Summoners

[lion_mouse]

Hi Devs,

In paper DnD summoners can be powerful casters - in DDO to be perfectly honest they kind of suck - even with 3 past lives of druid and Druid ED or warlock. How about you allow characters to summon 2-4 creatures (or more like DnD does) and allow us to use heighten to up their level (that way if you want a Caster lvl 9 Rat you could) - certain summons are powerful against certain mobs and if summoners could choose to bring out a powerful water elemental (instead of the a lvl 6 one - in a lvl 18 quest dies in about 2 seconds).

The Summon Monster spell or Summon Nature's Ally specifically says "You can only have 1 summoned creature of any type serving you at a time" you could change that to mean type like rat/spider/dog/elemental etc (where as I think type in this instance means druid/wizard/bard/cleric/fs etc) and then allow summoners to be able to summon 2-5 depending on their level - or special feats (or part of Augment Summon feat) or enhancements in the druid/wizard trees - or just make a universal for summoning (that I'd purchase). But at the present time - there is not much incentive to get 3 past lives of druid as you get 1 heroic summon and possible an epic (from epic wolf whistle) and even ones at lvl die rather quickly unless you keep healing them.

Any way this would mean getting past lives of druid became something people would actually consider (and purchase druid) and put them on par with Bards who can charm multiple mobs, or fascinate multiple mobs etc, or other wizard casters who can do mass holds etc.

Anyway something to consider.

Thanks Tim

[rabidfox]

I suspect until they deal with backend stuff to reduce lag that the last thing we'd want is everyone running around with summons out eating up server resources. I'd love to see summons and hirelings buffed up and useful but it feels like other work is likely needed before that can happen.

[Tsutti]

Afaik they've been reluctant to do a summons update because the AI pathing for them would create a lot of lag if they were semi intelligent (or something like that would cause lag, not sure if it's specifically smarter AI). I can't see how what you propose might cause more lag, except if summons already cause lag, so it could be a change in the right direction.

[Hecktor]

Afaik they've been reluctant to do a summons update because the AI pathing for them would create a lot of lag if they were semi intelligent (or something like that would cause lag, not sure if it's specifically smarter AI). I can't see how what you propose might cause more lag, except if summons already cause lag, so it could be a change in the right direction.

I might agree on this, my experience prior to nerfing the spawn of puddings or earth elementals with shroud weapons, i was able to run puddings (good pathing) right down hallways and up ramps to fight in the wiz king or use elementals to help beat down portals with little to no lag effectively in a party instance (but that was a long time ago). However if you had several summoners in your group that might be a different story. Perhaps a party limit of summoned creatures per instance would be an idea. Say a limit of 4 per char or 12 for whole group. In a instance i believe this shouldn't cause noticeable lag in a stable server environment. The question i have is do we actually have a stable server environment at this time?

Currently i find i'm occasionally rubber banding while in a solo instance. I feel we are coming to a point where if DDO wants to grow their player base further from here, an infrastructure upgrade is going to be inevitable. But with that i'm certain the resources would support what the old hardware was capable of doing 8 years ago, and allow for more summoned creature support perhaps. Just a thought. Hardware has come LEAPS and BOUNDS from what we are currently residing upon. (correct me if i'm wrong)

I will say that using this method of play was pretty fun at the time though.

[kanordog]

Images

Please crop your images before Alrik sees them and gets recurring nightmares!

[Hecktor]

Please crop your images before Alrik sees them and gets recurring nightmares!

I hear ya kanordog. lol i'm gonna leave them be this time. a full picture helps illustrate the situation better in this case IMO.