Drake summons are utter trash

[Daudastund]

I am lvl 19 now, and they do just piss poor damage. I see no reason why I should prefer this summon over 3 Wyrms. Was against some Vithracks in the forgotten Sanctum, the drake made with its normal attack whooping.. 2 damage and that if it even hits at all. The fire flame is weak too and can be only used once. Also the text flavor says, if it dies another one appears. Only that it doesnt! What am I doing wrong?They need to buff summons. 

Edited March 26, 2020 by Daudastund

[Boeroer]

48 minutes ago, Daudastund said:

What am I doing wrong?

You picked the wrong summons. These here: "Called to His Bidding, the Ancient Instruments of Death" are actually quite good and the weapons scale with your level (unlike most other chanter summons).

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Daudastund said:

I am lvl 19 now, and they do just piss poor damage. I see no reason why I should prefer this summon over 3 Wyrms. Was against some Vithracks in the forgotten Sanctum, the drake made with its normal attack whooping.. 2 damage and that if it even hits at all. The fire flame is weak too and can be only used once. Also the text flavor says, if it dies another one appears. Only that it doesnt! What am I doing wrong?They need to buff summons. 

1. another drake should appear, but it's not a member of your party. it's "enraged" so i believe at best it's a member of your team, but not anything directly controllable.

2. the vast majority of summons are stuck with a really lame 7 PEN, with no upscaling - the only option to improve this is Animancy Cat. Even the AL9 "The great wyrm flew o'er the mountains" dragon only has 7 PEN. This means--especially on PotD--nominally powerful summons will be at like -75% underpenetration. This is what makes the animated weapons that @Boeroer mentions are so good - they are treated as being equipped with weapons, which DO scale upwards and get more PEN. Similarly I believe priest Spiritual Ally also gets scaling gear, making it notably better on harder difficulties/late game than summons from other classes that are supposed to be good at summoning (e.g. druid). edit - this also means that abilities that reduce enemy AR are really good for summoning-heavy setups (expose vulnerabilities, the shield cracks, even mass flanking)

3. Speaking of which AL9 dragon is another massively good summon, even though its basic attack is guaranteed to be at -75% underpenetration in most fights. It just has enormous amounts of health (~1000+ with some elemental immunity - i literally used this summon to facetank some megabosses for me) and its abilities have MASSIVE powerlevel scaling (something like +20 PL bonus) so even if it's basic attack only has 7 PEN, its tail lash can easily do 150+ damage per enemy with overpenetration bonus (same thing with its prone attack and flame breath). I used it on a bellower--the bonus PL from the bellower made the summon last *huge* amounts of time, basically giving >100% uptime.

 

Even without PEN upscaling and some misses, most summons are still hugely good. I think expecting pure damage from anything other than the animated weapons summon is a mistake, though, and some summons (the 3 wyrms you mention as a fallback) are so clearly single-mindedly focused on (crappy) damage that they're hard to justify over even just the basic AL1 skeleton summon. Summons (esp chanter summons) tend to have a lot of supplemental effects, and if not that they may still be useful just as huge bodies to make the enemy waste their abilities and time.

Fortunately, if a summon isn't working out for you - you can respec.

Edited March 26, 2020 by thelee

[Boeroer]

Most summons I see as mere decoy for enemies à la "here, attack those guys while I beat you". 

[thelee]

1 minute ago, Boeroer said:

Most summons I see as mere decoy for enemies à la "here, attack those guys while I beat you". 

i think that's very true for druids - the difference between them all is basically "how long before the enemy is able to attack me again."

i really like most chanter summons though. the wisps you can use to spam prones everywhere; the spore has infinite charm capability; the ogres are good cheap tanks and can prone; etc.

[Daudastund]

17 minutes ago, thelee said:

1. another drake should appear, but it's not a member of your party. it's "enraged" so i believe at best it's a member of your team, but not anything directly controllable.

