Summoning

[toxic yoke]

Because most stats and their values are balanced around the fact that they only serve to buff the player. Extend those things to minions where each and every benefit from them, especially chance-based effects. Especially those that are solely meant for damage(ie. knockback, stun, etc.) And you will undoubtedly find unintended able broken behaviors.

And the main reasons it deletes pure summoner is because with no real wall between the player and minion stats, means that no matter how i build for my minions my own power is getting strong and im even futher incentivised to be hybrid and attack myself. Like if my attacks do 100 dps when my minions deal 20k dps, theres no point. But if i do 10k dps when my minions deal 20k. Theres no point to being pure summoner. Especially when its not like you are even making any interesting build choices to enable this behavior, put on damage gear and swap to your own weapon and profit.

[dire horizon]

Food buffs heavily are in effect here as well

[jagged lotus]

I think you're forgetting it would only apply to global stuff. Most melee talents for example, aren't global. Minions would not have knockback or stun or slow from talents in the ranged or melee tree. Zombies would not start giving you hp on hit cuz you equipped solarite armor. As for using another weapon as pure summoner? This is already how it is anyways. You're incentivized to have a backup weapon when your summons are active. It's a natural part of the class. It's not that different than having 3 freebie summons active for everything else with your idea.

[toxic yoke]

Beyond the fact that allowing values of stats that apply to one person now apply to as many minions as you can muster up, some how not being an obvious reason to see how insanely giga over powered it is ||might as well buff stormbringer just cause||, how would anyone ever know what Global stuff is. Even when explicitly saying "global" people are going to see crit is global and then assume that well my tome says it does melee damage melee crit must apply since crit is global.

Even I don't entirely know what stats would be considered global, theres no clear distinction you've made.

Like why doesn't melee damage affect melee minions?

[dire horizon]

So guardian set gives 500% attack as an explosion, if I had access to all stats from the food table I could reach this and more with a hybrid build, you think arcane staff is rough, it's nothing compared to the mixing I could do with summoning especially with current skill trees, minion detonator would be exploding minions for probably 20-40k instead of the 4-9k it does now

[toxic yoke]

Less damage than when the RNG gods provide a 200k+ single hit from a musket, requires more dmg honestly.

[dire horizon]

Meteorite staff also hits for 200k now

Magic musket you could say

[toxic yoke]

I have been waiting very patiently for a friend to do that boss so i haven't got to fight the new boss yet nor test its rewards.

[dire horizon]

Oh let me fix my sentence

Nvm i can't edit the spoiler on it toughie lost the meme moment

[toxic yoke]

Nah its good i know it exists and seen it used

I just haven't yet. 😄

Looked dummy good ngl

[dire horizon]

It's definitely strong, the aim is rough though XD

[toxic yoke]

skill issue

[dire horizon]

Facts

[toxic yoke]

Can you nuke yourself? I hope so that would be hilarious

[jagged lotus]

Pretty simple to tell. A minion attack would count the same way as any other player attack (bar explosion damage which imo should also be given this same behavior). They just don't count as ranged or melee or magic attacks. As for confusion about crits applying, I don't recall there being any melee crit specific stats per your example, or any other specific types of attack crits either besides summons.

[dire horizon]

It doesn't dmg you XD same with minion explosions they don't dmg you either

[toxic yoke]

sad but tbh better

[toxic yoke]

Ya but why not melee damage?

If % damage applies, how does melee damage differ if my minions are melee?

Why would i ever use summoner gear? If im meant to use a weapon myself and its going to do good damage by scaling. I'm gettin more damage by building generic damage and going summoner than using summoner gear to go summoner because player weapons are scale to do way more damage than the few minions i'm' going to lose from using non-summoner gear

[jagged lotus]

theoretically not opposed to that kind of mechanical crossover but you'd have to have it apply on a per minion basis to even consider the possibility. So a bat that procs weakness detection would only get weakness detection for itself. I'm no expert on game development but it might cause performance issues for the game to keep track of that many status effects constantly being updated and going off all the time. Otherwise it might actually be better for balance than only doing the half measure that I had in mind originally.

[dire horizon]

I can see this simple put probably more to apply

Magic dmg% conversion to minion dmg%

Minion dmg%

Crit dmg%

Triple dmg%

Dmg against poisoned%

Throw in dmg against burning% and bosses%

And that's already scaling my minion dmg to absurd dmg, not factoring minion attack speed ect

[jagged lotus]

Of course it also brings up topics of things like, why not general physical damage buffs? Why not have a physical skill tree so standard builds get that same kind of overlap? And obviously this would all be a massive overlap in damage buffs which would require a lot of them to be toned down I reckon

[toxic yoke]

And then in toning down things, every build is then effectively nerfed

So how was this supposed to not affect the whole game?

Like bro i get it

[jagged lotus]

Cuz this is off in looney land and a massive break from what I think would actually be reasonable

[toxic yoke]

But thats where youre going

actually

[jagged lotus]

It's just like a massive "what if?" if they had originally balanced the game around these 6 (7?) combat archetypes

[toxic yoke]

There is a very clear and explicit reason minion stats are separated from player stats because without this abstraction players stats mean nothing to the player anymore and only the best combination to apply to X number of minions matters.

[dire horizon]

No it's really just working with what we have without changing the entire game, we are avoiding the overhaul your entire game because X skill is kinda yucky rn

[toxic yoke]

Either the base stats of the minions would be so low that player damage still outscales them making minions useless, or that minions just infest the rest of the game

[dire horizon]

Minions base dmg would be hella nerfed for scaling with our stats XD

[jagged lotus]

For my actual response to this. It wouldn't. Minions being ranged or melee currently means nothing as it is and I don't think anybody would bat an eye if they removed that from their tooltips. Only damage% that would affect them is stuff like cooked marble meat

[jagged lotus]

They'd be infesting other builds with three 5 minute minions anyways

[toxic yoke]

They wouldn't

trust

[jagged lotus]

Speaking of that 5 minute thing

I liked your original idea of them being permanent but taking up a bit of the mana bar instead

[toxic yoke]

Ya again another thing that asks the devs for fundamental mechanic change

Its also just flawed af

Unless they remove the mana cost... Because it would be super unintuitive that at some point the mana costs vs your lowering mana bar could reach a threshold where your summon count isn't reached but you don't have enough mana to summon a new one.

[jagged lotus]

I mean, functionally it's just for people that want to have their terraria minion that is just free protection for multi-tasking, otherwise it's not really intended to be that viable for combat. Regardless of mana cost there's no real downside to having those even if they are still technically on a timer, 5 minutes is too long to really matter.

[jagged lotus]

I was thinking maybe those in particular could have a way to banish them, like right clicking on the tome instead of left click

[toxic yoke]

And its a god damn shame for those people because this game is CK 🙂

[jagged lotus]

Since they're permanent they can't technically go away

[dire horizon]

I have a better solution to this via our current pet build when I get to it

[toxic yoke]

don't do it xd

wildwarden is cooked let it die

[jagged lotus]

That's the intention regardless tho isn't it? To give those people that feature so they stop asking for it in actual minion gameplay

[dire horizon]

Imma do it 😈

[jagged lotus]

Wildwarden should just duplicate your pet

[toxic yoke]

No its to find a CK solution that addresses the problem

Not a carbon copy idea for summoning placed into a fundamentally different game

[jagged lotus]

I mean it's practically the same if it's just weak minion on 5 minute timer. You'd just have to resummon ocassionally when it disappears

[toxic yoke]

Also to expand on this whats like 500 dps from 3 non-scaled minions to the players 100k+ dps from the rest of their build. I wouldn't even considere this worth the inventory slot to carry it around

[jagged lotus]

largely I think pets kind of serve that same purpose already, I don't see a ton of reason to appeal to that niche regardless. I'm personally more in favor of going all in on short lifetime minions, with 30s being the absolute maximum for more support oriented minions

No offense @dire horizon

[toxic yoke]

Maybe if they were actually good. Theres a reason owlux and pheromoth are used by most players because their damage isn't comparible to player damage and buffing ourselves is way better than pet dmg.

[jagged lotus]

This would actually be kinda epic tho ngl

[toxic yoke]

Ehh i'd rather have 2-3 different pets more diversity not sure if you understand tho

[jagged lotus]

Yeah but pets still work better than what a free 5m minion pet would be

[jagged lotus]

Yeah but UI for it would be kinda funky

[dire horizon]

Imma revive wildwarden, it will be a better solution to perma minions and actually balance-able summoning can stay what it is because that's how CK feels summoning should be and if you want it to be active, I'd keep it far away from perma lowkey, I'll find more fun in my passive wildwarden style gameplay while playing loot box simulator with pets

[toxic yoke]

Cope

[dire horizon]

Watch wildwarden is about to pop off, crazy if it became more popular than summoning

[jagged lotus]

I think it's a cool idea regardless

[toxic yoke]

i used to care about pets suggested a couple things and welp no notable changes since their release so 🤷‍♂️

[jagged lotus]

The new pet that's coming is literally just subterrier with an extra radiation aura perk 😭

[dire horizon]

You didn't suggest enough buff stormbringer duh

[toxic yoke]

right all pets have a constant stormbringer beam coming from them

[jagged lotus]

New minion idea

[dire horizon]

New pet is a disappointment version of subterrier

[jagged lotus]

Tome of the Stormbringers. Summons rotating stormbringers that orbit around you

[toxic yoke]

radiation dmg bad

[dire horizon]

Genius

[toxic yoke]

you think its good cause fancy buzz word but then you realize it doesn't scale by anything

[dire horizon]

We do need a legendary tome

[jagged lotus]

I thought it was just a radial form of burn damage for the longest time imma be real

[dire horizon]

Ah dang you're right XD

[toxic yoke]

I wouldn't dream of a legendary tome until summon itself is good.

[jagged lotus]

I was so disappointed getting the astronaut armor and the radiation crystals still damage you, like why tf did I get this lmao

[dire horizon]

Let me cope

[toxic yoke]

https://tenor.com/vmuu4Phzlxb.gif

[jagged lotus]

Embertail would unironically be better off without the inherent burn debuff lmao

[toxic yoke]

I don't even remember my pet suggestions

[jagged lotus]

I made one for the magma slime a while ago cuz its talent selection is poopoo

[toxic yoke]

https://discord.com/channels/851842678340845600/1172298448633086033
https://discord.com/channels/851842678340845600/1217556872991866920

I think i also had mentioned like 3-4 new minions that you could acquire eggs for from breeding cattle.

[jagged lotus]

No burn on hit and no Flaming Treat talent like embertail even though there's literally a melee version of it in the game files

[toxic yoke]

Found it... #1215214588950478858 message

[jagged lotus]

Mfw I gotta scrap my first pet gerard cuz his talent rolls were crap 😭

Also shouldn't pets like, scale their damage to level 19? I've barely touched the wilderness in my current playthrough and my pet is already at level 8

Feels like they stop scaling their damage relatively early compared to player progression

[dire horizon]

Pets scale high though depending, prince slime is a little monster with hungry fang

[jagged lotus]

That is true, though prince slime is a chad

[toxic yoke]

If only pets weren't just early-access-minions aka having the clunkiest AI they might actually be good supplemental damage.

[jagged lotus]

I feel like a lot of pet talents are also just kinda crappy filler? Why would I ever take the pet movement speed one

[dire horizon]

Pet AI is better than old minion AI actually XD

[toxic yoke]

Movement speed is good for melee

[toxic yoke]

I'm pretty sure its identical with the old AI

[jagged lotus]

I must run damage buffs

[toxic yoke]

You've made that clear

But movement speed is an indirect damage buff if they can't keep up to actively do dmg

[jagged lotus]

True

[dire horizon]

Pets were much more aggressive than minions pretty sure, they would kill stuff even if it wasn't aggro'd on you, speaking mainly as a fanhare/prince slime user XD

[jagged lotus]

The melee ones tend to wander

[toxic yoke]

Its been so long since i've equiped a pet that attacked. I want to disagree but can't in good faith

[jagged lotus]

I will say it feels really cool visually to use an army of fire mites and an embertail, just wish there was a functional build to make out of it lol

[dire horizon]

Burn override is so yucky

[jagged lotus]

Fire mites were the original reason I suggested burn stat applying to minions, so fire mites could be good for applying burn in a burn summoner build. Only thing missing is a consistent way to apply the burn consumption ability with a different attack outside of the shaman skull and embertail

Something like a blacksmith hammer that you use in melee combat would be sick as like a combo type weapon to pair with it that comes with that ability built in

[dire horizon]

Maybe just make fire axe useful and apply it there XD

[jagged lotus]

Fire axe applies da burn. Maybe swap out the effect on smithing glove cuz it's not very good rn

[dire horizon]

Fire axe is yucky, it needs more than burn XD

#fireaxehater

[toxic yoke]

I should probably restart my own project. Wasting all this creative thought on a game i don't get paid for T.T

[jagged lotus]

Give it more burn

[jagged lotus]

What's da game

I'll pay you 5 schmeckles for it

[dire horizon]

1000 burning dmg sounds reasonable

[toxic yoke]

Which unfinished project LUL?

[jagged lotus]

The one

[toxic yoke]

Last one i was working on was very CK influenced

But a lot more combat/stat focus and roguelike elements

[jagged lotus]

Do the one thing other sandbox game devs never could, make minecarts not suck

[toxic yoke]

The person i was working on it with got busy so put the project on the shelf.

[toxic yoke]

Nah

[dire horizon]

Make summoner like terraria 🤓 chop chop

[jagged lotus]

https://tenor.com/view/ron-swanson-throws-out-his-computer-gif-26050062

[toxic yoke]

Actually yes, by not adding them they would be good

[dire horizon]

Also don't forget to buff stormbringer

[jagged lotus]

I kinda wanna play factorio just to have a sandbox game with a good train system lmao

[toxic yoke]

Choo Choo MF

https://tenor.com/bybDZ.gif

[dire horizon]

Yea I won't lie I've never ever used minecarts in CK...

