War Summoner (a balanced summoner idea)

Clearly, people want to see a summoning class that would be balanced.
Most of the threads so far on summoning have been shot down as unbalanced.
So here's my try.

The War Summoner:

Balance Issues:
1) Summons can be summoned ahead of combat, with stronger summons having no life duration (they die when they die). They thus function more like the ranger's pets, in terms of permanency.
2) Each summon takes a % of your max energy, which is removed as long as the summon is alive (could also be a fixed amount of energy instead). So after casting yourself a small army, you find yourself with little energy left for other purposes - thus you constantly have to choose between more minions and more energy for other uses. This does not affect your pips, so in theory, you can still cast support / direct damage spells at a decent rate.
3) Different summons would have different % of max energy removal based on their usefulness.
4) The summon primary would reduce that maintenance cost to permit building a larger army or casting stronger summons, or alternatively to free up some energy for other purposes. Otherwise, having summon as a secondary profession allows you to cast yourself a smaller army, or perhaps an ok-sized army if you're an elemental primary. That being said, the army size remains small.
5) On the issue that the summoner would be unbalanced because of numerical superiority, you already have 3 other classes with different types of "summons": ranger, necro, and ritualist. The summoner's summons would actually be somewhere in between: lasts as long as a pet, but doesn't tank as well individually, can't have as many as the necro's but they require less maintenance, etc.
6) Summons could as a separate class, in the same sense as the necro's undead or the ritualist's spirits. Summons do not leave a corpse.

Character:
Functions like a caster class, with similar armor (60 max), energy refill, etc.

Attributes:
Control (primary):
Reduces the maintenance cost of summons by a %, and makes energy-management skills more efficient.
Maintenance costs are applied after the energy cost is taken, but does not reduce your energy. So if you have 30/30 energy and cast a summon that takes 15 energy to cast, and 5 maintenance, your energy first drops to 15/30 when you start casting, and then to 15/25 once the spell completes (perhaps 16/25-17/25 given that your energy had time to refill a bit).
You need to afford both costs, or the summoning will fail. If the energy cost of a summon is equal or smaller than the maintenance costs, you could drop your max energy to 0. Max energy can never go below 0.
Also includes an unsummon signet, which removes a targeted summon, removes the maintenance cost, and refunds a portion of energy as well (depending on control).

Golem:
Limit of 1 golem per summoner. Casting a new golem removes the previous one. In concept, the golem is similar in functionality to the ranger pet, except that it is more varied. You can have physical / elemental golems, melee / ranged / spell-casting / support golems... You also have spells that affects the golem, much like the ranger class.
Also, golems are usually more expensive in terms of maintenance and energy costs than followers (except perhaps for a very weak golem and a very strong follower).

Followers:
The number of followers is only limited by the energy maintenance cost, thus the largest army possible is determined by the primary attribute and the cost of the cheapest follower (in terms of maintenance) and its cost in terms of energy cost (which is usually higher than the maintenance cost). As an exemple, for a summon that costs 15 energy and 10 maintenance, if your character has 30 energy total, you could cast 2 of them and have 10 energy left after it refills, because even though you can afford the maintenance cost of the third one, you can't afford the initial energy cost (unless you use a skill to reduce energy cost). With higher control, if you reduce the maintenance cost by 50%, you could get 4 and have 10 energy left after it refills.

Support:
Contains skills to support yourself and your "army", such as attack spells, defensive spells, health / energy sharing, summon healing, etc.

This is one of the few good summoner ideas. It includes multiple summoning attributes, a unique cost and limitation and reasonable room for functionality.

For a new writer this is a very thoughtful idea. I will say it lacks much of the flashing attraction neccessary to awe players, and that I couldn't compare it to my summoning ideas, but it is certainly good enough.

There are some figures left out in your idea. First of all, with icons and items, you can raise your characters energy to 42-57. And with an Elementist you can easily raise your energy over 100. So given the energy constraints with this idea, an elementist has a better primary for summoning maintenance than the summoner itself, because his energy can not only match the summoner in Familiar Maintenance, but also be used elsewhere. The only advantage the Summoner would have is in other benifits available from skills in his primary attribute, still having to compete with Elementist supreme energy generation techniques which would undoubtedly be vastly effective for a reduced energy pool.

