Game Mechanics Friends On The Other Side - A Summoner Remake Proposal

If I pay you a stack of LE will you add the nuke ability you teased on WynnTheory and use it on Charon

 

im joking. this is phenomenal as always

 

E ok
Thanks

I legit thought you were genuine lol

 

!!! fantastic thread. i would main this summoner. and the detail it's so nice.

 

Hmmm, if there's an ability that supports poison playstyle, there should be one that makes your melee/hybrid playstyle better, like whenever you attack with your relik, your minions do as well, dealing small portion of melee damage.
Current summoner has prerequisites to play like that (only thing that is not there, is buffing melee damage) and I wish this playstyle could be preserved
I also remember you agreeing with that, but I don't see any ability that supports melee playstyle (have you changed your mind?)

 

It was originally going to be the Necroghastic Malediction applying Pinned to enemies similar to Winded stack, but a bunch of people didn't really like it given how much it relied on attack speed so I eventually changed it to a single stack like Bullwhip instead, albeit with constant main attack required.

I don't think that any tree abilities actually buff or focus too much on main attack damage, at all?

 

Old version of malediction was still a spell focused ability, and because of that it had a problem that it didn't encourage you to build any melee stats, besides attack speed, which could be easily bypassed by using a weapon that attacks super fast, and build spell damage from that point instead
If it was a purely melee ability this problem wouldn't exist as slower attack speeds tend to deal more damage then faster attacks, (s.slow would stack less pins, but each of it dealt more damage, opposite with fast attack speeds)

Not for now, there's only pyrokinesis and twain's arc (and its upgrade) currently, but this is slowly changing. Xavier is working on making melee and hybrid playstyles better, enabling arcbender, on top of new abilities usually affecting both melee and spell damage (while I know that cursed latchers do this as well, they alone might not be sufficient enough to enable more of hybrid playstyles)
There are some abilities focused purely on melee damage planned too (apparently paladin might get one as well?)

 

Wyyyncraft if you read this PLEASE dont add this and rework the Summoner otherwise it would be totatly destroyed.

Please if you add those ability change the minions or remove sheppart its never going to be the same

Summoner got already nerfs after nerfs it doesnt need any other changes anymore.

And this change would be a heavy nerf

 

its not like it does a lot of damage anyways lol

 

This is not a justifiable answer
But my full summoner does 157 000 DPS

 

To be honest, I really get the point of Dream Dwellers, but other than that, it's a very good and high effort suggestion that I would absolutely take over the current Summoner tree. Trapper having more summons than summoner is just crazy to me.

 

agreed. i wish that the hound was the only summon and the new abilities were trap-related.
don’t get me wrong, the new summons are sick, i just feel like they don’t fit trapper very well

 

Hi, thanks for your feedback

Can you elaborate on how this structure of Summoner would nerf the archetype even further? Would be nice so I can take a look and see what I can change

 

Really dope idea, as it helps with the summoner lacking variety in summons issue. However I believe this change in summoner will generally make it weaker, the biggest problems come from the new summon you suggested, jinx voodoll:

Jinx voodoll as you say requires shift + summon totem to be summoned, the way of triggering this puppet is to let enemies hit it, but given it does not have any movement, plus it doesn't have any taunt capabilities, its very useless because melee enemies most likely will just charge over these voodolls, ranged enemies will probably just shoot you instead of this summon, or instantly removing it with arrow storm spells. The situation where summoner actually wants to use this voodoll, is to stand behind the voodoll, however because it gets either ignored or instantly melted by arrowstorms, it isn't playing well, and makes the summoner in a dangerous situation, and the way of playing this voodoll feels just like trapper's traps but without the dog. Shaman is already a glassy class and this playstyle gets very dangerous, it feels like playing trapper but extra glassy and without the escape. (additionally, the only good situation this voodoll can be in, is when you cast the voodoll towards where a taunting warrior is standing, which may also be too op resulting the whole archetype to become a shift + cast totem. and cause a headache to balance for the CT team)

Try to improve survivability when using Jinx voodoll, for example healing nearby allies everytime the voodoll gets hit, by like 7 percent or something?

