Invoker

It was going to be called 'Summoner' but dearest Ian Savage took the name first... luckily, I have a synonym dictionary.

This idea is absolutely different from Ian Savage's summoner. And it's one of my 'love or hate' ideas (you can only love or hate it, XD).

The main purpose of this class is to have an 'army of one' class without using corpses. But it will be versatile as all the other many other classes. Let's get started. First of all...:

Atributes

• Spuring on - Primary atribute, for each level of this atribute, any damage dealt by any allied non party creature will be increased by n% (Spirits, Minions, Pets, and Summoned Creatures). The idea would be that at rank 12, the damage dealt were +15%, of course, numers are secondary in a preliminary idea as they would be fixed based on testing. Command skills are centered in buffing allies, and they rarely affect the caster, most of them ill affect allies like pets, spirits, minions and even allied NPCs and creatures, and some even party members. Most of this skills are shouts and auras.
• Summoning - All the creature summoning skills will be here, and ONLY creature summoning related skills. Skill linked to this atribute
  For each three levels of this atribute, player have one aditional summoning slot for a maximun of five.
• Whip mastery - Weapon atribute. Whips deal very low damage, and whip attack skills focus on conditions and interruptions. This atribute is unique as it can target many skills in allied creatures, like party members, ally npcs, and ally creatures. Whip skills targeted on allies creatures sacrifice target HP in order to buff it (beware of traitors, Yay!).
• Capture - This atribute is centered in disabling enemies, making them slower, weaker, etc... The main purpose of this atribute is 'do not let them scape'. It has a unique skill 'Cage Signet' that will be

Armor
Invokers have typical 'caster' armor.
AL: 60
+2 regen
+10 Energy
Insignias:

• Horde Master's: +3 armor for each summon slot used (for a total of +15)
• Fustigator's: +15 if any whip-buffed ally is near.
• Gate Keeper: +20 armor while opening a rift (sumonning).

Male will feature leather best-tamer outfits, like circus master of ceremonies ones.
Females will feature leather outfits (XD Whips and black leather, XD).
Headgear would be full-head masks, showing only the mouth, like Skree Harpy ones.

Capturing the creatures, the Cage signet
This is the part that could be easily changed, many people won't like to have to capture creatuers and instead want to buy the skill, of course, this idea was originally meant to add a new gameplay style.

• Summoning skills will NEVER be abailable in skill trainers UNTIL UNLOCKED. This includes the 'last trainer' that tipically teaches all non-elite skills of a campaing.
• There will be only three ways to unlock a creature skill and they are
  1. Using the 'Cage signet' on a dead boss of that type of creature.
  2. Using a Signet of Capture on an Invoker Boss.
  3. By Balthazar faction.
• The Cage Signet will be a PvE Only skill that only human players will be able to use, at least until Heroes can use Signets of Capture. It will be used like the Signet of capture, on a dead corpse of a boss if you don't have that skill, a Notice panel will show that you captured the creature and it will appear un the Skill and atributes panel, otherwhise, a 'Creature already captured' red failed action message will appear. Cage signet will have 2seconds casting time and 2 seconds reload time.
• The cage Signet will NOT be replaced by the skill, so, the work you have to do in order to capture all those creatures is balanced with the gold you save. Also, in order to summon a newly captured creature you have to enter an outpost and chage the skillbar.
• Not all creatures will be capturable. Summoner won't summon creatures like Abaddon demons, Undead, Shiro'ken, Constructs, Titans, Dwarven, Tengu, Forgotten Ones, Charr neither any creature from any of the Realms of the gods (Including the Torment). But they will be able to summon giants, trolls, plants, skales, gargoyles, arthropods, oni, golems, beastly monsters, drakes, elementals, etc...