But it is not taboo to allow certain classes an advantage with other classes skills, some transitional advantage is a very appealing addition. Unfortunately this primary attribute is almost completely useless in supporting of other classes skill use, even with outstanding primary attribute skill ability, it would be a sore waste to invest in this classes primary in a cross build. And even if the support attribute techniques are potent in supporting other classes familiars (spirits, pets and minions), they are perfectly available as secondary class attributes for other classes, and would likely end up being the secondary feature on another class to support their units rather than for this class as a primary to support a secondary classes unit options.

The good of the idea is the use of physical familiars which do not suffer weakness like spirits and minions, seeing as spirits already have an alternative, and an alternative to minions would be another undead raising class, an alternative to pet use is probably the most acceptable option to excersise. I'm not going to compel you to make a better idea out of this simply because I think a finished piece on summoning is already available, but you definetly have the talent to make worth wile ideas, and I hope you make more.

Why can't we be content with summoning in the form of spirits and urns? **cough ritualist cough**

The summoner idea is great but i have to agree that the energy most be higher.
And if his name is WARsummoner i think he should have a melee weapon like a flail or mace.

Why not use an energy pip as a maintainence mechanism, like maintained enchants. At default you'd have a max of 4 and no more, maybe 5 or 6 if we tinker with the primary attribute to give back energy, but 3 could be common enough. That's a good in-between the necro and a pet.

I would suggest adding in some kind of skill line that can buff your summons, or else have summons that buff each other (like the D2 druid... maybe 1 golem, 3 followers, and 1 mobile spirit which doesn't fight but confers buffs on your summons.)

the golem idea seems great, like a flesh golem with eleskills

Thanks BahamutKaiser for the thoughtful and throughout comments. I would like to see links added for variants on the summoner idea, so feel free to add yours here along with a short description of how it differs from mine. I think Anet wants to make a summoner, but perhaps has not found a good way to balance it yet, so hopefully with joint effort we can figure this out

PS: do you have a link to the finished piece on summoning?
Indeed, I have only written another profession idea (the channeler). I think that summoners will be by default adopted by a good proportion of players, and will form a core component of gameplay if balanced well.
This is why I thought that a % maintenance would be better than a constant. The % is calculated on the max energy, after all bonuses to energy have been applied.

So if the cost for a given summon is 20%, you can have at most 5 summons, independent of your equipment. If you cast 4, then you are left with 20% of your energy, which will still be higher for elementalists than for summoners or warriors. Nevertheless, elementalists will still not be able to cast more summons than 5, which only the summoner primary can help with.

Characters with low energy will not have an advantage either, because even though their maintenance costs will be "lower" (% of less energy is less energy), they still have to meet the casting cost. They will be able to maintain an army about the same size as casters, but nevertheless on average smaller.

It's in the maths.
Indeed, if you're not going to summon, then being a summon primary is wasted. However, if you are going to summon, then points in primary has three consequences: (1) you can have a larger army, (2) you can have more energy left after you cast yourself a small army, or (3) a bit of both for a medium army. For options 2-3, an elementalist primary might end up with more energy, but the few skills linked with the primary attribute will suffer.
Thanks again, and again, I would like to read more about the finished summoning idea. I'll attempt to find it, and if I do, I'll include my comments and link here.
I've thought about energy pips, and I have opted against that option for a few reasons. First, this means that anyone with a few minions will have their energy slowed to a crawl. This is problematic if they want to do something useful during the fight rather than just look at their minions. The solutions to make spells cheap means that non-summoning spells will be disproportionally expensive. You'll end up with characters without summons, spamming those cheap summoning spells like no tomorrow.
About the buffs, I think it is a good idea, and I think that both golems and summons can come with buffs, some of which transfer to other nearby summons. Moreover, spells from the Support include buffs that you can apply to your summons.

Basically, in all cases, people are afraid of having too many summons on the battlefield, and also don't want a class too similar to the Rit, the MM, or the ranger pet. However, they would also like to see something like the MM, where there is not a constant need to heal your pets.

By far the most common suggestion is to have -1 pip energy degen, but I have issues with that (see above).

