Slime Squisher
Posts: 387
Joined: Monday, 15th August 2011, 16:31
Location: Frankfurt
Summoner Tactics
The background is that I feel my tactical play involving summons is in particular need of improvement in general. Of course, I often have one or two summoning spells and I'm making use of evocers. But it's more in a brute-force way: I'm summoning at the start of a fight, then forget about them and concentrate solely on what my char is doing. I feel I could benefit a lot from paying more attention to my allies and their positioning. And for that I need a better intuition for the whole ally thingie. So, I decided to play with the Summoner start for a while. Normally, I would just grab a weapon and play as a gladiator-with-support. But that kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise, so I want to play as summoning-centric as it is still sensible.
Currently I feel like a beginner again. My intuition for early D isn't working as usual, because threat assessment relates to my summonings rather than my char. I think I can get to Lair somewhat reliably if I pay attention, but I have to pay more attention than usual. I suppose that's normal at this point, though.
So, what I'm doing is this: From D2 on I use the best weapon I can find and melee everything that can't hurt me (much) with weapon skill 0. Everything else I try to get into 1-on-1 situations in a terrain where it can get surrounded and then I go all out on my MP bar, starting with the strongest summons that I can reliably cast. That seems to work o.k., but I wonder if there's a more sophisticated approach that involves better positioning.
That's vague, I know. I also have a couple more specific questions:
- Do people still bother with Mammals after D1? It seems that fights where I continue casting Summon Small Mammals after I have my ice beasts and imps already go somewhat faster. But that might be an illusion. I suppose, in theory, mammals might take hits away from my better allies. But since they seem to get one-shotted almost always at some point and casting takes one turn, I'm not sure it works that way. However: If it does, would it be best then, to alternate between weaker and stronger summons while casting?
- I know that I can either command my allies to attack, or I can do it indirectly by throwing/firing something. But do allies that are already engaged against a particular foe drop what they're doing immediately and attack a new target?
- If I make my existing allies attack a foe and then summon new ones, do the late arrivals immediately attack the same target as the others?
- Do people use the follow and retreat commands? If so, when and how do you use "retreat" for maximum gain & profit?
- Some summonings have a long duration. Is it worth it to always explore with some allies in one's trail? Or, let me rephrase that: Is the benefit large enough to justify the hastle?
- Sometimes a foe is 'sticky' and attacks my char rather than my summons. Sometimes switching places with my allies helps, sometimes not. Does stealth help with foes getting distracted by allies? If so, is it worth it? Or is there a positioning trick other than "switch places with an ally behind you and hope for the best?"
- AFAIK, allies do not normally attack when out of sight. Does this relate to the ally or to the oppenent? I.e. is it enough to keep the target in LoS? In that case, do allies out of LoS heed the a command to attack such a foe in LoS? Sometimes you get a message that something is attacking an ally from out of LoS, does the ally retaliate then or not?
- Do people pay attention to the number they already have summoned from a particular type? Sometimes it's difficult to keep track, especially with imps.
- Just going all out with summoning a small army is sure effective, but not very efficient. Do people with more Su experience have some rule of thumb as to what and how much they summon? It's probably all experience and intuition, but I thought I'd ask.
EDIT: Forgot some questions.
- For this message the author Utis has received thanks:
- MainiacJoe