2. the vast majority of summons are stuck with a really lame 7 PEN, with no upscaling - the only option to improve this is Animancy Cat. Even the AL9 "The great wyrm flew o'er the mountains" dragon only has 7 PEN. This means--especially on PotD--nominally powerful summons will be at like -75% underpenetration. This is what makes the animated weapons that @Boeroer mentions are so good - they are treated as being equipped with weapons, which DO scale upwards and get more PEN. Similarly I believe priest Spiritual Ally also gets scaling gear, making it notably better on harder difficulties/late game than summons from other classes that are supposed to be good at summoning (e.g. druid). edit - this also means that abilities that reduce enemy AR are really good for summoning-heavy setups (expose vulnerabilities, the shield cracks, even mass flanking)

3. Speaking of which AL9 dragon is another massively good summon, even though its basic attack is guaranteed to be at -75% underpenetration in most fights. It just has enormous amounts of health (~1000+ with some elemental immunity - i literally used this summon to facetank some megabosses for me) and its abilities have MASSIVE powerlevel scaling (something like +20 PL bonus) so even if it's basic attack only has 7 PEN, its tail lash can easily do 150+ damage per enemy with overpenetration bonus (same thing with its prone attack and flame breath). I used it on a bellower--the bonus PL from the bellower made the summon last *huge* amounts of time, basically giving >100% uptime.

 

Even without PEN upscaling and some misses, most summons are still hugely good. I think expecting pure damage from anything other than the animated weapons summon is a mistake, though, and some summons (the 3 wyrms you mention as a fallback) are so clearly single-mindedly focused on (crappy) damage that they're hard to justify over even just the basic AL1 skeleton summon. Summons (esp chanter summons) tend to have a lot of supplemental effects, and if not that they may still be useful just as huge bodies to make the enemy waste their abilities and time.

Fortunately, if a summon isn't working out for you - you can respec.

Thanks. I was kinda frustrared that I didnt leveled up so well. 

[Daudastund]

From my experience animated weappons have low health. Drakes are at least more tankier and can knock down when it matters. The Vithrack Luminars have an attack which can decimate half my party with a single volley, plus concentration. 

[Elric Galad]

Do you think it's possible to mod (I will try to investigate about this too) ?

And also do you think it would be a good idea to mod this so summons would be more equal ?

[Boeroer]

Summons' stats do scale with character level (well at least most do). However their equipped "weapons" do not most of times. Since those are their own game objects (the weapon I mean) it could be difficult to mod this based on the summoned creature. For example the skeletons do scale their health and ACC and stuff but they always keep their poor swords which are absolutely abysmal.

So basically the equipped weapons would have to scale with the summon as summoned weapons do.

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

Summons' stats do scale with character level (well at least most do). However their equipped "weapons" do not most of times. Since those are their own game objects (the weapon I mean) it could be difficult to mod this based on the summoned creature. For example the skeletons do scale their health and ACC and stuff but they always keep their poor swords which are absolutely abysmal.

So basically the equipped weapons would have to scale with the summon as summoned weapons do.

Yeah, I was thinking about that. Poor weapon could scale too, but would start a couple of ranks below and ends at exceptionnal instead of superb instead of Something like this. It could require creating new items. I would check if feasible.

[Boeroer]

Yes, just copies of the original ones which simply scale with the wearer's level.

[draego]

@Elric Galad that would be nice and just in time. i have a chanter summon character going in POE1 that i wanted to eventually play POE 2 with 

[Elric Galad]

1 hour ago, draego said:

@Elric Galad that would be nice and just in time. i have a chanter summon character going in POE1 that i wanted to eventually play POE 2 with 

Well, I am still not sure that it is feasible and how much time it would take (I'm finishing a package about Cipher/Wiz/"cuttlefish nerf" for now ) and the balance aspect of this is a bit concerning too.

I have already made a few changes for chanters that you might be interested. You can have a look below :

EDIT :

Gotcha, I can confirm feasibility, some summons weapons miss an Item Mod called Scaling weapon  :

        "$type": "Game.GameData.ItemModGameData, Assembly-CSharp",

        "DebugName": "Scaling_Weapon",

        "ID": "9691785d-0207-492a-9c88-47f9a86db8af",

By putting this ID in the ItemModsID it should work :

