Do summons level up?

[Not So Clever Hound]

[Elric Galad]

59 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

 

However the Ultimate was somewhat a competitive event and out of the first 12 only one was using summons heavily, even tho technically they are an ideal and safe choice.

Well Ultimate is a very specific experience anyway. Like how may subclasses were able to complete ? 5 ? 6 ?

And it relies heavily on various cheese.

59 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

This is simply due to them being underwhelming in the damage department and this includes the animated weapons even tho they are the best summons AND scale.

Now ofc I agree it's most likely an oversight the other summons don't scale, that doesn't change the fact it's in the game and won't be patched except by mods.

At the end of the day summons are at best a distraction in deadfire and even if all summons scaled properly none of them would even come close to the planetars, elemental princes or even the humble skeleton warriors of BG.

While BG summons might have been unbalanced in the way that some of them were too op (subjectively),

in deadfire summons have a hard time competing with other skills.

I personally find some of the summons to be among the very best abilities, mixing offensive and defensive properties. But once again I'm not familiar with the most extreme way of playing. I cap at Party PotD.

59 minutes ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Their main use is being a distraction or solving fights underleveled by keeping your party completely out of the fight and let the summons do all.

Killing Dorudugan with only summons damage is a feat of much patience.

Dorudugan is again a special case. About 2/3 of abilities are useless vs him. Summons still being relevant as fodders is still better than what most abilities can do in this fight.

 

I had a very good experience with Monk's Twins Vs Hauna O Whe. The simple fact that they deal Fire and Ice damages enabled each one of them to compete with my party's Auto Attacker.

[Raven Darkholme]

1 hour ago, Elric Galad said:

Well Ultimate is a very specific experience anyway. Like how may subclasses were able to complete ? 5 ? 6 ?

And it relies heavily on various cheese.

I personally find some of the summons to be among the very best abilities, mixing offensive and defensive properties. But once again I'm not familiar with the most extreme way of playing. I cap at Party PotD.

Dorudugan is again a special case. About 2/3 of abilities are useless vs him. Summons still being relevant as fodders is still better than what most abilities can do in this fight.

 

I had a very good experience with Monk's Twins Vs Hauna O Whe. The simple fact that they deal Fire and Ice damages enabled each one of them to compete with my party's Auto Attacker.

Well before Strand it was very restricted, but @abotthe only summoner who finished the Ultimate already used strand, so from that point on any class could finish it with good enough strategy.

I never said summons are "bad" my whole argument was based around how balanced they are compared to using other abilities.

You are correct that theres plenty of other abilites who don't do enough damage on something as tanky as Dorudugan.

As Kaylon said balance is quite a subjective thing.

Are some tools just too op (dots, blade cascade) or others too weak?

[Reent]

2 hours ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Balance mainly comes from Multiplayer games.

When using a class/skill/item etc. gives you an unfair advantage over people not using it its likely to get patched.

Same when something is underused. (In an ideal scenario)

In Deadfire being a singleplayer game I do agree it is more subjective, since players only compete with themselves, not with others.

However the Ultimate was somewhat a competitive event and out of the first 12 only one was using summons heavily, even tho technically they are an ideal and safe choice.

This is simply due to them being underwhelming in the damage department and this includes the animated weapons even tho they are the best summons AND scale.

Now ofc I agree it's most likely an oversight the other summons don't scale, that doesn't change the fact it's in the game and won't be patched except by mods.

At the end of the day summons are at best a distraction in deadfire and even if all summons scaled properly none of them would even come close to the planetars, elemental princes or even the humble skeleton warriors of BG.

While BG summons might have been unbalanced in the way that some of them were too op (subjectively),

in deadfire summons have a hard time competing with other skills.

Their main use is being a distraction or solving fights underleveled by keeping your party completely out of the fight and let the summons do all.

Killing Dorudugan with only summons damage is a feat of much patience.

While Summon damage isn't that high, its high enough - one use of summon weapons can shred enemy kith casters.

Sure, it doesn't compare to zero recovery auto attacks of a melee character, or or or... but what do you expect???

its one ability (spell cast), you don't start buffing your summons with haste, invisibility and and and (well, i'd love to see a fully buffed ancient weapon with alacrity of motion, too bad you can't), for one spell use you get a good distraction that deals damage too, used correctly its a bit like a CC that deals damage too, reliably.

Summoning in POE2... you don't invest heavily into summoning, no items (maybe one pet), simply 1-2 talents and "time".

 

I think you are too far into Blade Cascade and breaking the game - if i have a choice to cast eld nary or ancient weapons with a bellower that is maxed out on buffs and everything, against kith, i will cast eld nary and wait until all the enemies are dead - nothing else needed. If i have a Herald as heal bot, with a large shield, low perception - i will cast ancient weapons and laugh while my party never is in danger of dying and still can kill the backline with this one character.