[toxic yoke]

The best way to use them ngl

[jagged lotus]

Minecraft minecarts are pathetic, terraria ones are glorified rollercoasters, and CK ones become redundant the moment you start finding teleporters

[toxic yoke]

aka first boss?

[jagged lotus]

Exactly.

[toxic yoke]

[jagged lotus]

All my homies hate this thing

[toxic yoke]

Whats wrong? I just see a train.

[jagged lotus]

If only you knew

[dire horizon]

Minecraft minecarts are kinda convenient for many things, terraria roller coasters are really glorified cheesing boss mechanics XD, and CK why? I run faster than a minecart, we also have teleports

[jagged lotus]

It's pretty much just hopper and chest minecarts for farms. For transport they're slow and expensive

[dire horizon]

Terraria I only used minecarts for mastermode day time empress, whoever made that boss hates their life

[jagged lotus]

Tbh turret carts would be really cool for farms in core keeper

[dire horizon]

So um palworld crossover when? Lmao

Anyways so regarding summoning hurry up and send your Google docs

[toxic yoke]

No

[jagged lotus]

I stopped working on mine when iDoodler said he made his own

[toxic yoke]

xd

Let it cook

also not finished nor do i want to work on it

we were doing a bit to much of the yappening today to make progress

[dire horizon]

Smh yappers

[jagged lotus]

I think the general changes we have in mind for mana cost and lifetime and such are perfect

[toxic yoke]

Also to be clear, if we are setting a google doc vs a normal suggestion, I would highly recommend being signficantly more thorough meaning... After we do or don't agree on what the minimal changes are we can all add the suggestions for how to approach a full overhaul

[jagged lotus]

Right

[dire horizon]

That's fair

[toxic yoke]

No need to agree for that, just list a few different ways to take things.

[jagged lotus]

I literally titled it a manifesto

[toxic yoke]

xd

i didn't titled mine

Also check out this absolutely comprehensive video that features minecart logic at its peak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3IwGQDHmPg

[jagged lotus]

Talking specifics for thought process is important imo. Gives the devs more context for why certain changes should be made and why current implementation is a problem

[dire horizon]

Minecraft will always be an amazing game ( we are getting rideable ghasts soon )

[toxic yoke]

Agreed I assume the doc will be a lot longer than necessary but the context will help explain the what and why of each change.

[toxic yoke]

4 players at a time, and you can stand on it. ngl kinda sick

[jagged lotus]

I half wonder if the rideable ghast is to give players some more options for end traversal once they inevitably do an end update

[dire horizon]

Ikr? Elytra rates are about to ↘️

[toxic yoke]

fax

cash out while you can

[dire horizon]

XD

[dire horizon]

Maybe? Lowkey might even be another way to cheese the enderdragon

[jagged lotus]

Well probably not, the enderdragon would probably pop it like a balloon. Just specifically for getting between different outer end islands

[jagged lotus]

I would never trust standing on that thing ngl, especially on bedrock

[dire horizon]

Enderdragon projectiles are pretty slow, one friend brings enough splash potions it's enough to easily pop all the towers

[jagged lotus]

It has contact damage as well though

https://tenor.com/view/fish-gif-21991630

This is what it would do

[toxic yoke]

What could go wrong?

[jagged lotus]

https://tenor.com/view/bedrock-moment-bugrock-creeper-i-cant-stop-gif-4508476858246250678

[dire horizon]

Splash potions for regen ect you can out heal the dmg done, they have 10 hp, enderdragon doesn't spam it's projectile much, you can safely just float around with a means to an end XD, it wouldn't do enough dmg to one shot you unless the happy ghast had less hp

[dire horizon]

I play bedrock I fear the wither like it's herobrine

[jagged lotus]

I haven't touched hardcore on bedrock, don't trust how buggy it is

[dire horizon]

I accept my pain

[jagged lotus]

My friends all play on console so for realms I have no choice

[toxic yoke]

Its time to abandon them

🙂

[jagged lotus]

I have college friends now that have actual computers so perhaps

[toxic yoke]

no

xd

jk

[jagged lotus]

merely a writeup on what all would be affected with the change. I have my own thoughts on the matter

[toxic yoke]

ofc

Just messing around cause just looking to see if there was any new messages and saw you typing.

[jagged lotus]

List of generic attack modifiers which would theoretically affect explosions and/or minions if they counted for generic buffs:

• crit chance
• crit damage bonus
• generic +damage% modifiers (e,g, marbled meat meals, desperate fighter talent, well fed buff)
• +damage% vs bosses
• +damage% vs burning targets (smithing glove, pyrdra's necklace)
• +damage% vs poisoned enemies
• +damage% vs stunned enemies (only exists on hydra bone sword atm)
• +burn damage applied on hit.
• chance to consume burn and apply damage (shaman skull)
• chance to apply poison on hit (druidra's ring)
• chance to apply slippery on hit (crydra's ring)
• triple damage chance (owlux & hydra tooth)

Affected Talents:

• Keeping Tempo
• Strength of the Ancients
• Strong and Healthy
• Desperate Fighter
• Weakness Detection (would enable minion and explosive crits while active)
• Amplified Precision
• Thorny Weapons
• Poison Coated Weapons
• Potent Poison
• Power of Omega-3
• Healthy Diet
• Smell of Food (may affect minions already due to radial effect)
• True Sight
• Mana Channeling (would be even more op)

surprisingly large list honestly

[toxic yoke]

I'm not surprised 😛

Now think of all the items 🤣

[jagged lotus]

Besides crits being a very slippery slope with equipment the biggest offenders in terms of balance would likely be mana channeling and weakness detection. Weakness Detection due to the sheer amount of value you could get with a ton of minions all doing 100% crits every few seconds and stacking crit damage equipment, and mana channeling cuz minions would constantly keep your mana maxed out.

[toxic yoke]

I think its a lot worse than you think.

[jagged lotus]

probably, minions damage was not designed with all of this in mind (even though it's still poopoo regardless lol)

generic +damage% modifiers (e,g, marbled meat meals, desperate fighter talent, well fed buff)
I'm not certain how these types of modifiers in particular work in terms of stacking. Are all these small damage bonus talents multiplicative or are they merely adding on top of one another? I remember hearing something about marbled meat no longer being multiplicative

I do know the crystal meteor chunk in particular also boosts minions since I remember it was mentioned in patch notes. I've been wondering if it would make sense to add more proximity-based abilities like this

[toxic yoke]

From all my testing(at least what i remember), all % damage values are additive with the exception of crit damage, % damage against {status effect} enemies, and triple damage ofc. I don't remember if boss damage is a multiplier or not.

[jagged lotus]

makes sense

Have you tested what explosives are affected by? I know they're excluded from some things but I'm not certain what all that is

[toxic yoke]

I even tested %damage to allies aura from the one talent, and even that was additive iirc

[jagged lotus]

interesting

[toxic yoke]

No I didn't get too far into messing with explosives.

Ran out of explosives early and then switched to summoning and then later back to ranged xd

[jagged lotus]

Most of those kinds of generic damage boost talents would likely be kept more or less in check then if they're only additive. Kinda lame summoner doesn't really benefit from stuff like that to begin with.

[toxic yoke]

I did try to mess with sun caller staff a while ago for explosive meme, but it didn't seem to really scale with much

gave up because magic damage didn't scale the explosive portion, thought maybe because the staff is magic that it might, but nah

[jagged lotus]

They should change it so explosives also account for their attack sources. so magic explosions also benefit from magic damage buffs

[toxic yoke]

I don't care one way or another so long its balanced accordingly

[jagged lotus]

I do think they are affected by generic damage% though, someone said they tested it

explosives also have the quirk of their mining damage being determined by their explosive damage, so mining damage buffs don't affect them unfortunately

[toxic yoke]

Ya i have no idea how well explosives perform with the new stats and gear. I did see the AOE on them when buffed and that looks fun to kill myself with experiment with.

[jagged lotus]

It was very uh, half-you-know-whated

Unlike the armors that got retrofitted into magic armors like scholar armor, stuff like sulfossil got no changes to make it fit more, and they didn't add anything like an explosives potion

[toxic yoke]

I think thats fine though if things don't aren't always 100% on release for games that continue updating post release. Development takes time. I get that some simple stuff seems like small tweaks but likely their focus is elsewhere.

Not to mention deadlines happen, people gotta get paid so... theres that too

Thats why im only starting to get more critical of summoning now. Gave them a few content updates and it still seems to have the same issues i've had with it since release so... ya

[jagged lotus]

I think I might be more inclined to write a thing on explosives since I think the issues with it are much more straightforward frankly

[toxic yoke]

All you. Best i can do is give you my uninformed opinion 😄

And i'd rather not unless you want that

[jagged lotus]

I think I'm good

[dire horizon]

I've experimented with explosions with some talents ect, definitely seems to be more of a support than an actual dmg type build

Napalm is probably the best talent to grab, overall explosion dmg doesn't have a lot to offer, I feel it's basically mana potions for magic, and easy debuffs for everyone else, works fine on causal mode though, standard and up is kinda not worth lowkey

Also like minion explosions only use like 1 talent from the explosives tree which is really awkward, plus explosion dmg% doesn't effect them as well, ik it's a small gripe in the scale of things though

[jagged lotus]

Yes the general consensus for a while is that explosive builds are poo

[jagged lotus]

Btw does this mean damage type specific buffs are also additive with generic ones? Like if you have a +50% physical melee damage increase is that multiplicative or additive with a marbled meat meal buff?

[oak delta]

Have yall discussed the horrible response time of the minions and pets yet? Like firemites I've noticed could be quite a but more aggressive. Better than melee pets by far but still could use more push. I'll be running around and I'll see the mites kinda just sit there for a few seconds before engaging.

[jagged lotus]

Helps if you hit whatever you want them to attack to activate their aggro. Freshly spawned ones will also make a b-line straight for enemies in line of sight for whatever reason

[oak delta]

Yeah. Well I mainly mean when running around. Going from one point to the other. I'll run into a group and they take a few seconds before attacking.

[dire horizon]

With current AI my summons attack everything on sight XD but I think my world being mostly open has something to do with that, open areas melee minions do fine, tunneling ect, if there isn't a clear path to the enemy then your minions won't go

Ranged minions typically are better in that sense cause they don't rely on a clear path as much

[jagged lotus]

Says you, mine walk over chasms and water like they're Jesus

[dire horizon]

Mine follow me in the boat but they won't attack over water my fire mites are disobedient XD they'd rather watch me

[jagged lotus]

Weird

I've used them to fight enemies across chasms before, so they just won't attack if they're not on solid land?

[dire horizon]

There's 2 interactions I've used, you can spawn your minions through a block, so you can technically block yourself in somewhere and spawn your minions inside that block and they will go out and attack, and if I spawn my minions across a chasm they will attack, but if they are with me they will watch me get pelted by spears ect, they don't typically walk over that chasm or body of water

Also in the wilds if they are blocked by wood then they won't go unless I clear a path as well XD

[toxic yoke]

You'll have to test for food cause its been a while since i've went through everything so my memory on it is vague. But yes %damage and %damage with melee are additive. Additive Base * (1 + modifier1 + modifier2 ...) Multiplicative Base * (1 + modifier1) * (1 + modifier2) ...

[jagged lotus]

thank you, just making sure

[toxic yoke]

Waiting for the motivation to work on the doc 🤣

[jagged lotus]

I have not had time

[toxic yoke]

I did have most of the basic stuff typed out but with more detail to get more insight on the why of the changes

Will share and most likely change things after some peer review from you and weeb

I still plan to include the +2 base minion change since out of the 3 of us, majority was for it, which I know you don't like but 🤷‍♂️ we can go into detail in why we are adding it so in the future if a more major overhaul happens it can be replaced with something more fitting.

[dire horizon]

[jagged lotus]

I never got a clear answer from you on this I don't think, but how would it work? Would it be something you get at certain level intervals or would you simply start with 3 minion slots? Personally I'd prefer the latter

[toxic yoke]

I did say mention at least once that, perhaps at summoning 50 and 100 you'd get +1

I wasn't too specific about it because it doesn't really matter how, but i don't think just giving +2 at the start for free is great tbh

[jagged lotus]

Personally I'd prefer it just being something you start out with so it puts early summoner at a similar playing field to other archetypes at least

It doesn't matter a ton regardless since you can get pretty close to 50 pre-wall if you're using summons fairly frequently

[toxic yoke]

Perhaps, I see giving +2 at the start though does kind of clash with your concerns though

[jagged lotus]

I mean

Early summoner kinda feels like crud

And having the whole "cheaper mana cost and faster minion summoning but lower lifetime" balance shift I think it'd make some sense to start out with 3 slots

[toxic yoke]

To me summoner feels pretty rough early until you get an armor set(probably because of minion count), but they gets miserable mid game when it doesn't scale as well as other classes, then it gets good again once you start getting deep into the summoning tree and better/upgraded gear

[toxic yoke]

Thats fair but how do you remedy that with the issues you've brought up in other debates? Particularly minions used along side another class. Mind you early is where this type of use is most impactful when your damage values are low.

[jagged lotus]

Well I said before I think balancing tomes as more like actual weapons means you're using a primary weapon less because you're summoning more often. I think summoning is more fun when it leans into that style of play

[toxic yoke]

Hmm..

So you are always bringing up shorter lifetimes which clearly i think is great for a more active playstyle which 100% makes it harder to use another weapon since you have less time to switch. But on the flip side i think we should also consider the alternative too, basically players who either want a passive playstyle and in which cases leaves open the ability for players to use another weapon... And obviously this isn't easy to solve.

