Are summoners still doing ok?

Discussion in 'Mages' started by rutro, Jun 25, 2018.

  1. Adoninilol Well-Known Member

    I don't play live, reeee. Unless you're asking mr.elamite
  2. slica Active Member

    I remember him watching for avatar spawns for us even tho he wasn’t raiding with us. Heh
  3. SacDaddy420 Active Member

    That's a bingo
  4. Mark John Member

    Yes, I remember similar arguments about Warlocks, with Mogrim asserting they needed a boost and a host of others saying they were fine.

    Makes you wonder then, why Warlocks got such a massive boost this xpac; they were fine all along...just had to learn how to play the class and there was a warlock who allegedly led a parse...
  5. Dalandra New Member

    Summoner particularly Conj has had a reducing pot % for pets introduced Ie as every class gains in pot Conj which is pet / swarm related particularly against higher pot mit will keep losing ground .

    Amen That what’s been done by the dev team I still pass well but I see what’s been done if they keep it the same Conj falls by the way of blord . Main change time if you are a competitive dps class type person other wise meh stick with it.
    Beee likes this.
  6. Beee Well-Known Member

    Put a good warlock in a group with a good conj and the conj will be outparsed by factor 3 from the warlock. But this ist not the correct thread for this. And they dont care.
  7. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    Warlocks were always designed to be T1 DPS, conjurors were always supposed to be T2.

    Conjies used to provide more utility in Call of the Hero (nearly completely irrelevant since everyone has the tinkered call and CoV, but it was fantastically useful in Castle Mistmoore days...) We could be more useful now if we could power feed more... Sacrifice could have a shorter timer to allow us to power feed more rapidly.

    Even now, if you give a conjuror a troub, an illy and All The Buffs, that conjy can parse. But without the buffs, which always seem to go to T1 DPS, a conjy does maybe 30% of their potential damage.
  8. Xellium Active Member

    I don't know what your guys are smoking or what your even complaining about. Conjuror's are very good. If equal geared and skilled warlocks are not out parsing conj by a factor of 3... not even close.

    It's all relative to what you experience in your guild.
    My guild has top tier people on just about every class.
    Warlock, Ranger, and Conjures are top 3, any one of us could win any particular fight and we are always within a few percent.
    Necro is right behind by a few percent.

    Stop complaining. You could be a Wizard or an Assassin (do they exist?)
  9. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    Who gets what buffs? That's a huge difference.
  10. Xellium Active Member

    So were just talking about this in guild.
    Turns out that our Conj has the head rune form last xpac and at times has bolster.
    So Conys aren't exactly even Steven with locks as he has some advantages that help him keep up.

    I'm sure the class has issues as most classes do, so I don't want to take away your voice to better summoners.
  11. Rondo9 Active Member

    Fix Fiery Blast please!
  12. Adoninilol Well-Known Member

    Sure back in like 2006, summoner's were obviously intended to be damage classes after all of their utility became useless, when have shards/hearts been necessary in the past 8-9 years? When has call of the hero had any merit once call of the tinkerer/call of the veteran came out?

    You also add in the fact that they were given endlines (like ET, EB, soulburn) things to get them up to damage with other classes so they didn't fall behind when their utility didn't warrant them a raid spot.

    Last time I talked to xelgad in depth about class balance and what he imagined after aeralik had to abandon his great ideas about summoners/rogues being debuffers back in TSO, he said that he wanted summoner's to be somewhat on par with the other classes and perform well without buffs.
    Sigrdrifa likes this.
  13. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    My conjy wants either a ton more utility, or else a ton more DPS. I do raid on my conjy in PoP T2, but it's not a hardcore raid guild by any means. I have only once had the good fortune to have an illy in my group, but I wasn't getting the single target buffs. So really, she's only useful right now because of Ascensions. And I didn't sign up to be an Etherealist, I signed up to be a conjuror!
  14. Mark John Member

    I would say factor of 3 is a gross exaggeration. By my estimate, maybe 1.25 to 1.5. That would be for equally geared and by my estimation skilled players. Of course I have seen Warlocks outparse some Conjs by a factor of 3, but there are other reasons for that not related to class balance in those particular instances. Brings up the difficulty that everyone is working from their own anecdotal experience set, and hence the wide variance of opinions.
  15. Revanu Well-Known Member

    Dps capacity is built around the player not the class. 2 people playing same geared and spell tiered toon will have diff results. Ergo a lot of good monks but more bad ones, a lot of good wizards but way more bad ones, etc etc.

    Also, your dps will only be as good as those around you, either you drag them down or they drag you down or in the adverse you are all boosting to one another.
    Mermut likes this.
  16. Beee Well-Known Member

    Ok sometimes factor 3, Always factor 1.5 to all non warlocks

    The problem is that a conjurer does not have any conjurer ability to make huge dps like apocalypse or catalycism. Communion, swarmpets and even Planeswalker were nerved to ground, so a conjurer can only use ascension spells for dps

    A warlock has spells which are resetted by recapture, ascensions do not reset. Buffs like tempo work much better on a non pet class. New orange mage rune has no benefit for summoners compared with the 2017er rune. All this points show that daybreak does not care about high end classballance - but maybe they simply do not have the resources for this.

    Summoners are actual only average dps classes and a good summoner can still outparse a very very bad warlock ;)


    But maybe there is just a small bug in calculation of crit miti of pets, because in regular Content the difference is not as big, just T3/T4 raids it's terrible

    In my opinion every ability / spell which produce more than 15% output (heal/mana/dps) of a class should be watched if it works correct
  17. Mark John Member


    Absolutely correct. There is no spell or ability that a Conj can employ that will compete adequately. If the pet(s) - including swarm pets - made up the difference it would not be an issue. They are not.