{

        "$type": "Game.GameData.WeaponGameData, Assembly-CSharp",

        "DebugName": "Dragon_Summon_Claws",

        "ID": "c1938269-baae-4060-adff-0e180ce677ff",

        "Components": [{

            "$type": "Game.GameData.ItemComponent, Assembly-CSharp",

            "DisplayName": 4034,

            "DescriptionText": -1,

            "DescriptionTextTactical": -1,

            "FilterType": "Weapons",

            "InventoryAudioEventListID": "705deb97-3f84-48c8-a84b-e3c34e2d0e3a",

            "IsQuestItem": "false",

            "IsIngredient": "false",

            "IsCurrency": "false",

            "IsAdventuringItem": "false",

            "IsJunk": "false",

            "CanSellForFullValue": "false",

            "MaxStackSize": 1,

            "NeverDropAsLoot": "true",

            "CanBePickpocketed": "false",

            "IsUnique": "false",

            "Value": 0,

            "IconTextureSmall": "gui/icons/items/ingredients/drake_talon_s.png",

            "IconTextureLarge": "gui/icons/items/ingredients/drake_talon_l.png",

            "PencilSketchTexture": "",

            "InspectOnUseButton": [],

            "IsPlaceholder": "false"

        }, {

            "$type": "Game.GameData.EquippableComponent, Assembly-CSharp",

            "EquipmentType": "None",

            "EquipmentSlot": "AnyWeapon",

            "AppearancePiece": {

                "ModelVisualDataPath": ""

            },

            "ItemModsIDs": [],

 

 

{

        "$type": "Game.GameData.WeaponGameData, Assembly-CSharp",

        "DebugName": "Animated_Pike_Summon",

        "ID": "f833e3c8-a58a-4d84-8670-fa84c7f9c1e5",

        "Components": [{

            "$type": "Game.GameData.ItemComponent, Assembly-CSharp",

            "DisplayName": 450,

            "DescriptionText": 275,

            "DescriptionTextTactical": -1,

            "FilterType": "Weapons",

            "InventoryAudioEventListID": "81ec0468-cf25-427e-bdb6-b32013313a97",

            "IsQuestItem": "false",

            "IsIngredient": "false",

            "IsCurrency": "false",

            "IsAdventuringItem": "false",

            "IsJunk": "false",

            "CanSellForFullValue": "false",

            "MaxStackSize": 1,

            "NeverDropAsLoot": "true",

            "CanBePickpocketed": "true",

            "IsUnique": "false",

            "Value": 70,

            "IconTextureSmall": "gui/icons/items/weapons/pike/pike_exceptional_s.png",

            "IconTextureLarge": "gui/icons/items/weapons/pike/pike_exceptional_l.png",

            "PencilSketchTexture": "",

            "InspectOnUseButton": [],

            "IsPlaceholder": "false"

        }, {

            "$type": "Game.GameData.EquippableComponent, Assembly-CSharp",

            "EquipmentType": "Pike",

            "EquipmentSlot": "BothPrimaryAndSecondary",

            "AppearancePiece": {

                "ModelVisualDataPath": "prefabs/items/appearance/weapons/pike/a_pike01_v03_summon.asset"

            },

            "ItemModsIDs": ["6130193a-b513-4b10-96b2-057d384056d3", "b420d957-6932-4b02-8e02-1393b07f390d", "9691785d-0207-492a-9c88-47f9a86db8af"],

Edited March 27, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Elric Galad]

Now the real question is : If I add this mod and the equivalent one for Armor TO ALL SUMMONS WHO DON'T HAVE IT CURRENTLY, would it be balanced ? Does it require some tweaks to balance it out ? Should I remove my previous tweaks to Summon Duration ?

My goal is that all summons should be viable (some cheaper, some narrower, but all usable) and none overpowered.

There's a Huge mess of various Summons in the game not only Chanters), so I could need some help to evaluate this. 

Edited March 27, 2020 by Elric Galad

[draego]

i have never played with summons in deadfire so not sure but it makes since that if you are making them stronger both offensively and defensively maybe the added duration isnt needed but i have no basis to make this claim as i only did one run. 

[thelee]

On 3/26/2020 at 2:53 PM, Daudastund said:

From my experience animated weappons have low health. Drakes are at least more tankier and can knock down when it matters. The Vithrack Luminars have an attack which can decimate half my party with a single volley, plus concentration. 

the animated weapons can also knock down. there are three different weapons (four, with upgrade) and one of them has up to 11 uses of fighter's knock down. this is way better than any other summon i think (with exception of wisps, which have infinite). it's a little tedious, but back when i used animated weapons, i would pause, select the "fighter" weapon, hotkey the knock down with Q, and then pick one enemy and do "q shift-q shift-q shift-q shift-q etc etc" and then unpause. for the rest of the duration the weapon would just basically be constantly knocking down the enemy - the combination of scaling weapons and summon scaling means the weapon has pretty decent accuracy (enough that they were ace against even megabosses).