I also believe the latchers need some duration time buffs because the values it provides is too crappy, also simplify how the dream dweller functions, as having 5 different types of summons is already a headache to play as a human.

 

First off, I would like to mention that attack spams don't destroy the Voodolls in seconds.

From the Voodoll section:
"Voodolls have an internal cooldown when they retaliate, requiring 0.5 seconds before they can take further damage (and in turn, retaliate again). Ranged enemy projectiles that hit the Voodoll during this cooldown period will still cause them to be successfully blocked, albeit with no effect on the Voodoll or enemy."

As for its viability, asides from being a pseudo-shield the Voodolls are mostly for large-AOE spells that enemies cast (in other words literally every spell LOL), you used charge as an example but spells like charge tend to overshoot their target which doesn't make that spell a useful one for Voodoll's case. Heck, even a spell like Heavy Teleport is really good for Voodolls because the mob's line of damage that it does when it casts Heavy Teleport still counts as a hit to the Voodolls, no matter how small the actual damage is.

As for the Latchers and Dwellers though, I am interested in hearing how you see a gameplay loop of Summoner should it use this version of the archetype. Maybe you can tell me something about it, and I can see what I could have done in terms of usage complexity for the summons? Effigies and Puppets already need little to no maintenance, Voodolls and Slumbering Moon needing semi-constant maintenance and Latchers being the only actual action the player is required to fire constantly as part of their cycle. Let me know about it if you can, I'm eager for more of this type of in-depth feedback from people!

 

Mb I didn't see the invincibility frames paragraph for the voodolls.
Your idea makes the whole summoner is easy, boring and mid archetype ( I haven't played any wynncraft since the trapper update came out so I don't know if summoner is still mid) into a very complex archetype that utilises shift into different spell casting variants, which is very cool.

However I don't think using the key "shift" to cast voodolls and change summon targets for dreamers is a great idea, because by doing this summoners will have very limited mobility options as if haul isn't already bad, since holding shift slows them down. Plus when a summoner gets low, they would want to run away either using totem cast plus spam haul 2 times and drink pots or use a high ws build. This adding on top of needing occasionally casting voodolls is really annoying, and recasting totems (because you just drank a pot) will result in shift + haul to select minion targets for the dreamer because this thing only comes out when a totem is summoned, and also shift aura to set the thing sleeping for better buffs again. A big advantage of the original summoner is it maintains decent strength even if totems are off for a small while, however due to this rework deleting shepherd and reducing the duration of minions, I believe it gets weaker in this state.

A nice change to this is probably either increasing the survivability of this archetype, because without getting low, players won't ever need to go through what I just mentioned above, but Shaman's nature is just being glassy, so not much can be done.

Other changes I could think of, is replace totem with voodoll entirely, and the voodoll has all of totem's functions such as haul to where the voodoll is, voodoll casts aura, etc, it saves a lot of trouble because players won't need to worry about maintaining puppets and effigies.

Or just change how casting voodolls, changing target for dreamers and sleeping for dreamers work.

Additionally.
In a high walkspeed boss with a melee AI situation, such as the nameless anomaly, the fire guy in the qira hive, the voodoll can be quite useless as I assume it slingshots out like a totem, and usually it flies behind the boss as the boss chases you while you run away from it, and only occasionally it get hits by a boss's AOE attack which can take up quite some luck to be consistent.

Alternative suggestion 2 (I like this one more):
A way of changing how the voodolls suck here, is by actually making the voodoll work like, a voodoo doll. For example while casting uproot that hits an enemy target, summon a voodoo doll on the spot, it doesn't move, however by hitting it, the damage it takes redirects to the enemy target with like a 1.3 (placeholding value) x multiplyer, all summons will also attack this voodoo doll instead, which solves the issue where effigies and puppets can't even catch up with greg half the time. The voodoo doll lasts for like 7 seconds, and resets every time you hit an enemy with uproot.

This acts like a better bullwhip, and also works very good for group fights as allies can also hit the voodoll.

