Not stated by IMC.
Not stated by IMC. They listed these changes under Sorcerer/Necromancer/Bokor.
Going to give my opinion on summon changes, since I’ve been dedicated to this role since beta.
My Opinion
The changes they did were necessary, good adjustments to solve fundamental design problems with summoner. Summoner had scaling problems and issues benefiting from a variety of bonuses through party synergy, new equipment, set bonuses, and more, all because their Desmodus and Gather Corpse implicitly provided over 1000% bonus damage. These WERE originally final damage modifiers, but IMC changed them to additive damage modifiers that ignored the standard limit for reasons I can’t even remember. Now, we have come full circle and we’re back to final damage again.
IMC did not seem to quite understand the ramifications of their actions, as summoner suffered ever since they changed it away from final damage. WBR buffs didn’t matter for summons as much as it did for other classes, they couldn’t scale as well as other classes in party content, and they continued to design equipment such as the new Kartas set that provides meager damage bonuses to summons, not realizing that a 40% damage bonus on top of 1000% is an extremely small increase in damage (and they were laughed at on the KR forum for it).
Summoner has always been an afterthought, and it’s not really a surprise; most DPS in the game are red classes and scale their damage in the same way, but summoner has its own color (purple) and follows completely different rules for gearing up, scaling their damage, etc. It’s honestly a miracle they were even relatively balanced lately compared to anything else, but as they add new content, more and more problems arise. Summoner is a gaping hole of design problems that they bandage every once in a while until it gets bad enough again that they have to bandage it, without ever solving the fundamental issues that make this constantly necessary compared to everything else.
This is a good step in the right direction, far from a full fix, as summoner has a huge number of problems still, and this introduced new problems too.
Problems
This is just a small list of examples.
-There is no new set built for summoners. IMC wants summoners to just use the new damage sets and have their summons gain the % damage buff, but Liris is still better by a large amount, so Summoner has to stick with Varna unless they nerf it or buff the new sets even more to the point where they can’t be ignored.
-Bokor is supposed to be the final piece of the summoner build, but it is awful in every respect. The summon scaling and skill factors make no sense and are extremely weak (Wheelchair Zombie has a default 8% SFR) and the class is also awful at casting spells to deal damage. With this update, Featherfoot has been cemented as mandatory, because the % damage buffs from it (Witch Doctor, Levitation) are now extremely effective. I’m honestly not sure why Bokor is completely ignored. Both Sorcerer and Bokor share a problem of not having enhance attributes for their summons too, so every time the enhance arts level cap is raised, Necromancer pulls ahead, while these two get weaker in comparison to every build in the game.
-IMC seems to really think summoner should use a rod for some reason. This started back with the addition of the raid “First Refuge”, when they added the Masinios Rod, a pure SPR rod. It continued with the Skiaclipse Rod, allowing you to summon 1 more skeleton, which is a mandatory swap every single time you want to do any content. Rods have always been terrible to use for summoner, causing you to deal objectively lower damage by a large amount, but with the addition of the new Vaivora Rod, it is now a nightmare. The only way to properly use this rod and take advantage of it is to weapon swap nonstop in combat for the skill level bonus it provides and the ability to double summon with Evocation. This build already had a packed, difficult rotation, but this is just awful for quality of life. It is not fun to play.
-Bugs. So many bugs that just never get fixed. Morph has a % chance to fail any time you use it for unknown reasons, Levitation and Riding can cause you to go extremely high in the sky which will glitch out mechanics in raids like Moringponia and kill you, you can get stuck Riding forever, etc. These make playing summoner frustrating, especially in difficult content, as you have to play the class while walking on eggshells to avoid bugs, and even then, they can still just happen sometimes at random, which can critically affect your ability to succeed.
-Content is not built with summons in mind; it is a huge diceroll on how summons will function in new content when it is released. They interact strangely with mechanics, they die or live at random based on the boss patterns, and their AI/leash range makes dealing with mechanics cumbersome and more difficult than most DPS. Summoner damage rotation is also so focused on lining up cooldowns and timers that mechanics can be extremely unfriendly for trying to maintain a steady amount of DPS. Here’s a few examples:
- If summons pull aggro on a boss, sometimes the boss will run in a direction chosen at random until they reach a wall. If this happens in WBR, you basically have to restart (it happens almost every run).
- Bosses like Rexipher/Nuaele/more use an attack that aims at random targets in the area (for example, Rexipher’s giant green pillars). If you are alone, most of these pillars will hit the ground around at random, but a couple will hit you directly. Attacks that function this way all get laser focused onto the group of summons, and cause all of the summons to get splashed by all of the beams at once. If you are standing there, you are likely instantly dead, as you get shotgunned by all of the AoEs.
- Bosses like Helgasercle use an attack that must be avoided or you will die very quickly; attacks like these just melt your summons (her slow, creeping blood balls in this case) in seconds.
- The triple orb in mechanic in WBR is awful for summoner. You can only choose to remove the boss’s physical or magical defense, but summoner is the only DPS build that deals both of these types of damage (outside of very specific cleric builds), so no matter which way you choose, your damage is bricked.
- The void mechanic in WBR that throws a giant ball lowers your final damage by 80% if you are hit by it. Summons do not understand this, do not avoid it, and most of the time will just have to deal with losing a ton of damage for a period of time.
Summoner is not player friendly. Lately, instead of it just being weak like it has always been in the game’s history, playing it is an exercise in frustration. Any new content is a learning experience to figure out how it will all go wrong trying to play summoner in it. Getting any attention from IMC is a blessing or a curse, because anytime they try to touch it, it’s a total mystery what’s going to happen.
I consider it a miracle that I’ve accomplished all that I have with it, but for now, I’ve just hit my limit with the game, so I’m going to take an extended break. I’ll stick around on the forums and try to do what I can to help, as I still care about the game, but I do not enjoy playing it right now (and for more reasons than just summoner problems).
Desmodus
Gather Corpse
