Question:
Assuming someone would want to use only a Demon Lord Card as their main Grimoire card, which would be the best to go with?
For example, there’s a slightly increased aoe size on Legendary Cards, does any summon benefit from this more?
Also any opinions on Demon Lord Nueale card. (Now that attacks have been added to it?)
thank you,i have a last question:how do i get monster cards( only necronomicon not the one for sorc ) for shoggoth in early game? missions? farming areas?
The cheapest card for shogoth is 330 dun boss card 50k on market.
((SPR / (level + 1)) * 100)%
So the more level we gain, the more spr we need. Should we stop leveling after 390?
The time has come to chose between enchant Skeleton Warrior or Archer and honestly… so far I can’t decide… I’m leaning in warriors direction just because right now I’m using them and mages (due +1 gem).
Going to share some thoughts and information here to help aspiring summoners.
As you can see, summoner can be very powerful and is an end game viable build. In this, I’m showcasing Sorcerer/Necromancer/Bokor, which I personally believe to be the best combination of classes for summoners. They all have synergy with each other and boost each other in various ways. Losing any one is a loss for the others.
I’ll go into some details on how to get the most damage out of these classes.
Summons don’t deal much damage by default; their ATK stat is low and their SFRs are low. However, this can not only be fixed, but it can be boosted to high levels to start dealing effective damage.
Summons primarily gain damage from the MATK on your weapon and your SPR stat, then increased by damage bonuses. I will describe how they work here, but it’s just important to know you want as much of these as possible if you don’t want to get into the details.
ATK
MATK on your weapon doesn’t increase their ATK stat, but makes each attack they do act as if they have that much more ATK when dealing damage. This is an important distinction as it prevent snapshotting. The ratio at which it increases their ATK depends on the summon.
There are two types of summons: a “strong summon” and “summon.” This was easily seen previously when we could see the buffs on summoned creatures. Strong summons are Sorcerer’s Summoning and Necromancer’s Create Shoggoth. Normal summons are everything else.
Strong summons receive 100% of your MATK as ATK when they deal damage, while all other summons receive 50%. This makes Sorcerer’s demon scale extremely well with your weapon and makes Shoggoth hit harder despite you only getting 1 of him.
Besides your weapon, some summons gain ATK from skill level and card level. These scale the base ATK of the summon when they are created, and are not significant boosts. Summons by default don’t have much ATK stat, so increasing these doesn’t amount to a significant gain, but any amount is helpful.
ATK will always be the main factor that holds back your damage. Enemy defenses get higher and higher as you get into later content, and you need a good weapon to keep your summon attack stats up. While SPR is relatively easy to get and cap out on, It’s harder to scale the ATK stat of summons, so having as good of a weapon as possible is important for a good baseline for damage output, especially for summons that only gain half of it. Because a staff provides much more MATK than a rod, and ATK is so critical for summons, I highly advise using a staff when playing a summoner.
Lastly, the Demon Lord Froster Lord card provides a significant minimum ATK boost to your summons and I advise investing into it once you have money to spare.
SPR
SPR functions by increasing the SkillFactor stat on your summoned creatures. The formula is:
((SPR / (level + 1)) * 100)%
SkillFactor (henceforth referred to as SFR) is a stat on all entities in the game. You might know this as a way to determine how much damage a skill does in their tooltip, but yes, it is also a stat. Players have no way of raising or using this stat, but monsters use it to determine the damage they deal.
When applied as a stat, it acts as a multiplier on the SFR of skills used by the monster. For example, I typically summon with 1066 SPR, so based on the formula above, this puts me at 272.6%. This multiplies the SFR of all summoned monster skills by this amount. Marnox’s auto attack has a 98% SFR, but thanks to SPR, this is increased to 267.15%.
The monster’s SFR stat is decided and stored in the creature when they are created/summoned. This is not dynamically updated, making it possible to summon with a high amount of SPR, and then switch to other equipment (the concept known as “snapshotting”). Because you can gain more SPR when using a rod and offhand, it is advisable to, if possible, summon with these and then switch to a high ATK staff weapon. This is certainly not necessary, but will be a further boost to your damage output.
