Hi there! So I just want to start off by saying I love the game! Summoning is by far my favourite branch of magic and I really love it. That being said, during the course of playing through the game as a summoner I've found a few bugs and have thought up a few suggestions for potential changes or additions moving into the future. All of these are from my personal experience and based on my own playstyle, so please keep that in mind if you read through as I'm sure many of us all want different things. It never hurts to put your ideas out there though just in case Larian finds one they like! So if you have the patience for a bit of reading I really appreciate your time.
I'll be going through the list of spells from Summoning and my thoughts and experiences with them...
[b]Dimensional Bolt[/b]:
The idea of this spell is a lot of fun and the unpredictability can create some really fun bouts of chaos. The only change I really would like to see for this spell is to have the colour slightly altered for more clarity. Currently this spell looks very similar to electric discharge in colouration and it can cause some confusion when playing with friends who think you're casting an electric spell only to have a random pool of blood or the like form under the target. I think if the colouration was changed to a more black or purple it would be more clearly defined. The animation for this spell is one of my favourites though!
[b]Ethereal Storm[/b]:
I really love the concept of this spell and it's a ton of fun to unleash all that random chaos. That being said, I think the fact that it is the "ultimate" spell for summoning costing 3 source points it should really have some defined scaling. Either scaling it with intelligence alike to Dimensional Bolt or allowing it to scale with Summoning would give you a defined direction for tailoring your character and more motivation to use this fun albeit chaotic spell.
[b]Rallying Cry[/b]:
When I first tried out this spell I was really dismayed but over the course of the game is has saved me from quite a few sticky situations. The main flaw I see in it is that the area of effect for tracking allies is very small and actually encourages you to stack multiple totems together in a small group. The issue here is that you rarely want to be all grouped up since it's so easy for your opponents to just use an area of effect spell or ability and utterly decimate your totems and yourself. Another issue is that this spell scales with Hydrosophist and not Summoning, so to get the maximum effect your need to be investing points there. My suggestion is to change the spell into an area of effect heal for the current size, but have it scale based off the amount of allies currently on your team. This would actually encourage you to use the elemental totem spell at the later parts of the game as well as give the spell a strong effect healing damage on small groups while still maintaining it's potency on an individual target when your team is split up. The greater reliability of it counting all your allies instead of just the small aoe may warrant a nerf, but I think it would work more intuitively with the Summoning toolkit with this change.
[b]Soul Mate[/b]:
I LOVE this spell. The concept is really great and it's adorable to cast on your current love interest in the party ;) The only change I would like to see is to have the duration increased to 3 turns. I tend to use this spell in combination with Mend Metal and Soothing Cold which are both 3 turn duration and 3 turn cooldown. Unless you have Geomancy and Hydrsophist maxed the potency of these effects is minimal so I don't see a reason why the duration increase would cause an issue.
[b]Dominate Mind[/b]:
This is another spell that I am just in love with. Being able to charm an enemy to help you for a couple turns is hilarious and can really get you out of a few sticky situations. I think this spell is good how it is, although I have noticed a couple bugs. There have been several times where if the charmed target is the only opponent left alive the fight will end, and then immediately begin again once the effect is gone which just feels awkward. I've also had several occasions where I will charm a target and they will literally just stand in place for the 2 turns and do nothing. I understand not wanting to hurt your friends but I broke your mental defense/magic armor and you are now mine for 2 turns!!! So please don't just take a nap for the duration. Otherwise this is a great spell!
[b]Supercharger[/b]:
This is one of those spells that I picked up thinking I would cast it constantly and quickly realized that I didn't even need it memorized. It's effect on totems is hardly noticeable and killing your incarnate the next turn is usually not a wise choice unless the battle is almost over already. I was incredibly disappointed to realize that this spell doesn't interact with Door to Eternity or Living on the Edge which both seemed like great options to combo with it. I think ultimately it's fine at what it does, and if you're playing a Summoner focused on the summons other than the incarnate it can have some strong situational uses. This spell specifically states it boosts your summons damage and then next turn they "die" Door to Eternity and Living on the Edge both prevent death and extend your summons durations past their expiry. If you cast supercharger and then follow it with one of these spells your summon should be able to maintain the buff and stay alive until their effects end since they prevent death. Not having this interaction was so disheartening. I really hope it's added in somehow or at least have the tooltip state that the effects of Door and Edge will not keep your summon alive.
