Game Mechanics Summoner Mechanics Overhaul

[Beezwax&Nectar]

I will not deny that this has been suggested a lot. But I will acknowledge that this is something that certainly needs to be addressed. This is only my take on this matter and there are definitely other people who have suggested this.

With that out of the way: Lets go into the actual suggestion.

Summoners need more... things. This relatively small class was introduced in the 1.2 update as a support class based off of mages, and has been growing bigger and bigger ever since. I think that it's time for this class to fully break away from being a sub class of mages and introduce its own new mechanics. This thread will suggest major changes to the summoner class, completely changing it's mechanics, to hopefully make it more fun!

To give an actual statistic: The Ranged Class has around ninety-three different weapons, and twelve armor sets. How many weapons and armor sets does the summoner class have? It has eighteen weapons, and a measly five armor sets. five. You can count that number on your fingers. This HAS to change.

Spoiler: Mechanics

-Keep summons when travelling to different worlds
-Summons deal critical hits. Jesus christ, why don't they do this already?
-Summons no longer take up buff slots, but they instead have their own HUD under your health. This HUD would appear as purple versions of empty buff icons, and have the icon of whatever summon is equipped from their old buffs.
-Minions have a maximum distance that they can move away from the summoner. It would be referred to as “Range” in reforges. Range is visible after you have selected a minion from your HUD. It will appear as a yellow outline around your character. This will disappear after thirty seconds have passed, or when you target an enemy.
-Summons would not use mana.
-Summons would attack the strongest enemy within their range.
-You can change which enemy they attack by targeting. You right click on a minion’s Icon in the HUD, and then right click whatever mob you want them to attack.
-You can select multiple minions by right clicking on each of their icons before targeting a mob.
-Right clicking on a minion’s icon cancels whatever they were targeting.
-When you hover over a minion’s Icon it will show what mob they’re targeting.
-You can make all minions target one mob by double right clicking on said mob.
-You can make all minions of a certain type attack one mob by double right clicking
-A minion will not attack any mob outside their range. They will resume attacking it when it goes back within their range.
-Whenever a targeted mob dies, a minion will attempt to find another mob of the same type and move its targeting over to that mob. If it doesn’t find one, it will go back to attacking the strongest enemy in its range.

Spoiler: Existing Weapons Given Stats for this Suggestion

Item Name: Slime Staff
Minion Name: Baby Slime
Damage: 8
Range: 20 Blocks
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: N/A
Piercing: N/A
Summon at Mouse Location: false
Obtained: 0.01% drop rate from most slimes.

Item Name: Hornet Staff
Minion Name: Hornet
Damage: 9
Range: 25 Blocks
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: Poisoned
Piercing: False
Summoned at Mouse Location: False
Obtained: Crafted: 14 Bee Wax at a Lead/Iron Anvil

Item Name: Imp Staff
Minion Name: Imp
Damage: 21
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: On Fire!
Piercing: True (3)
Summoned at Mouse Location: False
Obtained: 17 Hellstone at a Lead/Iron Anvil

Item Name: Spider Staff
Minion Name: Spider
Damage: 26
Range: 45 blocks
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: Venom
Piercing: N/A
Summoned at Mouse Location: False
Obtained: 16 Spider Fangs at a Mythril/Orichalcum Anvil

Item Name: Queen Spider Staff
Minion Name: N/A
Damage: 21
Range: 36 blocks
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: Venom
Piercing: True (endless)
Summoned at Mouse Location: True, infinite
Obtained: 24 spider fangs at a Mythril anvil

Item Name: Pirate Staff
Minion Name: Pirates
Damage: 40
Range: 45 blocks
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: None
Piercing: True, 1
Summoned at Mouse Location: True
Obtained: 1/2000 chance drop from pirates, 1/100 chance drop from Flying Dutchman

Item Name: Optic Staff
Minion Name: Twins
Damage: 35 (Aerial Fighter MAI) 30 (Aerial Ranged MAI)
Range: 50 blocks
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: None
Piercing: False
Summoned at Mouse Location: False
Obtained: 1 black lens, 2 lens, 12 hallowed bar, 20 souls of sight

