Larian Banner: Baldur's Gate Patch 9
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Okay so i just got off the 1st island and noticed there is a necro spell called summon bone spider. I thought oh cool!! picked it up and taught to my summoner (lvl 10 skill so i have the colossal incarnate) Immediately i was angry... SO your telling me 10 points into summon gets me a 70 physical armor 70 magic armor 217 HP incarnate with provoke... While 2 point into necro gets me a 200 physical armor 1300 hp spider?!?! Oh and yeah he can burrow underground and eat corpses for more dmg and healing..... are you SERIOUS!? Makes summoning look like shit. Even after i BUFF the incarnate he only gets 150 armor more. The damage comparison was also 130 per hit for spider and 70 for incarnate talk about bullshit.

I understand that summon skill points makes all the numbers higher for both, so i taught the spider to one of my other characters with no points into summon and 2 points into necro. They still summon a spider with 120 shields 680 HP.

I thought the 10 points into summon to get the incarnate was cool and worth it till i saw how overpowered the spider is in comparison why bother at all?

I see why they let you respec whenever you want it was designed for the people who picked summoning and raged hard.

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It sounds like the necro summon is scaling with your summon points which I think is quite cool.

Summoner:

>200 armor, 1300 hp, 130 damage

Non-summoner:

>120 shields, 680 HP, ??? damage (65 damage estimate)

A little more than double, seems right. Should be affecting damage as well in that case. I think you're doing a poor job of trying to argue that summoner is underpowered if doubling this spider's health & damage is a result of those 10 summoner points.

I also feel like you're selling the incarnate a bit short. You get the four infusions

- Power (SKILLS: whirlwind, bullrush, DAMAGE:+25%, ARMOR BOOST)
- Farsight (SKILLS: ranged attack, DAMAGE:+25%, MAGICAL ARMOR BOOST)
- Shadow (SKILLS: chameleon skin, corrupted blade, BONUS MOVEMENT SPEED)
- Warp (SKILLS: tactical retreat, DODGE:+15%)

Plus all the elements!

- Fire (SKILLS: fireball, fire immunity)
- Electric( SKILLS: eletric discharge, electric immunity)
- Water (SKILLS: restoration, water immunity)
- Poison (SKILLS: poison bolt, poison immunity)
- Oil (SKILLS: fossil strike, earth immunity)
- Blood (SKILLS: mosquito swarm, ARMORs:+15%, +1 warfare)

I believe there are source infusion possibilities as well

- Necrofire (SKILLS: fireball, epidemic of fire, 20% fire healing)
- Cursed electric (SKILLS: electric discharge, closed circuit, 20% electric healing)
- Ice (SKILLS: restoration, steam lance, 20% water healing)
- Acid (SKILLS: poison bolt, acid spores, 20% poison healing)

Being able to cast top tier elementalist skills seems pretty badass to me, but I haven't gotten there myself yet so I can't speak to its effectiveness.

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My problem isn't that summoner makes the spider stronger. The issue is that the spider summon has 650 hp WITHOUT any points into summon while i need 10 points into summon just to make an incarnate with 200 hp. Also the super summons cost 2 source points to summon... So.... i don't count those.

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Wow that makes me think I should just pop a couple points into necro since I was just looking at summoning for a damage soak summon when needed.

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as a main summoner i disagree with you a damn lot, my incarnate hits like a mule, almost as much as my friend's assassin with 3 times the defenses

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It really isn't as bad as you're making it out to be. The Widow is undead, and it also has NO magic armor at all. The Incarnate has a longer duration, and for the same AP cost has access to more abilities (and can be buffed even more).

Furthermore, it's a lot easier to keep the Incarnate alive than it is the Widow. On top of that, the Widow is purely physical. The Incarnate can be pretty much any element, which makes it a lot more versatile for any given fight.

Both have their uses, and your stats of each is pretty off.
Rank 13 Summons at level 11:

Incarnate (2 AP) = 155 Physical, 155 Magic, 509 HP, Taunt
Incarnate (3 AP) = 463 Physical, 155 Magic, 509 HP, Taunt, Rush, Whirlwind
Incarnate (4 AP) = 463 Physical, 463 Magic, 509 HP, Taunt, Rush, Whirlwind, Projectile Attack
You can add more infusions, but I don't particularly care for the shadow version, and I don't have teleport yet.

That's for the normal physical version. If you summon it as an elemental (or infuse it later), it gets a ranged spell. In the case of fire, it gets Fireball, which is massive damage potential to both physical and magic armors. It hits more than a single target, which is all the Widow can do, and the Widow can't combo with another caster.

