Asuran Summons Discussion

There is a big difference here. Asuran summons have a one at a time limit, which means no matter how much sooner it recharges, it only matters to replace a lost one.

With Ebon vanguard assassin support, you can have several assassins up at the same time. Several assassins activating barbs/mark of pain, distracting enemies, knocking down hexed foes, with more coming in with arcane echo/assassin's promise recharge/any boss killed recharge/HSR recharge boost/EBSoW recharge/...

I use EVAS on my SoS rit. It is useful because EVAS can group a mob for me and then I can cast Painful Bond on the entire mob before warping my spirits in to pummel them. It's much more useful that way than any asuran summon and plays an active role to synergize the build. The asuran summons basically don't synergize with anything.

^ I'm currently playing a spirit rit and I can't hardly ever find room for these summons. Vampirism, Draw Spirits and Pain Inverter are my PvE skills of choice.

When I occasion were to use one of the summons it would still be the assassin instead of Vampirism because this whole 3 second cast is putting me off, and the assassin does all the damage when I want him to and isn't just another ally with one skill.

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Also This thread made me go finish the polymock quests on my current char and damn it was a pain even worse than the solo quests.

I wouldn't carry Pain Inverter either. Yes, it has specific situations where you can absolutely rape an elementalist but I'm sure it's overall contribution is fairly minimal. (Impossible to really compute a DPS calculation).

I also think Finish Him! is highly overrated. Other than an AP recharge, it's basically a maximum of 180 damage and cracked armor on an enemy that is already dying. In H/H PvE, an enemy with less then 50% health is one that is already targeted by your team's AI and is going to die regardless in a short time. Coupled with a 15 second recharge, I consider that a weak skill.

It's the ONE PvE skill I wouldn't be doing HM dungeons without.

As I mentioned before overall contribution/DPS isn't that important getting things killed when you need to is.

Respectfully disagreeing with you on the second point. A shout that delivers a damage spike, cracked armor and a deep wound every 15s is definitely not a weak skill. It's overpowered. Sure your AI might kill that target soon, but on the other hand it might heal up and continue attacking. But with the push of a button you can "Finish Him!" and flatten that enemy, instantly, from a distance. Pretty amazing.

On the first point, don't sell Pain Inverter too short. Sure, it gets most of its press from blowing up "hard mode ele bosses" and the like, but it also does very well at blowing up non-bosses. It's not only for niche use. This skill will guarantee a one-shot kill on most enemies that use Churning Earth, Maelstrom, or other AoE skills, especially if you bring minions. Pushing one button and WTFinsta-gibbing up an enemy that would otherwise continue dropping AoEs down on you is useful in many situations. (i'm looking at you, stone summit warders)

But if it's just you, solo, with spirits? Pain Inverter probably won't shine too bright, unless you put it on something that AoE's all your spirits at once.


@topic, EVAS is a skill unlike any other, and I don't even care about its DPS output. To me, the skill description of EVAS reads: "Conjure meat in the middle of a pack of enemies, to hold them in place for a sec, so you can nuke them before they scatter, and so they blow their initial damage spike on it, rather than on you."

I love it!

Good points, I think you guys are changing my mind on a lot of these skills, especially the EVAS. I'll give them all a try.

Anyone willing to defend the relative value of Vampirism? It seems mainstay on most Rit bars but ultimately, even with the Painful Bond applied, it's basically 20 DPS and some heal. Obvious great for solo farming but in full party PvE? I'm thinking it should be dropped in favor of better skills (including my beloved Asuran Summons... ....).

Keep in mind, PvE is not 2 infinite HP teams beating each other to death for all eternity. The fact that an asuran summon can out-DPS EVAS over a minute period is irrelevant when you spend half that time running between mobs. EVAS's recharge of 30s is about the rate at which you can kill one enemy and move on to the next. The reason spike skills like EVAS/Finish Him are useful is because if you can spike off 1 or 2 enemies you pretty much win the battle right there and the rest is just clean up. That said, I would still never bring EVAS unless running AP.

