Speed and Summons

[vastin]

There are a couple effects in the game designed specifically to speed up your pets - namely the Haste Other and Morale Boost ability (under leadership).

However, given the very short span that most summons exist for, these abilities are almost counter-productive. Because the duration of a summons is tracked by its own action rate rather than the base turn rate, casting a haste on them just causes them to time out faster.

Granted, you may get some faster damage out of them in the meantime, but it really reduces the value of haste other effects dramatically. It also makes fast monsters a lot less desirable in general (well except for converting them into items... Must find more Mirror Balls...)

Also, the damage to HP ratio of monsters seems so dramatically skewed towards HP, that it seems that it would take nigh-unto-forever for one monster to ever kill another, even with substantial bonuses being granted by the player. Given that most summons won't last past 10 rounds, that seems to relegate them to little more than ephemeral Meat-shields.

[Gando]

Yep. Irritating, Annoying Meatshields that time out too quickly to even be useful in that way. And they might turn on you for no apparent reason. Do not forget that. I never use the summon type or summon specific type spells anymore.

[Variaz]

Well, I guess I'll have to try out a summoner then. I'll see how it turns out.

[vastin]

I was using the Simulacrum effect for my summons, and while the sheer level and toughness of the creatures summoned is impressive, their duration remains pathetic unless you are willing to dump a huge number of AP into the ability - particularly as most of the decent creatures have at least +10 speed which cuts their effective duration in half.

Given that speed should already be taken into account in a creature's offensive ability, it should not affect the duration of the summons. It's basically a zero-sum stat for summoned creatures.

The biggest problem is that they are just such a slow way to kill anything. Even if you are willing to dump a lot of stat/skill/ap points into making staggeringly powerful simulacrums, they will still take several turns to clear a room, wheras the average wisdom spellcaster build can use a massive low-power ball spell to instantly clear 90% of the trash spawns they run into on-level, and be able to one-shot most bosses with a direct bolt spell unless they are magic immune.

Also, the Soul Guardian has a real disadvantage fighting with simulacra, as they won't stop killing your target when you want them to. Soul Guardians depend very heavily on the Life-blast effect to knock target creatures into the >20% life range so they can be captured, but a simulacra can't be called off, and will merrily kill off those valuable creatures before you can capture them.

Problem is, if you've invested the huge number of points into simulacra needed to make them effective, you probably don't have very good spell power - and especially lousy survivability given that hps and defense are no-where in the simulacra build. This makes capturing powerful creatures an exceptionally difficult and dangerous process for the simulacra summoner build.

[vastin]

Heh. I was playing with a Naga High Priestess soul last night and using its 'Summon Nagas' ability extensively, as it has a better duration and summons many more monsters than my own summon abilities can - this is particularly amusing, as her summon ability frequently summons more Naga High Priestesses, so they will pretty quickly fill a room with high level naga by chain summoning.

Still, while amusing, it's got to be the slowest way to kill anything in the game. They took about 3 minutes of me basically holding the space bar down to clear a single room of Water Hounds (probably took 30-50 rounds). That and as Gando has mentioned previously, even though I didn't use a single offensive effect during the whole battle, some Naga or other would occasionally become angry and start throwing poison balls at me. <shrug> Perhaps when they hit each other with effects, it counts as my 'ally' hitting them, and they become angry at me for it?

In the end they never were able to kill the one elite hound with a 50% physical resist, so I had to go in and wipe them all out and finish him off personally.

It's tough to guage the real effectiveness, because I don't have anything really invested in charisma or leadership right now, but even so it's hard to imagine fighting throught the game with summons as your primary offense - ESPECIALLY because soul guardians cannot itemize for charisma effectively.

Sooo slooow when I could have cleared that same room with a single offensive ball spell in 1/2 a second.

You know what would dramatically improve that whole process? The ability to turn off combat messages that don't apply directly TO or FROM my character. If I didn't actually have to space-bar through a thousand messages of irrelevant combat spam every round (which, incidentally is very dangerous as it means I'll miss my chance to block that one dark ball which is going to vaporize me), playing a summoner would be vastly more enjoyable. Is that already an option?