Edited March 27, 2020 by thelee

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Now the real question is : If I add this mod and the equivalent one for Armor TO ALL SUMMONS WHO DON'T HAVE IT CURRENTLY, would it be balanced ? Does it require some tweaks to balance it out ? Should I remove my previous tweaks to Summon Duration ?

My goal is that all summons should be viable (some cheaper, some narrower, but all usable) and none overpowered.

There's a Huge mess of various Summons in the game not only Chanters), so I could need some help to evaluate this. 

i think it is WEIRD that animated summons and I believe spiritual ally are like the only ones with scaling weapons, but i can't imagine putting that scaling on lower level summons and it being at all balanced (AL1 beckoner skeletons are frankly pretty good even with poor weapons). i think AL9 incarnate--if it doesn't already scale--and maybe higher-level druid summons and higher-level chanter summons could use scaling weapons. (maybe chanter ogres, if they don't already scale)

 

edit - in a more in-depth evaluation, here are the summons that i feel like could use some help (with either autoscaling weapons or autoscaling weapons+armor):

-> phantom
-> 3 wurms
-> ogres (maybe)
-> dragon (maybe - just seems weird an AL9 summon has base 7 PEN)

for druid:
-> every summon from AL6 and up

for priest:
-> incarnate, if they don't already

Edited March 27, 2020 by thelee

[Elric Galad]

7 minutes ago, thelee said:

i think it is WEIRD that animated summons and I believe spiritual ally are like the only ones with scaling weapons, but i can't imagine putting that scaling on lower level summons and it being at all balanced (AL1 beckoner skeletons are frankly amazing even with poor weapons). i think AL9 incarnate--if it doesn't already scale--and maybe higher-level druid summons and higher-level chanter summons could use scaling weapons. (maybe chanter ogres, if they don't already scale)

Anyway, I think the first step is to get all data about their current state. This would help both modding and also players who don't want to use mods. Then we'll see.

[Boeroer]

The skeletons are good as temporary blockers because they have engagement and you can steer them. But they do almost nil damage after some levels because poor swords have such low PEN that they underpenetrate nearly everything with -3 and the general damage they do ist already pretty low. 

I wouldn't want to see them swinging legendary swords, but something like exceptional in the later levels would be totally ok.

Poor swords just don't cut it, höhöhö.

So... is it possible to apply a "slower" scaling pattern?

Also: Aspect of Galawain - my goodness is it bad offensively (besides the looks and that you can cast Wild Growth on it). It's fangs/claws/whatever need scaling very badly. And if it's already in place: better scaling or better weapons to start with.

Edited March 28, 2020 by Boeroer

[asnjas]

I been in this game game long enough to know summons are always suck. Devs can never figure out summoning or pet classes.

[thelee]

14 hours ago, Boeroer said:

The skeletons are good as temporary blockers because they have engagement and you can steer them. But they do almost nil damage after some levels because poor swords have such low PEN that they underpenetrate nearly everything with -3 and the general damage they do ist already pretty low. 

I wouldn't want to see them swinging legendary swords, but something like exceptional in the later levels would be totally ok.

Poor swords just don't cut it, höhöhö.

i respectfully disagree... with ancient brittle bones it's pretty clear the main intent of the skeletons is to be pure trash, and at that they utterly excel. I particularly love summoning a swarm of them around a caster, because a caster will happily waste a lot of their valuable spells trying to clear out skeletons, spawning even more skeletons in the process. (and for trash fights, the casters have such low AR that the poor weapons actually massacre the poor casters)

i think the flip side is that the phantom definitely needs an upgrade, because it's pretty hard to justify picking at the same ability tier a single phantom that is only kind of better than a single skeleton out of a swarm of 3->6 total skeletons (6->12 for beckoner).

