Summoner can make quite an impressive army

[d24e]

I'm watching the Fire clip again and I just noticed something else. When the summoner is walking through the streets with his minions, there are quite a lot of them.

5 Melee (look like little rock golems with white lights)
1 purple thing (I guess it's like a buff thing, it doesn't seem to do anything)
8 Ranged fire globes

Sure it's no necro with 100+ total minions but that wouldn't be possible with these graphics anyway. Hell even 2D graphics had trouble with that.

Much more than EQ2's summoner class though, there you get 1 main pet and some temporary ones that only help during the fight.

Makes me rethink my evoker choice as first class. I'll probably go summoner or mechanic first.

[buddyp450]

just dont forget ur d2 experiences :)

somethink like andariel comes along and poison nova's ur minions and one shots them all lol

[Sulfuric]

The numbers of minions will likely be adjusted during Beta. I would expect the numbers to go down, but the strength go up a bit.

1.10 Summoner Necros were way better than pre1.10...sure, the numbers went down, but the quality of the summons went way up.

[d24e]

Ya that's true. Plus evoker lets me use guns (well sort of, not sure what they'll look like)

[Sulfuric]

Ya that's true. Plus evoker lets me use guns (well sort of, not sure what they'll look like)

If you mean the Focus Devices, they look like Gauntlets.


If you mean the Cabalist-specific guns, like the Jade Hydra or the African Killer Bee Swarm gun...then yeah, those are guns...without bullets.

[xTARANTULAx]

I am considering having a summoner for my single player character, that way I'll learn the ins and outs of summoning before I go online.

I love the fire embers because they make a nice little army of ranged attackers

[d24e]

If you mean the Focus Devices, they look like Gauntlets.


If you mean the Cabalist-specific guns, like the Jade Hydra or the African Killer Bee Swarm gun...then yeah, those are guns...without bullets.

Yeah I meant the gauntlets, they look hellacool. Like those big monsters in the game Prey who have rocketlaunchers for arms. Oh man I hope shapeshift cabalist will have something like that.

Also I made mistake in my first post, those ranged minions and the purple one are also little rock golems. Just a different colour.
And the purple thing seems to grow in size when you enter a fight.

Melee
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x122/d24e/HGLmeleeminions.jpg

Ranged
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x122/d24e/HGLrangedminions.jpg

Purple small size
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x122/d24e/HGLpurpleminionsmall.jpg

Purple big size
http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x122/d24e/HGLpurpleminionbig.jpg

[Sulfuric]

The colours generally relate to an element.

The orange/red are Fire. The White is likely Lightning. Purple is used in the game to signify Spectral element.

[xTARANTULAx]

The orange dudes, about the size of that spectral helper (Probably a different form of the same spell) are called embers. They shoot thin streaks of fire.

EDIT: NVM LOL

[iconocast]

yeh about that nasty posison nova, killing bosses was a major pain when ur minions get 1 hit. still i would assume they have looked into this. summoner has alwasy been my choice, after melee, but when i saw the quality of the demons it realy put them to the top of my "thats hot" list. have a mass of minions surrounding me as i use the cabbi guns/guantlet to spray death :D

[Mendax]

Don't forget "big red" with the scythe.

[Hazar]

:D

I wonder if they put a cap on the total number of summons instead of just per skill cap on summons.

[Mendax]

I hope they don't do like GW where at first you could have infinite minions, then a year later change it to 10...

[BrigAce]

They will probably put together a nice strategic way of handling the summoner's minions... hopefully it will allow you alot of versability and ways to go about it. Like a pool of points or something where different creatures take different amounts of points to bring out based on how powerful they are..'

10 points

4 - 'lil demon bugger (1 point each)
1 - bamf big 'ol demon (4 points)
1 - buffer magic majigg (2 points)

Something along those lines =]

[Jormund]

D;

Want to play now!

[iconocast]

ahhh big red. i almost forgot about him :P

[Arpeggio]

If you mean the Focus Devices, they look like Gauntlets.


If you mean the Cabalist-specific guns, like the Jade Hydra or the African Killer Bee Swarm gun...then yeah, those are guns...without bullets.

Actually he uses 2 guns that fires eploding flares in the video with the big demon. Nothing organic about them. Guns n' ammo.

[iconocast]

dont need to be a marksman to use gunz im sure.

[Sulfuric]

Actually he uses 2 guns that fires eploding flares in the video with the big demon. Nothing organic about them. Guns n' ammo.

You mean like the Vulcan Bolter?

http://www.hellgatelondon.com/weapons/#w-29

[Arpeggio]

You mean like the Vulcan Bolter?

http://www.hellgatelondon.com/weapons/#w-29

No like in the "fire" of the fire & ice videos. It's more of a exploding flaregun and its still a gun, not Cabalist voodoo stuff, so they can use regular weapons. Must hurt being wrong.

[Mendax]

Look at the 11th skill
http://hellgate.incgamers.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=1598&size=big&cat=

it's the reaper guy. Yaaaay for him.

[Necrodrake]

i think the purple one could be because of the enrage skill of the cabalists...

Ps:first post yey

[Arpeggio]

That screenshot looks tasty.

[Umbrix]

And that is why my main will be a summoner ;).

I play Warlock in WoW, so it was obvious i was gonna pick a Cabalist, but wow. This takes the cake. I can't wait to have an army like in D2 =D

[buddyp450]

What I don't understand is why... WHY... does this noob not have him summoned in the screenshot if it's available? lol

[Windburn]

I might be missing something glaring, but there's usually an indication of what level a given player is on the UI (usually the player frame), right?

