Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Summoning is limited

What is fascinating is originally the Summoner class was called the "Master Summoner" class.

It wasn't ABOUT summons at all, in fact there were no implications that it would even summon. What it WAS about, however, was manipulating summons and using them in new masterful ways. You could move your summons around, explode them for damage. An amazing assisting skill tree. There is SOME of that still in the game.

Heck even more so there was some implication that you could do things with ANY summon and create slight variations of summons.

The issue that mostly comes up is how monolithic summoning is. It is the only skill where you get far more than 10% effectiveness.

THAT and it in many ways kind of neutered the other magic trees because it begs the point use.

As silly as it sounds... I think the summoning tree would have been better off without a summon except maybe reworked totems and satellites... and instead have it assist OTHER summons.

Sure it wouldn't have been a solo skill tree... But I fell inlove with the "Master Summoner" concept and the game needs a coat of strategy.

[quote=FadeToBlack]Problem is, you have a high cool down on the one incarnate. It is dumb if you have summoning + necro that you can't have both. I tried to summon the bloated corpse and my incarnate disappeared. Also why can't you infuse other summons. Half of the skills are bound to the incarnate but if it is killed soon you can't do anything, only spam totems. And the totems are instakilled with one attack.

Other thing what is dumb, skill crafting only works if you combine one elemental with another. WHY. So everybody has to give one or two points into a skill line he doesn't want? I only have one character that had warfare and earth magic. Necro+Summoning would have get a really cool skill for sure. [/quote]

Killed soon...? What? My incarnate has over 1k hp and I can buff him to insane armor amounts. It's practically a 5th party member. Don't think it's gotten killed in 9 or so levels.

Hydro/summon is a much better combination than necro/summon. You'll have ridiculously strong heals, even more buffs, and the incarnate will deal great damage. Tanks or undead characters fit the bill for necro more.

while there are less summons available the summoner class makes up for it in the variety of infused incarnate powers. Missing a water elemental? infuse the incarnate with water then. Missing fire? then infuse with fire. While its not a complete 1 to 1 it opens up many possibilities. Summoner appear to be powerful. You can do still do a marksman with a summon combo by investing point(s) in summoner instead of something like geomancer.
So while I was initially put off by the fact that some summons were pulled I was very pleased to see with what it was replaced with.

nah, those two infusions dont actually increase damage or survability all that much, just give few quite useless skills in my opinion, so I consider them waste of memory and AP...
Shadow infusion can MAYBE useful for that corrosive dagger, but incarnate doesnt have enough AP to fully utilize all his skills.

So I have been extremely curious about this class, because I wanted to know if i was going to stack wits, whether or not my incarnate would have my crit chance, even if savage sortilege was needed. So i made a character with max wits to do some testing and stomped around fort joy and found that with 35% crit chance AND savage sortilege, my incarnate did not crit once, not ONCE. You'd think it'd have similar stats to the summoner but it appears that the incarnate cannot crit. It makes me sad, :( I wanted to have my pets rollin' around crittin' stuff like the pets in diablo do. I kinda wanna know if Larian intended this or if it was an oversight.

Im also against one summon at a time, since Incarnates have so long cooldown that its pretty.. dumb. Also i cant infuse totems that die to one AOE spell, even going from me myself.

I cant say that Incarnates are not powerful.. They are strong as hell, im playing with my GF where she build her 2 heroes in a wrong way and she deals almost no damage, die easily etc and just my 2 incarnates do the whole job all alone.
I've had to build my summoners to buff my party to keep her heroes alive but as far as i've seen it, totems after level 10 (in act 2) are useless as shit. I havent cast a single totem for 3 levels since they either die after one turn and its better for me to use 2 support spells for 1AP and render enemy attack useless than to get a totem just for one turn to.. do nothing. 73 damage (i have lvl 13 or 14summoning) against 1400physical armor and 1300health points is nothing.
What more i've seen, only physical Incarnates are actually viable since to use their Knock Down spell we have to take down the PA first and.. elemental incarnates cant do that.

On the other hand, Soul mate skill is some retarded top tier skill in this game, adding Dome of Protection you have a 3 turns of "you cant kill me". Living on the edge adds to that (necro).

I would rather want to have an Incarnate and Bone widow to do the job than to use totems. Totems were strong when we could spam Bless on grounds like Oil so they had some Physical armor buff.