Widow (3 AP) = 309 Physical, 0 Magic (very easy to control), 2034 HP, hits harder per normal attack, gets a free teleport, and a 30% damage boost with a heal when it consumes a corpse. Corpse consuming takes a while, and that's if you're even near one already or want to spend AP to get to one. You can't heal the Widow anywhere near as easily as you can the Incarnate (if it ever even needs it), it gets controlled by enemy casters extremely easy too. You can buff it with Armor of Frost, but it's rather weak compared to the Incarnate buff.

Again, both have their uses, but I normally only bother with the Widow as my first summon if I need to have something across the screen ASAP. It's also very useful to have two powerful summons in general. Some fights last long enough that one will expire before their cooldown is up.

If there's one thing I agree with however, it's that the Widow is insanely good for the skill investment. For only 2 into Necromancy and none in Summoning you get a rather beefy distraction that works well with any class type. Summoners still own everyone else for pets though by a wide margin.

Last edited by Sanctuary; 21/09/17 02:08 AM.
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Odd, what level are you, and how comparable is the HP of your allies? It wasn't until late game that my Red Prince (strength maxed, high power weapons) could equal or exceed his damage.

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The spider has no defense against CC. You need to stop comparing them. Go both and play "cycle summoner" with 1 point in warfare, pyro and scoundrel and 3 poly when that time comes.

What you do is summon the spider, use adrenaline/offering and combo it with enrage + haste + supercharge. Then summon the incarnate, buff it. Next skingraft then enrage, adrenaline and supercharge him for mad damage again. Bone widow is now off CD you can use it again.

As a summoner skin graft, enrage, haste and adrenaline ftw smile You can combo that shit like hell.

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Hmm, can you actually cast Living on the edge on your supercharged summon? That would be cool as fuck... smile

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Thing is, you need more action points to make your incarnate even compareable to the widow

At level 12 and 10 points in summoning my bone widow has:

2708 HP, 404 physical armor
deals roughly 260 damage

My incarnate Champion has just:

639 HP, 202 physical armor/ 202 magic armor
deals roughly 160 damage

[Linked Image]

For just one AP more you get a summon with 3112 Hitpoints, compared to the incarnates 841, that also deals 100 more damage AND can teleport.

If you cast teleportation and power infusion on an incarnate, you already spend 4 AP, but you still have less than half the hitpoints of the bone widow and deal less damage.

I tried this out to the most extreme and made everyone in my party a summoner with enough necromancy to cast the bone widow, I can finish fights by just casting enough widows from outside combat (meaning that none of party members are affected by turn cooldowns)
This turns tactician into a cake walk, I shouldn't be able to win fights without any of my party members even being involved in combat.

I don't understand why Larian made them even stronger, when they already made combat easier in the first game.
Incarnates themselves don't seem that overpowered, but I'm not sure if Larian tested the non-summon skill summons and how they scale when you put as many points into sommoner as possible.
I'll go test this for a while.

Last edited by Niklasgunner; 21/09/17 10:58 AM.
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I prefer the incarnate over the widow by a long shot.. no comparison hands down incarnate is better.... you can summon and buff it on your first turn.. or even outside of combat... and it has wayyy more abilities than the widow and has aoe which the widow does not... on top of that the incarnate has opportunist talent and auto attacks people who try to run from him for even more damage... all the spider can do is auto attack single target and then die to all the magic cc being thrown its way that it has absolutely no defense against... and you can give the incarnate a teleport ability as well... there is literally no situation where the spider is better... it will spend the majority of every fight CCed by the many enemies who can shock/freeze people.

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Originally Posted by Adrianna
you can summon and buff it on your first turn

So ? Even if you buff its armor the widow still has FOUR TIMES more HP and does significantly more damage. For the same action points
Originally Posted by Adrianna
or even outside of combat...

You can also summon the widow outside combat?

You can clear most encounters in the game (on tactician, mind you) by summoning four bone widows outside combat, without any of your player characters being limited by turns or being threatened at all.

It's clearly the strongest summon and spell in the game, generally summoner out DPSes any other combat skill.