Moving on to the latchers, I suggest just putting this summon on the enemy the uproot hits which notifies all players which enemy is being targeted by the voodoo doll.

 

I might have forgotten to add that haul works for the last thing thrown, not just Totems. That was always meant to be a mechanic, it was fault on my part so I apologise for that. Hopefully that information helps change the mobility slightly more.

As for the shift-haul realistically you're only going to have to do this once, perhaps near the start of the battle. After which assuming none of your totems actually reach the zero second mark you wouldn't need to reassign any of the Dream Dwellers' targets. I felt that shift-haul is a pretty good choice not only because it is related to movement, but also because players (or, well, most players) don't usually hold shift when they're about to cast a movement spell...? I might have really wrong on that one so feel free to correct me in the case of Haul.

To be honest I don't really see the issue of Summons having a shorter duration to live so long as their effective damage dealt to enemies still rivals what I assume you saw as old Summoner's damage. In that case a simple alteration of numbers (either via the timer or the actual damage they deal) should be fine in this case.

"A big advantage of the original summoner is it maintains decent strength even if totems are off for a small while"

Btw, why are Summons quickly losing attack capabilities after a cut in player input a significant point here? In battle the player would always have all of their Totems out 24/7, having any of them not deployed or run out and hence heavily reduce Summon damage output would imply that the player isn't actually doing anything, which... is one of the things I've trying to make a point of here.

Besides (and this is a huge tangent and an invalid point ignore this paragraph lol) Summons not being able to easily control their damage output is probably why Solar Vanguard is hell for that archetype lmao

I originally wanted Dwellers to buff player stats when they are targeting you, which was removed because of the Dweller nodes getting a tad bit too complicated. I eventually settled on Dwellers only focusing on the actual Summons and having the player bump up their own survivability via armor and whatnot should they choose to.

A boss with high walkspeed would indeed be a struggle for Summons. Summons in this case is, after all, a somewhat semi-grounded-ish class rather than a jump-all-over-the-place class. At least even in this situation Summoner can still actually work well, albeit a little bit more difficult unlike a lot of other archetypes where they require specific conditions to even function properly (e.g. Shadestepper needing minions and getting royally screwed over in any solo fight). In a case like this (CoW, for example) I would agree that yeah, Voodolls will be of little (even if not entirety null) use.

About the Voodoll change.
I... like that idea. I have no idea what I never thought about this. It's a Voodoo Doll. How on earth

Ok well maybe it's because this mechanic removes a heavy AOE aspect and makes the ability more singularly targeted instead

"Moving on to the latchers, I suggest just putting this summon on the enemy the uproot hits which notifies all players which enemy is being targeted by the voodoo doll."

Did you mean to say Latchers at the end there?

 

For latchers, what I meant was it should go along my "voodolls actually work like voodoo dolls" suggestion, and it circles around the target of the voodoo doll, so players have a good idea on who they are attacking when they are hitting the voodoo doll, you can also apply the debuffs on enemies just like in your original latcher idea, perhaps in an upgrade node.

I like how you already gave effigies and puppets AOE capabilities, which in my opinion, is very good for solo summoner players. however remember, this archetype is probably the most single target ish (cuz bull whip) shaman archetype, and you probably don't want to change that unique quality. It is going to be a mess if minions are attacking different enemies, and keeping them alive for a longer time, in which these mobs will cast more spells and in a long term, making it a ehp loss. Keeping a bullwhip like ability is a must for summoner. If you're too focused on AOE capabilities on summoner, it's still going to be a more complicated playstyle compared to acolyte, and acolyte is better because acolyte has better heal, groups mobs together with the ritualist node, and probably deals more AOE damage as well.