I've looked for some links on summoning, and here's what I found:

From Ian Savage:
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...d.php?t=132960
Primary slows the health degen of your summons. An interesting idea. You also get another attribute to making casting summons faster, than summons fall in 3 categories. You also have the -1degen per summon (not sure why).
This one also generated a lot of talk, which is nice to read for anyone seriously thinking about balance issues around summoner classes. You can see there some of my earlier ideas.

From RuneSeeker1
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...light=su mmon
Uses energy pips as maintenance cost. Some argue that its too similar to MM or Rit - I have not researched the question myself, so, you decide.

From Kai Nui
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...light=summo n
Summons are signets, where I suppose you can maintain only one summon per skill (so if you want 5 summons, that uses up 5 skill slots?).

From Kyten
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...light=summo n
Idea is that casting is faster with primary, and summons last a given amount of time.

keep it at a percentage, that would stop ele from going 2ndary summoner. Do not make it energy maintenence or else you would have mo/s running around with blessed signet. no good.

its a start, i like the primary. Try to make it as different as possible from the normal classes, but try not to repeat other peoples

Indeed, percentage of max energy seems the best (i.e. most balanced, least abusable) way to implement this if you want summons that don't die off or degenerate over time.
Thanks. I'll try to be original, but at the same time, I wanted to acknowledge all others who contributed to my thinking, and help generate discussion.


I'll be posting some sample skills in the next few days. I've already worked out the general ideas behind how the skills will work. I'm currently debating whether the war summoner should appear as a caster, or as a warrior, which will affect his choice of primary weapon. I'm thinking a whip / flail linked to control, along with a shield / focus linked to support.


It would be useful if links were added to other Summoner ideas I might have missed. In particular, BahamutKaiser mentioned that there were "more complete" summoner ideas out there... I'd love to read that, if anyone has the links.

Note: I put X's instead of numbers, simply because these values are likely to change to reflect balance issues.

Control (primary):
Reduces the maintenance cost of summons by a %, and makes energy-management skills more efficient.
Ephemeral summon: next summon does not cost maintenance energy, but only lives 60-120 seconds.
Returned summon: selected summon (yours only) is returned, and you gain 1-5 energy if it had more than half of its life left. Does not work on ephemeral summons, spirits, or undead.

Golem (limit 1 per character):
Golems of different types would preferably have different appearances, but that would require considerably more resources put into making them. An alternative would be to change the texture or the color to reflect the type of golem.

Shield golem (elite): summons a lvl X-X golem that adds X-X armor against physical attacks for all party nearby allies. Golem does not attack.
Pebble golem: summons a lvl X-X golem that throws high-velocity pebbles for X-X damage.
Earth golem (elite): summons a lvl X-X golem that periodically digs itself into the ground, to reappear at the random location of a foe in the area, interrupting that foe.
Protector golem: summons a lvl X-X golem that attacks foes that attack the summoner.
Get him: for X-X seconds, golem becomes aggressive, attacking target foe and doing extra X-X damage per attack.
Protect me: for X-X seconds, golem attacks target foe, and has extra X-X armor.
Rest: for 10 seconds, golem has +X-X health regeneration, +X-X armor, but stays passive.


Followers (limit depends on maintenance costs):
Followers would often be small monsters or objects, many of which taken from various chapters of the game itself, except that they do not inherit all the skills that the same monsters have in the game. Summoned objects are immune to certain conditions, like poison, dazed,

Summon leech: summons a lvl X-X leech that steals X-X life each time it attacks.
Summon extra sword: summons a lvl X-X sword that periodically deals X-X physical damage to a random foe adjascent to the target ally. The sword's location is linked to the target ally.
Shield me: for 10 secs, all followers surround you, and gain X-X armor.
Summon flying bow: summons a lvl X-X bow that attacks for X-X physical damage.
Summon grawler: summon a lvl X-X grawler, which attacks for X-X physical damage.
Summon mimic (elite): summons a lvl X-X morphologically identical copy of yourself. This copy moves around but does not attack or cast spells. However, when you attack or cast a spell, it mimics your movements.

