D:OS2 Summoning losing steam

Divinity: Original Sin 2

Drithius

Magic & Loss
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I'm nearing the end of act 2 (god I hope I am... Zzz) and I'm thinking of replacing my Summoner/hydro lead character with an archer. It just seems like the ability points I have invested into summoning aren't taken advantage of to the same degree as points invested into other schools.

Summon->infuse. Summon->Supercharge. It's just very limited and awful boring when compared to the outlay of 10 points into other schools.

Comments? Am I nuts here? While powerful at the very start of the game, summoning seems like a dead-end, build-wise.
 
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My issue was just it gets tedious casting the incarnate then giving him his buffs.

If you have over 10 summoning skill its plenty powerful.

Never used Supercharge, just the totem and incarnate, really.
 
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You can supercharge something like the fireslug for its laser ray - but that's more of a one-trick pony for difficult fights.

My issue is that, for 10 ability points, you can get a lot more variety and tactical options with other schools. Summoning is limited and boring in that regard. The summoner's best abilities are pets requiring source to summon (or source infusions) - and, even then, those pets are only good for one use of their special abilities.

So you can summon a pet that, while it may get its own turn, the limited nature of its abilities makes you second-guess just how smart it is to dump all those points into the summoning tree instead of something with far greater tactical options (such as huntsman).

Your comment kind of proves my point too:
If you have over 10 summoning skill its plenty powerful.

Never used Supercharge, just the totem and incarnate, really.

10 points for two abilities. Although I try to make use of more, it's still very limited.
 
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Supercharge just doubles their damage for 1 turn then kills them early, right? It doesn't add lasers?

Playing on Tactician, equipment item level is super important. Unless you have all level appropriate gear it's just way too hard to win battles.

Summoner is probably the best at dealing with this issue since its just based off summoning skill and player level - not an ability score or weapon damage. The summon has the best HP, armour and magic armour of anyone in the party while the summoner has the worst gear of anyone in the party. The summon gets AOO attacks, u can place it anywhere, change whether it does magic or physical damage, etc.

I've found that summoning isn't "losing steam" but in fact is always the best equipped member of the party and pretty much carries us through every battle. If everyone was a summoner we'd have a party of 8 with more than double the armour and hitpoints we have now.

It's just the game itself is losing steam. Once you get good at a game you get fast at making your moves and then start hitting these little delays from animation speed being slower than your thoughts and the game doesn't keep up with you. Then add in the irritation of having to do the same buffs on him every time when there are no macros or some way to summon him WITH buffs for a 4AP total mana cost.'

But you cant really complain about the animation speed because its all tied in with the excellent quality graphics. I just wish "turn based" didn't have to mean slow paced.

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is turn based but you should see how fast I play it using the built in funtions for macros, auto explore, auto attack, etc.

For eg. To cast a magic dart you'd have to press [z] for spells, [a] for magic dart, aim at the target and fire. Instead you can make a macro [za.] and . just means nearest enemy target. Then you can add [o za.] if you want which will try to auto explore then cast at the nearest enemy, but auto explore will fail if there's any enemy in view. So, 1 button playstyle for your level 1 wizard! You could even throw in a "rest until healed" to the macro before you start the exploration.

Anyway, just voicing thoughts. Carry on!
 
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Necromancy with summoning is still op.

Summon bone widow, when she starts getting low health or running out of turns cast immunity to death for 2 turns and increased damage based on health for 2 turns. I have only just started act 2 and i am already doing 400 damage a hit for 2 action point costs.
 
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Yeah, it's very powerful. Keep in mind that it boosts any summons: Fire Slug, the big plant (crazy damage), Bone Widow etc. Also, summons make good tanks, so don't use super charge to get some extra damage out of them, as it kills them.

When it comes to Incarnates, try to spawn them in a pool of blood, so they gain an extra ability while still being physical. Then uprade them with charge, granting them the ability to knock down enemies without physical protections. Finally, when you get the teleport upgrade, buff them with that if they need to move fast from A to B.

By the end of the game, an Incarnate should be doing as much damage as a full blown melee character.
 
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I don't know man, I'm still at the end of chapter two waiting for the fix to Reactive Shot, but my summoner is the damage dealer in my party. That big incarnation is so useful! It attacks immediately after summoned, I place it near someone with low shields, so after I cast it, it attacks twice, armor gone, next character with crowd control like chicken or knockdown neutralizes that threat. Next round it bull-rushes to the next enemy that the other characters lowered their physical armor, another enemy neutralized. Give it a ranged attack with a 1-point skill and it can now attack things out of its reach. And it can take a beating!

Oh, the enemies have lots of physical armor but low magic armor? then cast it on a surface like fire and now their attacks are magical! I mean honestly I don't think I could live without it. But like I said, I'm still on chapter 2, if it really loses utility later that'll make me a sad panda.
 
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Oh, the enemies have lots of physical armor but low magic armor? then cast it on a surface like fire and now their attacks are magical! I mean honestly I don't think I could live without it. But like I said, I'm still on chapter 2, if it really loses utility later that'll make me a sad panda.

It doesn't. Not unless the recent patch changed it. By the end, they'll hit harder than your melee guys. The scaling is through the roof.
 
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I went ahead and respecced from Summoner to Archer last night. My main gripe is that it was so incredibly boring to play (with little variety) for a 10+ point investment. This is at the start of Act 3.

Although I can see the merit in having a damage dealer that you don't need to equip via the game's revolving door loot policy, the opportunity cost is too high for me. Ten ability points can offer much greater versatility spent elsewhere.

Maylander said:
Also, summons make good tanks, so don't use super charge to get some extra damage out of them, as it kills them.
Getting enemies to specifically target "tank" characters is pretty hopeless in my experience unless deliberately casting provoke. I most used supercharge on summons with limited abilities (such as the Slug), that I intend to replace the next round.
 