Because SPR scales the SFR of your summons’ attacks, and ATK is used to determine damage dealt based on SFR, increasing both of these in tandem scales extremely well and will greatly boost your damage output. Neither should be neglected.
Damage Bonuses
Once ATK and SFR have been calculated out, damage is dealt to the target based on their defense. This is then increased by damage modifiers. These are any sort of buff, debuff, or effect that increase damage by a +%. Summoners in particular have many of these.
For example, if you would have dealt 1000 damage to the target after all is said and done, and you have +30% damage, it would increase to 1300 damage. These are all additive with each other. Here is a brief list of the main ones we use:
Desmodus (+60% Summoning damage, +40% regular summon damage)
Riding: Increase Stats (+50% Summoning damage)
Summoning: Overwork (+30% Summoning damage)
Hexing (+30% dark damage, skeleton archers/skeleton soldiers/zombies/Ignas/familiars)
Necromancer Bane (+50% skeleton damage)
Great Corruption (+30% Physical/Fire damage)
Tiksline (+50% damage)
As you can see, it is trivial to reach high damage bonus values, going to +100% and over with only a few skill presses. In the past, most of these did not exist, but these promote summoner being a more active play style. Maintaining buffs, debuffs, and meeting the conditions for them is key to scaling your damage after your stats are all figured out.
Lastly, Tiksline is chosen as the set bonus of choice for summoners. Kraujas increases your own damage, but it will not increase the damage of your summons. Sumazinti is not significant and only accounts for the magic damage dealt by summons, which is far less proportionally compared to physical damage. Tiksline does work with summons, and will also cause the mark to explode for damage appropriately, as you can see in my video.
Sorcerer
Ultimately, it’s up to you which summon you want to use. Sorcerer is a very cool class and most demons deal roughly the same damage, just in different areas of effect and cooldowns. There are a few that are particularly good, and a few that are particularly… not great, but beyond that, most are about average.
These summons I consider to be the best. They are all useful in their own situations.
Ignas
Marnox
Froster Lord
These are budget or very situationally useful:
Netherbovine
Gorkas
Necroventer
With future updates, we will probably see more summons.
Necromancer
It’s worth stressing since this comes up a lot, but the card choice for Necromancer’s Shoggoth does not matter. While there are four card slots, and different stats are displayed, they don’t influence anything.
The only thing that matters is the level of the card placed into the Necronomicon, as the stars increase his base ATK and DEF (which as already covered, is not really significant regardless). Get any card you want to 10 stars and use that; don’t bother with legendary cards or placing anything more than that into it.
It’s not mentioned, but Shoggoth also has a hidden effect called Rigor Mortis. This reduces the damage taken by nearby summons by [skill level * 3]%, and this bonus is doubled for skeletons. He also periodically provokes nearby enemies to attack him, taking damage for your summons.
For skeletons, soldier will be the best for damage provided they don’t have to run around a lot. If you are facing many random enemies (challenge mode) or are fighting a highly mobile boss, archers are better. Their DPS isn’t significantly different, but archers have range which will make them more consistent.
Mages are currently not worth using unless you do not have a Rangovas necklace for knockback protection. This may change in the future with upcoming changes, but at the moment their auto attack cannot cleave at all due to having negative AoE attack ratio, their initial “Flesh Strike” cast deals weak damage, they are lacking an enhance attribute, and they don’t benefit from things like Hexing and Corruption due to dealing Magic Poison damage. They have too many issues at the moment to be competitive with the other two.
Bokor
Normal zombies deal the most damage due to their attack speed and the damage they deal.
Wheelchair zombies deal slightly less damage, but they have a much higher movement speed, making them more consistent. The damage difference is not significant and either of these are just fine to use.
Large zombies do much less damage while having a slightly bigger AoE and significantly more health. Currently, due to how difficult it is to summon these, and the little benefits they have, they don’t serve much purpose. I advise keeping this attribute off unless you have problems keeping your zombies alive.