Here's what i would do:
- Buff totems with bonus stats or make it have Cursed surfaces stats bonus after level 10 of summoning.
- Make it so we can have at least 2 summons at the cost of totems - 2 turns cd with a a bit more HP on them or invulnerability to AOE spells.
- Also change incarnates Charge Knock Down effect based on the element it attacks with.

I would also throw my hat in the ring with those that feel summoner's should be able to summon more than one creature at a time. I created my character as a summoner/Necro with the intention of having an incarnate and bone spider out while playing with the bloated corpse when the timing is right.

While I agree that the incarnate seems quite strong, I think the fun factor of a build is just as important as raw strength, obviously opinions will differ tremendously on this. I find it to be a bit tedious and uninteresting to summon my incarnate and then proceed to buff him after he has been summoned. Obviously you can't add all of his abilities to him and leave him as a 2 AP cost summon, but I honestly would find it more interesting to have the player have to make a choice on a couple abilities to give to their incarnate. I think this would do two things, offer players a decision instead of just having the incarnate be a catch all of abilities and jack of all trades, as well as nerfing him a bit. With this nerf I think that it should open up the ability for the summoner to have multiple summon's up at once since the incarnate wouldn't be such a monster.

I don't find the totems to be a good substitute for having multiple summons as they not only feel weak but have very little player interaction. I make one choice with a totem and then forget about it, as it will either die instantly to an enemy or friendly AOE or it randomly chooses someone to attack regardless of what I am doing.

So in summary I think the incarnate being as strong as it is limits the summoner class to being less fun and interesting as it could be. The ability for the incarnate to be buffed to do almost anything limits the class to just summoning the incarnate and then buffing it to do everything you could ever need it to do. By limiting the incarnate to less skills and having the player make a choice as to what skills their incarnate has it would bring the power of the incarnate down and allow for more power to be added else where in the class such as summoning other creatures which I believe would make the class more enjoyable to play.

You could use a 2ap source ability to keep more than 1 summon for X turns, sounds good?

Imagine it last 3 turns, it will let you set up the battle field nicely without spamming overpowered summons everywhere.

lol i just noticed this tried to summon a oil blob and my incarnate goes away little bit silly if you ask me.

i know it seems disappointing. but the summons are extremely powerful. the design where you can learn more than one summon, but only have one up at a time... is ONLY there so that you have a backup when your primary summon skill is still on cooldown. period.

note that you can have 1 summon AND 3 totems active. that is very powerful.

well, think, being a summoner, if you have a powerful incarnate against a strong boss, would you throw it at them so that they can beat the shit out of it and you spend the next 5 turns flailing at them with your feeble attacks then get your face stomped? no. You use your secondary summon to wear down the enemy, wait for favorable elemental surface and position, and then drop your incarnate, so that at least before it dies it can use all of its abilities, this situation happens a lot when playing lone wolf
However I'm ok with adding summons from other branches, makes no difference to me tbh

i think summoning is meant to be coupled with another school like hydro/aero/pyro rather than necromancy or used by itself. it makes sense if you think about it, most skill trees allow you to set up surfaces you can cast totems and incarnates on, and let you manipulate the field so your summons can do more damage. even blood rain is a good skill to use since blood incarnates/totems are very strong and allow you to maximize physical output if you need to. i think it'd be way too strong if i were able to summon an incarnate champion and a bone widow at the same time, two very bulky summons that do a lot of damage and have opportunist/can potentially teleport. enemy mages will melt in one or two turns even on higher difficulties

i get that it can seem underwhelming but playing as a summoner is really fun and adds a lot of versatility to combat aside from buffing teammates and doing damage. placing totems on high ground areas is also a cool way to manipulate combat

TBH Summoning is extremely powerful simply because it does not require main stat to function well, you can build a tanky buffer with tons of CON and 10 summoning and it will still be able to do quite a bit more damage than that setup could ever do otherwise and will be unkillable. Heck you will get rallying cry and dominate too as well, not too shabby.

Incarnate is pretty powerful, it's not a player character powerful, but it's a lot of damage for something like 4-5AP you spend in the beginning of the fight and it's unkillable too, pretty much.

IMO summoning is exactly where it should be, maybe it's even a bit too powerful simply because of that no-main stat binding caveat.

2 summons? That would be outright broken, unless Incarnate is severely nerfed, but that would be uncool imo, I like one uber summon.