Originally Posted by Adrianna
on top of that the incarnate has opportunist talent and auto attacks people who try to run from him for even more damage

So does the bone widow, and again, it deals more damage
Originally Posted by Adrianna
and you can give the incarnate a teleport ability as well...

which the bone widow has from the start, for just 3 AP.
If you need to buff your incarnate over several turns to make it compareable to the widow, one is clearly superiour. Once the widow is cast you can just focus on making your player character summon more totems/cast spells.
Originally Posted by Adrianna
and then die to all the magic cc being thrown its way that it has absolutely no defense against...
It's defense against CC is its ridiculous health poll, what does a stun matter if in the same turn the enemies damage barely makes a dent?
I really don't understand why Larian made summons even stronger when they were already a cheap strategy in the first game.

Last edited by Niklasgunner; 21/09/17 02:23 PM.
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Well that's unfortunate...
I was like : cool, I want to see the level 10 summoning, now I want to see this spider thingy.
Good thing I chose both skills school, I will rage a little less...
Even if the summon is more versatile, I tend to agree that for the health alone the summon is too good. Those help also soak damage so... And it's not like now CC can last more than one turn, so it would still steal one hit per turn at least to stay out of combat.

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It's not just the bone widow, it seems to me like all summons except for the incarnate itself haven't been balanced well when the player has mostly points in summoning. My only explaination is that the devs overlooked how the artillery plant and bone widow summons scale in that case.

Look at this example. Here I attack a party member. The top is the artillery summons ranged attack, buttom the incarnates ranged attack after farsight infusion. Granted, the artillery plant ranged attack has a two turn cooldown, the Incarnates ranged attack only one and also costs one AP less. But still, this kind of damage just feels like a glitch.

[Linked Image]

I don't believe that one source point is supposed to be the difference between a dent in magic armor and an almost instant kill.

The devs must have playtested the bone widow and artillery plant with a character skilled in necromancy/geomancer and none in summoning. This would also explain the hugely inflated HP values of the bone widow.

That the Incarnate does so much less damage despite the summoner being designed mostly around him doesn't seem right.

Last edited by Niklasgunner; 21/09/17 04:34 PM.
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i have found the opposite to be true.. i have no idea how you get the bone widow to be "powerful" my incarnate is MUCH stronger than the widow and basically kills people in 1 turn.. ifan with those stats would be dead with 1 turn from my dual infusion incarnate (remember that using both farsight and power infusion both increase its damage by 25%)

im not sure how you have such a weak incarnate when mine can deal over 500-600 damage with a single attack.. and can attack twice per turn.. it can almost keep up with another assassin character on my team (in multiplayer).

not to mention the incarnate lasts much longer while the widow only lasts 3 turns.. the incarnate lasts like 8 and can fight the entire battle before it goes away.. meaning after you summon it you dont need to resummon it... so for 1 additional AP over the widow you have a stronger pet that lasts 3 times as long and cant be CCed by magic (which drops dps even further)

Last edited by Adrianna; 21/09/17 08:29 PM.
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The widow has a lot of HP and does pretty good damage but the incarnate has better abilities, can CC (and in this game CC is king) and you can give him back physical/magic armor by buffing him during the fight, making him more resilient to CC (and again, in this game, CC is king).

In the end, I only use the widow when my incarnate is on cooldown or if there's no blood around (since the blood incarnate is my favorite).

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[quote=Adrianna]i have found the opposite to be true.. i have no idea how you get the bone widow to be "powerful" my incarnate is MUCH stronger than the widow and basically kills people in 1 turn.. ifan with those stats would be dead with 1 turn from my dual infusion incarnate (remember that using both farsight and power infusion both increase its damage by 25%)

im not sure how you have such a weak incarnate when mine can deal over 500-600 damage with a single attack.. and can attack twice per turn.. it can almost keep up with another assassin character on my team (in multiplayer).[/quote]

Not that I'm disagreeing really (see my above post), but how on earth are you hitting that much with the Incarnate? Or when you say "single attack", you're not specifically talking about regular melee damage? Mine, at level 14 Summoning on a level 13 character doesn't come anywhere near that.

Last edited by Sanctuary; 22/09/17 08:03 AM.
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Incarnate is much more flexible. In addition to the mentioned Opportunist buff, there's also the ability to make the Incarnate run any type of damage, and qute a few defensive immunities. Need Fire damage, get a Fire surface and summon him onto that (and he gains fire Immunity) etc.

Additionally Incarnate has a better to hit %, I noticed on the Spider it was significantly lower (don't recall exact numbers at the moment).

Unfortunately, (although probably reasonable from a balance perspective) all the 'big' summons occupy the same slot, Incarnate = Bone Widow = Artillery Plant = Ifan Soul Wolf... summoning one kills the old.


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