At low character/summoning levels, positioning is important in placing totems. At the very least, an attack destroying a totem is an attack not directed at a party member, and if you place them out of view or range of a mage or archer, an opponent will be forced to move to attack them, using up AP.
Some people have argued totems are over powered (pick up skills to apply surfaces of your choice; oil is quite effective), especially with more than one summoner in a party.
Damage is not the primary purpose of Bull Rush.
Don't conjure an incarnate somewhere opponents can attack it immediately but it has to move to reach a target. Summoned before combat, if you see or suspect opponents ahead, there isn't an AP cost during combat, and even if they are targeted immediately, that is an attack directed away from a party member.
In D:OS every character could put a point or two into every skill school to get the majority of the most useful skills, as well.
Raze I really respect you for being one of if not the only Larian guy that ever reacts to people, but... sry, that is, sadly, not true.
Maybe it's intended to be that way, but doesn't workout.
In 90% of the battles enemies have a way larger range than the party by starting on elevated ground. They almost NEVER attack summons, which makes sense because they don't need to as pets are so weak it's actually no problem to ignore them.
They offer almost no protection and only die when hit by collateral damage targeted at party members. Same goes for totems.
Mostly the zones you fight in are so small you can cover most of it with a single attack. And the end of act 1 actually put that to even more extreme dimensions...
So enemies can easily blow up MULTIPLE TOTEMS (and often the incarnate as well) WITH ONE ATTACK with simply COLLATERAL DAMAGE sacrificing nothing at all! With skills like infectious flame that create multiple AOE zones according to the targets hit by it it even gets worse as it increases damage for NO BENEFICIAL aspect at all!
Without any way to do anything against it! Except... not skilling into summoning at all ofc...
And that doesn't even count the fact that most areas have serious LOS problems... making totems terribly bad by offering counters against them that are so easy it feels surreal...
And the compensation for all these drawbacks...? 1 attack with roughly 1/4 of the damage a single enemy deals with just one strike... and the incarnate deals even less damage.
At the final battle with all points into summoning my incarnates dealt at max less than 30 damage (about 20 to 28) while enemies hit for 5x that damage, critting for almost 10x said amount!
Now prettymuch the only somewhat useful thing summons can pull of is the KD with power infusion. Now that's 3+1 AP for one attack to 1 turn of KD. Almost no damage but KD. Ok.
Now the fighter can do that aswell, but with battlestomp for example deal considerable amounts of damage too and attack at least a second time dealing about 150 dmg at that time, with mediocre equip. Now let's say the incarnate doesn't die by some knoxed up whirlwinds (or whatever) aimed at the party and lives for 5 rounds, he barely can deal even the amount of damage the fighter dealt in round 1 throughout its whole lifetime...
Right now for me the only way to have a bit of fun with the game and live with summoning is to ignore that skill and pretend it doesn't exist.
Regarding the skills in D:OS1, yes but with way higher drawbacks at least!
@mikefury
Brofist! I also can't understand how they can keep that system and all it's problems, that a lot of people have brought up.
But I fear it will be the same as it was for more than a decade now with the RNG of loot in the Larian games... people complain about it for various logical reasons, but still Larian always cramps it in...