Item Name: Pygmy staff
Minion Name: Pygmy
Damage: 37
Range: 58 blocks
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: None
Piercing: false
Summoned at Mouse Location: true
Obtained: Guaranteed after first Plantera kill, along with grenade launcher

Item Name: Raven Staff
Minion Name: Raven
Damage: 37
Range: 64 Blocks
Critical hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: None
Piercing: N/A
Summoned at Mouse Location: True
Obtained: 1.79-14.29% drop chance from Pumpking depending upon wave

Item Name: Tempest Staff
Minion Name: Sharknado
Damage: 50
Range: 56 blocks
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: None
Piercing: False
Summoned at Mouse Location: True
Obtained: 20% drop rate from Duke Fishron

Item Name: Xeno Staff
Minion Name: UFO
Damage: 36
Range: 53 Blocks
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: None
Piercing: True, 2
Summoned at Mouse Location: True
Obtained: 11.11% Drop chance from Martian Saucer

Item Name: Deadly Sphere Staff
Minion Name: Deadly Sphere
Damage: 50
Range: 68 Blocks
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: None
Piercing: N/A
Summoned at Mouse Location: True
Obtained: 2.5% drop chance from Deadly Sphere (Enemy)

Item Name: Stardust Cell Staff
Minion Name: Stardust Cell
Damage: 60
Range: 73 Blocks
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: None
Piercing: N/A
Summoned at Mouse Location: True
Obtained: 18 Stardust Fragments at an ancient manipulator

Item Name: Stardust Dragon Staff
Minion Name: Stardust Dragon
Damage: 40
Range: 69 Blocks
Critical Hit Chance: 4%
Debuff Dealt: None
Piercing: N/A
Summoned at Mouse Location: False
Obtained: 18 stardust fragments at an ancient manipulator

 

[Alpha_Steboh]

Definitely gonna keep an eye on this suggestion. BUT I wanna bring up this fantastic Summoner UI suggestion by [TRIGGER WARNING], as they've got a solid basic on the whole UI idea.

 

[Beezwax&Nectar]

Bump: Massive edit to the format, removed the major wall of text, loads of changes to the suggestion

 

[Leinfors]

For starters, I've changed your title as request.

On the subject of the topic itself . . . I must say I find I disagree on a number of fronts, though as a dedicated summoner player, I love the attention and desire to see the class grow.

This relatively small class was introduced in the 1.2 update as a support class based off of mages, and has been growing bigger and bigger ever since. I think that it's time for this class to fully break away from being a sub class of mages and introduce its own new mechanics.

As of 1.2, I'd agree with this. Summoner was a quirky, 2-weapon class that was barely viable.

However, the introduction of the 1.2.4 Summoner gear really fleshed out the class and made it into its own thing; it has virtually nothing in common with Mages now, save ONLY that summons require mana, and I think we can all agree its a token cost; I've never run out of mana casting my minions. It is my assessment that the class has established itself as its own being long ago. That is not to say it has good coverage, or that rebalancing isn't needed, oh god no, but is it still a mage sub class? By very nearly no definition could it be considered thus anymore.

To give an actual statistic: The Ranged Class has around ninety-three different weapons, and twelve armor sets. How many weapons and armor sets does the summoner class have? It has eighteen weapons, and a measly five armor sets. five. You can count that number on your fingers. This HAS to change.

Let me start by saying this: I agree Summoners need more coverage, both in armor and weapons. No denying.

But lets be realistic about Ranged's weapon/armor count. 7 of these weapons are junky wooden bows, none of which beyond the Wooden Bow are really relevant. 8 and then 6 of the remaining bows are ore tier bows and their alternates, of only very slight improvements in terms of potency. This serves to demonstrate my point that there is a serious case of "decreasing returns" at high levels of gear-per-tier saturation . . . Summoners don't need a 1 damage upgrade from Iron-Silver tier (not that they have good early game coverage, a different and valid point entirely.)