Initially I was thinking if the tomes we provide early game have short lifespans then this is one approach that makes 3 base minions have less impactful abuse cases... But I feel like this is a bit of weird solution with the approach to balancing the two because then all early game minions are going to do a lot of damage with their short lifespans, and then you get later into the game with longer lifespan minions and all of a sudden they are doing way less damage. I understand the upgrade bench mildly mitigates this, but overall most gear acquired later in the game IS better even if just slightly. So just feels weird

Perhaps an approach would be that lifespan would scale with levels? How do you feel about something like that? Idk if i like that tbh

[jagged lotus]

I'm still in favor of allowing those people to have some kind of perma minions for passive personal protection. Could be some kind of offhand ability or adding in a different kind of minion for it

[toxic yoke]

Because for the short minions it probably couldn't scale much like 15s duration base with like +1s every other level up to ~20-30s which for an active minion would be fine, but definitely a lot harder to get right imo

Like if we are thinking about it with ~20-30s with 10 minion count, you have to summon every 2-3s to sustain cap, so as the player you don't get much free time to sustain your dps. Which is the result we want for active playstyle. I see mana being a major issue here without some solution

Unless it really is cheap like 5-10 mana

Definitely a tangent tho... back to when to give the minion count idk

With only 3 minions at 15-30s duration theres still plenty of time to use another weapon

[jagged lotus]

I think generally if minions are super cheapo it should generally be 15s

[toxic yoke]

Ye don't disagree, if anything(would require a larger overhaul) a perk that increases minion mana cost to drastically increase damage would be neat

[jagged lotus]

Or heck you could take it a bit lower to even 10 seconds, and lifetime items would become very valuable

[toxic yoke]

But does this not create the same problem we are trying to solve by giving 3 minions by making lifespan really short and now lifespan value outweighs other options?

I don't really disagree with anything here btw just trying to explore options and stir more ideas 🙂

[jagged lotus]

Maybe? I think it gives lifetime and minion count similar usefulness, you could kinda take it in two directions where you could extend the lifetime of smaller numbers of minions by a lot or you could get a much larger army of minions that lasts for a shorter period of time. Lemme look at lifetime accessories real quick

[toxic yoke]

I am however concerned with uptime issues due to the behavior of mana and mana regen. Currently every summon has a forced 1s cd, not sure this is going to change although i think it would be wise to do so, particularly with shorter lifespan minions. But as minion count increases it is increasingly hard to maintain 100% uptime of your cap if lifespan doesn't also increase.

Particularly around early to mid game

Oh i didn't finish my thought... uhh the 1s you have to wait due to the tome CD is also the length of delay mana regen is interrupted for after spending mana, if you have to constantly summon to maintain your cap, at some length of a fight you will lose uptime. Maybe this is okay, but just pointing it out.

Lets say we have 100 mana, at 5 mana per cost, 1s CD. We can sustain for 100 / 5 - minionCount = fight duration at minion cap

[jagged lotus]

This was why we're reducing mana regen cooldown isn't it?

[toxic yoke]

I would personally remove it. Its terrible for magic too and one of the reasons mana channeling is as good as it is.

Most magic builds would easily be sustainable with a bit of investment into mana regen if it didn't get interrupted at every cast.

[jagged lotus]

I think I'd halve it at the very least, even terraria has a pause in mana usage when you use a magic weapon, but the delay is lower I think

[toxic yoke]

I mean could buff the one talent

atm it is 6%-30%, but could be 10-50% or even 15-75%

[jagged lotus]

https://terraria.wiki.gg/wiki/Mana#Technical_info
here's how terraria does it for reference

[toxic yoke]

I'd still remove it personally i think it only serves to mislead players into a noob trap as mana regen is not always # per second.

I'm aware.

[jagged lotus]

Seems they have a ramp up mechanic which is interesting?

[toxic yoke]

I'm personally in favor more a more simplistic approach. They are easier to understand and easier to add comprehensible depth to.

[jagged lotus]

My main concern would just be that it might end up being that no mana regen delay would mean basically no mana management for summoner if your regen gets high enough

[toxic yoke]

Ya but that should be by choice no? Give up a ring and amulet or w/e to be able to sustain. You lose dps for sustain.

Sustain better for longer fights where dps is fine for anything you can kill quickly.

Its nuanced in a way thats easier for players to understand

[jagged lotus]

Yea but this also affects mage, which has much easier access to mana regen cuz it usually comes standard on their equipment

[toxic yoke]

I would say the same for Mana channeling requiring investment into crit, but the issue there is that the mana delay is entirely bypassed/ignored AND you can just get 100% crit from the ranged tree albeit rng reliant but once it procs you can generally sustain it so long as you are hitting an enemy.

[jagged lotus]

Investment into crit is also like, you get crits for more damage lol

[toxic yoke]

ya i was going to mention that too

[jagged lotus]

That's kinda why I don't like how weakness detection is designed, it kinda skirts around needing investment into crit chance

[toxic yoke]

I mean the only magic weapon that can really take advantage is arcane staff tbf

no others can reliably proc it to keep it up and hit often enough while its up to sustain their mana costs

[jagged lotus]

Yeah but like it also applies to other ranged weapons, arcane staff gets used a ton for summoner too cuz of all the synergy talents

It all kinda just feeds into the current game balance heavily favoring high attack speed weapons

[toxic yoke]

arcane staff isn't getting used FOR summoner its summoning is getting used FOR arcane staff

just making that clear

[jagged lotus]

It's a bit of both innit?

[toxic yoke]

No

[jagged lotus]

Especially for grim set

[toxic yoke]

Arcane staff does not give anything to minions

[jagged lotus]

Not directly, but it's used with grim set which gives summons a ton of buffs from mage synergy

[toxic yoke]

the stat on arcane staff is crit chance, and the benefit summoners get is magic damage gives some summoning damage

the flat magic damage on weapons means nothing

[jagged lotus]

Nah that's not what I mean I just mean the general build it's used in, mb

[toxic yoke]

Arcane staff is benefiting from summons, and it just so happens that in building for arcane staff you also get some feedback synergy into summoning

[jagged lotus]

Right

[toxic yoke]

explicitly % magic damage

[jagged lotus]

But yeah I don't think weakness detection is balanced in general. Not just for mage weapons

[toxic yoke]

Otherwise summoning gets nothing of use from any magic weapon lol

[jagged lotus]

Yea

[toxic yoke]

This is why i've said a few times the magic-summoning synergy is a non-issue when it comes to buffing summoning cause the only thing that would noticably benefit is arcane staff. Of which imo should be individually nerfed

[jagged lotus]

I don't think it's inherently wrong I just think there's too much of it in the summon tree cuz it takes up a lot of space that could have been used for summoner specific abilities

@toxic yoke is group effort used with the basic hybrid summoner arcane staff build or is it trickle down arcana? Or both? Not super familiar with the specifics of that build

[toxic yoke]

I think the 5 you use are:
Ferocious creatures, Power in numbers, Tough gang, Group effort, Longing for this world

[jagged lotus]

Looking at the Charging In and Taking a Step Back talents it looks to me like Trickle Down should be in the magic tree rather than the summoning tree. It buffs summon damage in a similar way to the two I just mentioned, as well as Group Effort and Adrenaline Rush. They're in the skill tree of the attack type that is used to activate the talent rather than the target damage type of the ability

[toxic yoke]

Ferocious creates - because you have to
Power in numbers - attack speed duh
Tough gang - magic barrier gives flat damage when used with The best offense from the magic tree
Group effort - magic damage duh
Longing for this world - less management

[toxic yoke]

ya idk i agree, although its a bit arbitrary ngl

You could easily say the opposite for Charging In and Taking a Step Back

[jagged lotus]

Well yes, but I'm looking at how similar abilities follow the trend

And the most recent one is adrenaline rush

[toxic yoke]

ya they aren't consistent for sure, who knows what happened xd

There is definitely not a requirement for them to stick to any particularly formula but the consistency is nice when it does. Would I change it? Probably. I am also fine with no change.

[jagged lotus]

So are we going to be messing with skill trees or no?

Personally I think it'd be really beneficial to both magic classes but like you said it's not that big of a reason for the problems with summoning

[toxic yoke]

I think w/e we end up sending to devs should be split between this is what we need, and this is what we want

[jagged lotus]

Well I suppose we should establish what we need

[toxic yoke]

And need should have the most impact with the smallest changes.

[jagged lotus]

bruh I'm tired

[toxic yoke]

Lol ya bro my sleep has been super messed up this passed 2 weeks

[jagged lotus]

I just started a java realm with my friends on the 1st, not good for my sleep schedule 😭

[toxic yoke]

Its causing my focus to be so terrible i haven't wanted to sit down and finish the... honestly very basic doc lmfao

[jagged lotus]

Okay so let's establish what is necessary then I guess first before we get into side stuff

[toxic yoke]

And also i guess tbf I'm probably the least pressured for changes to happen since even though i still play on occassion i'm not particularly invested in the game atm

[toxic yoke]

I feel like i did this day 1, no? the same thing weeb kept linking to

[jagged lotus]

I was gonna do a full explosives playthrough but it ended up turning into a summoner playthrough cuz explosives is so anemic 😭

[jagged lotus]

Mind sending a message link?

[toxic yoke]

ya 1s

[jagged lotus]

It might also help if you DMed the doc to me so I could see what all you have laid out without it getting lost in a chat string

[toxic yoke]

#1354589473295302788 message

[toxic yoke]

I mean most of the details i've written here, the doc only has fluff explanation since i didn't get far enough to get into details

[jagged lotus]

Yea some of these aren't super clear what's necessary and what isn't tho 🤔

Like the last two under build diversity seem more like nice-to-haves with the "consider"

[toxic yoke]

I mean generally, the sections are the key things we need solutions for regardless of the solution. Rebalance, Mana/Ramping, and Build Diversity

[jagged lotus]

Yea but they're very nonspecific, devs could take that in any direction they want which might not turn out how we like

[toxic yoke]

Each of these kind of affects the others slightly and with that grey area i think you're never going to be perfectly clear. 🤷‍♂️

[jagged lotus]

Like, doubling lifetime again to appease the people who want passive minions 😆

[toxic yoke]

I mean.... 😄

It helps xd

But same issue is still a problem but just less

[jagged lotus]

Yeah but not in a way that makes the class actually more fun for its original purpose

[toxic yoke]

I personally would like both active and passive/significantly less active minions to exist.

The way i see it if both permanent minions and temp minions exist you can kind of configure, in a sense, how active you want your playstyle to be.

If 10 minions is too hard/annoying to sustain, just use 4 permanent minions, and then actively summon with your remaining count, as an example. Or something along those lines

Not like you have to be all in on one type to benefit from each of their aspects

[toxic yoke]

and "hard/annoying", could be anything from mana sustain, lifespan uptime, or just you want to be less active to be able to use a main weapon as a hybrid build.

But ya getting back to the point... addressing those three main issues with the minimal demanding changes possible is the goal imo

if you have any other issues you think aren't included in those 3 categories then feel free to elaborate

[jagged lotus]

What if instead of taking up your mana bar, summoning a passive minion applied a negative debuff to your damage output? It'd keep builds in check that just use them as free extra damage

So if you continuously summon more, it has a progressively more negative overall effect on how much damage your primary weapon does

I think figuring out a good example of how passive minions would be implemented that's not just the current system of giving a super expensive minion a high lifetime would be good cuz it'd give the devs an idea of a better system than what we have now

[toxic yoke]

Can continue this conversation later(cause going to sleep) but at least for this...
I think the only way this works is if the perma/long duration minions also have good base stats then lowering them isn't so bad, but I don't see much point in this when you could just have their base stats lower by default. Like why punish players for an already arguably worse option. Unless by "your damage output" you mean like non-minion damage, and in that case i'd need to think about how that might work out, and im too tired to do that atm.

[jagged lotus]

I meant the latter thing yes

Goodnight!

[dire horizon]

What happened? I was asleep

[jagged lotus]

I've come around on 3 default minions (if it's a default thing and not gotten at level thresholds)

Besides that we were talking about minion balance with lower lifetimes

[toxic yoke]

Doesn't this make them super hard to balance early tho?

[jagged lotus]

Eh? If costs are like 25 default for minions, that leaves you with like 4 slots worth of minions you can summon at once, plus an extra fifth you can get after magic regen with witch doctor armor

So no not really

[toxic yoke]

No im saying damage wise

[jagged lotus]

Not really, tome of the dark is pretty crap till you get a higher number of minion slots

[toxic yoke]

Ya but starting with 3 is giving those slots

[jagged lotus]

It's got 36 damage per shot, I think total the dps is still gonna be pretty poor with 3

[toxic yoke]

But you'd have like 5-6 once you get armor which is pretty easy to acquire

Whats your concern with giving the extra +2 minion count with levels or w/e else?

[jagged lotus]

It doesn't really benefit early game and late game doesn't need the boost. Only appeal is mid game

[dire horizon]

Assuming max mana isn't going up unless we put that on the to do list 5-6 minions would be more than 100 mana, plus idk how early we are getting the 15 sec temp minions or the longer duration so I'm not sure how unbalanced it would be lol

[toxic yoke]

Valid tbh

[jagged lotus]

I'd make tome of the dark 15 second lifetime

[toxic yoke]

You both want tome of dark to go down when i think its one that should go up or stay the same 🤣

[dire horizon]

Tome of dark 15 secs feels like a crime 🤣

[toxic yoke]

ya but didn't you say this too? maybe not 15 but shorter

maybe im misremembering

[dire horizon]

I didn't say that about tome of dark

Tome of ashes I did talk about being shorter

[toxic yoke]

Of the minions that exist i see fire mites getting the super short treatment

[jagged lotus]

Just from basic math, 6 bats is still only roughly the same damage per second as an iron sword without taking into account any other equipment buffs.

[dire horizon]

Yea 6 bats isn't a game breaker tbh

[jagged lotus]

And chieftain armor by itself isn't gonna let you summon all of them at once

[dire horizon]

6 tome of ashes might be but we can just assume that will be shorter, and plus malugaz is immune to burning so tome of ashes is usually kinda doo doo till wall goes down

[toxic yoke]

I been thinking about having lifespan scale slightly

Not sure how to feel about it, definitely something i'd need to test to really get a good understanding bout how that feels.

