Conjuration's Comeback

[Erawen]

Ok everyone, I don't know if you've all seen the explosion on the SOE forums, but it's been epic. I thought maybe we should open a discussion here about the direction we want to go regarding summoning as a community. As it is now, it appears most of the spells are just targetable versions of our current arsenal. With this thread I hope that we can talk about upgrades we want for those current items; if they're making new spells we might as well suggest improving the item, right? (Sphere of Air, Levi Ring, Etc.) I guess we don't even know for sure; they may plan to do that already. Anyhow, we should also talk about new summons - whether they're listed on that Spectacular poll or if they're completely new ideas.

I guess we're just discussing anything and everything conjuration.

-Mechanics of new Pet Summons
-Reverse, or any new iteration of CoH
-Pet Armor/Weapons/Trinkets
-Player Items (clickies)
-New Ideas

I might be forgetting topics obviously, but let's just have a good constructive think tank on the implementation of anything here so that we can prepare ourselves for beta.

*I have plenty more to write, but I'll wait til other people toss in some stuff *

[Merlaina]

I'm happy they seem to be changing our item summons to targeted summons for the most part. Some of them however seem to still require an open bag slot, just more indirectly than before (you get a summoned item which you click to "unpack"). I'm not sure if when you unpack these if you get a bag with all the items in it (like our pet armor sets), or you get a bag plus all the items on your cursor (like quiver of marr). I'd definitely prefer the latter over the former, since with the former you still need an open bag slot.

One thing I'd like to see: permanent summoned items. Ice clickies and mod rods are lore anyway, would the world really end if they didn't vanish on logout? We can't sell them (to NPCs), and people sell pet weapons through the bazaar anyway, plus they basically get used up when the pet dies, so what's the big deal? I already have to summon a pet, buff him, and buff myself (plus remember to put my pet on taunt/hold/focus), so would it be too much to ask to only have to summon new weapons every 3 pets? And not have to summon a new rod, ice clicky, and lava orb every time I log in? I mean let's do the login count:

1 - Summon Pet*
2 - Burnout*
3 - Iceflame
4 - DS
5 - Arcane Distillect
6 - Hulking Bodyguard (optional)
7 - Summon Pet Weapons*
8 - Mod rod
9 - Ice clicky
10 - Lava Orb
11 - Empyrean Guardian
12 - Shielding (if I don't have darkpaw focusing, which is usually not the case)
13 - Aegis

So if I didn't still have a pet when I logged out I'm casting 12-13 spells to start my day, and if I did have a pet I'm still probably casting 8-10 spells (since I'll usually recast Iceflame and DS, burnout lasts long enough that I may not recast it). I'm guessing Necros and Beastlords are probably in a similar boat, but what other classes have to cast that many buffs at login? Maybe this is my ignorance of other classes shining through, but I'd guess most only regularly cast half this many spells. I think removing the temporary tag from a few items could be a nice bonus.

[Tacoma2586]

yah cause casting 10spells is so hard and time consuming lol :p

[Erawen]

I think we should definitely get an aa "Persistent Summoning" that makes items we summon permanent. It is really annoying to have to resummon the clickies etc. I'm working on a detailed list of stuff as far as ideas .. I should have that up in a day or so. But keep the comments coming

[Merlaina]

yah cause casting 10spells is so hard and time consuming lol :p

I know, it's a minor gripe, but I don't see the point in items being temporary anymore. When the game started they didn't want people having free weapons (back when our summoned weapons were worth a smurf) but now there's no point in having these things be temporary. And it's not just every time I log in, but every time I die, or even if I lose a pet I have to cast 7-8 of those spells. I'm just suggesting that it wouldn't hurt anything at this point to make summons permanent. They did it with our pets after all.

[Erawen]

Speaking of old summoned weapons, I was going through the entirety of the mage spell line up last night and looking for any of my missing spells. I noticed that most of our summons got thrown by the wayside around the time spells started to become more cookie-cutter. Also, many of the utility items have lost their necessity due to things like ultravision, see invis, etc. becoming easily available to everyone. As I'm still working on my list of stuff, I'm wondering if we should also include ideas for New and more desirable utilities via our summoned items. I should be able to post my entire manifesto as it were later today haha.

And as far as the convenience thing, I think that's totally something mages could use a bit more of - but I don't want it to cause us to give up summoning - yay targetable summons etc. We'll just have to make sure people keep on them about it during beta. I know I'm not as good hashing out damage and parses, so I'd gladly stick to working on the other stuff!

[Merlaina]

If anything were to be requested in the form of summoned utility it would need to be serious utility, not just "kinda nice to have" stuff. I think the majority of mages agree that our main concerns are DPS, pet strength, and mana regen. Summoned items that support those ends: great. Summoned items that don't lead to an increase in one of these areas probably aren't high on the wish list. Changing summon spells to be targetable instead of self only is a fairly easy change, as it removing the temporary tag from items summoned. Creating and balancing new summoned utility items is a good bit trickier and would require considerably more dev time. Dev time that could be spent working on those three categories listed above.

I'm not saying I'm opposed to new summoned utility items, I'm just saying that anything you might want to request had better be smurf good to merit the attention. Personally I'd like to see the molten orb line revived alongside the ice clicky summons, though I'm sure the devs see it as they replaced the molten orbs with the ice clickys, and never the twain shall meet.

[Danille]

This is a very interesting thread. One thing that would be cool would be to eliminate the randomness our caldron spell as an advanced mage of the 90th season should be old enough to have mastered the art of summoning the items truly needed and not a pail of slop!

[Merlaina]

This is a very interesting thread. One thing that would be cool would be to eliminate the randomness our caldron spell as an advanced mage of the 90th season should be old enough to have mastered the art of summoning the items truly needed and not a pail of slop!

I actually don't mind the randomness. It makes it so we can't on demand summon a windcloak. If we could it would probably be considered overpowered (and the rogues would scream bloody murder). I wouldn't mind if they decided that at level 90 we were at least skilled enough to avoid the pail of slop though.

[Yaddab]

This is a very interesting thread. One thing that would be cool would be to eliminate the randomness our caldron spell as an advanced mage of the 90th season should be old enough to have mastered the art of summoning the items truly needed and not a pail of slop!

Hey but even experts make mistakes sometimes - just more rarely ..so reduce the chance, and please why does it only happen whenIi have just died and have no spare cauldron weapons !

On a more serious note. now that the cauldron items are not temporary, thank goodness, I really dont see any need for any of our other items to be temporary either, and as merlaina posted above as a mage it seems to take me so long to get ready when I log on, Ii mean why did my orbs and mana rods have to disappear. Sadly I still use one Gift of Xev to add to that list too


On another note, I am rarely rarely asked for an invis stone in this age of group invis, but perhaps that is more of a raid thing.