Support:
Share health: spreads health of yourself, your golem, and all of your followers, for up to X-X% towards the average health.
Ignore target: for 10 seconds, followers and your golem ignore target foe, attacking other targets instead, with extra X-X damage.
Sickness: for X-X seconds, adds a X-X% chance that golem & followers will inflict bleeding condition when succesfully attacking.
Sickness: for X-X seconds, adds a X-X% chance that golem & followers will inflict poison condition when succesfully attacking.
Sacrifice for survival: unsummon summon with lowest life, and redistributes that life evenly to other summons.

This profession is meant to be balanced. So far, I have discussed how to balance the profession such that it is fun to play, useful as primary or secondary, and balanced relative to other professions. However, I have not yet considered initial / late advantage issues, which I will correct here.

This profession would naturally be at an initial advantage, because of the ability to build an army from scratch, and letting your energy max out before engaging. This can be curbed to some extent by having a "adrenaline" equivalent for the war summoner: aggressivity.

Aggressivity is built up by you or your summons hitting the ennemy. It can be spent on spells either for special summons, or for most attack / defense spells that affect your summons. This means that the summoner is more effective in the middle of the fight, rather than at the onset.

This concept also helps balance out late fight, where you have lost a few summons, by freeing some energy so that those can be re-summoned.

OK, I wrote my ideas on summoner in someone elses thread, I never developed it all here, it was in a thread on another forum, I will have to find the link.

But for basics, my idea involved the energy maintenance cost, and as a primary increased energy regeneration to offer a unique and powerful advantage, simular to Elementist or Rangers Primary, but also counteract their Summoning cost, with additional energy regeneration countering energy maintenance.

My suggestion involved more elaborate "monster" or "creature" summons, like Rodgort the Fire Demon (see elementist spell Rodgorts Invocation), twin ice wolves named Frost and Chill, and other unique creature summons. Elites like the 2 mentioned here were coupled with energy maintenance of 3, making it very costly to maintain, even with a maximum of 4 energy regeneration increase in my summoners primary attribute (at 16), you would basicly be brought down to normal regeneration by one elite summon. Other classes would require powerful energy restoration techniques, provided in one of the summoners supplimentary attributes, which allow for cheap and frequent energy restoration, allowing someone to summon creatures costing them most or all of their maintenance, and using energy restoration techniques to replenish themselves.

As for more generic summons like your Golems, if your just going to use the elemental creatures of the game as summon material, than I would suggest a greater focus on the Djinns and Ethers in Nightfall, as they are far more interesting and attractive elementals than the Golems of Prophecies.

Another idea I had for cost is exhaustion. Exhaustion is currently featured only on Elementist, and he counteracts it with higher energy pools, but if summon creatures mostly included exhaustion, it would be a temporary but difficult cost to overcome. With a Primary that lowers the amount of energy lost from exhaustion by 1 point per 2 attributes, you could reduced exhaustion on this class as a primary to very little, and also give them an advantage with elementist skills that involve exhaustion. But likely the best would be a reduction at 1 point per 3 attributes, and either way it would also require another small supplimental improvement to summoned units per point so it isn't useless between thresholds. I would suggest increased summoned unit armor by 1 per point, this could also be a powerful improvement to Minions and Ritual Spirits giving Summoner class an advantage with armored units that take less damage.

As for Ritualist, I agree that they are technically summoners, they summon the spirits of the dead. The problem with this is that it is a very narrow and secluded form of summoning, almost developed to create an opportunity for other summoning, it does not provide the appeal of an summoner that creates powerful and functional units. This is also why I do not like the golem idea, with golem summoning, your basicly an elemental MM, different mechanics, different cost, but still summoning a bunch of generic creatures to your aid, for a 4th familiar class, a class which brings extravagant summon monsters is a must (IMO), because it seperates it from exsisting familiars and satisfies the interest in flashy power summons that so many players like. A class which has big powerful summons, and utilizes abilities through their summon (a step up from beast mastery which only uses attacks through their pet), you provide a unique and enjoyable class.

But even more importantly, Right now Ritualists Primary only affects 2 other classes abilities other than his own, Necromancers MM, and Rangers Nature Rituals. Along with its own Binding Rituals, the Ritualist is very limited in effectiveness with his own primary. Having a new summon feature on another class is an important diversity feature which would increase the potential of his primary, and possibly summon related skills. So it is just as supportive of Ritualist to add a major summoning class to the game, if not more supportive than distracting.

