The last few expansions, summoners have seen a huge disparity in the power of AA/Heroic/Prestiege abilities compared to their other counterparts; Please don't let the developers continue this trend for levels 93-95. While Soulburn is a huge boost to our DPS potential, it comes with it a huge cost, especially to our Conj siblings who must juggle Plane Shift around the timing of this ability. Necromancers have very few tools to keep their pets alive through the massive AEs that many mobs have, just one very very powerful one - Bloodpact. However, with so many high level encounters having static raid debuffs increasing power consumptions 4-10times or more, it's basically impossible to keep this up in many encounters. Couple this with line-of-sight bugs that cause our pets to run in to melee range (if we can even get them to attack) and it becomes even more likely our otherwise lack of pet protections are our downfall. The Granite Avatar buff found on two items was previously our savior for this but unfortunately that was specifically coded to not protect our pets anymore beyond level 90 (However it's more than happy to still damage our pets when we remove the item). While Exploit Weakness is a pain to use and relies on luck, Assassins are receiving much higher numbers from this ability than Soulburn gives us summoners. Even more troublesome is the ability Sorcerers get, Sanguine Sacrifice. Developers did well not naming this "Uber Lich Form" which is basically is, as they were able to sneak it by many people by not making it so obvious. Increased power at the cost of health? That's a defining necromancer characteristic, and it's been given willy-nilly to our sorcerer mage bretheren instead. However, the bigger gap has come with presteige abilities. Starting with the first row of points and ignoring the nuances of ability mod, sorcerers get 10% damage to their spells per rank for a total of 30%, which summoners receive 5% per rank for a total of 15% to a few spells. On top of this, our personal damage roughly accounts for 50% of our damage, meaning instead of a 2:1 difference, summoners are actually receiving 1/4th the benifit compared to sorcerers. No other AA/presteige ability in the game is on par with Eternal Damnation that warlocks receive. Eci's Frozen Wrath that wizards get is a distance 2nd, and both are miles ahead of what summoners get. There is plenty of evidence of these sorcerer presteige abilities parsing over 200K DPS for just these spells on fights with waves of adds, which is almost every raid encounter. Meanwhile, our equivilent gives us 66-100% more damage to Lifetap. As low as 66% because this doubling of damage doesn't accept any Ability Mod, meaning in current raid gear, we're lucky to get an extra 15K DPS out of this ability. This is more than an order of magnatude difference in power, and Conjs are way worse off with the joke Crystalline Destruction is. Yet, we're penalized for using Lifetap when we need it most. The very next presteige point in that same line that "doubles" the damage of Lifetap also gives Lifeburn's timer a chance to reset. The caviate with this however is, successfully resetting the Lifeburn timer cancels any current Lifeburn! If you try and heal yourself through Lifeburn with Lifetap, you risk wasting all the time you wasted prebuffing HP and casting Lifeburn in the first place. And it's not like this Lifeburn canceling is the only bug we've been plaqued with for ages. We still have line of sight issues were we cannot even send out pet to attack, or it may even just stand somewhere attempting to cast, while not able to do anything (Easily reproduceable 100% of the time by sending pet to attack Sergeant Levik in Karnor's Castle and watching pet sit at bottom of stairs) And while the patch notes claim to have fixed the agility line causing mobs to make a beeline for our pets, this issue is still unresolved. It's no longer possible to train with our pet's defensive buff up as mobs will change hate from us to our pets as we body pull past them, and then attack out pets, receive damage shield proc damage, and put us in combat slowing our runspeed. Again, easily reproducable running through any overland zone that isn't grey. Next to all this, shared stats doesn't share buffs. Making things like Enchanted Vigor better any other DPS class. Upbeat tempo not giving out pets any additional ticks to dots, Time compression not sharing casting speed/reuse because it's for "Spell casting speed" not "Ability casting speed", etc. We're also the only mages who get no AA to increase our recovery speed. We get a small increase for our pet, yet the native spells our pets get actually have 0 recovery time, it's just the AA spells like Minion's Mark and Wrath of the Undead Servant that have recovery time associated with the spells. We actually cast less spells per minute than a sorcerer proccing things like Dynamism less times, for less damage (thanks to all the potency buffs they get). And while sorcerers have this huge edge of DPS over us, they pay for it with higher survivability with things like Battlemage Armor increasing their physical mit and regenerting wards added to Magi's Sheilding and mana shield. Please, don't let us get put futher behind this next expansion. Make sure our level 93-95 presteige abilities are on par.