Edited March 28, 2020 by thelee

[Elric Galad]

9 hours ago, thelee said:

i respectfully disagree... with ancient brittle bones it's pretty clear the main intent of the skeletons is to be pure trash, and at that they utterly excel. I particularly love summoning a swarm of them around a caster, because a caster will happily waste a lot of their valuable spells trying to clear out skeletons, spawning even more skeletons in the process. (and for trash fights, the casters have such low AR that the poor weapons actually massacre the poor casters)

EDIT : I don't know how poor weapon + scaling interact. I would have to tests because they are both classified as "quality" mod so they're might have weird interaction. Note that Animated Weapons have both "Exceptionnal" and "Scaling" mod so there's something to check about this.

EDIT BIS : Note that adding a new mod which has the same effect as "Poor" but doesn't interact with "Scaling" would be possible anyway. I'm not too worried about the feasibility, just about the needed time to develop, final balance and of course forgetting about something.

I would tend to think that Skeletons might be the only needed exception : everything should scale but skeletons. However, scaling is not only about PR/AR but also Accuracy and Damages bonus, so this should be used with caution.

Quote

i think the flip side is that the phantom definitely needs an upgrade, because it's pretty hard to justify picking at the same ability tier a single phantom that is only kind of better than a single skeleton out of a swarm of 3->6 total skeletons (6->12 for beckoner).

In my mod, I have set the Phantom upgrade to 45s, making it the longest chanter summon (so it is the best at something since it is also super cheap). I think it would be fine this way if its weapon/armor also scale.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Elric Galad

[Boeroer]

9 hours ago, thelee said:

i respectfully disagree... with ancient brittle bones it's pretty clear the main intent of the skeletons is to be pure trash, and at that they utterly excel. I particularly love summoning a swarm of them around a caster, because a caster will happily waste a lot of their valuable spells trying to clear out skeletons, spawning even more skeletons in the process. (and for trash fights, the casters have such low AR that the poor weapons actually massacre the poor casters)

That is one single use case though. the higher the level/content the more narrower it becomes.

But then: If you put the same skeletons but with exceptional weapons against the same soft casters the outcome would be the same.

In fights against tough foes in the late(ish) game the skeletons are currently very weak. They will get massacred very quickly anyway (they do scale HP but not on the same scale as enemies' dmg output and PEN grow) - while they don't even scratch them anymore. They are only good as decoy then which is a bit sad.

Still great with a SC Paladin and Divine Retribution of course or with Grave Calling (ot both) - but that's not the intended use I guess.  It wouldn't hurt at all if they at least could scratch non-squishies a bit before getting crushed.

Besides that I could make the argument that Ancient Weapons would also still be somewhat useful if they didn't scale their PEN etc. - if I put them against casters. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to take the scaling away from them. You also called for scaling weapons for wyrms. Still you could use them against casters to some effect...
If scaling weapons is a good thing on some summons it should be good for all. Being systemic and coherent and all that...

In my opinion it's not okay that they are really good offensively in the early game but only circumstancially useful later on - with Obsidian making sure that low level abilites stay relevant via Power Level on the other hand. They don't scale as well as other abilites do. And I think that was an issue that Obsidian wanted to avoid after PoE. In my opinion it's an oversight that the summons themselves do scale their values but not their weapons. Phantom is a very obvious case, but Skeletons are not right as well.   

Due to their numbers a normal weapon scaling would be too good, sure. That's why I said their weapon scaling should be somewhat slower or limited. Lvl-20 guy summoning skeletons with exceptional swords doesn't sound too much - but maybe it's too good indeed. So poor - normal - fine could be it. No idea. One would have to test that. 

A viable ability (for your character) should stay viable throughout the whole game. That's what PL and scaling is supposed to do - but it fails with most summons.

 

Edited March 29, 2020 by Boeroer

[Elric Galad]

10 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

 So poor - normal - fine could be it. 

"PowerLevelScaling": {

                "UseCharacterLevel": "true",

                "BaseLevel": 1,

                "LevelIncrement": 4,

                "MaxLevel": 0,

                "ValueAdjustment": 1,

                "DurationAdjustment": 0

            }

That's the weapon PR Scaling Table. Easy to copy for tweaking. I could do the same for Accuracy and Damages bonus if needed.
I'm confident that everything is possible.
The only limit is dev time (and well... testing). And of course, balance.

Quote

One would have to test that. 

I will do. One day . Working on Rogue Mod at the moment.

More seriously, the number #1 Step is to check what summons currently do.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Elric Galad

[draego]

Ye it seems weird to me that other early level abilities scale with power levels but not summons. so in principle i support trying to scale summons