[b]Cannibalize[/b]:
Not much to say about this spell, it works well in those moments as a last minute save for your summoner and can be combined well with supercharger and multiple summoning spells to great effect.
[b]Summon Inner Demon[/b]:
This spell has a wonderful visual but feels very awkward in practice. I think the damage of Demonic Tutelage should scale off of your weapon type instead of just being physical. Terrify destroys magic armor and you would want the demonic hit to do the same since breaking their magic armor only for them to walk up to you and get a small dent in their physical armor feels so lackluster and counter intuitive.
[b]Door to Eternity[/b]:
For the cost of this spell it feels very underwhelming. I think if totems were more powerful it would feel devastating but it's so incredibly situational. Your incarnate has a lot of buffs that help keep it alive already, and it's 10 turn duration means you rarely need this spell during any encounter. I think the intended function of it is to summon 3 totems, then cast Door to Eternity keeping your first totem alive for 2 additional turns and allowing you to get about 5 or 6 on the field. This sounds great on paper but never works out in game. Totems mostly die to a single hit and almost any archer or nearby enemy will just kill them the turn they are summoned. I think a better iteration of this spell would be for you to actually summon a "door" onto the field that can be destroyed. As long as it remains on the field it would grant the "persisiting" aura to your summons preventing them from death or expiration. This would motivate destroying the door to prevent an army of totems being summoned and keeping the door alive could be a fun mission for summoners during battles.
[b]Planar Gateway[/b]:
The most disappointing spell in the entire game. When I saw the skillbook for this spell I had a little fangirl scream moment and clapped my hands. I loved the idea of creating 2 waypoints to defend during battle that I could use to reposition with. And then after earning the gold and learning the skill I get into battle and pop that bad boy...and it costs me 6AP on top of the movement cost to go between locations. That means you literally have to wait 2 turns of doing nothing basically in order to change locations one time on one character, and if you are using lone wolf you basically give up your entire turn if you're right next to it, to swap locations. These gateways don't have longer range than your standard jump spells...so you could use 6 AP to move to a set location, or 1 AP. Oh but you're thinking you can just use it out of combat to move your party, well sure if you don't mind wasting a source point. But why not just take an extra 5 seconds and jump and use your pyramids, or jump and use teleport without wasting any source? Change the in combat cost to 2AP for using a gateway since they can still be destroyed quite easily or remove the source cost so you can use it reliably outside of combat. There is absolutely no reason to ever use this spell when teleport and pyramids exist, I honestly don't even remotely understand the 6AP combat cost. By far the WORST source spell in the game.
[b]Elemental Totem[/b]:
I can't decide if I love these little dudes or hate them. In the early parts of the game they felt awesome, but by about act 2 they quickly started to feel more like a chore to maintain despite being a core aspect of Summoning. The problem is that the totems have little synergy with the rest of the Summoning spells. Using them with Rallying Cry by bunching them up tends to just have them all being destroyed by a single area of effect spell right when you actually need to cast the heal. Using them with Cannibalize feels awful since their vitality is so low that just letting them take a hit for you is more effective than consuming them to heal. Their damage isn't high enough for Supercharger to make any real impact. I think changing the totems to cost a single AP to cast would make them feel better for what they are. A nice bit of extra damage and a potential hit not taken. Often times they are unable to even hit the enemy since their line of sight is easily blocked. I just can't justify spending 2 AP to summon a totem that might do nothing for me when I could cast any number of other spells for that cost that would have a huge impact on the flow of the fight. Aside from this I think changing the water totem to shoot healing bolts to allies and then adding an ice totem that shoots water damage at enemies would also add some more dimension. The water/ice incarnates have healing spells and it would be nice if the totems would follow suit in a similar fashion. It would give a nice option for those healing/support summoners out there!