[jagged lotus]

I think I'd only do that for certain summon weapons

Like yano how some regular weapons have a faster attack speed stat built in that increases with levels?

[toxic yoke]

I think all are fine, but im talking like max 5s increase on the low lifespans(10-15s base) and 10-15s on the mid(30s-1m base), and maybe like 20-30s increases for(1m-2m base if this happens)

[jagged lotus]

Eh

You're kinda just compounding the value of upgrades more when they're already going to be much more worthwhile in terms of scaling

And it kinda takes some of the value off of lifetime stuff like hourglass rings

[dire horizon]

Lifetime rings already have bad value tbh XD

[toxic yoke]

The problem im trying to solve for is how restricting lifespans can be early but get alleviated so you can still maintain higher minion counts

[jagged lotus]

When near everything is 15-30 seconds the value will go up by a lot

[toxic yoke]

doubt

[dire horizon]

Not really, I wouldn't lose out on summon dmg any day of the week especially early game

[toxic yoke]

Also question cause you keep talking about the shortened lifespans, but how do you feel about the longer ones?

Seems like you don't want them or at least aren't personally interested

[dire horizon]

Lifetime rings are more for luxury late game activities when your summons deal enough dmg with grim set that you don't have to care so much XD

[jagged lotus]

A basic hourglass ring gets a 15 second minion to 20 seconds. Much more value per summon and lets you focus more on attacking with another weapon if you like that playstylr

[toxic yoke]

Ya but you have to think about on the upper end, if you have like 10 minion count, you have only 2s between summons to maintain cap

And then you start running into potential mana issues

[jagged lotus]

Wasn't your intention to make high minion count less important?

[toxic yoke]

Sure, but im still thinking about the range of everything

[dire horizon]

High minion count is less important with base 3 minion count, but for pure summoner I'm sure many of us are gonna reach that 10 minion count, jellyfish gonna go brrrr

[jagged lotus]

Personally I just like the idea of summons being more focused on the actual management aspect rather than them just acting like passive buffs. I see the value in it for permanent minions for people like @dire horizon who want them to be more like passive damage output for multitasking but besides that I think it's kind of boring

[toxic yoke]

Ya but then you exclude all people who don't want that

flexibility is key for diversity

[jagged lotus]

Well what do they want then? Genuine question. If they don't like managing summons and they don't care for using them as passive damage output what are they looking to get out of summons?

[toxic yoke]

Like lowkey the hardest part of settling on a solution here is there isn't much to work with since we have 3 tomes and only a few armor sets and like 5 accessories total

And we are wanting to simultaneously accomodate a wider range of playstyles

at least i am wanting that

[jagged lotus]

The devs tried the middleground thing already and the latter group didn't like that and it made minions feel like crap for the former group

[dire horizon]

Orbital tomes longer timers
Ranged tomes mid range timers
Melee tomes short timers

That seems pretty valid tbh

[toxic yoke]

This is how i see it actually

[jagged lotus]

I'm still confused on this. What does this middle group of people want that doesn't like either of these gameplay appeals for a summoner class?

[dire horizon]

Right I feel many pure summoners won't reach decent lifetimes with melee, eventually they will just be bomb fodder for guardian set, and ranged will be used with grim set alongside orbital

[toxic yoke]

My only complaint is that orbital tomes are the riskiest to use since you have to get in even closer than melee tomes to be effective. But it would be weird idk

[jagged lotus]

I'd probably swap lifetimes on melee and ranged. Ranged is the safest to use

[toxic yoke]

But this is counter to the change in playstyles imo

[jagged lotus]

Wdym

[jagged lotus]

Again again please answer this

[dire horizon]

Yea but by the time we obtain them you're gonna use ranged or you're gonna shield up and use orbital, plus we have many survival options, they are the most passive summon we have so that's kinda my justification for longer on them

[dire horizon]

Melee are the best to blow up, bats are weak, and keeping pestilence at mid timer gives players ( summoners ) more options than just going orbital cause they hate the timers XD

[toxic yoke]

Ik it feels 100% counterintuitive but like... people who are using ranged tomes either because lack of skill or want the safety they are going to play ranged cause duh. And its better to lean into how players are likely going to play and just give ranged minions lower stats to balance rather than the alternative.

[jagged lotus]

Idk I think it's also not great design-wise to lock minion lifetimes purely based on their type. Why not have a high damage output orbital minion with low lifetime or a super high lifetime orbital minion focused on defensive supoort?

[toxic yoke]

I don't either tbf

[dire horizon]

Right so I think it's best we do

Orbital longer
Ranged mid
Melee short

I could go into much detail why lol

[toxic yoke]

Lets get that detail for the giggles

im interested

even though i mostly agree

[jagged lotus]

Chat, I still wanna know what the sinister third thing is that people are using summons for

If it's not mini RTS and it's not passive support what is it

[toxic yoke]

Who? I think i missed something.

[jagged lotus]

I'm asking who these people are that you said "don't want that"

And what it is that they want

[toxic yoke]

Oh no real good way to put this but some players just are low skill but at least know that minions will do a better job.

being active with minions is not something good for them

[jagged lotus]

I think they'd still fall into the active management focus. They'd just be more focused on staying away with a ranged weapon and just summoning more dudes as their lifetimes end

[dire horizon]

I gotchu

Tome of decay and tome of deep are passive summons in the purest form, so they deserve the longest timers, the concerns for being closer are valid but it balances magic/summoning hybrid to an extent, while also we have plenty of survival options to live up close battles, and since they take the most advantage of boss hitboxes even if nerfed they will be near our best summon ( deep )

Ranged being mid is all new player friendly, decent timers for the safest option, bats are weak so there's nothing to really balance there, pestilence I would reccomend it keep the same stats cause some may not like orbital or melee playstyles enough, and pestilence gives them that comfy zone they can resort too

Melee why small timers? They do the most dmg and buffing them to do more is gonna result to smaller timers, you can be the most active with them, guardian set will make them really strong, minion detonator too, if you focus on minion dmg as you should with them more so than count they will be enough dmg to deal with most anything on your path, even grim set could use them but I only see few doing so because of the 15s and that grim set takes the most advantage in numbers, while guardian is more for dmg

[toxic yoke]

Ya isn't this opposite of what you said earlier that ranged should be short?

[jagged lotus]

I wouldn't really call the current orbital tomes passive. You have to actively run right into the enemy to get full usage

[toxic yoke]

If they are actively running they likely wouldn'tbe paying too much attention to maintaining summons

[dire horizon]

Passive as in they don't do anything but spin, you're character is more active then the summon XD

[toxic yoke]

Unless you use them for how people are using them which is for the per minion buffs

[jagged lotus]

Couldn't you swap them for anything else atp?

[toxic yoke]

Well i guess people do still use them for boss kills

[toxic yoke]

You'd want the thing with the highest duration if thats the case but currently yes

[dire horizon]

Jellyfish are the best summon for most bosses

[toxic yoke]

ya its tough one tbh

Is that a good thing?

[dire horizon]

Pestilence doesn't fall too short but it also requires you to close in for full output

[jagged lotus]

I mean if you wanna maintain balance while still accounting for people that are just using summons to account for skill issue, I'd say ranged should be the lowest lifetime if we're going down that route (even though I think it's kinda arbitrary). People that are hanging back out of harms way while they're letting their minions deal with threats would ideally have the least amount of time to switch back to a primary weapon

[toxic yoke]

or else your missing shots ya

How are skeletons jwing?

[jagged lotus]

doing?

[toxic yoke]

I don't really use them but they have always felt useless ngl

[jagged lotus]

They're higher damage than the fire mites

[dire horizon]

Skeletons are good for boom boom, best dmg for it

[toxic yoke]

fire mites feel better than skeletons am i crazy?

[toxic yoke]

i could see this

[dire horizon]

No you aren't, the fire mites make up for it in burning

[jagged lotus]

I haven't obtained skellies since the ai rework but statistically they'd usually be better unless they have some other stats that aren't shown like worse attack speed

[toxic yoke]

But this falls off once you get pestilence afaik

I actually have an issue with oribital minions, particularly what to do with them lifespan wise

[dire horizon]

Yea but ashes and dead the buring from ashes makes them better till you start scaling minion dmg% then skeletons come up top since they scale higher

[jagged lotus]

Current orbital tomes are borderline just glorified melee weapons and ideally they should reward you as such

[toxic yoke]

ya but they also feel the most passive its weird.

[dire horizon]

Orbital being small timers will absolutely kill them XD

[toxic yoke]

I think so too, but this is a clear issue design wise lmfao

[jagged lotus]

Passive in behavior, active in gameplay affect (if you wanna get full use of them anyways)

[dire horizon]

They take the MOST advantage in numbers without minion count orbital suck

[toxic yoke]

I think the only reason they are even good is because they hit so fast

[dire horizon]

Which is why I reccomend pestilence till you can manage orbital

[toxic yoke]

despite the spinny nature of not being able to hit all the time

[jagged lotus]

I liked that idea someone previously gave of making tome of the deep apply slippery and knockback, would make them have a potential support focus

[dire horizon]

Yucky knockback on orbital sounds bad

Trying to close the gap not knock them back XD

[jagged lotus]

If it's pushing enemies away from the character it'd encourage pairing it with other minions

[toxic yoke]

good for defense against melee, bad for dps against everything except bosses that probably can't get knocked back

[jagged lotus]

Bosses would largely be unaffected

[toxic yoke]

ya they probs can't get knocked back

[jagged lotus]

Most if not all bosses are unable to be knocked back

Even like malugaz

[dire horizon]

Knockback would make world exploration with them bad

You want them to hit the enemies as much as possible

[jagged lotus]

Could always just add another damage focused orbital minion in their stead. Aesthetically I like the idea of them being support focused

Maybe instead of knockback they'd have stun? They are jellyfish after all

[toxic yoke]

Another thing too... that orbital minions because longer duration it even plays into using them as the main hybrid minion... wait this kind of works. Because of this it forces you to be close to make use of them which is highest risk

You know... I've somehow came full circle and think its fine again.

[dire horizon]

I like the idea of stun, but idk how balanced that would be cause then if enemies get stunned constantly nothing is really a threat

[toxic yoke]

Can't stun bosses

[dire horizon]

I said this in my big paragraph kinda 😭☝️

[jagged lotus]

I have no real opinions either way, I lean more into doing it on a case by case basis for each minion

[dire horizon]

I was talking about just exploration enemies tbh, ik for bosses jellyfish will probably operate the same

[toxic yoke]

tldr xd only skimmed but i'll go read it in full now

[jagged lotus]

I'd really love a hybrid melee summoner armor ngl

[dire horizon]

Ah that's crazy XD

[toxic yoke]

ya but real 🙂

[jagged lotus]

Actually is there a different leash radius for melee and ranged summons? I know melee will tend to continue attacking enemies further out even if you move further away

[toxic yoke]

jking, im messing i got distracted with the convo

[dire horizon]

Tome of decay needs a buff though it's so bad XD

[toxic yoke]

Btw JUST SAYING... this would all be the general guideline but not actually be a static thing

[jagged lotus]

Radiation is kind of a problematic damage type in general, has no real synergy and it's just kinda burn but worse

[dire horizon]

Idk, current AI they go the same distance as ranged, but ranged shoots further

[jagged lotus]

So ranged is generally the safest?

[dire horizon]

Yea basically

[toxic yoke]

I mentioned this in another post about the 1-hit minion. Having a sniper-like minion that has high damage but is slow and expensive

[jagged lotus]

And I guess quickest acting cuz they don't have to close the distance

[dire horizon]

Yea it's like way worse burn

[toxic yoke]

tbh atm theres not much difference between melee and ranged atm, the main difference is that melee minions take longer to respond since they have to move to the unit to be effective

[jagged lotus]

You could probably have a ton of variations on this ngl, orbitals that shatter on first impact, a more sustained damage type melee minion that kinda feels like using a homing magic weapon, etc.

[toxic yoke]

Best case scenario melee aggro range either gets lower, or ranged gets increased to making this more apparent

[jagged lotus]

I kinda wished we had gotten a proper instadet minion instead of the explode on death passive for all minions

[toxic yoke]

Only issue is all of these new types take time to get developed so we can't really expect these as part of the need section of the suggestion

[dire horizon]

To be fair the explode minions happen so late game they really don't even matter XD

[toxic yoke]

?

[jagged lotus]

Right, but I think it's something they could play around with instead of just being a one-off idea

[toxic yoke]

I got 2 minion detonators pre-wall

[jagged lotus]

That was a bug

[dire horizon]

They fixed that

[toxic yoke]

oooooooo

then its useless

i mean even prewall it was useless

[dire horizon]

It wasn't supposed to happen, basically you obtain it near passage level

[jagged lotus]

https://core-keeper.fandom.com/wiki/Desert_Guardian_armor?so=search
this thing shoulda had some explosives buffs built in ngl

[toxic yoke]

minions are bound to hit more than 5x so only good if you can 1-shot a boss

[jagged lotus]

Apparently minion detonator is also bugged so only one of the minions will deal damage if all go off at once atm

And in general it apparently isn't affected by explosives stuff so no benefits from stuff like bomb ring

[dire horizon]

Currently max dmg explosion of a minion I was able to do was 9k, so if we buff melee minions and solve the mana issue to an extent for that set, it could be decent XD

[toxic yoke]

1-hit melee minions + desert guardian sounds so fun ngl

martyr minions

[jagged lotus]

I almost think that's what skellies should be tbh

They're bones!

[dire horizon]

Could make ashes 1 hit minions, maybe they leave a napalm on the ground as a side effect? 👀

[toxic yoke]

I feel the same about fire mites though, i meant they are just a little puff of fire

[dire horizon]

Tome of ashes? No FIRE SPIRITS FROM CLASH ROYALE

[toxic yoke]

All of this is great but idt we can expect to get the 1-hit minions.