    Unfortunately, I think the lack of balance affecting multiple classes, not just Conj, is an intended consequence of deliberate actions on the part of DB.

    If you are a 'hardcore', competitive player, you are most likely going to switch classes. When you do so, you will be required to reinvest in ascension, spells, familiar upgrades, server transfers to facilitate and accelerate the advancement of your new class. Very likely you will be motivated to spend real $$ to achieve this. That is why, despite the fact I enjoy the game and enjoy raiding, this is very likely my last xpac. My expectation is this will happen again, and again.
  18. Dotuming Active Member

    Ok enough people have asked me in recent days to post about some of the deficiencies in the Conj class that I figured I would make another post in hopes of some changes...(yes i know...not likely.) Please take this with a grain of salt as it only comes from my perspective as a raider of some higher end content. I'm not going to get into where we stand on DPS as its been pretty well hashed out where we sit on the parse. This also may relate in some cases directly to necro's but I won't comment on that.

    What i currently see as some of our issues are the lack of actual spells at the higher end of levels. Of course the devs cannot just change some of the lower portions (re: old combat pets, pet stances, etc.) as it would impact other aspects of the game such as the TLE and actually leveling up a conj.

    The biggest issue i currently notice is that our pets do not scale up when going from tier to tier such as master to GM and GM to Ancient as they should. I have posted before doing multiple tests on raid mobs and training dummies that when you go from GM to Ancient tier, it is 0 to 2% (being generous on rounding...). After spending a metric shitton (canadian metric term) of plat to get swarm pets to ancient, I was hoping that it was not like last expac whereas there was again no increase from GM to Ancient. Disappointed to say the least. Yes there are issues as well when we fight T3/T4 mobs and the pets do not really perform as well, but that is out of my ability to test for as there are more than likely hidden mitigation factors at work.

    Just so others that read this wonder what i'm talking about as far as our actual number of spells that CAN increase here is a quick list.

    Spells that do not increase or are rendered useless at higher Tiers:

    Earthen Avatar - Old Pet rendered Useless by Epic 2.0
    Fiery Magician - Old Pet rendered Useless by Epic 2.0
    Aery Hunter - Old Pet rendered Useless by Epic 2.0
    Minions Translocation - Why this is even an upgradeable spell.../boggle
    Masters Intervention - Useless since 2.0 pet does not get aggro.
    Antagonize - Useless
    Defensive Haven -(Tip for new Conj: Use lvl 14 GM Defensive Haven and offset hate gain with Minion's Intent AA for more pet health for Soulburn since there is no increase on pet health with higher level spells)

    Conj Pact (The combat mit debuff does not change from App to GM...The normal mit reduction is rendered useless)
    Heal Servant (yes i know..it heals for more...but you can get same result with App than with GM due to stats)
    Elemental Aspect - Group buff...every class has some spells they just wouldn't have on their hotbar...
    Vehement Skin - Rendered useless with 2.0
    Fire Seed: No increase to Damage from App to GM.
    Sacrifice: Really no reason to bother getting new tier. (Tip for new Conj's - Dont take the AA/Focus effect to reduce the duration of sacrifice as the longer duration will cover more of the power drains from this Expac's drain fights.)

    Somewhat upgradeable but still bad at higher tier's:

    Essence Shift - Every mage class gets something similar
    Vampire bats - Really has not scaled well at all...Used as a filler when nothing else is up.
    Petrify - Welcome to losing dps when casting a spell...Not on hotbars at all.
    Flameshield - Well unless you tank things or put it on a tank...somewhat okish.
    Elemental Unity - Pretty bad at the higher levels..Maybe cast pre pull for something to do?

    Whats left since we only have a few spells that actually increase Direct damage (6) or offer some utility
    Crystal Blast
    Fiery Annihilation
    Earthquake
    Winds of Velious (New conj tip: This spell rocks as far as usefulness...Read the spell description!!! Use it often or at least until it breaks and you have to zone or camp to use it again...)
    Shattered Earth
    Ice Storm
    Blazing Avatar - I really hate to lose this on our new orange.../sigh
    Geotic Rune - (New conj tip: With the mitigation requirements higher raid tiers require, get the focus effect and you can buff all mit by a decent amount)

    Swarm pets that really dont scale per tier.
    Communion
    Roaring Flames
    Aqueous swarm


    So what I am saying with this long winded post really amounts to we are struggling with what we can actually cast as so many of our spells are for the beginning game...not the current tier of raiding. We definitely do not have the spell repertoire as some of the other classes have currently and this will continue to be an issue going forward. All i can ask is for conjies to post in discord asking for changes to the swarm pets per tier and maybe some tweaks to some of our spells for current tier gameplay.
    Beee and Ashandra like this.
  19. Ashandra Well-Known Member

    The pot mit thing that they have done which sees dps fall off for pets/swarms on higher tiers of mobs is the class killer it’s why on lower tier content you do well then as the tiers ramp up yr dps goes down compared to other classes with equal potency.

    It’s got to be some thing like the pets potency in tool tip is less then what it actually reads by what ever % they nominated so it’s hits the mit wall. You can semi get around it if you have high enough stats in potency to push yr pets through the barriers but it means you have to have more then other classes to do so.
    Beee likes this.
  20. Ashandra Well-Known Member

    I forgot to add if they wanted to make the swarm type pets scale with tier ie app to ancient turn them into a proper dot and set the damage according , keep the animation for old times sake as it stands they have never scaled with tier since the game was made.

    Just 2 cents worth of input from an old summoner in the hope devs actually read these...