[b]Conjure Incarnate[/b]:
This little fella made me fall in love with the game. When I played on early access I was instantly drawn to how adorable he was and I loved his interactions with surfaces. On the release the champion incarnate sealed the deal for me, I've spent countless hours with this beast at my side and I love him!!! I'll be talking about all his buffs individually but as for the base spell the only thing I would like changed is for him to be able to utilize all of his abilities effectively. Currently all of his secondary effects are blocked by physical armor, but this means that any time you summon an elemental incarnate he is unable to break physical armor and so all of his secondary effects are completely useless. Being the primary focus of Summoning, the incarnate should be able to utilize all of his secondary effects no matter what form he is in or the type of damage he is currently doing. If he is in a physical form, allow the effects to be blocked by physical armour, and if he is in an elemental form, have them change so that they are blocked by magical armour. This I believe is part of a larger issue with weaponskill based powers, but it really should be addressed. If you're trying to knock someone down and the force of your blow is based in magic then their magic defenses would be the thing to block it. Having a magical attack that knocks down blocked by physical armor when it isn't touching that physical armor at all makes no sense and isn't realistic.
[b]Farsight Infusion[/b]:
I love the idea of each infusion giving a unique ability and a buff. In the case of this infusion it gives your incarnate a unique ranged weaponskill of sorts and a 25% damage boost along with a permanent increase to magical armour for the duration of the summon. I think the damage buff doesn't really go with the theme of "farsight" so I'd like to see it changed to increasing the range of the incarnate's long range abilities by 2m. While this may seem lackluster compared to the damage boost, all of the incarnate's alternate forms have a ranged spell and other infusions such as the warp infusion would benefit as well from increased range.
[b]Power Infusion[/b]:
This infusion grants the incarnate it's own version of Whirlwind and Battering Ram with the latter being renamed to "Rush". These both have unique icons compared to their Warfare counterparts. It also gives a 25% buff to damage and a permanent increase to physical armour for the duration of the summon. I think this infusion is fitting theme wise and in function. Again I would like Rush to have it's secondary effect blocked by the corresponding armour to the incarnate's current damage type. At the moment it is always blocked by physical armour and so this ability is largely useless to elemental incarnates aside from repositioning since the damage is negligible.
[b]Shadow Infusion[/b]:
This infusion grants the skills Chameleon Cloak and Corrupted Blade while it also provides +1 movement for the incarnate. Unlike the previous infusion which had unique visual icons for it's incarnate versions of Whirlwind and Battering Ram; Chameleon Cloak and Corrupted Blade use their base icons. This may have been an oversight but they really should have unique icons and be called something like "Demon Cloak" and "Corrupted Claw"...he doesn't even have a blade. I think this infusion is cool visually but somewhat lackluster in function. Corrupted Blade costs 3 AP which is limiting on the incarnate who recovers 4 AP per turn. The secondary effects more than make up for this, however they are once again blocked entirely by physical armour even in elemental form. This makes Corrupted Blade completely useless on an elemental incarnate since the damage is comparable to his 2 AP basic hit. Chameleon Cloak also has a very limited use since in most situations you benefit more from your incarnate being targeted instead of your summoner but it can be useful to stall for time if your incarnate gets low on health. I think changing Corrupted Blade to have its effect blocked by your corresponding damage type would make it vastly more useful and instead of the +1 movement I would like to see this infusion grant the incarnate either the ability to backstab, or the Executioner talent to fit with the theme and help with damage or AP recovery respectively. The backstab in particular would make Chameleon Cloak more useful since you could use it to position behind your opponents more easily for the increased damage.