[dire horizon]

Skeletons could also be one hit but I feel it fits ashes better, skeletons seem like they can be 10-15 seconds XD

[jagged lotus]

I'm cool either way

I do think it's kinda clunky the more mechanically complex tome of ash is obtained before the skeletons which are the real stock melee minion

[toxic yoke]

🤣 Just how it goes sadly

[dire horizon]

Tome of ashes is probably the hardest tome to obtain

[jagged lotus]

hehe no

[toxic yoke]

is it?

lol

i don't feel that way

[jagged lotus]

It drops a ton from ruins cavelings

[toxic yoke]

feel like the only minion i fail to get, probably because i want it them most for leveling is tome of the deep

[dire horizon]

I mean speaking in pre boss terms it certainly is, I get asked questions about it all the time

[jagged lotus]

There's only two pre-boss minions and the other can literally be a starting item lmao

[toxic yoke]

few runs i've gotten it quick, others im legit scouring the beach at the ocean and takes forever.

[jagged lotus]

I would think tome of the dead is the most missable cuz people tend to skip over mold dungeons

[dire horizon]

Tome of ashes has some low rates

[toxic yoke]

low rates of something that happens often tho

[jagged lotus]

Especially caveling shamans

[toxic yoke]

I might have a scuffed take because i set up simple mob farms very early and get a lot of free kills and i like to fish a lot early in runs so i get locked iron chests as well

[jagged lotus]

I think most magic and summon stuff not being craftable is kind of a shame ngl

[dire horizon]

True, it would be nice to eventually craft some of it

We can craft accessories XD

At least 1 accessory

[toxic yoke]

xd
#🎮-game-discussion message

Question.

[jagged lotus]

This is a whole separate issue but the crafting system could use a lot of work. Like each anvil only has 12 items at most, why not have a larger scrollable grid UI for crafting benches so you can just have more sets of equipment on one menu?

[toxic yoke]

What if base +2 minion count on every tome?

[dire horizon]

Would be weird cause you'd have to hold the tome for that effect

[toxic yoke]

That's the point but using potions and stuff would suck

sadge

[jagged lotus]

The two extra minions getting thanosd out of existence cuz I need to drink a potion

https://tenor.com/view/bebe-gif-5526812072482676565

[dire horizon]

Right but let's say you switch to your pickaxe, you lose your +2 minion count lmao

[toxic yoke]

Ya baby rage indeed

[jagged lotus]

I think generally 3 minion slots as default is fine

[dire horizon]

👍

[jagged lotus]

Early game it actually puts summoner dps on par with other classes, and mid game you have said already that summoner struggles

[dire horizon]

Mid game I just tell people to bomb rush to the dessert for grim set, corrupt warden is so bad

[jagged lotus]

thats what explosives has to do as well lol

ocean has nothing and blasting dung is a desert item

plus you get stuff like bomb rings from the scarabs

[dire horizon]

Explosives you can at least cheese all the slime bosses XD mortars wise

[toxic yoke]

I have never used that set in my life

[dire horizon]

I have, it's depressing

[toxic yoke]

Witch doctor hat, chieftain chest and pants all the way

ez +4

[dire horizon]

If we get a legendary tome though? I hope it's strong

[jagged lotus]

as for general minion balance tho I'm still in favor of 15s being the general baseline, and something like permanent minions for people who wanna just use them for multi-tasking

no mana scaling takes a ton of the pressure off of the time it takes to get a full set of minions out

[dire horizon]

Yea orbital longer timers 1-2 minutes

Ranged 30s-1 minute

Melee- 1 hit, 15 seconds

[jagged lotus]

that is not what I said

ranged does not need a friggin 1 minute timer when it's already nearly identical to melee, but better

[toxic yoke]

i mean tbf he said 30s-1m

i could easily see bats at 1m cause they are just a worse version of pestilence anyways

and mind you 1m is the current time for all summons

[jagged lotus]

if you have anything above 30s timers it basically makes management a complete non-issue with the other changes to mana cost scaling and summon cooldown

[toxic yoke]

And i think they should be balanced accordingly

[dire horizon]

Also aren't we buffing the shorter timers? So technically melee would be stronger

[toxic yoke]

I would personally

[dire horizon]

Yea cause without a buff I wouldn't make the timer shorter XD

[toxic yoke]

lmfao same

[dire horizon]

Ashes but worse for funsies

[jagged lotus]

The cost changes are already insane buffs for all of them

I cannot stress enough how much that will free up time to do other actions

[dire horizon]

Cost changes doesn't free up the dmg output XD

[toxic yoke]

ya only thing buffing damage other than buffing damage we've mentioned is the +2

[jagged lotus]

It does, you have more time to switch to another weapon for compounding damage

[dire horizon]

Tome of ashes and dead would be non useable with 15 seconds or 1 hit without a dmg buff

[toxic yoke]

Lets ignore 1hit for now 🙂

[jagged lotus]

Obviously 1 hit would have much higher damage per hit

[dire horizon]

Okay so 15 seconds is a huge debuff for melee summons XD without a corresponding dmg buff

[toxic yoke]

Keep in mind we are going from 1 minute duration to 15 second, just saying for context.

Imo it doesn't need to be a lot just a little to give it the dps edge over ranged.

[jagged lotus]

Valid

[dire horizon]

It would probably be decent for guardian set but I was also taking advantage of numbers for minion dmg%, without that shenanigan um my explosions would be 6-7k instead of 9k

They explode so slow too XD

[toxic yoke]

And even then it probs still won't be the best minion because fast enemies would make it hard for melee minions to have their dps online, so each would have their own unique advantages.

[jagged lotus]

Anyhow, I'd much prefer keeping lifetimes at a lower state. Their launch lifetime was 30 seconds for reference. And that was clunky due to mana cost issues

With the mana and use speed changes you'd basically be able to pop 4 minions at a time no matter what unless they have anything greater than 25 mana cost

[toxic yoke]

Ranged better for safer playstyle and for better dps uptime on mobile enemies, melee feature higher dps values and utilize the minion detonator/desert guardian set bonus well, and orbiting are the risky minion, best for boss dps if and only if you can live standing near/inside them without dying.

[dire horizon]

30 seconds felt rough, but I don't like actively using summons like they are swords, so I'd probably run to orbital ASAP and maybe eventually test the other summons, too much to manage, I'd rather play simple

Orbital being 1-2 minutes I'll live with 🙏🤣

[jagged lotus]

Hence why I'm for permanent minions for people that don't want to use them any other way

[dire horizon]

That's fair

[toxic yoke]

As much as i'd like permanent minions to exist as the passive option i don't think Ck devs would be truly up to making it actually passive.

Thats why with long enough lifespans they become long enough that its a non-issue for a lot of the issues that exist right now

[jagged lotus]

It's been pretty evident to me from just looking at minion feedback over the time since launch that the people asking for longer lifetimes is mostly people that want them to work like terraria minions, constant personal protection while they do other things

[toxic yoke]

Thats why I originally said between 15s-5minutes

5 minutes with 1 hourglass ring and the lifespan talent they'd last as long as a food buff

lmfao

[dire horizon]

I've seen a lot of minions being like D2 as well with HP bars ect

[jagged lotus]

That's a whole different kind of system

[toxic yoke]

I play summoner in every game i possibly can

[dire horizon]

Sameee I like my simple gameplay

[toxic yoke]

Idc if its simple or not

Some times its a lot more complicated than the alternatives.

[jagged lotus]

Considering they straight up doubled the uptime from 30s to 1m I think they'd be willing to fill that niche for those people. It'd also be better for preserving the original intention of summoner being a more actively engaging playstyle

[dire horizon]

Grounded, terraria, heroes siege, diablo series, ect, summoner is my go to

[toxic yoke]

I believe the double was two fold. Sure everyone was complaining about minions not lasting that long, but people were also complaining about mana sustain for minions

as 2x duration means 1/2 the mana sustain required to maintain cap

[jagged lotus]

The mana sustain is still a problem. But if they fix it like it is now, the mana cost is basically irrelevant

[toxic yoke]

I actually like my solution to permanent minions which is independent if they make any minions permanent or not by default.

Instead of the lifespan talent, they change it to minions aging 20% slower, so at 5 points minions will no longer age and would subsequently be permanent. Except at the cost of -10% minion count per point so you lose half your minions making them permanent

[jagged lotus]

I do think having it as a sort of optional thing for all minions would probably be simpler than adding new minions but idk how I feel about it being a talent. I'd almost prefer it being something like an offhand

[toxic yoke]

offhand is an issue for me imo

[dire horizon]

Interesting take but at the same time half minions would only give half minion bonuses, which would kill your grim set shenanigans, and the perm minions would be fairly weak

[jagged lotus]

I'd also have balance concerns with it since they'd basically be the best thing for buffing magic attacks

Also like

How do you remove the minions lol

[toxic yoke]

Ya but thats the point

[jagged lotus]

Thats something they'd also have to address with permanent minions

[toxic yoke]

You wouldn't, summoning new would replace the oldest

[dire horizon]

Oh wait you could snapshot minions invest into the talent, summon some, then take the talent off

[toxic yoke]

could always reset your talents if you really want them gone

[jagged lotus]

But like, what if I don't want them out in cases of stuff like desert guardian?

[toxic yoke]

this could easily be addressed afaik, unless they really messed something up

[jagged lotus]

Idk personally I'd be in favor of something like an offhand that pauses minions lifetime while equipped but lowers the host's overall damage with their weapons so it doesn't just become the be-all for hybrid summoner

Only real value I see in indefinite/super high lifetime summons is for passive multitasking, I'd rather it not become the best way to engage with hybrid summoner

[dire horizon]

Welp I'm playing hero siege rn, if y'all need me feel free to spam @ me

Regarding perma minions if they are just god awful then we might as well stay temporary minions and go alongside core keepers intentions for it, giving perma minions that deal 300 dmg per sec isn't much when bosses on hardmode have 20-100k hp and up XD alongside many enemies would be able to reach you effectively not worth investing for, I think the wildwarden suggestion I'm making will solve the perma minion issue for most and even make a new banch of dmg type with pet dmg scaling, it's a lot to type though for the idea

[jagged lotus]

That's also why I like the idea of it reducing the player damage instead of the minions so the minions themselves are still functional as more than glorified buff sticks for magic and ranged

It's mainly just so people who want that laid back style can play that way without it invalidating the more engaging gameplay of juggling summon upkeep with attacking with a main weapon

[dire horizon]

I mean regardless hybrid is kinda the way to go for almost every dmg type, I don't wanna invalid that, literally arcane staff is the only issue at the end of the day everything else falls in line

Nerf arcane staff further 😈🤣

[jagged lotus]

It wouldn't invalidate it is the thing. It's just keeping hybrid in check with permanent minions since the effect of compounding damage of minions and your main weapon can get out of hand otherwise

[dire horizon]

Assuming with grim set and some shenanigans pestilence does 300 per bullet-900 if all connect, that's 6,300 every volley with 7 minions ( CC the ball hitboxes are so small you might as well go jellyfish cause you're getting either half or 1/4th your potential from a ranged )

But using minions with any other set (that isn't minion) is maybe +1000 dmg high balling it, it's mainly your dmg like meteor staff hitting for 200k, minions aren't contributing dmg to that at most just used as buffs, but that's how it will always be with current skill trees regardless imo, and changing that system would mean changing grim set as a whole which overall is a unnecessary nerf, magic and summoning take the most effort to get online tbh ( besides explosions but I'm not sure if they can even become online XD )

[jagged lotus]

When I'm saying hybrid I'm mainly referring to grim set since there's not any other hybrid summon armors atm. Main purpose of this offhand would be specifically for the people who just want them as these passive defensive tools while they do other things (mining, fishing, exploring, etc.) since they don't care for the management aspect. They gotta have a way to keep that from becoming op for actual combat and I think the best way to do that is for them to maintain the minion's damage while applying like a 50% debuff to the player's other attacks, primarily magic since it benefits the most from stuff like group effort and tough gang

Cuz otherwise what's really the point of having for example a pure magic build if the guy with the permanent minions can just get a bunch of extra stat buffs essentially for free?

[dire horizon]

Oh yea that's fair as an off-hand for sure

[jagged lotus]

Like idk I think that kinda fills that role for people who want minions for that, and the devs would be pretty much free to balance minions how they see fit otherwise

[dire horizon]

That's fair, I want perma minions mainly for exploration more so than anything else, bossing I can live with the standard cause even minions can shred bosses in 30 seconds or less

The main inconvenience is exploration and constant upkeep during exploration

Lifetime rings don't help that much cause you lose minion count and dmg in using them, base minion dmg is pretty wacky over all

When you first obtain tome of pestilence it's like 50-60 dmg something like that, assuming you use corrupt warden with mid skill lvl, 100% bonuses ( high balling here ) you're probably gonna average 110 per pellet, 330 if all connect, 4 minions 1,320, assuming your using lifespan rings with this and not dmg rings or other accessories, which means all 4 minions would have to connect all pellets ( on small hit boxes too ) to kill 1 gardener caveling on hard mode with 1305 hp, if you get swarmed you're pretty doomed XD

Then if you get snared too you're definitely doomed cause minions don't target the snare

[jagged lotus]

So yea I think an offhand is the best solution for that then

It's optional, you can remove it whenever and it can be used with literally any minion type if you want

[jagged lotus]

I'm trying to do some dps calculations but nothing besides the bats has their attack rate listed on the wiki

Seems fire mites at least have similar attack rate to them but it's a bit less consistent cuz they gotta keep up with the enemy's position

Iron Sword + Iron Armor: 407 DPS
Tome of Ashes + Chieftan Armor(assuming 6 base minions with changes): 255 DPS with 6 active minions targeting the same enemy. This includes the added dps of burn dot

However, using an iron sword alongside 6 fire mites wearing chieftan armor gets you roughly 600 DPS on a single target in the right conditions.