The invoked creatures

• - This is the main feature of the 'invoker'. The creatures this class members call to battle are REAL creatures of the PvE Campaings.
• - Each summoning skill uses one 'summon slot', even if it summons more than one creature. Summon skill invoking low level creatures will summon more than one of them. The summon slot will not be released until all the summoned creatures with that slot are killed or banished.
• - Summoning skill will be quite slow, specially the 'everlasting ones'.
• - Some creatures will last until they die, but some other will be summoned only for a certain amount of time. Creatures summoned until death will leave corpses, creatures summoned with a timer will just banish once the timer finished or they HP goes to 0.
• - Summoned creatures will have the original creature IA and act just as they would. They will just think the Invoker is their 'boss' and will follow the character even leaving the battle behind.
• - Any creature over level 20 will be summoned by a elite skill.

Whips
Whips will look like melee weapons, but the game will deal with them as one-handed ranged ones. It will be possible, thought hard, to dodge them just by moving around and strafing.
This will be the first class that will have a 'martial weapon+focus' items with it's atributes, instead 'martial weapon+shield' or 'caster weapon+focus'.

• Damage type: Piercing damage
• Minimum damage: 1-3
• Maximum damage: 7-17
• One handed
• Attack interval: 2.10 seconds
• Range: Half shortbow range
• Arc size: Directly horizontal
• Projectile speed: 0.25 Seconds

Remember the numbers are just to help the idea, I don't like giving numbers

Metagame
The Invoker will mainly stay a few steps behind the tanks and melee damage dealers. He will try to raise a wall of allies and stay behind it, but near.

Celestal skill.
'Celestial invokation'. I think a good idea of the celestial skill would be randomly invoke one a downsized version of the celestial creatures of the Nahpui Quarter mission for a fixed amount of time. Or maybe more or even all four of them.

History
Invokers were orginally from Orr, and they developed their powers thanks to the orrian knowledge, some of them could scape the orrian disater and traveled far away from Orr to the land of (put campaing region here here ). They knew the origin of the disaster and it seems history was going to start again... to be continued.

Please... no references to that 'gotta chatch'em all' thing... remeber the skill hunter title, eh?

More ideas of mine:
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/User:Mithran#Misc

Seems like a sort of blue mage/pokemon/S+M type character.
I like where it is going. Name seems sort of wrong, when I think invoker I think of invokers of demons.
In my mind I think there would have to be a limit of controlled beasts, like for a MM there would have. If you were to release another over the limit the first beast becomes hostile. I don't know I'm just yammering. What do you think?

command is a paragon attribute.

This is honestly alot better than most of the summoner ideas, the name is better than summoner, Invoker, perhaps Envoker or Evoker is a little easier to role, but I is a new Class initial.....

I will say that this is bridging to much casting and attacking. It draws a very close parrallel with Ranger, but ranger has less energy, and a better weapon, This has all the energy benifits of a normal caster, +10 energy, and +2 energy regen, but also has a weapon, which is somewhat misplaced IMO. Also another ranged weapon plus dedicated familiar class is mirrorring ranger very closely, this is basicly a casters version of Ranger.

My advice is to focus more on Invoking, I woln't bore you with my ideas since your doing decent on your own, but if you want them you can look up one of the recent summoner ideas and search for my imput there. Personally, I would say that the class should have 2 invoking attributes and drop the weapon. Also a new form of cost would further seperate invoking from other familiars. The summoning slot is a mirror of necromancers minion cap, something more original would be better.

That is all the advice I will give, if you changed everything I suggested you would likely end up with my idea, but some diversity is good, hopefully you can improve this enough to be an impressive idea, personally, I am always hoping to be impressed, any idea that doesn't impress really doesn't deserve to be in the game.

Search here for my work on summoning.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10072155

P.S. Change Command Attribute to Guidance Attribute, or Empowerment, something like such.

Nice, yeah it needs some work but one of the best ive seen so far

An Evoker would summon energies more than creatures, not cratures, the summoner will summon more creatures than enemies, and invoker is more general, I used Invoker because summoner was already in use. But my original idea was sommoner. I have read your idea and is more like evoker or invoker than mine.

Well. I stated that, althout the game consider the whip a ranged weapon, the range of the whip is half a spear range, that is, VERY SHORT. Remember the range circles? A whip will have a range from the center to the second circe starting from outside, the third form inside, that is Nearby range.