[Raven Darkholme]

13 minutes ago, Reent said:

While Summon damage isn't that high, its high enough - one use of summon weapons can shred enemy kith casters.

Sure, it doesn't compare to zero recovery auto attacks of a melee character, or or or... but what do you expect???

its one ability (spell cast), you don't start buffing your summons with haste, invisibility and and and (well, i'd love to see a fully buffed ancient weapon with alacrity of motion, too bad you can't), for one spell use you get a good distraction that deals damage too, used correctly its a bit like a CC that deals damage too, reliably.

Summoning in POE2... you don't invest heavily into summoning, no items (maybe one pet), simply 1-2 talents and "time".

 

I think you are too far into Blade Cascade and breaking the game - if i have a choice to cast eld nary or ancient weapons with a bellower that is maxed out on buffs and everything, against kith, i will cast eld nary and wait until all the enemies are dead - nothing else needed. If i have a Herald as heal bot, with a large shield, low perception - i will cast ancient weapons and laugh while my party never is in danger of dying and still can kill the backline with this one character.

Maybe I'm mentioning Blade Cascade too much, but I'm just doing this to show my own subjective interpretation of balance.

I'm not even saying everything should be as strong as blade cascade, that's why I said earlier the question is if one tool is too strong or the others too weak.

[Griffonheart]

On 5/25/2021 at 4:55 PM, Raven Darkholme said:

A very good example is another chanter invocation Thrice was she wronged.

Not only is the Powerlevel 3 upgrade Her Revenge an amazing upgrade, but thru scaling it remains one of the best invocations thru the entire game.

Never tried it! I will give it a go.

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Raven Darkholme said:

Balance mainly comes from Multiplayer games.

When using a class/skill/item etc. gives you an unfair advantage over people not using it its likely to get patched.

Same when something is underused. (In an ideal scenario)

In Deadfire being a singleplayer game I do agree it is more subjective, since players only compete with themselves, not with others.

This "balance doesn't matter because it's single-player" is a misguided trope I keep seeing.

The biggest examples personally I can think of in multiplayer for balance are still relatively noncompetitive (e.g. MMORPGs in PvE/raid environments).

The "balance" needs come from making choices meaningful. There's no meaningful choice if there's a clearly better ability. The argument doesn't even matter if people are just interested in flavor for the other nine, it basically acts as a penalty for people who want to use the other nine abilities. E.G. people who want to use druids as summoners on PotD are basically punished by having weirdly implemented and poorly scaling (if at all) summons compared to even wizards. It's not even really a subjective matter - the maths that designers use to tweak and balance WoW or whatnot is still mostly the same math you can use on single player games (except you perhaps have a much, much smaller population for live telemetry if you even instrument for telemetry).

 

I get that some ppl really like the JRPG-style, have clearly OP&terrible powers and who cares about balance approach. I don't. I like looking at a system full of different spells/abilities/items and finding many ways to put together interesting builds with interesting tradeoffs with meaningfully different optimizations [no coincidence that of all the SP final fantasies I enjoy FFT the most]. Absolute balance is never going to be possible, but so long as there's meaningful decision-making along the way (e.g. Fireball in AD&D is a wildly powerful third-level spell, but there are legitimate reasons to pick up other spells instead without feeling like you're handicapped) it's fine.

Edited May 26, 2021 by thelee

[Not So Clever Hound]

I don't think that anyone here made the argument that balance doesn't matter because it's a single player game, but I really appreciate your detailed point about meaningful choices. This is especially important for a game like Deadfire in which so much of the replay value is about mixing all those amazing classes/abilities/items, finding synergies etc. This is the very substance of the game.

Considering the complexity of the different classes and game mechanics, I think the designers have done an amazing job overall through several rounds of extensive patching. Kudos to them (again). But it's also true that certain classes/subclasses drew the short straw, and every time a certain class/subclass is just strictly worse than others, either because of a deliberate choice or because of an oversight, we lose some of that rich potential that the game has to offer. Then I guess that's where the amazing community-led patches/mods come in, if you're so inclined .

Now I think it was @Elric Galad who mentioned in another thread that Deadfire is a party-based RPG first and foremost and as such, its job is to propose a balanced Party-based experience (which it does). But the whole idea of balance changes completely if you start thinking in terms of Solo vs. Party viability. At the same time the game challenges or "taunts" players into Solo gameplay (Solo challenge, obviously The Ultimate). 

Anyway, to me these are the conversations that keep making the game so interesting to play and think about on top of, well, actually playing it. (Which is what I'm going to do now because Belranga is not going to kill itself ).

Edited May 26, 2021 by Not So Clever Hound