This is a lot of value, and it's why I'd generally prefer keeping summoned minions lifetimes on the low end. The player must switch to their tome to resummon minions fairly often still which is reducing the amount of time they're able to use that other weapon. If minions are roughly 25-30 mana to summon and do not scale, it'd become very very easy to keep them up 24/7 if their lifetimes are anywhere in the 30s-1m range, while still being able to easily wield a regular weapon alongside them for that much higher combined DPS.

Potentially, tomes could also have a secondary ability tied to their respective minions that would encourage wielding the tome itself. That way, summoners aren't always heavily encouraged to rely on a primary weapon for competitive damage if they don't want to

[dire horizon]

Malugaz is 20k hp with immunity to fire, usually running a melee set, hivebone is popular but iron armor is enough with an iron sword or preferably battle axe, you can scale melee dmg with food, and add on top of that other food bonuses early game, melee scales much more than a early hybrid summoner, usually I can get battle axe to dish out 600 per hit with like mid food but ik the sword can do about 250 a hit and swings faster, but base without food or skill levels, early hybrid would be strong though honestly upkeeping minions 24/7 wouldn't be ideal to most players, so they would at most only use it for bossing exclusively

When calculating everything to factor it really comes down to who uses food and who doesn't XD ik a lot of players that don't like to use food buffs so honestly hybrid anything would be best for them for sure

[jagged lotus]

Food and potions only compounds the damage. You can stack damage buffs to both your minions and your primary weapon

[dire horizon]

True but you don't get the most out of it, buffing the battle axe with foods and a corresponding armor is much more value than a minion armor with food buffs, plus you'd be straining more resources than most playstyles in doing so

More resources and effort should be rewarded more than less resources and less effort ig in a way, but that isn't the case in some hybrid builds XD

[jagged lotus]

It gets you more general DPS regardless. Which I think is fine considering it'd be the most complex build to use in terms of active gameplay but it's still gotta be kept in check to some extent. With a 30s lifetime minion you'd get like 20 seconds easily where you're at full minions and free to attack with another weapon. This becomes even worse with anything higher than 30s lifetime

[dire horizon]

Yea but later game that falls off quick, where hybrid minion with anything but magic is absolutely worse XD

[jagged lotus]

Right now that's mainly due to the mana scaling

...and the lack of damage scaling from most talents and equipment but yall dont wanna let them benefit from that so 🤷‍♂️

[dire horizon]

No even with mana issues solved general weapons will out scale minion hybrids talking about current minion dmg bonuses

Yea but then hybrid summoner would be meta for every scenario as we said

I get about 700-800 dmg from my jellyfish with current shenanigans, take into factor how they abuse boss hit boxes like chakram without much set up, they delete most bosses in 30 seconds or less, only struggle they face is At. Worm, or ursheilm, but you can use pestilence on them and kill them under a minute depending,

Tome of decay, tome of ashes, tome of dark, and tome of dead, are all kinda yucky rn

[jagged lotus]

Doesn't really seem that way. You're compounding damage of both the minions and your primary weapon for higher overall damage output than either could do by themselves. That's gotta be kept in check. Right now that's due to the clunkiness of mana cost and how much of a pain it is to keep all your minions online but that won't be so when that issue is alleviated

[dire horizon]

I don't think that's how scaling works or every set would be a minion set regardless of mana problems, many weapons scale much higher than a minion hybrid with the right pieces of gear, ra-kar gear gives pure dmg which scales much more than minions+ a rando weapon, plus most sets cannot fit minions in without losing major bonuses, it's not even a mana issue with our current 1 minion count XD, with just 1-10 hits meteor staff deals 240k without the use of multiple minions, chakram does what jellyfish can do but better XD, generally and not speaking about good builds whatsoever and random gear, yes minions plus a rando weapon is gonna be better than using either in their pure forms, but with the right gear many weapons scale better than what you can typically hybrid with minions

[toxic yoke]

Thats why I think having a reduction to minion count for extending their durations like this would be good. But i agree with #1354589473295302788 message that if perma minions are terrible and never useful that it'd be better to stay on temp minions.

[toxic yoke]

Ya but this doesn't include any scaling from the skills, food buffs, etc. I can say for certain that with mininal effort into leveling and proper food buffs you can easily outscale or match that hybrid setup.

And keep in mind that hybrid is also a lot more demanding of the player in general and most aren't willing or aren't skilled enough to keep their buffs and minions up while attacking with a separate weapon and not dying 😄

Would be easy to calculate all these things if i ever finished my stat calculator but unfortunately some data was annoying to gather. ie. I was trying to be able to select a piece of gear and input a level and it would calculated the stat values from a formula but theres a hidden upgrade stat multiplier to determine how each stat on an item scales, as well as a multiplier that makes the upgrade values slightly random for each item.

[jagged lotus]

Hence why I suggested having a permaminion offhand that doesn't impact the minions damage output but rather your main weapon's damage output. Makes you worse for general combat but the efficacy of your minions for protection while doing other things is not reduced

[toxic yoke]

imo being an off-hand item hard limits it tho, cause that means no minion detonator, no shield, no rift lens or feather

[jagged lotus]

Those are all things more designed for direct combat which permanent minions just aren't

[toxic yoke]

They are mostly utility items

They don't directly affect combat

[jagged lotus]

It ocurred to me that you couldn't use bait items with it taking up an offhand slot, what if it was a necklace?

Idk

That also has problems for the fishing set ig

[jagged lotus]

My main issue with making it a talent is if you wanna switch it on or off you have to spend a bunch of ancient coins and reset your summon tree over and over. So idk what a good solution would be

Maybe an item similar to this that can just be disabled or enabled and sits inside your inventory?
https://terraria.wiki.gg/wiki/Encumbering_Stone

Call it like a mana anchor or something that lets summons stay indefinitely but has a 0.5x damage multiplier to your non-minion attacks

[toxic yoke]

idk about you but coins are just about the free-est thing in the game

[jagged lotus]

It's tedious and inconvenient. It's not like swapping your loadout where it's literally one button click. And no I wouldn't say coins are super cheap, especially when you'd be doing it over and over

[toxic yoke]

it absolutely is

[jagged lotus]

https://tenor.com/view/roblox-mighty-omega-gif-22253898

[jagged lotus]

What is the appeal of something that takes up a talent slot and needs a whole process to re-pick your talents every time you wanna turn it on or off?

[toxic yoke]

I doubt you'd be respecing it often

its not like crafting or fishing tree where you need to respec like every time you want to use one of the crafting benches

[jagged lotus]

I mean if I'm doing a summoner playthrough I'd probably wanna make use of a multitask mode for summons pretty often while fishing or exploring

[dire horizon]

Free-est to endgame/people with plank farms but to the majority of peeps they struggle with ancient coins, I've given out 100s of stacks to many people, plus I'd rather spend coins on boss totems than redoing my skill tree for convenience, I already get frustrated changing my fishing/gardening constantly XD

But like I said I'm okay with no perma summons there's no realistic compromise to them without making them so inconvenient why even have them tbh

[toxic yoke]

Same tbh i don't see much difference in high duration vs perma

[jagged lotus]

Balance mainly. You have to make them crap to be balanced

With a toggle item it'd save a lot of dev time without having a bunch of crappy minions that people just use for fishing

[toxic yoke]

not really just slightly undertuned from the average is more than enough

[jagged lotus]

Define slightly undertuned, I can't see people bothering with 15s minions if the 1m long minion only does a few damage points less

[toxic yoke]

I mean even just +-10% from the average, for short and long term minions. So if we say average damage is 90-110 at w/e level, short would be 99-121 and long would be 81-99.

Short would be doing ~22% more damage than long, and an uninvested weapon would likely not be enough to match the differences. If you do try to invest then you have an even bigger gap to bridge to match dps.

Even if it does get close or surpasses it, it now is a lot more active than just being pure one way or the other.

[jagged lotus]

I still don't think that would be a large enough difference to justify the massive gap in lifetime

[dire horizon]

Personally if melee minions are 15s then I think they deserve 200-250 ( max values )

Ranged can scale the same as is being 30s

Orbital ( I'd prefer it stay the same but if we must nerf it ) jellyfish and decay are different rn I hope that they meet the same range of 69-85, going lower than that it gets scary it's already hard to scale them up but I don't think anyone even uses orbital unless min maxed for them to do dps which is very endgame, being 1-2m

Tomes currently

Bats 79-95
Ashes 87-105
Sprouts 71-85
Dead 102-124
Jellyfish 79-95
Decay 🤮 52-62

Max values with lifetime changes I could see

Bats 79-95 (30 sec)
Ashes 130-157 ( 50% increase ) (10sec)
Sprouts 71-85 (35 sec)
Dead 153-186 ( 50% increase )(15sec)
Jellyfish 69-85 (1min)
Decay 71-87 ( it should be better than jellyfish 😭☝️ ) (1m 30s)

Remember orbital take the most to scale properly and they are the closest range for a summoner regarding minions

[jagged lotus]

Are these max values with level 19?

Honestly Radiation could probably be reworked. Like maybe radiation sickness reduces max health or attack dmg of the recipient instead of just being a basic DoT

[dire horizon]

Yea maxed values lvl 19

I forgot to say maxed sorry XD

[dire horizon]

Tbh with just a dmg change to be similar or slightly better than jellyfish would be enough to live with for me personally, decay has way to low dmg to make up for it's ability

[jagged lotus]

It'd have to be insanely high to be worthwhile I would think

[dire horizon]

I mean the base dmg I recommend would be enough, it would work similarly like jellyfish but slightly better, the ideal scenario for hands

[jagged lotus]

Since it doesn't stack, if the DoT was super high you'd be better off just having 1-2 and then stacking it with a bunch of jellies

I still think it'd be cool if Jellies could apply slippery and stun

[dire horizon]

The radiation dmg can stay the same tbh scaling it higher is kinda useless for when you obtain it ( being most bosses late game and the shimmering are immune to radiation dmg XD )

[jagged lotus]

As for lifetimes and everything I still don't really get the purpose of making anything last longer than 30s (which is still kinda pushing it ngl)

Like idk I don't get the logic with making specific types have specific lifetimes

[dire horizon]

Cause orbital you want to constantly keep out in numbers so numbers matter the most for orbital, you can work with ranged and melee but if you don't pick numbers on orbital you don't get any value from them basically

[jagged lotus]

That seems arbitrary and it doesn't even really make sense to make ranged in particular have higher lifetime than melee if we're going off reward for using each type

[dire horizon]

Melee does more dmg, it's has the biggest dmg pool and works the best for the particular minion detonator/guardian set the best, ranged don't get close enough and orbital have the least amount of dmg so both would be horrible candidates for that purpose

[jagged lotus]

But it's going to be really really easy to keep max minions with 20s+ lifetime no matter what. I think I should remind you that mana costs are going to be non-scaling and much lower than they are now, keeping minions up isn't going to be difficult at all even with low lifetimes

If they're anything less than 33 even somebody with no mana boosts can pop out 3 with every mana regen

[dire horizon]

10 minions X20 is 200 mana, assuming we aren't getting max mana, that'll be hard to constantly maintain from a summoner perspective, 8 is enough sure but 10 would be ideal, and basically since they have the least amount of dmg they should be able to hybrid the most conveniently

I mean we can mix it up but honestly I think melee should be the high dmg output as they are now, orbital is minimal till min maxed, and ranged is that comfy middle ground

[jagged lotus]

I think I'd be more comfortable with ranged getting 20s at most. Orbital I just don't get at all. Orbitals I just don't know why you'd need anything more than 30s

Idk what you mean by "minimal till minmaxed"

Jellies (or rad hands) should ideally be the most rewarding in terms of damage output but otherwise I think lifetime for them should still be closer to the others

[dire horizon]

They are only rewarding with numbers and abusing boss hitboxes, and as of rn they take the most effort to get there XD

[jagged lotus]

I don't mean right now

I mean in general, they should ideally do the most damage per hit

[dire horizon]

Regarding this, it's so we have minions with small timers, mid timers and long timers, without long timers even with mana changed everyone is gonna complain about summoner as of rn, we have to appeal somewhere

[jagged lotus]

The long timers (current ones) would be unbalanced with the mana changes we're going for. I get people want passive minions for multi-tasking which is why I think it'd be better just to give those people a toggle item with downsides that keeps it from being op rather than trying to balance it with everything else. Super long timers end up just being something with zero real management involved to the point they have to be balanced by having crap damage, so for anyone actually trying to play summoner legit, those are basically dud weapons

[dire horizon]

But also minions already category into 3 minion types so timers effecting those types makes the most since, melee for small timers biggest dmg, ranged for mid timers for some casuals, and orbital for the longest timers because hybrid builds can't fully abuse this but it's Also convenient for summoners as well

[jagged lotus]

I'm pretty certain orbitals would just be the default pick for hybrids in that instance. Highest damage and super high lifetime? Why use anything else?

