Game Mechanics Make Summon Staffs Not Cost Mana

BrusselSprouts693

Retinazer
Summoner weapons cost 20 mana to use, stemming back from when staffs were magic weapons. Now that summoner armor exists, people who aren't mages, who likely haven't used many mana crystals (instead using stars for sunplate, star cannons, or mana crystals for mage friends) will find themselves having to wait a bit to summon all of their weapons.

So of course, my solution is to make summon staffs cost no mana.



Please Read Before Commenting: Summoner Weapons instantly fire when used, however, they are significantly worse than an actual weapon of a similar tier. The Hornet Staff does 9 damage (Use time 22), versus a weapon available before it, the Demon Bow, which does 14 damage (Use time 25).
 
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Personally, I'd love this. however, summons would need to be heavily nerfed in order to compensate for 0 mana cost; so, unfortunately, no support from me.
 
Personally, I'd love this. however, summons would need to be heavily nerfed in order to compensate for 0 mana cost; so, unfortunately, no support from me.
Currently they only cost to summon initially. It's not that big a buff
 
Yes, a 20 mana cost to have an undying minion until you die or you disspell it. I'd agree with a lower mana cost for early-game, but not removing the cost entirely.
 
Yes, a 20 mana cost to have an undying minion until you die or you disspell it. I'd agree with a lower mana cost for early-game, but not removing the cost entirely.
It does not add any difficulty to the game. It's exclusively a delay. The mana cost comes exclusively in the form of minor annoyance, not challenge.
 
Sometimes I try to summon a minion and realize I can't use the Staff, and then I realize my mana is out.

This is a needed QOL change.
 
There's something that would need to be changed to accommodate this. Summons who fire projectiles have shot delays - in some cases, like the Imp Staff or the Staff of the Frost Hydra, this delay is very long, but a shot is fired the instant the minion is summoned. So you can spam a minion's shots if you repeatedly summon it, firing once for every click - potentially far more dps than it could achieve normally. The mana cost limits the potential abuse of this function, but without it, you could turn certain summons into rapidfire turrets indefinitely.
 
There's something that would need to be changed to accommodate this. Summons who fire projectiles have shot delays - in some cases, like the Imp Staff or the Staff of the Frost Hydra, this delay is very long, but a shot is fired the instant the minion is summoned. So you can spam a minion's shots if you repeatedly summon it, firing once for every click - potentially far more dps than it could achieve normally. The mana cost limits the potential abuse of this function, but without it, you could turn certain summons into rapidfire turrets indefinitely.
The extent of this exploit is very limited when you consider that this only applies to certain sentries. The only reason this can be abused anyway is because they can be placed anywhere on screen, so you could make it so that you must need a line of sight to place a sentry down(if a re-balance is absolutely necessary). Using sentries or certain minions this way lowers your DPS because you can't focus on using another weapon along with your sentry. There are definitely more overpowered things in the game, so this wouldn't upset balance too much regardless.
 
There is one other thing that I haven't seen mentioned. There would need to be new summon prefixes for the weapons' reforging, currently they use the mage prefixes and those have a mana requirement to get the best prefixes.
 
As much as I hate to say it, it's entirely your own problem if you haven't used enough Mana Crystals to afford the ~80 Mana you usually need to get all your summons out in an endgame scenario as well as the extra 20 Mana used every time you put down a Sentry.

This is a suggested solution to a problem that only exists if you fail to properly manage your resources. If you're going to be using Mana to any extent at all, you should be using Mana Crystals for yourself before wasting Fallen Stars on the Star Cannon or donating Mana Crystals to other players unless they're not topped off yet and they're actively flinging Water Bolt around.
 
If you want to have ANY change towards Summon Weapons, either cut the mana cost in half, or have higher-tier armors offer a set effect where Summon weapons cost no mana.

I've seen it before with ExpandedSentries having the same purpose for the Engie Armor, so A summoner armor with that set effect shouldn't be too far-fetched.
 
There's really no reason we can't go all out with the cutting here. It's a less complicated solution that lets me have a good time with a bewitching table. It saves 2 seconds at best, so there's not much to say for balance issues.
 
There is no balance issue with this. It's not like Summon staves use mana more than once or anything. This is not a balance suggestion, it's a QoL one.
 
There isn't any issue with this. The projectile spam exploit is useless once you realize that you're meant to play summoner impure.
 
IMO there is no reason for them to cost mana.
 
Yes, a 20 mana cost to have an undying minion until you die or you disspell it. I'd agree with a lower mana cost for early-game, but not removing the cost entirely.
Minions don't die, and constantly summoning minions is actually worse than just one-time summoning it, so minions not having a cost is completely fine
 
If you want to have ANY change towards Summon Weapons, either cut the mana cost in half, or have higher-tier armors offer a set effect where Summon weapons cost no mana.

I've seen it before with ExpandedSentries having the same purpose for the Engie Armor, so A summoner armor with that set effect shouldn't be too far-fetched.
Eh, since they're one-time weapons, I wouldn't say that having an armor made for that would be necessary
However, (if this suggestion can't be added) it would be a nice little random buff for some armors to have
 
The summon weapons would be to overpowered without mana cost.
 
The summon weapons would be to overpowered without mana cost.
Yes, you're so much more powerful spamming a minion summon than with using other weapons, that totally is how dps works.
 
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