Massive Summoning Nerf

[Laraso]

So, I just tried to play a summoner on the latest version of trunk...

... and it was terrible. The first immediate change I noticed is that summons can no longer follow you up/down stairs, and I was perfectly fine with that. In fact, I was rather grateful, as it made summoner enemies a bit easier to handle.

However, later I noticed that the duration of summons had been drastically decreased. Everything I summoned stayed out for only a few turns, around six or seven on average, and I was virtually forced to play as a mummy of Sif Muna just so I could keep my magic supplied as I pumped out summons every other turn. The ironic part is that when something is summoned hostile, they retain the old duration. So at low to mid power, repeated casting of Summon Scorpions will put you in a situation where there are more hostile scorpions than friendly ones, and you can't keep the friendly scorpions out long enough to terminate the hostile ones. Summon Small Mammals is mostly worthless once you get a hold of Summon Imp, since the rats despawn/die so fast that it isn't really possible to keep more than four of them on the field at one time.

The game turned into a luck contest, where you have to cross your fingers and pray that channeling will give you enough magic to throw out another batch of summons, and hoping that they stay out long enough to keep whatever nasty creature you're fighting back long enough for the summons to kill it. Seriously, I was OK with Summon Hydra having a short duration, but now everything has a hydra-class lifespan. I wouldn't be surprised if I found out Summon Hydra only lasts two or three turns now.

Is this a work-in-progress adjustment? The current state of summons makes playing a summoner extremely hard, nearly impossible I might say. It's not even fun anymore.

[Sandman25]

Reread spells description, there is a cap on summoned monsters. Or just see table at https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... :summoning

[Arrhythmia]

The idea is that you mix spells. Rather than half a dozen hounds, you call 3 hounds and 3 imps.

[Laraso]

Reread spells description, there is a cap on summoned monsters. Or just see table at https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... :summoning

Oh wow, I didn't realize that. I guess that means my problem was that I was trying to repeatedly summon a single type of monster, constantly hitting the cap, and watching as my summons were constantly abjured. I guess that means the only effective way to use summons now is to simply throw out one of each? That doesn't sound too interesting. That means your attack power is directly proportional to the amount of different summoning spells you've learned. When I play as a conjurer, I'm not forced to cast one of every spell I have to take down monsters, so why should summoners? I guess I'd be fine with it if the cap was raised slightly, the current cap seems a bit too limited.

I did like some of the proposed changes I read in that link though, namely the Call Canine Familiar change. That would be very interesting and I'd love to play around with the concept of permanently summoned hound that levels up and becomes stronger.

I guess I should go back and give summoning one more try now that I know I have to use all of my summons simultaneously.

[Sandman25]

Don't worry too much, MuSu is still playable even without Sif Muna viewtopic.php?f=12&t=8646&p=117820

[snow]

The summoning cap is pointless and adds nothing but annoyance.

You can STILL summon an endless swarm of creatures. Just now it has to be a mix of say ice beasts and scorpions instead of just scorpions or whatever. It's like if the devs decided (arbitrarily and for no point at all) that you can't use mystic blast twice in a row so you end up just cycling between mystic blast and fireball or something. Is there REALLY a point to that?

[Sandman25]

The summoning cap is pointless and adds nothing but annoyance.

You can STILL summon an endless swarm of creatures. Just now it has to be a mix of say ice beasts and scorpions instead of just scorpions or whatever. It's like if the devs decided (arbitrarily and for no point at all) that you can't use mystic blast twice in a row so you end up just cycling between mystic blast and fireball or something. Is there REALLY a point to that?

Well, 3 Ice Beasts and 4 Scorpions cannot provide 3-cells shield surrounding you from every side, later they die very fast also. 2 Summoned Dragons should be very different from 10+ dragons which you can have in 0.12.

[Lasty]

The summoning caps (at least the version I tried) do create interesting situations. You can still have long-lasting summons, but not a giant swarm of them. You can still create swarms, but they don't last long. Summoning can no longer be used to simply drown your foes in summons, because when you go for swarms they disappear relatively quickly, leaving you short of mana and allies; instead, you generally can walk around with one or two friends, and bring in a few more short-term when needed. You can also create a giant swarm, and use that to cover a retreat before it quickly evaporates.

Having more summoning spells does increase the degree to which you can keep a swarm going, but it's still more limited, and doing so no longer feels like the focus of the summoner playstyle.