[dire horizon]

You have to constantly be in melee range for that to take effect, and for the most dmg you have to be inside the boss with a shield for jellyfish XD

[jagged lotus]

They should have the most damage per hit for that melee range requirement

Having to do jank hitbox stuff ideally wouldn't be required to profit off of them since it makes them worse for general exploring

[dire horizon]

Exploration everything dies in melee range with current jellyfish on hardmode

[jagged lotus]

I'm just going off what you're saying man

[dire horizon]

If they did then melee minions has no role, just AXE them lol XD plus now we have no longer timer solution without hybrid being too broken, their requirement makes them worse for hybrid essentially nerfing hybrid potential the most

[jagged lotus]

Melee has more damage per hit than ranged, and they're still basically ranged weapons in practice. Idk what you mean about requirement being worse for hybrid

[dire horizon]

Orbital making you be in melee range that requirement

[jagged lotus]

Which they should be rewarding you for with highest dps

They do not need minute long lifetimes

At that point it's basically just free damage for a hybrid summoner since they'd need no investment in lifetime stats or mana regen or anything

[dire horizon]

Not if you're in melee range, arcane staff does everything from a range, so does most any other magic weapon, at most you can take advantage with schimitar

[jagged lotus]

Pretty sure Arcane staff can still be used at close range

[dire horizon]

Right but you're in danger zone if you want jellyfish to do any dmg, same cannot be said with any other summon

[jagged lotus]

And the reward is highest dps

If you want to use a safer option melee and ranged are right there

[dire horizon]

Yea reward would be more dps if you can live with the requirement to constantly be in 1.5 tile radius of the enemy yes, doesn't apply however with small hit boxes

[jagged lotus]

I'm not seeing the problem here, they should be highest risk highest reward

I fail to see why this must also equal a totally unecessary doubled lifetime

[dire horizon]

Cause orbital don't do anything for you till you're in that small radius of the enemy so they are the most passive summon on our arsenal

Longer lifespan just gives us that middle ground for it without being active with it every minute

[jagged lotus]

What does passivity matter here? They require aggressive, dangerous play and should reward you with high damage

The lifetime stat becomes meaningless if it's one minute which we've been over several times

[dire horizon]

Lifetime stat is meaningless rn, there's no accessory lifespan rings can replace without losing drastic dmg, 30s will not be enough for endgame builds, and definitely not enough for people who don't want to micromanage their summons every 30s or less assuming you can summon 5 at a time, 10 being cap ( 11 possibly with mixing gear ) 7-10 seconds will be used summoning alone still (3-4 seconds just 5), kills hybrid possibly with crazy micromanagement, and makes summoner just as inconvenient as it is now, the main complaints this class gets is you're playing time manager and it takes the most effort to get online

Unless you're suggesting we increase tomes base dmg by 100% XD I don't see any middle ground, and even with that increase no one is gonna appeal to a time management class when you can swing a sword with much less thought process and convenience

[jagged lotus]

Look I get that you don't like actually managing your summons but it's like the whole point of the class and the entire focus of most of these reworks is to make actually managing them feel better rather than just slapping a bandaid on by trying to circumvent it. As for lifetime, I don't really get why you think upkeep is going to be hard, mana regen isn't that slow even with basic summon armors and you're going to be able to chain way more summons together at a time with the cost reduction and faster use time. Even 10 wouldn't be hard at 15 second lifetimes and even if it was, that's the entire reason you'd take stuff like higher mana regen or lifetime boosts

If you don't like managing summons, I don't know why you'd want to play the class

Like seriously, this isn't terraria summoner, it's not a pet class. There's lifetime mechanics and mana cost and a core part of the class is the management aspect. It's what the class is trading for direct attacks

[dire horizon]

I'm gonna stand by this example for how I think it should be I've explained the reasoning and we can agree to disagree

[jagged lotus]

I just don't get it. You're constantly talking about how obsessed you are with playing summons in every game but you pretty obviously hate the management aspect here, just seems like it's just not the playstyle for you fam

[dire horizon]

I don't think you've actually played summoner tbh I don't think you understand ect summons roles, their strengths and weaknesses in situations, I'm also trying to appeal to a greater audience than ourselves as well, we don't need perma minions agreed 👍 but if all minions are small timers you aren't meeting any middle ground for people who want longer timers ( summoner isn't like throwing grenades there should be some sort of passive playstyle, even now if you min max jellyfish they can last you the entire boss fight while you spam your shield, making them 15s takes away your shield and survival so orbital now suck cause you can't kill a boss in 15 seconds in hardmode XD )

Melee minions have the beat AI for guardian set so them having the best dmg makes sense, it scales high enough to be viable ( orbital you can't control if it will explode behind you or in front of you, and ranged don't get close enough 90% of the time )

Orbital is the most passive summon they aren't aggressive and they don't have to be, it's the player's choice, and they would be the best candidate to make hybrid cause it is the most risky but could be the most rewarding as well with enough investment

Ranged minions are decent and good for the causal playerbase, they don't require as much min max to be decent and you might struggle a tiny bit on maybe 1 fight in the entire game because the CC orbs are awkward for pestilence ( atm pestilence straight up out DPS' melee )

Grim set atm is our on viable set for minions, you basically get a 200%-300% minion dmg additive, without that your minions are boned dmg wise, all minions base dmg values even at maxed are horrible to work with till you max out skills and abuse the magic/summoning tree synergy

Difference between other games and this one for summoning is summons have no real identity, they want to be a dmg type but they are best as buff fodder for your dmg type

But mana costs shouldn't change then If timers are the most important part of summoning we have plenty of mana income sources rn

Explosion=mana potion, need to go to another skill tree for that? Yea that's the life of summoner in CK, hybrid skill trees are fully intended as such

Summoner is meant to be a passive class in CK as of rn as well, making it active is going against it's identity as well

There's no real win argument here, I'm just trying to reach a middle ground and we aren't reaching that if you think passive summons are dumb, then why even have passive dmg at all? Make all summons just do 1 hit lmao

Oh wait that's just magic in grenade form ^

[jagged lotus]

I'm for perma minions if they're an optional separate system from regular summoning, specifically for people that don't like the management aspect or for people that want them for multitasking (i.e. You). I've been over this but the problem with long timers is that it takes out the management aspect with no real downside in any department besides a negligible decrease in damage (and if it's not a negligible decrease, then you've said yourself there's no point in using them if the damage is too poor).

Summoning is still generally a passive playstyle regardless, besides orbitals you're not directly engaging the enemy, and even with them you're not locked in place while the minions attack unlike with true melee weapons. You're trading directly engaing the enemy with time management. That's the give and take. A hybrid summoner should be combining both the time management aspect with active attacking while rewarding the player with higher damage for that greater complexity. Otherwise what's the point?

Don't even know where you're coming from with the "taking away your shield" thing. You aren't suddenly stopped from using your shield cuz you have to resummon slightly more often, how do you think standard melee gets by? Shield has literally zero delay or cooldown and lets you totally negate most damage if you use it well.

I also don't get why you're so transfixed on locking the different types to specific lifetimes, design wise that seems mostly arbitrary, each minion should be balanced on a case-by-case basis depending on its usage. And no, there's no choice with orbitals in terms of how aggressive you have to be to attack with them, it still requires aggressive play. If you make them uber long lifetime they become defacto buff totems for grim set and not much else if you're also reducing their damage due to that high lifetime, which makes no sense when you consider they should be rewarding you with high damage for their close range.

[dire horizon]

1.You can't be for perma minions, makes hybrid broken, and if they get nerfed to an unusable state it's just asking to add something useless for the game, which is why longer timers is that middle ground, orbital being tied to that even more

2.sure passive playstyle but it's not so passive when you're stopping every 15s to summon your minions your gameplay is now essentially slower than any other playstyle good job👍

3. 15s your jellyfish go away and your stuck in the middle of igneous, you're essentially just losing much value and you can't summon THAT fast while also switching to shield, you're just making that process more painful than it already is to make summons strong enough to kill the boss in a decent time

4. It makes the most sense because of how the minions work and their roles ( I've gone into much detail already with it )

[jagged lotus]

I don't even know what you're trying to say here. It being a relevant mechanic to how they function does not make it the sole most important mechanic, mana regen is still important, minion count is still important. But you can't have long lifetimes with the other changes being done because it'd be throwing minion management out the window, it'd be insanely easy to keep your minions active alongside a main weapon, which removes the entire tradeoff with hybrid summoner which is juggling both the management and active attacking.

[dire horizon]

We don't change mana costs at all, make minions 30 seconds and summoner is effectively more active simple as that, mana is not the sole issue whatsoever anymore we have plenty of ways to obtain it now, making them 15 seconds and 20 mana you lose value in even trying to mana management cause every second counts in that interval unlike the current state of things

But basically you want just all active summoner in which case isn't what summoner is in CK rn, changing that to straight up active is gonna have much negative feedback for sure, it already gets a lot of negative feedback for what it is rn XD

[jagged lotus]

1. I literally already told you how I'd do permanent summons. Toggle item, pauses minion lifetime, decimal multiplier like 0.5x to your non-minion damage. A hybrid can't get tons of free value from permanent minions, but they're still effective for people who want the passive protection or just don't want to bother with time management (again, people like you who don't actually like the management .)

It's still passive regardless. You're either sitting back far away similar to any ranged build or you're simply focused on staying in close proximity to the enemy. Ocassionally needing to use your summon tome every 10-20 seconds does not compare to any other class constantly pausing in place to attack when it comes to positioning and how they engage with the enemy, please do not try to argue that it does.

3. Why are you sitting in the middle of igneous? Is it because current orbitals aren't effective at bossing without hitbox jank? Are you saying they do not reward you enough for using them currently? Are you struggling to parry at the right time? I would think it would be simple to just wait to resummon till you have an opening, yano, like how attacking works with any other class.

4. your roles are arbitrary. A melee minion could have 30s lifetime for the exact same reason to use ranged, they're only mildly slower to start attacking an enemy but otherwise perform similarly. An orbital has no inherent reason to have the longest lifetime. To actually use them for their main purpose (high risk high reward pseudo-melee weapons), you have to be aggressive while using them. If they have longest lifetime then they also have to have worse efficacy than other options which totally goes against the risk-reward of them being close range offensive minions, which turns them into nothing but grim set fodder.

[dire horizon]

And you're not down for a middle ground simply because it "makes minion management obsolete" even though regardless you're gonna have to resummon those minions in 1-2 minutes every 1-2 minutes

[dire horizon]

3. orbital doesn't work without boss hitbox abuse just like chakram XD

[jagged lotus]

Then they should be buffed. Plain and simple

[jagged lotus]

Every second should count. The entire class revolves around time management.

[dire horizon]

Cool we can't have hybrid then we are recommending pure summoner at this point XD in a game where nothing is pure

[dire horizon]

The best dps summon in game rn should be buffed everyone is gonna look at this silly

[jagged lotus]

Literally every time your mana runs out is time where you are able to do other things. You can drink potions, use direct weapons, use other items, etc. Hybrid does not go away because you have to actually interact with summons

[dire horizon]

15s summons hybrid does indeed go away no doubt

Sounds absurd to think you can get more than 2-3 hits in the summoning time, mana gain, and re summon time for 15s summons, you might as well put on RA-KAR and abuse thorns pure dmg and you'll do more dmg with a ranged/melee hybrid than the 15s summon farce

[jagged lotus]

Then use lifetime buffs, or use a summon with higher base lifetime. There's solutions to these problems of yours. I'm not inherently opposed to 30s but anything more makes summon management a total joke.

And again, incredibly easy to do literally anything else while your mana regens, it's not exactly a small window

[jagged lotus]

Then fix the hitbox jank. If it's not rewarding you properly without hitbox cheese then its damage should be buffed and the hitbox crap should be fixed. Plain and simple. Would be simple to add a cooldown to the individual jellyfishes' damage to make it more consistently good without having to abuse hitboxes to maximize damage output.

[jagged lotus]

Come to think of it this is the perfect window to use stuff like mana blast synergy to keep your minions online more consistently

Yano

[dire horizon]

Fix the hitbox jank doesn't just nerf summoner though, it kills chakram and many other builds plus the devs actually enjoy seeing us pull off wacky boss kills that sort of balance is definitely not on their priority list

[jagged lotus]

For more time to use other stuff

[jagged lotus]

If you don't want actual fixes then why are you complaining?

Seriously, to me it sounds like you're against the entire rework we've been discussing to begin with. You hate time management, you don't want stuff to be rebalanced, you'd rather minions just be passive player buffs, I'm confused why you're even engaged in these discussions since it sounds totally opposite to everything you want

[dire horizon]

[dire horizon]

No you just haven't even been reading everything we've said XD

[jagged lotus]

We? No, I'm talking about you. Just based off of things you've said in the past, plus over the course of these discussions, you don't like having to manage summons. You don't like having to keep track of them or manage their lifetimes alongside other things. It's the whole idea behind the wildwarden concept you made, passive attackers that do stuff for you which you don't have to manage.

[dire horizon]

^

[dire horizon]

You're acting like 1-2 minute lifetime's have no management at all, like you aren't clicking a button every 1-2 minutes

[jagged lotus]

...are you serious?

Yeah guys I have to click a button every 1-2 minutes, lots of effort amirite?

[toxic yoke]

Its more than 1-2 minutes

[dire horizon]

1-2 minutes with much effort to even get those summons to do dmg did you even pay attention to their base dmg?

[toxic yoke]

you are going to have 8-10 minions

[jagged lotus]

Consuming buff foods isn't any more effort than any other class lmao be real

[dire horizon]

Buff foods aren't enough, we are talking maxing out gear, maxing out 2 skill trees, and having all purple foods just to do DECENT dmg omg you're right no effort at all

[jagged lotus]

I'm talking about in-combat effort. Actual gameplay. Grinding out skill trees isn't hard or engaging, it's just an extra time sink. Ideally with reworks summoner wouldn't have to go through all that effort to be effective which I assumed you would realize since that's kinda the whole point of these discussions, to make summoner more effective and less tedious.

[dire horizon]

Welp I want you to read what I agreed to again cause literally we aren't seeing eye to eye and you're throwing a lot of assumptions out

[toxic yoke]

ya but how hard is ranged combat you hold lmb

[dire horizon]

Actually ranged combat you can kill every slime boss off screen with no food buffs

( also hive mother )

[jagged lotus]

It's not much effort. Where did I say it was? However, sitting back and clicking a button every few minutes as your main form of attack while you solely focus on stuff like dodging and food consumption is considerably less effort than even ranged is. I'd question the validity of anybody arguing in favor of making a playstyle like that stronger

[toxic yoke]

But your whole argument is that its easier to do summoning along side also doing another weapon type

at least thats what it sounds like, i didn't read the whole convo cause i just woke up

Just noticed the pings and looked 😄

Also i don't think its stronger if those long term minions are weaker that others via base stats

[dire horizon]

@toxic yoke what do you think of these changes regarding timers ect?