I have to admit, the idea for increased energy regeneration as a primary is very strong, allowing the highest upkeep in the game and giving the Summoner heavy advantages with any other classes energy skills, but by reducing Summoners own attributes to demand a summon medium to use any effects, summoner would at least require a particular class combination to take advantage of increased spell use. It may seem overpowered, but in actuallity I don't think it is any different than Rangers Expertise, which can reduce the actual cost of spells by 40-50%, half cost is almost the exact same thing as double energy regeneration, just different means. Both are better than double max energy, except when facing exhaustion. I really think the maintenance idea is better than the exhaustion idea because exhaustion is very prohibiting for other classes, whereas increasing your energy and maintaining it is alot more common through many classes.

Here is the most I have writen on summoner. You can read through a couple of pages to see some of the elaboration done on the idea.
http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forum...=class+ide as

I also discussed the idea in a thread on this forum, basicly as an example to compare a very bad summoner idea, but I cannot find it, there isn't much in that to elaborate on the idea though.

i would limit 1 summoned creature of each type for the entire party. This would stop having a party of 8 summoners with 4 each that would mean 32+8 = 40 foes.

also, i'd like to have a summoned creature that restores energy over time. This could be useful for the monks in your team.

Summoned creature could have the armor and life of a spirit.

Note: they are vulnerable to Unnatural Signet.

(wait a minute! this actually makes sense. could this be the reason for the buff in Unnatural Signet? :O )

You forgot my Guardian/Magus!

nice idea.

I really hope they bring out a summoner class

Absolutely. I think summoner could also either summon mounts or shapeshift, which would work (in game mechanics terms) similarly to the Dervish forms.

That sounds great. I have to admit, past my balance ideas, I could use some help from ppl that have better RPG-imagination

I agree with that. They could of course make up an entirely new line of creatures...

Actually, this is quite frequent. Melee chars tend to affect melee ability (criticals), casters affect casting (speed / storage / efficiency), etc. But summoners primary will want to have a few summons (unless some strange balance issue pops up), freeing them up to use other skills while their summons do their jobs. It's the fact that you don't have to actively maintain your summons that makes this fun, you can spend your fighting time actually fighting, unlike the necro who spends his time donating blood.

This idea is pretty interesting. Summoner primary gets better tanks

I think that this is a popular idea, but difficult to implement and ultimately unbalanced. Here's why:
1) You're limited to summons that have -1, -2, and perhaps -3 energy degen. That means you're limited to about 3-5 summons of the lowest kind, regardless.
2) The summoner becomes the only class that has access to very high energy regen. Sure, that regen is eaten up by summons, but only IF he chooses to have summons. Monks and elementalists would be better off going summoner primary, and not have a summon, thus giving them the advantage during longer fights.
3) The energy degen would be hell to deal with for summon secondaries, making the summon secondary an unviable option.

Ranger drops cost of skills, not spells. That makes a huge difference in balance, as the ranger advantage can't be used to heal or to cast meteor showers. In contrast, your idea of energy pips increase would affect all classes by allowing them to spam their skills and disregard high energy costs. Even if you require the summoner to have one summon to benefit from this, he will cast one with -1 energy degen, and still have the advantage in spamming his spells.

Problem with that is that the cost is harsh for initial cast, and if you lose your army... but summoners will usually cast their army first, regen their energy, then engage. That means that they will have to regen longer, but otherwise, this will come at no penalty during the fight as long as they don't have to rebuild their army during the fight... Balance problem again, IMHO.

There is nothing to stop having a team of summon necros & ritualists, yet you don't typically see 8 of them summon themselves an army. A balanced team needs at least some form of healing, spiking / pressure damage, etc... An army of 8 summoners (necros, rits, and summoners) will make a formidable army, perhaps, but will not be effective. They will be especially vulnerable to AoE spells with some tanks in the middle, as this will multiply the damage by the number of summons in the area.

I therefore see the new summoner class as an alternative to the summoner... a more attractive one for those who don't want the micro-management needed to keep the summons alive.

My 2 cents

for one. i think this would be a great class... good thread man! w00t!

Thanks.
I just love summoning