And it has no dedicaded familiars! You'll invoke creatures from the real camapaings, they'll have no HP degen, but most of they will banish after some time. It's not 'you invoke the thing and it will follow ou around' it is more like, 'you set a group each battle, half of them will die and the rest will likely banish' so you end up with some srvivors and have to set another 'commando' for next battle.

The inoking slot is exactly the same like minion cap, those caps are necesary, to prevent people invoke a horde of creatures to overwhelm enemies. There is no other efective way to limit the number of possible invokations, since, for example an armor +6 energy regen instead of +2 and make each summoning a maintaned skill won't make the invokations attribute-based. This system is much better.

Adding that is has 60 armor and that her insignia are focused on its skill using and has no unconditional armor bonuses (like bonus to all the elements rangers have) make it very different to a ranger. Also her weapon is not really meant fo damage dealing, and has very low damage. The whip will limit the range of many whip mastering skills, so in order to buff your creatures and allies, you mst be in nearby range with them, so you are not out of risk like Rangers. You must set a wall of creatures and/or allies between you and the enmies to keep them form reaching you. A ranger can move around with a bow much more.

And it is not only based on attacking and and casting. This class have NO direct damage spells. Only some direct damage whips attacks, and most of them deal conditions and not much damage.

Also, the most of skills that buff up allies will have some health sacrifice for them, and it will have few ally healing skills, and only healing by regen, not by direct healing. This class will summon a monk 'like a salving catus' instead of healing herself.

Your sommoning idea was one of the first ones I read. (I actually read all the ones called summoner or something like that)
And I can't say that I like it, looks more like a 'remake' of the Minion master role than a complete differente class. E.g.: The Summon Grenth spell require you to control undead. My class in independant of any other class, thouth it can be used to improve any of them:
- Warrior: Summon bodyblocking creatures to keep enemies on site, or to heal you a bit,
- Monk: Have some HP bags that will eat damage for you. Or use whip-buffs and quickly recover their HP with Divine favour.
- Elementalist: Create diversions to let you cast long casting time skills.
- Necromancer: Summon weak cratues to leave corpses, increase damage dealt by all minions...
- Ranger: Whip buffing will affect animals, so you can have them deal even more damage. You could also set traps more efectively behind a some summoned creatures.
- Mesmer: Take energy from your invoked creatures, copy their skills, etc...- Assasins: make the enemy focus on summoned creatures so you can backstab them.
- Paragon: Well... lead the horde!
- Dervish: Summon enchantment user creatures to bff you up.
- Ritualist: A mix of Elementalist, monk and necromancer roles. Plus summoning of Spirit using creaturs to you can use Spirit sacrifices more often.

I still want people to give ides and add changes, and maybe skill examples.

I have to say i do like this idea.
Having to cap a creature before you can invoke it is perfect and im a big fan of whips.(read my Slayer concept for some whip attacks that might work for you )

I imagine your elite summons will have a limit of 1, like the flesh golem and having a counter for the rest is a must to prevent mass armies.

I would suggest that Tengu, Char and Forgoton could be summoned but do your somond creature retain all skills or just take comands from your Spuring on attributes.
If they retain skills then do you have any control on targets or do they just follow npc AI?

Parts I like, Parts I dislike.

I have my own idea of summoning, so that might play into the bias.

I do like the primary, and think it would work well. Its also creative, and not seen befoe. But its name could be better.

On the meat of this, the summoning. On part, I dislike the need to capture the creature before it can be use, as it will make PvE and PvP have differnt advantages. Also it seem too full on skill (unless done so like Charm Animal). And to retain the creature's skill seem open to possible imbalance.

Also make it either the summon be in Ghost Form (where you capture its Essence), or call it a Slave.

The Whipe Attribute work well with such class. Not too sure about Capture. While the function of Capture is good, seem a bit missmatch to me for some reason. Maybe just give Whipe lots binding attacks.

Its a interesting concept none the less... worth to see more disscussion on.