I had to take some time to digest all this, but here is my opinion on Summoners as someone who has a Necro, Conjy, and Wizard. First, I agree Summoners need some love. However, I have always and will always defend that Wizards should be the premiere single-target dps class and Warlocks the AE dps class. They are glass cannons. They hit hard but get hit hard. I just dont support this whole "a dps class should equal another dps class" mentality that seems to have sprung up since WoW made its emergence and everyone thought everything should balance with everything else. Each class has its function and purpose. Each class trades a little of something for a little of something else. Take Scouts. Should a Troubadour do the same damage as a Beastlord? Or even more down to earth, an Assassin? No. Troubadours trade pure dps for party and self buffs, and some are pretty dang good. Does that make a Troubadour useless? Hardly. So... Summoners vs Wizard. Summoners lose pure dps and gain utility and survivability. And even that is debatable among the Summoners who parse as high as Wizards. As someone who plays all three, I can definitely say that my Necro can solo better than my Conjy, who can solo better than my Wizard. Although the shift of pure DPS would be opposite. So my Necro gives up some dps for heals, FD. Conjys have Stoneskins and a LOL in Elemental Blast. Now to a few specific points: Sanguine Sacrifice vs. Lich. Sanguine Sacrifice requires spending AA to get, and is the capstone in the Heroic tree. Lich is a granted ability. SS has a 1 minute duration. Lich is essentially permanent. Im not seeing why you are upset over this. How exactly is it "uber Lich Form?" Eternal Damnation/Eci's: again, these are pure dps classes with nothing else. I do agree Summoners' prestiges arent all that great. However, in the devs' defense, this forum asked for a Necro self-rez for years. And we got it! Nevermind the usefulness of it, we asked and we got. So what should we ask for next? The devs seem to actually listen sometimes. I agree with LoS issues. Needs fixed. Same with Teamwork. Useless atm. But lets look at what we do get: Necros get every way out of a bind possible. When a Wizard (or even Conjy) get in a fix, theyre screwed. Its either kill or be killed. Necros? They have Tainted Heals, one of the most useful AA passives. This only gives Necros about 4-6 ways to heal their pet while not healing. Add to this Necros also have 3 different heals. And if that is not enough, they have Feign Death. Should Necros get all these survival tools AND the dps of a Wizard? Only if Wizards gain heals and FD. IMO my Necro owns anything I tackle. Conjurors. They trade the utility of a Necro for a little more oomph. They cant heal, but they can Stoneskin. They can save their pet from death with Masters Intervention. Other than that they trade survival for buffs like Blazing Avatar and Elemental Unity. Neither should be laughed at. Elemental Shift? Total chaos. But lets look at Elemental Blast. This ability is just LOLOMGDEAD. Its hard to say Conjurors need love when they have EB. Both get Elem Tox, a nice little boost to dps. And another pet death save in Reanimate. And my favorite, Detonate. Its just so much fun to blow everything around you up. I do feel Summoners need love. However, your post came off as sounding like Sorcerors get everything and Summoners get nothing. It read as though you were advocating Summoners keep all the utility they have and also gain the same dps as Sorcs. I understand why with the current mentality of the lower-IQ raid group who cannot see past a parse and see a class's utility. Troubadours seem to have the same problem when compared to Dirges because raids are too stupid to realize just what a Troub really brings that a parse doesnt measure. If Summoners cant cast 200k damage fireballs what good are they? Its a bad raid mentality for sure. So where do we really go from here. First, we accept we are not Sorcerors. We have pets and utilities. Second, we accept no dps class is Beastlord. That was a huge mistake by SOE and one that still needs balancing. Again, I do not believe someone punching something with a cestus with a kitty cat biting and clawing should equal the damage of an ice comet. Although I have a Beastlord, I feel they need one heck of a nerf bat swing. So what really needs fixing: 1. Teamwork. By far the most broken part of Summoners. 