[b]Warp Infusion[/b]:
This infusion grants the abilities Tactical Retreat and Swap Places along with 15% dodge. This infusion had so much potential and it just feels so underwhelming. The 15% dodge buff is slightly underwhelming but it fits fine with the theme. But why on earth did you give the incarnate Tactical Retreat over Cloak and Dagger? Just why? Not only does Cloak and Dagger visually fit better on a demon incarnate but it would have given actual synergy with the Shadow Infusion since you could use Chameleon Cloak to go invisible and then use Cloak and Dagger to reposition without breaking the invisibility. I guess Tactical's one turn haste buff could be useful at times but honestly I'd much rather just cast Haste myself on the incarnate for the 2 turn duration and have an incarnate with better synergy in his own toolkit. Despite this flaw, any jump skill on the incarnate is helpful for repositioning. My real issue with this infusion is the Swap Places ability. It is so incredibly buggy that it actually makes me want to pull my hair out at times. This skill sounds amazing. It allows you to swap places with your summoner. Sounds great right? Who doesn't want the option to jump to a safe location and then swap places with your master to help him out of harms way. Well 9 out of 10 casts this ability simply doesn't work. In the first place, the range is awful, just awful. You need to be somewhere high to actually be able to use it effectively. Secondly, the vision for this ability makes abosolutely no sense. My character can summon his incarnate on the other side of prison bars, and then cast Nether Swap without issue to swap places. But this spell? It can't seem to see outside the bars to be able to be casted. And I tried it reversed with my character in the bars and the incarnate in the exact same position as my character and he still couldn't see me in order to swap despite Nether Swap working in both instances. Nether Swap can be buggy at times as well, if there isn't enough space for the targets you are swapping it won't let you cast the spell, but not this one. Even if there isn't enough space for your giant incarnate where your player was, it let's you cast it anyways and wastes your AP since it just simply doesn't do anything aside from put the spell on cooldown. You're there wondering what went wrong. The spell is incredibly buggy and frustrating. I think this spell should be changed to just swap places with the summoner without targetting anything or relying on distance, you already moved to that location and are spending the AP to swap, there isn't any reason why it needs to have line of sight. Otherwise I honestly wish they would just remove it from the incarnate and give it Nether Swap instead. At least then you could swap reliably and in the case where someone doesn't fit it just wouldn't let you. That would also give a lot more tactical use in combat since your incarnate could swap other things around and would still fit in with the Warp Infusion theme.
[b]Fire Infusion[/b]:
This infusion gives the Fireball spell as well as 100% resisitance to fire, immunity to burning and a 20% water weakness. It changes all of the incarnate's skills to inflict fire damage which is magic based and prevents your incarnate from using any of his skills secondary effects since he can not damage physical armor. Using this infusion gives the incarnate 3 points in Pyrokinetic which is a 15% boost to fire damage. (In contrast the base incarnate without an element has 6 points in warfare increasing physical damage by 30%.) This infusion is perfectly fine aside from the HUGE downside of not being able to utilize the secondary effects of Rush and Corrupted Blade or the effect of Taunt.
[b]Necrofire Infusion[/b]:
This is the enhanced version of Fire Infusion costing 2 source points. It boosts the fire resistance to 120% as well as granting the skill Epidemic of Fire. Currently the spell is bugged and does not cost any source points to use, thus allowing the necrofire incarnate to cast Epidemic of Fire twice before it expires. It still only grants 3 points in Pyrokinetic. In my opinion this should be changed to 6 increasing fire damage by 30%. (For clarity, this damage increase is based on my suggestion to remove the 25% damage buff from Farsight Infusion while still maintaining reasonable damage scaling.)
[b]Water Infusion[/b]:
This infusion gives the Restoration spell as well as 100% resisitance to water damage and immunity to freezing. It grants a 20% weakness to fire and is given 3 points in Hydrosophist for a 15% boost to damage and healing. All of it's damage becomes water which is magic based and makes you unable to utilize the secondary effects of Rush, Corrupted Blade and Taunt.