A ranger is already a physical attack and familiar class, and has the longest attack range in the game, by giving this a weapon 3 things happen, there are no wands available to the class, the class gets pushed into melee combat, and his low armor fails him. Half spear range is basicly adjacent to melee combat, and moving in with a caster class is simply folly, expecially since this class also involves long cast times which are giant bullseyes for interrupters if you move well into their range. A weapon just doesn't belong.

As for Drawing summoner away from minion masters, having a summoning cap is alot more simular to Necromancer than having minions which require energy maintenance, as an alternate form of restriction, and as a significant cost for a powerful and mobile familiar which also has the benifit of special abilities.

Ranger has no direct damage spells, has a pet which can be used to execute his own moves, and has a weapon. I think the soul purpose of a Summoning class is to allow players who wish Beast Mastery could be their primary function an option which involves controling a Familiar as a primary function. Anything less than that is no better than swarming with minions or using a pet as a suppliment to your combat abilities.

Honest truth is your idea is more simular to the Minion Master role than mine. Without a significant cost, retainable creatures do not merit any more power than a minion does, and with the summon cap, your basicly reusing the same function but you don't require corpses and your minions don't degenerate. Take away the corpse requirement as well as degeneration and add a one time cature requirement, and you basicly have your idea. It cost less thus it must be weaker.

It isn't a summoner class unless it has a focus on the best familiars in the game, without this we have another MM. And if it is a summoner, not being able to deal direct damage with a weapon as well as spells is more potent than just a lack of offensive spells. In order to retain powerful familiars, a significant and original cost should be applied, and to further seperate it from MM, adding group based "spurring" to use creature abilities puts it beyond beast masters with a small diversity of special moves on each familiar instead of several defined moves available to a single pet. Truthfully, my idea is 10 fold more original, yours is decent, but it doesn't match mine.

That is the point.

You pay for your power, your risk your like doe to your great power.
I don't see the point on sticking only the current play styles.

I'm talking about a class that may have 20 level 10 creatures with working skills bothering the enemy.

You have a great power, but you are in the second line of fire.

Since you summong the creaturs BEFORE the battle, not during it, the long cas times are not really a problem.
There will be also skill types in spurring exlusive to this class, that, like glyphs and mantras, will change the next spell behaviour. There will be skill that set and efect like:
Next spell can't be interrupted, but if someone uses an interruption effect on you while casting, one of your creatures will be banished.

Alas, you don't sacrifice your health, you sacrifice others.
You don't really heal your creaturs, you make them heel themselves.
You don't need the creatures, you may go without them.


The main difference between and MM and an Invoker is that the MM maintain the Undead and they go around killing the nearet target.

But an Invker do not maintain them, an invoker keeps them coming and send tem to targets.

Instead of a lot of undead jus rambling around, you have a bunch of grunts that think that you are their boss.

With an MM, you can raise a bone army and stay out of danger (specially with the new jagged bones elite, that will make any dying minion spawn another) using Blood of the master to stay alive while minions take all the damage.

With an Ivoker, they'll lose focus, panic, and die soon without you. You'll bbe able to overwhelm them, but you'll have to be in the middle of the dance floor, where all the eyes are looking at you.

If an enemy gets to you, cripple him with your whip and make a troll teach him why they shoud not attack you.

That discription adds to the unbalancing pvp, pve comement.
Letting a creature keep it's skills is just to unblancing as you could have a team AND ceatures, creatures have professions too and would basically let the invoker be 4-5 professions at once, instead of quality in the skills(creature abilitys are like 4-6 at lvl 10) you have quantity(that choice it the whole backing of a necromancer story wise but noone roleplays in gw. Its impossible even, due to max 10 minions and their health degenerating)
But 3X vamperic bite form 3 scarabs is just as powerfull as a lvl 20 necro using the skill.

A invoker could be a interuptor a backup healer and a spiker at the same time, way over powered I'd say. Even MM's have to get a few corpces when soloing before we can take down the wallows and island guardians for the loot they drop.

A summoner would be uber before they go into battle, having an entire multiple profession team of summons backing them, it doesn't matter you have to be in the middle of the 'Dance floor' if you have good healing summons with you.