2. LoS. This will never get fixed. It was never fixed in other SOE games. They just dont get LoS. 3. Not really a fix, but I dont like how games make pets of pet classes "50%" of the class. I would be fine seeing our dps increased to 75% and pets lowered to 25%. We are still Necros and Conjys. We are still plagueing enemies and setting them aflame. We should be doing most of the damage. As it is, aside from the big nukes, you should never take aggro from even the Mage pet. Our pets are the class. We are just the controllers. Going Forward: As you said, a little dps would be nice. Not on par with the pure dps classes, but a little more to be a little more attractive to groups who can only see numbers in a parse. We dont need an Ice Comet (although Conjys get one in EB). We just need a little love. Fix our Prestige and Heroics. Give us a little love compared to Sorcs. This I agree with. All this said, I am fairly satisfied with how the classes play. My Necro is still the class I play first, followed by Conjy, then Wizard. And tbh, although numbers might state differently, I feel my Necro out-dps's the others. Maybe its because I have 90%+ of my health instead of 25%(Wizard). Maybe its because the fast cast times and lower mana costs leave me with less downtime. Whatever it is, I much prefer the Summoner over the Sorceror. (btw those mana-drain debuffs need to go. Worst idea ever)
summoners have no more utillity than sorc. if i don't get a summoner in my group, i don't notice. you can argue about rez/heart but those are pretty much meaningless exept for heavy power drain fights and even then no one really cares that much. having said that.. summoner over all damage should still be lower than sorc because while everyone is running around worried about scripts or whatever, the summoner pet continues to attack relentlessly IF you know how to keep pet attacking (keeping LOS is a skill). going forward for summoners? fix dumbfire pets.. this as been an issue since the HUGE nerf they got back in LU33? years.. fix it all ready add some real utillity to the class - make elemental unity and consume group procs. that will make a HUGE difference in performance.. at that point people will demand to have a summoenr like they do an inquis or bard/chanter. undead tide- it's garbage and has been for years.. compared to it's counter part plane shift, it's like lol. this could be tied in to the dumbfire fix but it should also have it's reuse lower by at least 120% so at least you can cast it more often if you want. vampirisim - again should be fixed under dumbfire fix but even then it's crap. allow the heal to critical maybe? or make it an aoe ward like the shaman shrine?
Well we can all agree dumbfire pets need to be fixed heh. Or removed as I mentioned on the Conjy board. I think I would rather see them replaced with something useful than to try to fix them and fail at the attempt. Undead Horde by far needs fixing. Undead Horde or Plane Shift... hmmm... I wonder which one is more powerful... We should get an ability akin to Plane Shift, especially being Necros and having power not only over Undead but also Demonic entities (classic definition). An ability to call forth demonic strength for our pets to use? An ability to call forth a demon or even a "true" Lich? Also I would not mind a re-visit to spell names. Spell names in this game are rather bland. I dont feel special like in Vanguard where spell names really do reflect the class. I've always felt that EQ1 and VG drew you into the world, where EQ2 just doesnt have that "RP flavor". Everything is pretty blah for the most part, from the lands to the NPC's to the dungeons. Needs...more....color.
Davngr1 wrote Not sure what you're paying attention to but a good wizard and warlock outparses a summoner. I know a few who are good at what they do, and I'm no slouch. As far as a line of sight, it is an annoying issue. Its an issue because you have to find the right spot where the pet will attack when there is a CLEAR line of sight - take Vallon's Tower for example, top floor. The pet will not attack unless you move to the bottom step in the center of the room. Clear line of site and yet we have to move just to get it to attack. Its an issue when a pet goes wandering off on its own when it CLEARLY does not need to when its in range anyhow. Keeping LOS sure is a skill, a skill to put up with it.
Not advocating WoW as I hate that game, but one thing they did get right was pet mechanics and LOS. That should be the model games use imo. SOE games have never been able to get either right, whether its EQ2, EQ1, SWG, VG.... all SOE games have pet and LOS issues. Its like they just dont get it. A small tree or rock or even stair should not break LOS. They need to really review the LOS rules and make some changes.