( assuming everything is maxed dmg value )

[jagged lotus]

Honestly this convo covered too much stuff to compress it down like that. But no I was mainly arguing in favor of avoiding long timers (instead use something like an indefinite lifetime pause item that also gimps your main damage to keep hybrid in check) because minions such as that would either be too weak for a straight summoner to bother with or be defacto grim set buff fodder for hybrid builds. Especially if the chosen long duration minions are the orbitals, since their risk vs reward design is directly at odds with making a long lifetime minion have lower stats.

[toxic yoke]

Im not sure, i don't feel like really feel like looking into it rn, like i crawled out of bed like 5 minutes ago and made some tea. And i got friends wanting to play MC so i'll be doing that for now. xd

I'll get back to reading everything at some point.

[jagged lotus]

I spent like 2 hours trying to figure out how to use the autocrafter last night

[toxic yoke]

No need to try to summerize it.

[jagged lotus]

The game does not want me to make my pumpkin pie factory a reality

[toxic yoke]

I'm playing oceanblock 2 modpack. I was feeling playing sky block but my friends like to adventure so this is somewhere half between

[jagged lotus]

Originally we were gonna be doing a vanilla-style modded server but nobody wanted to bother figuring out how to set up a server so we just got a realm which can't do server-side mods

[toxic yoke]

A bunch of weird quirks to it to so its pretty neat, crops have to be planted under water, Sea level is at 192 and if you go more than 64 blocks down you start taking crushing damage so you need special armor

Rafts everywhere you can loot, random airdrops that actually fall from the sky with random loot

[dire horizon]

Minecraft we have like 12 big mods, crap ton of addons, and small mods on my server, like I think we are on currently the 11th boss out of 278

[jagged lotus]

I think most we were gonna do is smaller stuff like farmer's delight and such

[dire horizon]

Probably best to keep it small ( my PC wants to explode at times )

[toxic yoke]

If you want to play a more casual pack i also tried out BigChadGuys Plus which is a cobblemon x Stardew inspired pack

That looks really fun too but only tested for like 30m

But you got like a crate that can sell things in every day for emeralds

[jagged lotus]

This sounds like if Raft and Subnautica had a minecraft lovechild

[toxic yoke]

Ya it has that vibe for sure

[dire horizon]

Welp I'm playing hero seige rn, about to do some raids and probably pass out, I'll read chat in the morning

[toxic yoke]

Hero siege is fun

Couldn't get into the end game grind of it tho

I love d2 so hero siege scratched a bit of a nostalgia itch

[dire horizon]

Endgame is a lot to take in honestly, been like that for a while, season 6 solved some of the issues but honestly the roughest part is getting the item you need from a 1000+ loot pool of items that can drop sometimes XD

The satanic zones help a crap ton, the raids are still bullcrap XD and anubis is forever the newbie slayer

[toxic yoke]

@dire horizon have you played craft to exile 2?

[dire horizon]

Path of exile 2? Yea, craft of exile 2? No XD

[toxic yoke]

xd craft to exile 2 is a minecraft arpg if you like minecraft and like arpgs like path of exile/diablo/hero siege, then you'd probs like it

[dire horizon]

Betttt thank you for the recommendation

[warped nebula]

End game you can use a lifespan build that 4 minions can last almost 4 minutes. So your only casting to upkeep the other 4-5.

I like the small changes that doesn't change Warlock to much. That seems like a win. I personally like the skill and mechanics associated with the class. I don't want the class to turn into a Summoner class like Terraria. Warlock is the only class that has a strong defense and offense with certain builds. Other classes the more of 1 you prioritize the less of the other you get. Warlock you can focus on both making it quite strong.

[jagged lotus]

That's only kinda proving my point dawg

[dire horizon]

Fairly enough warlock rn is just a mage with extra buffs

[jagged lotus]

Is there even any better mage loadouts than grimset arcane staff?

[dire horizon]

I mean I don't know exactly, the meteor staff set up someone used didn't use the grim set, think they had like 11k magic and hit for 240k occasionally, not sure if that's better but a strong contender, probably much simpler

[jagged lotus]

What armor set they use?

[dire horizon]

Found it

[dire horizon]

Scholar set

[jagged lotus]

Ain't no way

Wait no, that's the new one

[jagged lotus]

That's the sorcerer armor

[dire horizon]

Oop

XD

[dire horizon]

You're right

But yea tbh I'd say that build is a strong contender to arcane staff, if anything much simpler

[jagged lotus]

Makes sense tho, it has magic barrier and arcane monk doesn't which is kinda poo

[dire horizon]

Though I swore someone showed higher numbers than that mixing in lily pad armor

[jagged lotus]

I forgot lily pad armor is a thing now

[dire horizon]

But I'd have to dig deep for that at least we kinda have mana potions in the form of free debuffs XD

( poison grenades+napalm, and the mana from explosions talent )

[jagged lotus]

Lily pad seems like a pretty nice set in general ngl just looking at the stat spread

[dire horizon]

Just gotta be near water in which case progressively the next biome has plenty of it from where you obtain it from XD

But most importantly it converts even more magic barrier into magic dmg

[jagged lotus]

Apparently lava also counts so it works for the volcano mines

[dire horizon]

Ahhh I didn't know that wow

[jagged lotus]

Yummy free tough gang synergy

[dire horizon]

Yea they averaged the dps of meteorite staff to 90k so honestly it's basically a less complicated musket with more consistent dmg

Quill gun is absurd

Basically it's the arcane staff build with much less effort

( dps wise )

[warped nebula]

I was in agreement

[jagged lotus]

I wasn't sure what point you were making tbh cuz you said you don't want it to change too much

[warped nebula]

My first statement replying to you was in agreement.

My next statement was my own input. I don’t want it to change to much.

This thread was a nightmare to go through

[jagged lotus]

You're teling me

[toxic yoke]

It really isn't that defensive tho, magic barrier doesn't give you any mitigation just increases your pool even the like 600 or w/e you get from minions is just like 1-2 hits depending on what you're fighting. Also a lot of your dmg is coming from it so when you get hit you lose your dps

[warped nebula]

I typically agree with your takes. I'll disagree with this one. Magic barrier will come back fairly quickly unlike health which you need a potion for and potions have a cooldown. Even if it blocks the 1-2 hits you will still have another 1-2 hits before you die and then you still have a potion. If you don't have magic barrier you will only get the 1-2 hits and a potion so I don't understand your take. My point was your damage and defense scales together with the build. Obviously that is true. Pick any other class and the more you put into damage the less defensive the build gets. If you only get hit 1-2 times over 5-10 seconds you will basically be unkillable because the magic barrier will continue to fill back up.

[jagged lotus]

Why not exactly? Summon management right now is more annoying than anything and the mana scaling costs are rediculous

[warped nebula]

I agree the mana cost shouldn't scale with the level of the tome but that is a small change which is cool. It wouldn't take away from the playstyle of the class. It is after all a playstyle. Every playstyle doesn't have to be for every player. I never played Summoner in my dozens of playthroughs on Terraria because it just felt to simplistic and all the other classes just felt better to me. Warlock feels good in CK and out of my 6 playthroughs of the game I find myself preferring Warlock in a lot of situations. In all fairness though if I couldn't bind my gearset I probably wouldn't play the class. I haven't actually played with 1 gearset but I would imagine it would be painful. I do use lifespan gear in my playthroughs and it makes the playstyle work. You just get into a rhythm with your fighting and casts.

[jagged lotus]

Console doesn't really have gear switching by default iirc

You have to manually add the input into the control layout

[toxic yoke]

Swapping sets is not bound by default on PC either, unless you just mean switching it with your inventory open.

[dire horizon]

I don't think we have gear switching at all wanna swap gear? Gotta manually switch it through inventory

But even then minion snapshotting doesn't work that well on console either IMO, switching from minions to your mining set you lose all your minions regardless, it only works if you hold 2 minion sets together switching between them and even then it's just kind mid tactics, rather have my optimized dmg minions than the ones that last longer and do much less dmg

If I use longer lifespans it's more so for the arcane staff shenanigans

[warped nebula]

Lifespan lasts even if you swap gear. Yes you want to use 2 Warlock sets. 1 is a lifespan and 1 is a damage/minion set. The lifespan set is to cast your first 4 minions and then you can swap to a damage/minion set. The first 4 minions will retain the lifespan even though you've swaped sets and will also get the increased damage of the new set. So there is literally no reason to not do this. I have mentioned this to you multiple times and you still describe it wrong.. Just try it so you stop telling people wrong information. Its not shenanigans its literally just understanding the class mechanics.

[dire horizon]

That's not how it works on console, minions snapshot current bonuses and they don't gain any more unless resummoned, actually even PC people who have downloaded the infinite minion lifespan mod have noticed minions not gaining dmg bonuses of new sets they put on, the lifespan minions may last longer but do less dmg with less attack speed as well, this is all from personal testing on console and from many people asking questions from the infinite lifespan mod

But the no reason not to do this still stands, unless it's for arcane staff, having longer buffs is nice

[warped nebula]

Have you ever even tried it? Its an incredibly easy test.... It 100% works how I described it.... Just because you disagree doesn't make what you say to be true. My advice is to try it out for yourself because it makes you look foolish doubling down.

[dire horizon]

I have tried it myself

Could be an exclusive bug for console/infinite minion mod but for both scenarios minion snapshotting works the same

[warped nebula]

I don't use mods

If you are using infinite minion mod then how do you test it...

The only modifier that holds when you swap gear loadout is the lifespan. Everything else minion specific changes with the gear.

[dire horizon]

They summon minions with shaman gear, then switch to corrupt warden and explain that the minion dmg doesn't go up or any of the stat bonuses corrupt warden gives them, they leave the game come back and re-summon the minions and now have the bonuses of corrupt warden, I've helped figure that out at least

Regarding console, simply put you lose attack speed of minions when switching from grim set with lifespan, to grim set with puppet, so losining dmg overall also maybe some stacking benefits they would normally snapshot

[warped nebula]

Damage and attack speed of minions change with gear. You do not have to recast.

[dire horizon]

May be a console/infinite minion lifespan glitch then?

[warped nebula]

You can never say for sure if something is vanilla if you are testing with mods.... Always test with vanilla.

[dire horizon]

Console is vanilla

[warped nebula]

right but you keep mentioning a mod

[dire horizon]

The mod is PC in switch case I would think exposes minion snapshotting the most I would think, but as said it could just be problems console vanilla faces alongside that mod itself

I'm not full in disagreement I'm just saying what happens for two experiences, console, and minion mod from PC, that method does not work as you have described it

[warped nebula]

Only an 8% damage difference in equipment but the attack speed is much more noticeable. Both sets lasted the same amount of time because they were both casted with the lifespan set. 3 minutes and 47 seconds.

You can see in the screenshot that the minion set does 10 more damage and it hits a ton more.

You can test this yourself

Here is the gear I used

I would suggest only casting 2-3 for your test so you can confirm its the same minions

Just to clarify why this info is important and why it matters to all Warlock players is because summoning 4-5 minions is the sweet spot for enjoying the class. Anything higher is a pain. If you can precast 4 minions that last almost 4 minutes keeping uptime on 8-9 minions for at least that long is much more manageable and fun no matter what weapon your using. Basically it doesn't change your playstyle at all with the exception of adding 4 minions each 4 minutes.

I'm sure this is the reason the dev's decided to have most the lifespan gear drop pre wall.

[jagged lotus]

I think requiring a second set of gear for lifetime is goofy

[warped nebula]

Who said it was required. Again its a playstyle. I use 2 Melee sets and ranged sets. 1 is a dodge set and the other is a damage set. Its not required by any stretch.

[jagged lotus]

I mean for warlock, I'd rather balance it around having one dedicated loadout

[warped nebula]

Play with 1 armor set then. You can do that.

I used the 2 sets to prove how the mechanics work. It just so happens to be 2 sets I use for my Warlock.

[jagged lotus]

The issue is the whole gear switching interaction changing damage but not lifetime. Personally I'd patch that so you're actually making a choice

[warped nebula]

If it was patched out I probably wouldn't play the class then. I like to attack myself and if I have to keep uptime on 8-9 minions there is no time to do damage myself.

[warped nebula]

This would basically make Warlock a chore. You might as well make it a summoner at that point.

[jagged lotus]

That would be the appeal of a dedicated lifetime build no?

[warped nebula]

Absolutely not

[warped nebula]

You can only cast 4 minions lol

[jagged lotus]

They way I'd do it is just that the high lifetime minions don't get the damage buff from switching

[jagged lotus]

Wdym "a summoner". It's summoning lol

[warped nebula]

Its called Warlock. Terraria has Summoner. Its a different beast. The consistent casting of minions and attacking with magic damage is the playstyle.

[jagged lotus]

I'd argue it's more focused on summoning than the terraria version which is more like a melee class with pets

[warped nebula]

Terraria the summons are the main damage and you are the support. Warlock you are the main damage and minions are the support. It's a small difference but its a difference.

[jagged lotus]

With magic grim set hybrid it's basically just stat buffs for magic damage which is boring imo

[warped nebula]

again every class doesn't have to be for every player. if you don't like that build well, nobody is forcing you to use it. play something else. I don't play that build either. I use a broken set.

[jagged lotus]

I like summoning, I don't like the talent tree and the main endgame armor basically requiring a hybrid mage build. It doesn't end up that way till late game

The whole point of this discussion was to come up with a solid overhaul for summoning that makes it not a total chore

[warped nebula]

Thats what I'm saying. You want a Summoner class. I prefer the Warlock class. We just have a different preference. Neither of us are wrong here.

[jagged lotus]

What?

The skill is literally called summoning

[warped nebula]

and?

[jagged lotus]

By definition it's a summoner class lol

[jagged lotus]

Again this is the only change I'm saying to do in this case so there's no benefit to cheese minion stats with loadout switching

[warped nebula]

its not cheesing. we have food that makes even the worst builds op and your worried about gear swapping??

In the case of Warlock the use of lifespan gear is QoL.

[dire horizon]

I mean warlock is just a glorified mage with familiars basically, what we are asking for is for the familiars to be more used for combat than as a buff

[jagged lotus]

Summoning also only really ends up like that late game