Empty air sandwich
Terrarian
Summoner seems kinds of intended to HAVE multiple summons but still just be using regular weapons of other kinds 24/7 anyway, but some people still want to exclusively deal summon damage for a e s t h e t i c s because it fits with the idea in a cooler way, so how about we do make that a more meaningful choice too.
Passive effect - summoner armor sets come with this or it's an accessory. The longer you go without dealing any damage (except summon-type damage), the higher +% SummonDmg you get. Gets reset if you deal damage in any of the other 3 types, maximizes at maybe one minute, or two. Maybe involves this SummonDmg bonus and/or their attack rate and/or their movement speed, or other things that inherently help them. The purpose is that this is mental incentive/comfort for people who already like this playstyle even if the effect isn't gonna be crazy high, mixing is still OK too if you prefer.
And I also have the idea of an active weapon to expand on it - this is an attacking staff which deals damage as summon-type damage, and it lowers DEF per hit. It's supposed to NOT be like every other "abuse the attack button 24/7" weapon, it has some sort of unique cooldown. It has maybe exactly 1 chambered shot, and it always takes around 8 seconds or longer to recharge, maybe the weapon even HAS to stay selected to recharge. (hardly could instead be made as costing much more than a hundred MP to use if you absolutely couldn't cheat it with mana flower somehow)
What it does is shoot a sphere of a, say, ice elemental or spiky slime, in a forward falling arc like a throwing weapon. It does nothing until it direct-hits any enemy or any solid wall for a CC explosion; it sticks to that map position (not the enemy) and triggers a storm with several pellet projectiles shaped together in a rotating circle, with multiple layers of this pellet ring around where the shot stuck at. The pellets hit on contact and are non-piercing (disappears on hit, doesn't inflict invincibility) and they stay alive in the area for a second or two or three, every hit is damage and a DEF drop so they lose more DEF depending on how well they got hit by the entire attack instead of an Ichor on/off situation, this DEF reduction is stackable per hit and per cast.
(or maybe it's just a buncha pellets in a radius and they move around inside the area in any way, or the attack just grows out projectile rings from the middle multiple times with them dissipating at the end, or to make it even simpler, it's just a multiple-try explosion)
And the hits might also have an existant amount of knockback and maybe a small short slow against normal enemies. So this is an AoE CC shot with some damage, that also lowers DEF for your summons to hit especially on bosses, that has a cooldown on shots to use, and still counts as only summon damage to scale with summoner equipment and work with the passive effect. So you would have this actual attack to fight with synergizing with your summons, and on a boss battle instead of being a spam weapon you would want to intelligently aim the shot while dodging the boss for a direct hit or latch it to the scenery where they'll stay at or else you would just waste the cooldown. And in a party you're doing damage while cutting armor for teammates.
This weapon would be obtainable early at a weaker state and would have a line of several upgrades across the entire game. Also, while holding it as your weapon you also have the same alt-fire of summon staves where you redirect summons to the targeted enemy.
(maybe each hit of the staff cuts a simple amount of DEF, or each hit applies 1 stack of a debuff that automatically converts X stacks of itself into 1 stack of DEF reduction and this amount can be tweaked per version of the weapon)
Non-summoners probably wouldn't find it broken to take just for the DEF reduction on bosses because Golder Shower would be much better as that role.
I'm not big on summoner but I had these thoughts. I think it would be more "complete" with a feature like each of these 2 fronts.
Passive effect - summoner armor sets come with this or it's an accessory. The longer you go without dealing any damage (except summon-type damage), the higher +% SummonDmg you get. Gets reset if you deal damage in any of the other 3 types, maximizes at maybe one minute, or two. Maybe involves this SummonDmg bonus and/or their attack rate and/or their movement speed, or other things that inherently help them. The purpose is that this is mental incentive/comfort for people who already like this playstyle even if the effect isn't gonna be crazy high, mixing is still OK too if you prefer.
And I also have the idea of an active weapon to expand on it - this is an attacking staff which deals damage as summon-type damage, and it lowers DEF per hit. It's supposed to NOT be like every other "abuse the attack button 24/7" weapon, it has some sort of unique cooldown. It has maybe exactly 1 chambered shot, and it always takes around 8 seconds or longer to recharge, maybe the weapon even HAS to stay selected to recharge. (hardly could instead be made as costing much more than a hundred MP to use if you absolutely couldn't cheat it with mana flower somehow)
What it does is shoot a sphere of a, say, ice elemental or spiky slime, in a forward falling arc like a throwing weapon. It does nothing until it direct-hits any enemy or any solid wall for a CC explosion; it sticks to that map position (not the enemy) and triggers a storm with several pellet projectiles shaped together in a rotating circle, with multiple layers of this pellet ring around where the shot stuck at. The pellets hit on contact and are non-piercing (disappears on hit, doesn't inflict invincibility) and they stay alive in the area for a second or two or three, every hit is damage and a DEF drop so they lose more DEF depending on how well they got hit by the entire attack instead of an Ichor on/off situation, this DEF reduction is stackable per hit and per cast.
(or maybe it's just a buncha pellets in a radius and they move around inside the area in any way, or the attack just grows out projectile rings from the middle multiple times with them dissipating at the end, or to make it even simpler, it's just a multiple-try explosion)
And the hits might also have an existant amount of knockback and maybe a small short slow against normal enemies. So this is an AoE CC shot with some damage, that also lowers DEF for your summons to hit especially on bosses, that has a cooldown on shots to use, and still counts as only summon damage to scale with summoner equipment and work with the passive effect. So you would have this actual attack to fight with synergizing with your summons, and on a boss battle instead of being a spam weapon you would want to intelligently aim the shot while dodging the boss for a direct hit or latch it to the scenery where they'll stay at or else you would just waste the cooldown. And in a party you're doing damage while cutting armor for teammates.
This weapon would be obtainable early at a weaker state and would have a line of several upgrades across the entire game. Also, while holding it as your weapon you also have the same alt-fire of summon staves where you redirect summons to the targeted enemy.
(maybe each hit of the staff cuts a simple amount of DEF, or each hit applies 1 stack of a debuff that automatically converts X stacks of itself into 1 stack of DEF reduction and this amount can be tweaked per version of the weapon)
Non-summoners probably wouldn't find it broken to take just for the DEF reduction on bosses because Golder Shower would be much better as that role.
I'm not big on summoner but I had these thoughts. I think it would be more "complete" with a feature like each of these 2 fronts.