Can the next number one priority be fixing summons?

This may be a lot to ask but I think it sort of ruins the fun. I would really appreciate it if these would be addressed in the next patch. If you are wondering whether I just lost a game because of one these spells, you bet I did lol. But it really is too op imo. And not every bg is carrying around a "sever summons" unit. It gets worse when people are carrying multiple of these spells in their bgs.

So far, 2 spells and 1 bug I have encountered, or at least I am hoping its a bug.

SPELLS:
3 summon groble spell - Groble Strike Force
3 summon footman spell - Call to War

BUG:
Fleshweaver witch dropping full hp corpses.

Any comments or suggestions?

Cheerios

 

No.

Cheers,

Blonde.

 

Anyone with any useful input?

 

Well, not to dash your hopes, but Fleshweaver is supposed to be summoning full hp Festering Corpses....because, well, they kind of suck otherwise. Not that they couldn't still be useful at 50% or lower given she likely herds them the turn after summoning, but...yeah, fully intentional.

The other two I've never seen used, but for a 90 or 80 nora spell, I'd expect an awful lot. With the Revamp not touching non-champs yet, both spells could very well have received an unintended buff.

 

Saw Call of War used twice Today (in the same game) but I rarely see it or Groble Strike Force, so I don't see them as problems. If they were used more often, then maybe they could use a nora increase.

 

Perhaps not a big deal right now then, but I have seen quite a few games today, and I have seen the Call to War being used alot in SL games. Only seen groble strike force in 2 games.The fury on footman adds up to their damage + surge enemy, and they are 3 units so it does seem a little OP. But fair enough, I guess I will just wait and see what happens, but I do think these should be addressed later, maybe not now. 80 nora for 3 units does seem a bit low.

 

Guess they get used more than I thought. And yeah, 80 nora is cheap when it would cost about 162 to deploy three draksar footman.

 

It doesn't help that summons are spawning with upgrades

 

It's a mix of summons with base stats that are too high (or the ability for their stats to be boosted much higher than the devs anticipated), the ease of spamming summons, lack of counters to summons (this is a huge one), and summoning capabilities being put on champs that have additional roles outside of, well, summoning champs.

I only mention the last because DOG stated that they want to limit the possible roles of a champion.

 

Some good points made here. The lack of counters is a big deal. I can only think of 2 units at the top of my head with severe summons (bug keeper and griefbearer).

 

Salaman Negamage (the OG) and Stitched Anathema have it as well.

 

Not that I'm fond of creating new abilities to handle situations, but I'm fond of an idea I had a while ago with an anti-summon ability that worked similar to Psychic Ping. Once a round, the unit would 'pop' the nearest summon to it within X amount of spaces. As it is now, sever summons is a bit too hard of a counter, but the ability is sparse enough that I'm not sure if it needs to be tweaked.

On top of that, there are some abilities that can be tweaked to help with summons, such as Hunter: Unnatural, Absorb Illusion could be renamed and allowed to strike summons as well. A more extreme one would be Rebuke. A clause could be added that any summoned unit damaged by the ability is destroyed. Could maybe also add that clause to Gift of Scrying, and maybe even have Scry destroy the nearest summon in addition to rune reveals. Would allow those abilities to still be useful after all of a player's runes have been revealed.

And those are the ones I can feel comfortable saying they might make sense. Others like Blood Magic or Bloodtracker, maybe even Soften I think might work, but it'd be a stretch.

Of course, none of them would have to full out destroy summons, but they could do significant damage to them. Like Scry might destroy a summon on deploy, and Gift of Scrying might deal X damage to the nearest each turn.

And that's just going to the ability list on Poxbase and scrolling halfway down, I'm sure there are at least a few more abilities that might make sense or make sense at a stretch to deal with summoned units without being the hard counter that is sever summons.

 

I really like the above ideas. It would save the hassle of adding sever summons to multiple units, but instead just modify some of the existing abilities to deal with summons. +1

 

If you find you are facing summons in more games than not, perhaps try looking through your faction for some mechanic that can benefit off of enemy summons. Swarms, Battle Leader, Surge: Enemy are all available options, and I'm sure there are more !

 

Nope, I think you've about covered them.
the problem is, surge: enemy is only on like 7 units, double this if you include bravery which has the stipulation of always standing near an ally of the same race. problem here is that not all of these are meta viable, certainly not the bravery units as they tend to only work well in themes for obvious reasons.

Battle leader only exists in 4 factions. kf, is, ud, sl. and most of those are in IS. so that's a very limited pool to select from.

Swarms are okay. but not every faction has access to a good swarmer, in fact im not sure FS even has a swarmer.

So the reliance is still largely on sever summons, which just isn't good enough as a sole counter and is making it an auto include out of desperation in some cases.

 

The only suggestion I can make in terms of new design that is balanced is maybe make some existing, generally shoeboxed AOE spells (or put this mechanic in new upcoming spells) that makes them do double or triple damage to summons.... and make these particularly available to factions that lack summon counters. If summons are gonna be a big thing for the meta (again), then strong counters, I think, should be readily available. However I do not support having Sever Summons in every faction.

 

Excessive amounts of hp has always been problematic.

It's the reason why summons, swarms and champs with a ridiculous hp per nora ratio are always on top of the food chain.

 

As a user of Call to War, it is silly good in games of middle skill level. Maybe it is different at the top of the food chain, but my three little guys have managed to do some serious work in the few games I have played post-revamp.

In an ideal scenario they form a very cheap block 2/regen 2 shield wall in front of a defender unit (temple guard), a battle master (black scale or angel), and draconic force (Torien). Drop Channeled Violence on them with Sermon and Battle drum for good measure. It would be even worse if I had a High Marshal.

In reality, they can still be pretty silly with just Torien and CV.

The easy solution is a ranged counter to plink down the 5spd front line, but even that is not super easy with a potential +3 armor and +10 health. Enrage means anything not dead when they do make is going to have a party.

 

I tried range, but as you mentioned, they are really tanky and seeing that UD rarely has any ranged in the first place, it gets a bit difficult. The way you play it is pretty much what I had to face lol. Its just all those buffs they end up getting which is the real issue. I think if they received half the bonuses, it wouldn't be as bad.

 

Well, I did just face ST and they face rolled over me with lonx and ice terrain. I couldn't even get close.