.
5. With 100% Freeze/Stun immunity and Antimagic, you can stand in the overlapping Winter's Furies from Rimebark -> Frantic Summoning -> Rimebark without any real effect (note that they will kill each other, though, so you have to space them out a bit). You'll take the first hit for about 40-50 damage to activate resolve, then Resolve kicks in and you don't take any more damage.
6. You can end up brainlocking your own minions with Aura of Silence - not that bad with anyone but Rimebark. The equilibrium recovered is pretty solid if you ever need it.

Also worth noting that the most recent patch made the drake hatchlings not count against your limit, so I don't think there's a reason not to max out Grand Arrival. Sometimes the battlefield can get pretty congested, and the modest range on summons means that reaching an extra space with those damage resist debuffs can be pretty useful.

[Sheila]

A few things I've noticed in a Nightmare run-through with Antimagic/PES/Superpower here (having some trouble with my pre-Steam login on Steam so started a new account to try Summoner again). These may already be common knowledge, but given that this is the most up-to-date Summoner guide and the guide notes that Antimagic may be worth it, it seems worth mentioning them here.

1. Antimagic Shield is running around 123 points absorbed while walking around normally and 71 retaliation damage, up to 150 absorbed/89 retaliation with full PES - Heroism - Lightning Catcher (managed 11 stacks, not sure how, may be an artifact of Grand Arrival with Drake) - Militant Mind.
2. Resolve can crit, which means that while the talent description says it adds 52% in practice it's often adding between 70-80% resistance, or, practically speaking, whatever your cap is.
3. Resolve's % reduction happens before Antimagic Shield's flat reduction.
4. With Resolve 5, equilibrium regenerates while standing in Devouring Flame, while Rimebark's Winter's Fury breaks even on equilibrium.
5. With 100% Freeze/Stun immunity and Antimagic, you can stand in the overlapping Winter's Furies from Rimebark -> Frantic Summoning -> Rimebark without any real effect (note that they will kill each other, though, so you have to space them out a bit). You'll take the first hit for about 40-50 damage to activate resolve, then Resolve kicks in and you don't take any more damage.
6. You can end up brainlocking your own minions with Aura of Silence - not that bad with anyone but Rimebark. The equilibrium recovered is pretty solid if you ever need it.

Also worth noting that the most recent patch made the drake hatchlings not count against your limit, so I don't think there's a reason not to max out Grand Arrival. Sometimes the battlefield can get pretty congested, and the modest range on summons means that reaching an extra space with those damage resist debuffs can be pretty useful.

1. It's a nice amount of absorption, but it might seriously not be worth losing arcane gear and runes
2. Max resist can easily be reached with an endgame wild or defensive phase door either way
3. This is nice, but keep in mind the most dangerous times magic happen it's big amounts of spike damage which antimagic may or may not really help with
4. This is also nice, but you're spending 5 points in something that you can otherwise do just fine with jelly and 1 point in nature's equilibrium
5. I never saw any reason whatsoever to stand in the rimebark aoe myself as there's no reason to and some positioning gets rid of the problem entirely; I still want rimebarks to hurt jellies on occasion if the battle is too dangerous
6. Silence is nice but it can be easily gotten through itemization, like torques

Not maxing grand arrival never had anything to do with drake hatchlings, but a little more range might just not be worth it depending on your point spread, it's not a big enough advantage to justify 2 class points.
Basically there's a few nice little tricks you can reach with antimagic but like I said it's heavily up to the player and I don't think it entirely justifies itself for summoner, might make low level play easier overall though. I might just be biased against AM after it being mediocre for so long, will have to give it another try soon

[Snarvid]

1. Oh, sure. This is not a full throated argument for "AM is definitely worth it for Summoners, hands down," it's "let's look at what it does actually offer and then we can make reasonable comparisons about what we gain and lose by taking it." I wanted to see what PES and Superpower stacking offered in terms of maxing summon power and also making high Mindpower available during PES downtime, but was cautioned that doing so might leave gaps in defense. AM is a defensive option that scales with Mindpower, so this is probably a reasonably good test of max AM output available to a Summoner.

2 & 6. As long as the opportunity costs are counted in both directions, I am happy to acknowledge that these capabilities are available through other means.

3. It does help, although of course there will be times you're done for either way. Late-game, I found that Amethyst of Sanctuary's Resonance Field was a great way to further stretch the power of AM Field.

4. Resolve 5 + Devouring Flame's equilibrium reduction is additive with jelly, and Resolve 5 + negating Rimebark's damage doesn't cost you anything (which, since your AM shield forces Equilibrium tests and deactivates when you fail, is helpful to keep low). If you don't want Resolve's resist, you wouldn't go to 5 just for the modest Equilibrium regen.

5. Rimebarks still hurt jellies either way, so maybe I'm missing your point there.

More broadly, I'm not suggesting that one should stand in Winter's Fury absent a reason to do so, but the third sentence of your discussion of Rimebark-chan is about being careful with placement. If you can't stand in Winter's Fury without taking damage, some battlefield layouts are going to read as "don't use Rimebark here," while others are going to say "maximum Rimebark control/damage would be available from placement A, but you have to go with placement B for safety reasons." AM (with stun/freeze immunity, but you want that anyway) can remove these concerns.

6 (just to put a # on the Grand Arrival discussion). I didn't feel particularly constrained on my last points as a Summoner - is Jelly 5 particularly important? I did have a few extra Equilibrium management panic buttons (Aura of Silence, Mana Clash, Conversion via Escort), so maybe that's significant.

[dndfans]

Great guide for summers!! My turtle never use Taunt with any weight

For more safely, i prefer Draconic Will and Swift Hands, so i can swift to shield with time without using any precious time.

For some bad luck, i like have some epuipment in Inventory to cap my PHY Res Pen in case that the monster has 80+ALLRIS.
which can offset ,most effect of Grand Arrival.

For some hen-tai heal monster，i full my Healing Nexus to give me enogh atacking windows.

I can't agree more with the Blighted Summoning part, even it Waste your pet's turn to use some useless skill. B U T, the Rimebark with Blighted Summoning is AMASING !!!!!!

[Moopamoop]

Just thought I'd note that baby fire drakes no longer count to your summon limit, which is pretty boss.

[evil]

I know this is old but FYI for anyone reading: Through the Crowd actually doesn't work with fire drakes AOE and you can still target your jelly with natures equilibrium (which is a bug im assuming, but still)

I took Through the Crowd on my adventure insane run and it actually seems to not be applying the "you can never hurt your friends" thing very much at all, the only things it actually works for as far as I can tell is the breath attacks from the hydra and drake..... rimebarks winter AOE and fire drakes AOE still hurt you, which I hope gets fixed soon but until then you can abuse elemental harmony and stuff with it active still

[FuzzyCuddlyBunny]

Overall good guide, but I think you drastically underrated Healing Nexus. With heal on summon items, Healing Nexus can be used after you get some summons out to restore 10 equilibrium plus 10 extra per summon and to heal for ludicrous amounts. I reached over 3000 healing per summon relatively effortlessly, going up to 6000 at one point! I could also restore 100 equilibrium per summon. Trivial equilibrium management and huge healing is in no ways an insane difficulty only benefit to me.