First of all making each summon summon only 1 mob would effectivally reduce the max summons to 8 as you can only take 8 skills.
But then you should still do something about the skills the mobs have, there should really be a limiter on how they use them, as the AI standard is reasonably effective, with the exeption of spirit handeling(though they still get lucky, every so often).

So you need a way to cotroll the effective ness of mobs regarding the skills they get when summoned.

1. Have them get only 1 skill, shown in the summon discription
   • Hive Mother(summoning)
     Summon
     energy 15 activation 4 recharge 20
     Summon a Mantid Queen, this summon will attack at range and can cast spear of light.
     
2. Have them get only 1 skill, randomly selected from the list they would normaly have(not the best idea, it would probably be anoying to have to resummon something untill it ahves the skill you want)
   
3. They never use skills unless you tel them to, you would have skill that tell them to use a particular skill type:
   • "Mend me!"(spuring on)
     Shout
     energy 5 activation - recharge 10
     All you summons within shout range will attempt to use a total of 1...3...4 healing abilitys on you.
   • Signet of Enimety(spuring on)
     Signet
     energy 0 activation 2 recharge 4
     For 3...10...15 seconds all your summons will develop a intence hate towards target foe, and they will attack that foe even if you lose controll over them. Any of your summons with an attack skill will attempt to use it on target foe.
   • Supress(spuring on)
     Elite Hex
     energy 20 activation 3 recharge 12
     For 5...12...14 seconds target foe is hexed with Supress, whenever that foe is casting a spell, summons you controll nearby that foe will attempt to use skills that interupt, knockdown or daze that foe.

These are just suggestions of how to bring the functionality of mobs down, I'm sure you could come up with better ones.
Noticably the above mentioned options could never be combined.

A Invoker seems like a wortwhile class, both weak and strong on the battle field, requering good planining to play(which is my favorite type);
but Anet would definatly have doupts about something that is so overpowered, having multiple creatures with fully functional AI and skills, its just like hencies but without the droprate decrease or party slots.

Another balance idea might be to limit the number for each profesion you can summon at one time. It would still be overpowering to have 8 monsters on your side that could all cast Orison.

You might concider a small change to the cage skill. Force them to capture the monster while its still alive but below 25%hp. This would make the capture a little more challenging and might prevent having lvl 20 players helping a lvl 1 invoker cage a high lvl monster as its hard for a high lvl player to avoid killing something 10 lvls below it

You might also concider having the Invoked creatures level be determined by your summoning attribute lvl. You could also force the captures in quests, for example the first quest a new Invoker would recieve would be to capture a lvl 0 minataur with power attack and dolyak symbol. As you lvl up this creature would become more powerful and would never be unusable.

Yup, you have to tell them what to do. If you don't target and attack an enemy, they just follow you arround and attack anyone attacking your party.
Who to attack, who to heal, etc. Spuring put some decision on them.

I thought about have to capure it alive. Reducing the cast ime will do, or just leaving the creature the last an send your damage dealing allies away to keep them attaking, but I also though it would be easier just to kill them, and capturing a lot fo creatures is a lot of work already.

The level of invoked creatures will depend on the summoning skill, yorn attribute in Summoning, the number of creatures the skill summons and if it is elite or not.

A skill summoning a mantid of each type would summon them with lower level.
A skill summoning a creature over level 20 would always summon only one, and uver level 24 would always be elite.
My idea is not 'as is' but a start point. The main thing is that you risk a lot to have a lot of power. You'll raise many enemies, but you'll lose movility. The more you are a thrath the more you can be threatened.

Remember that we have 8 slots, so even with 5 creature slots to summon you won't be able to raise an army of very different creatures. And the better creatures will banish after some time, so you won't be able to have an unlimited
Plus they may be be banished by your actions, not only killed by the enemy.
There will be skills that may banish one or more of your creatures to prevent your own death, but once you have no creatures... what would you do? Most of the skills have low casting times!

So this is not a 'summon and forget' class like MM can be.

Your idea still needs alot of work, and needs some finer definition.

