I would like to have this thread discuss summons in general. Do people feel they are fine as is? Do they need changes, and how so? What are the inconsistencies and how is best to address those? So please vote, and provide your reasoning why. Also please list any inconsistencies you know of. (this summon has upgrades, this one does not etc) Master thread : http://forums.poxnora.com/index.php?threads/community-concil.5747/
This is my personal opinion and my reasoning as to why. Summons General changes -all summon abilities are broken into ranks like summon imp with appropriate stat penalties -summons only receive a 50% boost from any stat bonus -summons have no upgrade abilities Anti-summon abilities. - sever summons: removed from game - ritual abilities: range increased splashed onto other champs. Possibly with other damage types. - hunter summons: created and splashed around. So with all the summon hate here wouldn't summoners be very weak? Yes so I propose in conjunction with these changes summon abilities are steeply discounted. Or in the case of weak summons, cool-downs and Ap costs reduced. Summons I feel should be surge boosting roadblocks. I suggest they receive only partial stat buffs because as you summon more they become harder and harder to balance. This is because mechanics like boost are fine when hitting champs that have appropriate nora cost, but summons have little to no cost and the buffs eventually provide a boost to to much free meat.
Summons are still abit nuts, too easy to obtain in certain factions (KF Mainly). They need to make the summoning abilities less common and maybe introduce a few more counters.
I want to clarify that for option 2 (we need more counters) doesnt mean that we need more summon autokills, but things like %more damage to them or stuff like that
Nerf summons until we don't have to see them anymore. Or! No summons at all would be pretty cool. Or 10hp max, across the board. Now you don't need counters. I dunno, the tort summoner is ridiculous, and the sheer number of saplings is obnoxious. I can't say I have great ideas for balancing them, mostly because free meat is a hard counter or lose scenario. And it's usually just lose unless you can outrush. And right now, it's trying to outrush kf when their first three deploys all summon more crap. And then make Nora and damage off of them.
Hello, I'd like to share the idea that 'hard countering' may be bad game design. I think nerfing summons is the correct choice rather than having more 'hard counters' to summons. Hard counters in games are poor design. It facilitates very little player interactions. Some hard counters probably exist because some effects are so powerful, it's easy to stick a hard counter and bandage it up. Some, not all. If I deploy something so powerful that the other player can do very little about it, unless he happens to draw a counter to what you're doing in order to not lose. This is bad game design. At the same time, if your strategy was built around summoning and its too easily countered by a skill like sever summons, you dont really get interesting gameplay out of it, since he just hard countered you... The fact that I'm seriously considering sticking a shielded, magic immune salaman negamage in any bg i run just to cast sever summons, is a symptom of summons too powerful, therefore making a skill like SEVER SUMMONS seem so powerful.