Lastly, I’d like to make some quick corrections to guide information.
While [Evocation] does scale with SPR, [Desmodus] does not.
You can’t use this attribute with familiars anymore.
This will not boost Shoggoth damage, as he does not deal Dark damage.
There is no penalty for striking ghost, as this was removed. The display occurs due to a bug (-50%) when hitting enemies, but damage is not reduced.
[Desmodus] deals Earth damage, not Dark.
This is more of an opinion, but it is important not to neglect INT either, as it is a boost to MATK. Even if you are an all summon build, you will still be dealing magic damage through powerful skills such as Flesh Hoop and Damballa.
I think that covers everything I wanted to say. Feel free to ask me any questions if you have them here, in game, or in the Reddit discord.
Thanks for the updated info and corrections, I’m not really playing anymore though so I think I’ll update the guide one last time when the featherfoot etc balance tweak hits, or Episode 11 if it’s not too far off from that.
If you feel like it though, you can just make a new guide. I wrote this one cause of the event but I’m not really willing or able to keep it up to date anymore.
What summon would you recommend for Riding and for Autoattacking? Ignas seem too expensive for the normal casual player. I suppose Marnox would be the best for autoattacking?
Marnox is great for general use for auto attacks and skills. If you can’t afford Marnox, then something like Netherbovine/Gorkas/Templeshooter will work fine.
Froster Lord is mostly for his skill usage as his AA is far worse than Marnox on regular enemies, but they become much better with aiming.
Currently I have 2 builds with Sorc. My first is Bokor - Necromancer - Sorcerer (full summon). For this I’m intending to use riding more often because of the lack of skills to use (only debuffs + Damballa to spam and summons do most of the work). Would Froster Lord or Templeshooter be better? I have both by the way so I don’t need to buy any. Froster Lord skills have a shorter cooldown, while Templeshooter has 3 skills to use. Which one have stronger riding + AA? I’m be using Morph pretty often I think for challenge modes to spam the riding skills more often.
My other build is a Sorcerer - Shadowmancer - Warlock (dark based, I know its not the best but it’s just for fun and it’s different). For this, since I have more skills to use so I’m thinking Marnox might have a better AA? For this I probably won’t use Morph that much and just use the riding skills as per normal
Froster Lord would be better. He has powerful skills. This is even more true if you’re using Morph.
Yeah, that’s fine. It’s still important not to neglect using Riding skills because they’re powerful, but Marnox has a wide, strong auto attack and is sufficient to deal consistent damage in an area.
Hello there.
First of all, thank you for the effort making a good guide for summoner build. It helps a lot.
I want to try the Pyro-Sorce-Necro build. Always been a fan of Pyro and Sorce class. I want to ask about attributes. What class should be the main focus for the attribute points allocation? Sorce? Necro? Or Pyro? I’m planning to use it mostly for CM purpose.
Also I would like to ask about Morph. When should we use Morph aside from skill cd reset? I see the new summon from Morph retain stat from the previous summon, so should we put our main summon on the Morph slot and ‘stat slave’ summon on the Summoning slot? Which card best used for ‘stat slave’?
For equip, I’m not really that well funded but I can afford Velco 1H weapon. I also have an Inquisitor I’m still building (currently still lv 200 ish). Would it be fine if I just get Velco 1H Mace so I can use it with both my Wizard and Cleric without investing too much BG for transcend, or will I lose a lot of damage by using 1H Mace instead of Rod on my Pyro-Sorce-Necro?
I haven’t been playing so take my advice as a secondary opinion:
You can settle for a cheap transcended primus mace (+11 or higher, trans 7+) for both your wizard and cleric and just wait for episode 11 before upgrading your gear. Slightly ahead of the episode 11 update (or at the same time in iToS maybe) comes balance changes that will pretty much remove pyro-necro synergy so you might want to look ahead and learn more about featherfoot or other class combos entirely.