Similarly, 6 of those 12 armor sets are HM ore alternates as well. This is more of the same; many people skip Cobalt/Mythril/Pally/Orich entirely, due to the needlessness of them.

Finally, realize that, pound per pound, summoning content is significantly more code-time intensive. It ain't nuthin but a peanut to add in a new bow with just tweaked stats, but summoner weapons all have unique AI and animations which are significantly less "mass producable". So adding 14 pre-EoC bows is of no concern at all, but that same amount of effort in summoner content would be many hours of work.

So lets say this: I consider an ideal, fully fleshed out Summoner class (from Day 1 to Moon Lord) to have as many as 3 more armors, and could probably field 3-5 more summon staves and 2 more turret staves before it starts getting redundant.

I'd place some of them in tiers around:
- Pre-EoC armor
- Post-EoC/Pre-Queen Bee armor
- Hallowed tier armor
- Early game "intro summon" weapon
- EoC/EoW/BoC/Meteorite tier summon
- Golem/HM Dungeon tier summon
- Mid-easy mode turret (EoC-Meteorite tier???)

I also think that Spooky Armor needs a serious buff; right now, it suffers from being a sort of reject tier that isn't actually an upgrade.

I hope my lengthy discussion has not detracted too much from what you were going for.

 

[Alpha_Steboh]

I feel that Pygmy and Spooky Wood armor should serve as 'alternatives' to each other, much in the same way that Beetle has Beetle Scale and Beetle Plate. While not crafted from the same materials, Summoner has always been a bit of an unorthodox class in the first place.

Compared to Beetle/Spectre/Shroomite, Pygmy/Spooky don't have any interesting set bonuses going for it; even Stardust has one in the form of the Stardust Guardian. Perhaps they can diverse based on summoned types? Spooky could focus on Sentry summons, increasing the time they're out, etc.

 

[MouseyMouse]

You want summoner to be better but your suggestion is nerfing weps. I don't understand

 

[Beezwax&Nectar]

You want summoner to be better but your suggestion is nerfing weps. I don't understand

I don't see how any of these weapons were nerfed. If you're talking about the range, I see how it may appear that way, but in actuality due to the new targeting system, allowing for more control, most of these weapons were made much better. and with the increased range for later weapons, summons go much farther than they can in the normal game (From my experience, most summons only go about two times a screen's width away from the summoner, which is about 60 blocks, I think, don't quote me on that though)

Also, critical hits. Seeing the relatively small critical hit chance on every weapon may appear like it doesn't have very high crit chance, but then again, most weapons have 4% crit chance anyways.

 

[GORYTiger8]

My suggetion is a big one so this is gonna take awhile, so my thought would be with the intro of the pink gel and blueslimes dropping blue gel which is still classified as just gel allong with the green dropped gel, my thought is maybe (I know this would be an inventory crisis in the maikng) so the slime staff a starters summoning item that is pretty hard to get for new commers or people trying the summoners playthrough i suggest maybe having the slime staff be moddified in order to summon different kinds of slimes such as the green, the pink, and the blue, before you frek out I am not done yet,
The pink slime= so when this slime is summoned it yes would resemble pinky but slightly larger due to this process of adding gel would cause the slime to grow up (remember that for the other slimes) so pinky is known for being knocked back and jumping so maybe pinky could be the flying summon that did more damage to flying enemys and basicly give you some sort of anti air slime, now with this buff maybe it could do a little less damage to enemys on the ground.
Blue slime= so maybe this slime would be the opposite of the pink slime and do more damage to grounded enemies and less to flying enemies and also it would prioritize this tactic instead, it wouldn't jump as high though (back to the pink slime the pinky as I will refer to it as, would run slowwer on the floor but faster in the air
Green slime= would stay the same as the baby slime when you summon it it would do slighty more damage to everything but not get the buffs quite like the othere two would
My fingers hurt from typing this.
Warning: i typed this with a tablet and don't want to go back and fix spelling errors, so sorry.