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I went ahead and respecced from Summoner to Archer last night. My main gripe is that it was so incredibly boring to play (with little variety) for a 10+ point investment. This is at the start of Act 3.

Although I can see the merit in having a damage dealer that you don't need to equip via the game's revolving door loot policy, the opportunity cost is too high for me. Ten ability points can offer much greater versatility spent elsewhere.


Getting enemies to specifically target "tank" characters is pretty hopeless in my experience unless deliberately casting provoke. I most used supercharge on summons with limited abilities (such as the Slug), that I intend to replace the next round.

Bone widow hits them if enemies move away from them often killing them. Bone widow also has a burrow ability to stay on enemies. Bone widow also has a special ability to eat corpses, which increases her damage by 30% for 3 turn increasing her damage even more.
 
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Getting enemies to specifically target "tank" characters is pretty hopeless in my experience unless deliberately casting provoke. I most used supercharge on summons with limited abilities (such as the Slug), that I intend to replace the next round.

True for the most part, but the spells have a huge range, so you can cast them near enemies that are really far off. There's a good chance that'll keep them occupied. Also, most summons are so big they'll easily block paths and such.
 
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True for the most part, but the spells have a huge range, so you can cast them near enemies that are really far off. There's a good chance that'll keep them occupied. Also, most summons are so big they'll easily block paths and such.

And let's not forget the free whammy they'll get if they decide to move away from the summon.
 
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I love summoning myself. Not only is the incarnate champion super cool and bestial looking (love how it looks) it is very versatile, can place anywhere (as someone else said), gets attacks of opportunity, and you can flavor it by what you summon it on (i.e. cast on water and it can cast a heal).

I get plenty of variety from my other 3 party members ... plus I think the summons has enough variety and my caster for it (Lohse) is also high ranking in air magic.
 
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And let's not forget the free whammy they'll get if they decide to move away from the summon.
Indeed, which hits like a truck.

I get plenty of variety from my other 3 party members … plus I think the summons has enough variety and my caster for it (Lohse) is also high ranking in air magic.
I started out doing that as well, which worked out just fine. Over time, however, I swapped to a slightly different approach: My tank also got summoning, as I realized they don't need a whole lot of skill points, and summoning gains nothing from Intelligence. It's based on skill alone, so it's entirely possible to go:

- Almost all out Strength
- 5 Warfare for all the physical stuff. Loads of good options.
- 2 Huntsman for Tactical Retreat
- 2 Necromancy for Bone Widow and Bone Cage, neither of which uses Intelligence
- 10 Summoning

The remaining points can either go into Polymorph for some interesting stuff or simply the weapon type for a bit of extra accuracy/damage.

The thing I liked about it is that summoning only really "needs" the first turn, and the rest of the time you can run around like a regular tank and punch stuff/knock stuff down/etc.
 
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Something not mentioned above is the summoner Charm power. Getting that was a game changer for me. Get some fighter's magic armor down to 0, cast that, and the fighter fights for you for two turns! The only tricky bit is not freezing/stunning them in the process of lowering their magic armor.

Archers get a charm, too, in the form of an arrow type but ammo is limited and it only lasts for one turn. There's a charm grenade but ammo is even more limited.
 
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Towards the end of the game, skills are pretty powerful no matter what you choose to do. Unless you ignore your primary stat and distribute points into absolutely everything - I don't think you can gimp yourself too badly.

It's not a game where you need to exhaust your brain to come up with clever combinations - because most everything will work, and so many of the battles are unpredictable due to the nature of the battleground.

Personally, I'm not too big a fan of that approach - but the combat system in itself is so entertaining that it doesn't ruin the fun.

For the future of the game, though - I would really like smarter synergies between skill sets encouraging clever build strategies - and I would certainly like to see the various elements and ground effects toned down severely. It's not THAT fun and should be reserved for only a few battles, in my opinion.

As it is, the terrain dominates way too much - where it really should be a tactical gameplay element that should feel way less random and pervasive, if you ask me.

As for summoning, it's indeed very powerful - but I'm less taken with it than most, it would seem. Definitely can't compete with dedicated damage dealers for total output towards the end of the game - if you gear properly.

However, there are som edge cases - like the artillery plant that's just sick when used appropriately.

Charm is also very powerful, but like all the status effects in the game - it relies on depleting armor first - which means no spells are necessarily THAT powerful.

It's a strange balance mechanic because it both ensures a certain even playing field - but it also almost guarentees victory past a certain point.

I don't think I'm a big fan of it overall.
 
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The idea is to limit CC effects. It could be done without armor protection with saving throws and RNG like DND. Still the best system I’ve played, despite the nondeternimism.
 
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The idea is to limit CC effects. It could be done without armor protection with saving throws and RNG like DND. Still the best system I’ve played, despite the nondeternimism.

You don't need saving throws or RNG, though. Typically, D&D uses immunities for enemies that you're not supposed to kill by snapping your fingers - which I find a much better approach. Spell resistance and saving throws rely a bit too much on RNG, I would agree - but it also makes more sense and is less predictable.

I mean, it makes zero sense that physical armor would vanish after a certain amount of damage and become useless. Magical armor might represent "mental strength" - but then they should have called it something else.

I don't like RNG when it comes to stuff like this - but I don't find this a very good alternative.

I mean, it works and it's fun - but it's also very predictable and the majority of fights are entirely too easy because there's always a way to breach their defenses.

It doesn't limit CC at all, in my experience. I use CC in every single fight - more or less, and this system ensures that it's possible in all but a tiny handful of fights.

But to each his own.
 
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