As for Morph the stats didn’t really matter to me when I tested them (no significant difference between cards and even card levels) so to me it’s just a cooldown reset or substitute summon slot for utility.
This game changes too much and has too many inconsistent things that require personal and in-depth testing (sometimes even the UI is lying to you) or data mining as seen in Crevox’s post above so it’s best to figure out attribute priorities, skill distribution and such on your own cause they really do tend to be a matter of preference.
Thanks fo the input! I took Pyro for now and later will probably change to full summon build. Enjoying it so far.
Ok. I’ve been trying to build my summon wizard but until now I couldn’t because I have many doubts yet.
So far is it good to build a summon with just a Templeshooter card (level 7) and low budget? I can’t afford many cards right now.
From all the cards used by necros, which one should I use to Shoggoth?
Is it possible to do things in group with a summon build and still be useful to the party? (Like helping them with challenge modes, killing bosses, etc).
If I were to choose sorc - necro - bokor, should I start with which one?
Is it required a lot of attribute points to use on them? (I don’t know if my wizard has spare attribute points). And what are the best attributes to level first taking into account the three “purple classes”?
Last question: I don’t want to really go around “mounted” on my summon, I just want to have fun with their auto-attacks and basic skills. Should I still use Templeshooter?
I’m level 375 at the moment.
Templeshooter is alright, you can use it in the interim until you get a better one.
Any card is fine, the stats in the window don’t mean anything. Higher stars means more ATK/DEF and that’s it, so preferably a 10 star.
Of course. Summon builds are viable DPS builds and party builds like any other builds.
Any one is fine, but I’d advise Sorcerer or Necromancer. Bokor requires you to kill enemies to spawn zombies or use capsules which cost money, and it’s easier to kill when already having another class. It’s also a bit more clunky.
Sorcerer and Bokor both require few attribute points, but Necromancer can require a fair amount depending on how you build.
You ideally want all of the non-enhance attributes (though Wheelchair Zombie and Large Zombie are optional). After that I’d recommend Riding: Enhance and to start working on Necromancer summon enhance attributes such as Skeleton Archer. For enhance attributes, generally you want to try to level them up all evenly, including your damage spells, due to their cost raising at higher levels. Riding: Enhance is an exception to this since the attribute is much cheaper to max than every other enhance attribute in the game (and also doesn’t function the same in that it receives no final bonus +10% at max level).
Templeshooter is fine for this purpose. In general, you don’t stay riding on your summon for any duration longer than to just use their skills regardless.
Thank you for your help! I’ve changed my character and I’m trying this new build.
@crevox
1 - How much spr do you have on this video ?
2 - In the build Necro > Sorc > Bokor what you think is better, skiaclipse rod( for +1 skelleton) or asio rod because had 49+ spr for all summons
3 - Would greatly increase damage in the end game using an ignas lv 5 instead of lv 3 ?
4 - Would greatly increase damage in the end game using an froster lord lv 5 instead of lv 3 ? XD (
equipped in character)
5 - I was thinking in use the new uphill necklace
and superior psychic band for more spr instead of rangovas for GTW what you think about it ?
6 - Do you know if lilith buff applies for every summon damage or just for auto attacks ? and the damage is 2x ? or have one formula ?
Should be about 1200? This was a while ago now.
Asio Rod. You can weapon swap and snapshot Skiaclipse Rod’s +1 skeleton. There’s no reason to full-time it.
No, card levels make a small difference.
No, but every level helps.
You should always be using Rangovas Necklace because of the knockdown protection. You can summon with other equipment (such as the uphill necklace) and then swap if you want the extra SPR.
Summoner builds are not ideal in PVP content in general. They have no way of getting through enemy block or evasion, and have a very hard time hitting mobile enemies. Burst damage is strong in PVP, and summons generally don’t do that.
We know nothing about Lilith other than what I posted because it’s not released yet.
@crevox Which the case of you choice the Necromancer skill [Raise Dead] and [Raise Skull Archer] ,Instead of [Raise Skull Mage]