The idea that you have to actually attack with your summoned creatures defeats the purpose of a familiar, a player can just as well add additional effects to his attacks, which is what the Invoker is reduced to if his familiars only attack as support to his que. Even a pet does not receive the kind of direction your describing, and as a single trained animal, they have first rights to effective control and direction. If the invokers familiars are only active during his attacks, than they may as well be his attacks, as the summoner would select a target, the familiar would attack them, it is a more advanced form of control deserving of a class which cannot deal legitimate attack damage by itself.

Still, this idea lies in a combination of effects from Necro, Ranger and Ritualist, I have yet to see some significant differences which are totaly unique to this classes familiars, and though I have a few of my own, I challenge you to make your own instead of using mine. Capturing creatures and unit caps are reused material, you have a few things well done, but the overall idea is still disfunctional.

Ranger already defines the role of familiar as supplimental damage to his own attack, the whole idea with attacking and familiars which attack with you doesn't fall far enough to be original, and doesn't provide a new role for players to experience, it is a modification. As I described before, the primary role people want to obtain with a summoner class is that which they lack from Beast Mastery, the ability to use powerful familiars without the stigmatism to deal attacks yourself, by adding a weapon your introduce the same issue ranger has, trying to use an attack weapon, familiar attribute, familiar support attribute (Expertise), and a 4th attribute to sustain yourself.

Good Beastmasters can use Monks healing attribute to heal themselves, their pet, and allies, as well as allow focus items and a staff weapon, wile pumping beast mastery, and expertise to lower the cost of healing and the pets attacks. If they try to use their bow than their attributes get divided too much, by even having a weapon on such a summoner class, and worse, making attacks a neccessary part of your familiars function, you compound a difficulty already annoying most beast masters, and arn't providing an enjoyable atternative.

A familiar, or small group of them which can activate familiar skills for ally support and healing as well as damage and spell damage is a nice alteration from beast mastery which seperates this, since pet skills revolve almost soley to boost the pet or deal melee attacks, but that much I already included in my idea, and others have developed that as well, this much is good in your idea, but again I say it isn't enough, and the idea should be developed more to provide a unique gameplay experience, party role, and attractive archtype (that much you have) for it to be a useful class idea.

None the less, Anet will likely make their own version of summoner if they so choose, and developement is likely futile, the fact that players raise and reraise the archtype is likely all the influence we will offer to Anet. Personally I deveope ideas because I find creation facinating, and I like to imagine the possibilities, unfortunately, only portions of my ideas have been incorperated into exsisting classes, and I doubt Anet will ever develope a class which entertains my distinct interest.

For now all they made is exaclty what I wanted, so I have faith, hehe...

I think the fact that exactly what you wanted has already been fulfilled means they are due to satisfy the rest of their players, and attract new ones. The whole point of adding something new is to reach out to someone else, whether it be an exsisting player how wants more/otherwise, or a new player who wants more or otherwise before they even join.

Satisfied players will enjoy what they already have, and even if they don't get a new class they want, they still have what already satisfys them and continue to play the new content, if they even desire that. The whole point of "new" is to excel beyond what we already have.

I have to aggree with Bahmut, the only question is can this be done with a new class or will they need to add something radicaly differnt to the game.

Invoker, while not yet ballanced, is a playable class that would appeal to current players and a few newone. The way I read this class is that your akin to a slave driver, using your whip to push your minions ahead of you. What might help somewhat in the balance would be to adjust your control so that its not total.

If you send them into a suicidle attack they just might turn and attack you. Adding some chance of defience onthe part of the monsters you summon might add something in the way of tactical use of your minions to prevent them from turning but still get the job done.

Whip them or you'll get wiped. XD.

I really like this idea, especially the idea of sacrificing target allys health to buff them. I can see a sort of shadow form based elite:

Whip target ally (lol): Target allys health is reduced to 25% and for (insert time here) They cannot be the target of spells or attacks.

Like the dervish one, they cant be healed either, so if you accidentally cast this on an ally already with degen, ooopsie

You are getting the point.

Power has a price.

The price for this class is that it gets your to the edge of power... and to the edge of death too.

After some time with testing, Anet could tell if it possible, and then, everything else would be about balancing.