Well, its armor ignoring which means a ton in HM. Large spirit groups also body block pretty well, which makes an enemy melee line very easy to nuke. Not amazing but its OK. Bad players that bring an entire bar of spirits are bad though.

since your dedicating a skill slot for the summon it should be 1 sec cast time like the rit spirits and have a 30 second recharge. even with those buffs evas is still superior.

A lot of valid points have already been brought up both for and against, but to me, Ice Imp isn't too spectacular snare-wise because:

1. There's no control over it.

   Although the Ice Imp will spam Ice Spikes when it can, it won't always target your target, so you won't necessarily get the snare where you want it (it will be useless some of the time). Beyond not being able to choose where you get the snare, you also can't choose when you'll get the snare. While the Imp may spam it, you aren't guaranteed to have it up when you need it.

2. Deep Freeze is better.

   Although costing more energy and overall taking more effort to use, the increased range of Deep Freeze is a great advantage. If you're running any AoE larger than adjacent range then upgrading to Deep Freeze is going to be more useful. If using the snare to immobilize melee, etc., the increased range is also going to be more useful because you'll be able to potentially snare more foes (unless all the foes are nicely balled into adjacent range, Deep Freeze is going to have an advantage over Ice Spikes). Finally, Deep Freeze has a greater duration and efficiency than Ice Spikes (10sec vs. 6sec, 58.82% vs. 50%) so for longer lasting AoE, Deep Freeze is going to have another advantage.

i cant really judge, i cant even beat the pokemasters to actually be rewarded these skills.

I just did it to the end using 3 purple pieces (kappa, fire elemental, earth elemental). I'm really bad at interrupting, so I didn't even try. They will always open with a glyph of concentration and then their big attack which you can still block. You can then cast your own glyph of concentration and then your biggest spell. Otherwise I just spam away, just blindly casting block and the interrupt (I don't bother trying to time it, I just cast it on recharge). Usually blocking that first attack and getting your big attack successfully cast will ensure you a win. Obviously you want to recharge your energy as soon as it gets to zero too.

So in other words, it's pretty doable and obviously helps if you can get your hands on a few powerful pieces. It doesn't take a ton of strategy so I wouldn't be afraid to try it.

I struggled with Polymock until I was lucky and got a Gold Polymock from a chest. As per poster above though, get a few purples and its less tricky.

The wikis are quite good telling you what pieces work best against each poly-master and which are the main "must interrupt skills" that they use.

I have completed polymock on all 9 of my characters now and got my missus through it on one of hers too

There are only two of the encounters that are really tough - Blarp and Volumandus.

I tried quite a few times the other day and finally beat Blarp, then I proceeded to fail at Volumandus a couple of times before trying the other two and I could do those pretty easy and with the pieces I got from that I could beat Volumandus as well, the final battle wasn't hard but maybe I was just lucky.

Not true, because your Asuran summon can be killed before its lifespan is up so having a faster recharge still helps sometimes.

They still need a 30s recharge so without AP and arcane echo, you can only have 1 vanguard sin for 15s max and be without one for another 15s. You need to gain 50% faster recharge to have it up all the time without using tricks like AP or arcane echo.

It still helps if your asuran summon is killed before its natural lifespan.

Only with tricks like AP or arcane echo, otherwise its natural recharge is a long 30s for a sin that only lasts for 15s. You can't have more than one sin out at a time without resorting to these tricks.

Although I use EVAS a lot more, I like the fact that I don't need to control my asuran summon on my passive character when I am bringing 2 characters across a mission at the same time.

I think you guys convinced me on the Ebon Sin. Just doing a few misc missions with the sin in place of the Ruby Djinn and the sin is clearly more effective overall. The main advantage I see is the ability to spike a monk or other desirable target right out of the gate and as mentioned the sin just draws the whole mobs attention almost every time so they do all waste their initial spells on him. That alone makes him immensely valuable even if the enemy manages to kill him right out of the gate.

Thank for all the input, very appreciated.

The only useful asuran summons are Ruby Djinn and Naga Shaman (for some particualar SC).
Though, PI, EVAS and YMLAD! own them easily

They are decent meatshields when you have em at level 20.