"Btw, why are Summons quickly losing attack capabilities after a cut in player input a significant point here? In battle the player would always have all of their Totems out 24/7, having any of them not deployed or run out and hence heavily reduce Summon damage output would imply that the player isn't actually doing anything, which... is one of the things I've trying to make a point of here." What I mean here is solo summoner players eventually needs to chug on pots, cuz the regeneration heal is like nothing. Trying to keep your totem up as a summoner and view regeneration heal as your main healing source is eventually gonna get summoner players killed. Not being alive means no more dps and healing, thats what I am trying to say here, your idea reduces summon duration for the 2 original summons. They are going to run out of duration quickly when a summoner player is trying to make space with mobs and chug on potions, which loses a little more dps than the original summoner when the totem isn't out. (If you didn't know, if you switch from your mainhand relik to anything else in your toolbar, your totem despawns immediately, but summoner minions still stays Idk why)
How I tried to beat solar vanguard with my shaman class is to build a walkspeed summoner that doesn't even casts totems most of the time and mainhand healing potions because pre nerf acolyte healing (no absolution of course) can't even catch up with how much solar vanguard deals.

Looking at team use for summoners here, teams don't need summoners, healing gets outclassed by acolyte, acolyte has this 20percent damage buff for everyone standing in the totem along side with that, and acolyte has better crowd control.

Summoners probably has better dps now since puppets got buffed, however it still gets outclassed by Trickster, maybe cataclysm acrobat, Sharpshooter, boltslinger (assume divzer), trapper (i don't know how much the reworked version does, don't judge me on this), fallen battlemonk, arcanist.
(correct me on this part I don't know how good the summoner buffs that came with the lr update are)

Most teams will take acolyte players over summoners, and even ritualist has some group buffs, which they will take over summoners as well.

I hope there is some group buff ability, possibly summoner themed as well, that invigorating wave rework is nice however it isn't summoner themed, I feel like its a chant of the coward rework more than an invigorating wave rework.

 

Okay so, a few things

My memory might be a little bit off and I'm probably Mandela Effect-ing myself here but I do recall mentioning multiple times throughout the first post that my new Summoner rework gives AOE capabilities specifically because I didn't want Summoner to be a single target archetype. Like, that's like the whole point here

Which reminds me, I was actually considering giving Effigies and Puppets a tiny tiny damage hitbox for their regular attack rather than a single target hit so that they are able to attack multiple enemies at once when they bunch up (As mentioned in the post, your Main Attack is the new Bullwhip and all enemies that are hit will count as active targets), but that one can wait for later.

Speaking of which, I really like your Voodoll idea but it still runs into the issue of lack of Crowd Control, which while my own Voodolls technically have, your Voodolls requires specific targeting of enemies, from what I understand. Not good in a crowd.

While making this, I've also set myself a hard rule that the distinct roles of each Summon should be separate and never overlap (e.g. Latchers and Dwellers should never directly deal damage as they are Support Minions). In this case, Latcher's role is ultimately still the Support Debuff Minion, and should stay that way as its default ability rather than delegating it to an upgrade and having the main node be a connection to another minion.

I may be downplaying this quite a lot, but should we really use potion usage as a reason as part of the game design here? Pretty much every single class faces the same issue, switching to a potion basically breaks action for a second or so. Hell, the other Shaman archetypes instantly have their Totems disappear the moment you drink a potion! Granted, Acolyte doesn't need it but why should Summoner specifically account for this player action? I mean, the summons don't even have that short of a lifespan, I'm pretty sure taking like a second to drink a potion isn't going to make all of them spontaneously evaporate

As for the team thing, that's pretty okay, Summoner is like its own mini-team anyway. As for actual team support Summoner's just as useful as it is before. It'll probably be better if it falls into the dps role rather than a support role in raid teams.

Damage could use some tweaking if it still doesn't compare to archetypes like Acolyte, but as for the general AOE capabilities, I don't want the Crowd Control to rival Acolyte, but I also don't want it to be completely single-target either. Like I've said a couple of times in the main post, my personal opinion is of Shaman naturally being a Crowd Control class, and I wanted Summoner to at least have a small part of that.

I do believe I gave the reason for the Invigorating Wave change in the post, but I assume you've read that already.

 

Srry mb for not reading the entire thing in the first post.

I didn't see the part where invigorating wave becomes a universal node for every class lol.