[b]Blessed Ice Infusion[/b]:
This is the enhanced version of the Water Infusion costing 2 source points. It boosts the water resistance to 120% as well as granting the spell Steam Lance. I haven't encountered any bugs with this incarnate's source spell but I personally would either like the spell to be changed to Mass Cleanse Wounds since healing is more situational or have Steam Lance apply it's effect to undead along with increasing the points in Hydrosophist to 6 for 30% increased damage and healing. This should be the ideal incarnate to fight undead with, however since Steam Lance only applies it's initial effect to allies, undead remain unharmed unless they choose to walk around in the blessed steam. It does a good job of helping to heal, but I think Mass Cleanse Wounds would actually be much more useful for this purpose while also being a reliable area of effect damage spell to undead since it costs only 1 source point. You would have more opportunities to heal throughout the fight with the 2 source points the incarnate is given.
[b]Poison Infusion[/b]:
This infusion gives the Poison Dart spell as well as a 100% resistance to poison and an immunity to being poisoned. It gets a 20% weakness to air damage and gains 3 points in Geomancy granting a 15% damage boost. It does poison damage which is magic based and makes you unable to utilize the secondary effects of Rush, Corrupted Blade and Taunt.
[b]Acid Infusion[/b]:
This is the enhanced version of the Poison Infusion costing 2 source points. It boosts the poison resistance to 120% and grants the spell Acidic Spores. I haven't encountered any bugs with this incarnate's source spell but despite being an "Acid" Infusion it isn't immune to acid. I believe it should be given acid immunity as well as 6 points in Geomancy for a 30% damage boost.
[b]Electric Infusion[/b]:
This infusion grants the Electric Discharge spell as well as 100% resisitance to air damage and a 20% weakness to both poison and earth damage. It also gains immunity to shocked and stun effects. It gains 3 points in Aerotheurge giving it a 15% damage boost. It does air damage which is magic based and makes you unable to utilize the secondary effects of Rush, Corrupted Blade and Taunt.
[b]Cursed Electric Infusion[/b]:
This is the enhanced version of the Electric Infusion costing 2 source points. It boosts the air resistance to 120% and grants the skill Closed Circuit. Using this spell when your incarnate has 2 source points will leave you with 1 source point despite the spell costing 2 to cast. The infusion appears to be giving 3 source points to the incarnate where one is invisible. Picking up a source puddle while the incarnate has the remaining 1 source point allows the spell to be cast again before expiration. Along with the bug fix I believe the incarnate should be given 6 points in Aerotheurge for a damage increase of 30%.
So that is my experience and opinions/suggestions on the Summoning skills currently in game. As I said earlier I do love this branch of magic the most but there are some large quality of life issues the incarnate needs worked on since it is the main focus of Summoning. Specifically the secondary effects of Rush, Corrupted Blade and Taunt. I know I sound like a broken record but not having their armor protection scaled with with the damage type of the incarnate is a HUGE weakness and creates a fundamental flaw with the entire incarnate system of elements. The simple fact is that you are only given spells to change the elemental affinity of the incarnate. Once it has been summoned if you cast any one of these elemental infusions you will not be able to do physical damage with your incarnate for the rest of it's summoned life. This means that if you utilize any of the enhanced elemental source infusions, your incarnate will be unable to utilize the effects of half of it's skills that you just spent AP to imbue it with.
Yes, your other party members could spend their time breaking the physical armor, yes your summoner could learn skills to damage physical armour, the issue is that you should not have to. The incarnate being the focus that over half of the skills in Summoning are spent buffing, should be able to activate it's own secondary effects that you gave it through buffing it. Having to rely on outside sources to let it have access to a large portion of it's functionality after already being buffed, is ridiculous and serves no logical reason.