Now since shepherd is removed, I have 1 more suggestion that could fit in this some sort of AOE capabilities.

Looking at how trapper's rework switched the places of archetypes in the tree, you might as well just switch the place of ritualist with acolyte, because ritualist's mask changing ability conflicts with the original bull whip or your latcher ability. Then move the regeneration node from the ritualist tree into like one of the first upgrades on the ritualist tree, right below one of the spell unlocks.

Now with summoner and acolyte being close together, I see more AOE capabilities as summoners can take the opportunity to take some aura upgrades from the acolyte tree.

As well as adding a replacement to a final red node ability in replace shepherd, which I have an idea for AOE capabilities:

An ability that buffs aura by sacrificing all summons that currently exists, creating a super strong aura, giving players options to decide if they want all of their summons out dealing constant dps, or clear a big group of mobs instantly with the minions built up.
If this is in consideration, I suggest putting this into shift + aura and putting the sleeping dream dweller into normal aura input, just in case players cast the wrong spell.
The ability should be something like this:

(Placeholder name)

Aura does 50 percent of player dps, every summon being sacrificed adds on 30 percent dps to this blast.

An example calculation: Should be around 5 (effigies) + 5 (puppets) + 3 (voodolls) + 1 (dream dweller) + about 6 (latchers)

20 * 30 percent is 600 adding 50 percent dps, thats how much for a nuke like clearing AOE ability. Players need to wait and resummon everything which is like probably 8-10 seconds before they could use this ability with full potential again, and also accept the fact that they just lost all of their constant dps (minions) temporarily.

Additionally:

For balancing issues, sacrificing latchers will be only adding 10 percent dps onto the aura because how fast players could potentially spawn them, don't mind my calculation above there.


Maybe even needing sacrificial shrine as a node at first, just for the theme. (scratch this)




About some thoughts on latchers and dream dwellers:

change latchers into pure buff/debuff summons, and change dream dwellers into pure crowd control/ healing
Starting from explaining latchers:
What I mean this in detail, is to rework latchers to become a summon that "steals stats"

When you uproot an enemy, it latches on the enemy, debuffs it identically to your original latcher design, what is different is that it transfers the debuffs on the mobs, into buffs that benefits the player, for example when you uproot an enemy one of the stats latchers "steals" is walkspeed, then what is stolen becomes a buff to the summoner player, lets say -10 percent walkspeed for the enemy, +10 percent walkspeed for the summoner. Once the latchers despawn, the buffs decay away as the stats returns back to the enemy. This ability's buffing potential will get really hot when a group of enemies gets latched on.

Going on to the dream dwellers:
Explaining the dream dweller healing and crowd control:
By default, there will be this dream dweller is sleeping state, in this state, it provides extra health regen for the summoner player, quite simple right?

Once a summoner player is hit while the sleeping state is active, the dream dweller wakes up because someone just beated their master. It makes enemies within the radius of lets say 8 blocks "asleep" for 3 seconds, in this state, enemies cannot move (-100 percent ws, just like your reworked nature jolt), and bosses are obviously going to be immune to this ofc, this ability has a 4 second cooldown (starting the cooldown after the 3 second duration of the "asleep" ended), and once dream dweller casts this sleeping ability, it immediately falls back to sleep again, back to giving the summoner player extra health regeneration.

As to why I thought about changing latchers and dream dwellers, is because the abilities feels just more dream dweller ish ( don't judge me, its just my opinion and i didn't make the post), because I just thought it wouldn't make sense for a sleeping themed summon to be tied with damage buffs, and feels more right if it made enemies "asleep". Making a unique crowd control ability for summoner different to ritualist (groups enemies together with aura), acolyte (killing everything with rather high aura damage lmao, also every acolyte in their right mind takes that ritualist node because its so free), by "stunning" enemies is quite interesting as well. By putting the original buffing role of the dream dweller onto latchers also makes more use of latchers, and people could use it more other than that single use for debuffing enemies.

Having AOE capabilities doesn't nessecarily mean needing extra AOE damage, but also some crowd control yk (auras always there). :D