Compounded onto this issue is the fact that aside from it's base summoned form, the incarnate only has a single other form that does physical damage, and that is the Blood Incarnate. We do not however get a crafted spell to imbue our incarnate with the Blood Infusion, thereby trapping our incarnate into only magical damage after using any of the crafted infusions we do get. Furthering this issue, the Blood Incarnate is by far the most powerful even in comparison to it's source infused counterparts. The Blood infusion gains only a single point in Warfare, however because of it's base 6 in Warfare it still gains a damage increase of 35% compared to the 15% the source infusions have. On top of this the Blood Infusion also grants 15% maximum physical armour and 15% maximum magical armour making it much more durable than any of the other incarnate forms. The fact that it does physical damage also means that it can in fact activate every single secondary effect from it's abilities while also dealing the most damage. There are also very few enemies in the entire game with any resistance to physical damage, yet multiple enemies have resistance to every element of magic at the same time.
The problem with this entire system is that the game promotes you to use these elemental infusions even though it actually weakens your incarnate in most situations. It also limits you in solo situations where your incarnate is your main damage source because you are forced to fight the weak physical armour enemies first since after you imbue your incarnate with an element you are unable to change it back to a physical form until you are able to summon it again, and then you are forced to buff it again.
The true shame though is that all of these flaws could be worked around by just having a crafted Blood Infusion spell. This would allow you to swap between physical and magical damage throughout the incarnate's life and would make it so that your incarnate would be able to access all of it's skills without becoming weakened considerably from doing so. Although I personally would want Rush, Corrupted Blade and Taunt to change their armour protection based on the incarnate's damage type, having a Blood Infusion spell would at least allow you to change your incarnate back to a physical damage source when you needed to utilize those secondary effects.
Based off of this, I have a few crafted spell recommendations that I believe should be added into the game.
[b]Blood Infusion[/b]:
(craft by combining a Summoning book with a Necromancy book)
The blood incarnate is already in the game and this spell would just allow you to imbue the incarnate with this form. Since the blood incarnate is strong but doesn't have any source powers this infusion could probably cost 2 AP to imbue as opposed to the others which only cost 1 AP. This is also due to the fact that summoning a blood incarnate on fresh terrain is mostly done by casting Blood Rain, which itself costs 2 AP. The blood incarnate is already kind of an enhanced version of the base incarnate so I don't think it needs a source variant.
[b]Oil Infusion[/b]:
(crafted by combining a Summoning book with a Geomancy book and a Polymorph book)
I really wish this infusion spell was in game. I think adding a Polymorph book into the crafting mix works well since Geomancy has 2 types of magic and Polymorph is all about changing forms. In this regard it is being combined with the others to change the normal poison variant of the spellbook into this oil one. The reason I want this infusion spell in the game is because it is the only infusion that does earth damage and it has unique immunities to slow and petrification. Akin to the source variants the oil infusion already has 120% resistance to earth damage and gets 3 points into Geomancy for a 15% damage increase. It has the Fossil Strike power which applies the slow effect, one of the few effects that bypass armour. This is another magical variant and currently is the weakest of the infusions due to the fact that it can only be summoned via oil and by no other means. This means that in order to use this infusion you are forced to summon the incarnate immediately into a magic variant that cannot access it's secondary effects on Rush, Corrupted Blade and Taunt, and using any of the other infusions also prevents you from changing the incarnate back to this form for the duration of it's summon. Adding this infusion spell to the game allows for more incarnate versatility and doesn't hamper it since you can swap away from it and back into it throughout the encounter based on what is the best strategic choice. I also don't think it needs a source variant since just like the Blood Infusion it is more unique and situational but still very useful nonetheless.
[b]Shed Skin Infusion[/b]:
(crafted by combining a Summoning book and a Polymorph book)
This could just be a crafted spell that allows you to remove the current elemental/blood infusion your incarnate has and return it to the base form. Akin to the Blood Infusion being able to change your incarnate back to a physical damage version after changing it to an elemental version would allow you to access the secondary effects of Rush, Corrupted Blade and Taunt based on the strategic need during the fight without trapping the incarnate into a magic only damage form.
And there we have it, thank you to anyone who managed to read through this entire article. I hope that someone from Larian manages to read through and at least contemplate some of my suggestions and notify the team of the bugs I've encountered. Once again just wanted to say how much I love this game, I feel so passionately towards it and I really just want to help it be the best version of itself!