Just thought it'd be interesting to know what level that summoner is to have a full accompanyment of skills on his bar!

[Kaldurenik]

It looks nice! Hopefuly they will make so you can have like 5-10 of them and they should be okey in power ;).

[Scorpion Raptide]

Good thing that it prolly won't be that hard to start the army like starting your army in D2 1.10. I always had trouble getting the first few kills. But I think that was more me having spent points in the wrong skill :p .

[iconocast]

wow there is alot of deamons 4 him to summon. cant wait to use big red. excelent.

[EliteSummoner]

Good thing that it prolly won't be that hard to start the army like starting your army in D2 1.10. I always had trouble getting the first few kills. But I think that was more me having spent points in the wrong skill :p .

lol espically in hell it took me like 10 minutes so it was pretty gay. If i could just summon them from the ground uber diablo, meph, and baal would have been cake

[IvanFK]

at present, what is a good estimate of the maximum amount of summons a summoner should be able to control at any one time?

im thinking there's the 4-5 demon summons, a couple of which are on timers. then there's a variable amount of elementals based on the power pool of the summoner.

is that correct? do any of the demon summoning skills allow more than one summon?

personally i'd prefer a mid-range of summons 10-15 but nothing like a huge d2 necromancer army to a very small group of 5-6 that are stronger, just for effect. but i guess with the amount of processing resources required for summons compared to the d2 summons (which still taxed the game a lot, due to the code, especially in multiplayer with multiple necromancers) it would make sense that there would be far fewer.

since the engineer class seems to only have a few drones out at a time i think it would be good, however, to further distinguish the summoner and the engineer from one another by having the summoner be the summon class which has many out at a time and maybe one or two very strong ones as opposed to the engineer who uses fewer summons but makes them very strong (equipping them with items, etc). that may already the case, though, im not sure.

[Sp3tSnAz]

Actually from what Ive read b4, you can only have one demon out at a time, and the elementals are based on your mana pool...

[IvanFK]

ahh. that's a little disappointing then, if it's just one demon at a time. so i guess the summoner is based chiefly on elementals to do damage?

[Sp3tSnAz]

As far as I know yes, while the main demons serve other purposes like healing, controlling minds, suicide attacks and other stuff... but don't trust me 100% on that...

[penemue]

well the demon from what i see will be the single largest damage do-er or tank. the elementals will have all their group damage add up to substantial amount, but by themselves they aren't very useful.

[Alhanna]

I cant decide between Guardian and Summoner. They both look sweet.

[Hazar]

just play both then? D:

[LeeDot]

A few quick clarifications -

- The Reaper is the only Summoner pet that is on a timer while all the minor Hunter pets (bots) are on timers.

- Each elemental that has been summoned lowers your maximum amount of power based on the type of elemental summoned. The number of elementals of any given type is also governed by how many skill points have been spent on that type of elemental mastery. In practice with a build specifically geared towards summoning elementals I can get about 17 elementals into play at once.

- Elementals have very fast casting times and don't require corpses like the D2 necromancer so someone focusing on building a larger army of weaker minions can definitely rebuild their forces in the heat of battle if properly prepared/skilled.

- You can have one major demon in play at a time. Major demons have a longer cast time and cool down but do not lower the size of your power pool other than the initial cost of casting unlike an elemental.

- It is definitely possible to have your major demon be the primary source of damage dealing. Whether or not they do more damage than elementals depends on the type of elemental vs. the type of demon but the general rule is the elementals gather their strength from numbers and have to be constantly resummoned since they're relatively fragile where as major demons are much heartier/more powerful but if you let them die you better run.

[Sp3tSnAz]

Wow, thanks for the clarifications Lee :D

17 elementals is not bad at all :D

Sounds like this class will be really fun wen I try Hardcore ;)

[Alhanna]

what are the differences between the different elementals? i heard fire are good ranged dps but are very fragile while earth ones can tank well for solo play.

[SpellsofWar]

From what I can see each of the elementals has a specialty, we already know fire and force elementals function. I know I'm still a little sketchy on the function of poison elementals, AoE maybe? Spectral will most likely debuff enemies. Lightning...well its lightning...pretty easy.

[Lihanna]

I know I'm still a little sketchy on the function of poison elementals, AoE maybe

AoE/DoT is my best guess

[AlienGamer]

Can someone link the video. I think I've seen it; but can't find it atm.

[saidin0111]

from what I've seen of the skill tree on web sites is that one of your stats acts as a "point pool" and that the lesser minions, or elementals, use up their casting cost in this pool, therefore, to have a horde like the vid, you have to have some insane stats. And it seems that you may be able to have one of each major summons active at one time.

Lightning also apparently gets a boost vs. flyers, so definitely a must in the streets and high ceiling areas. Spectral has a chance to phase enemies, not sure how this is implemented, i.e. ethereal stun, or what. As for poison, I'm not really sure at this point, of course if I did know, I couldn't tell you anyways.

[Bells]

AoE/DoT is my best guess

How ironic, the summoner thread gets necroed.

[Bizwik]

ya summoner is lookin pretty sweet. just pre-ordered the game on Saturday, so illl be in beta Mon or Tues if everything goes well


CAnT WAIT!

[The Punisher]

If you mean the Cabalist-specific guns, like the Jade Hydra or the African Killer Bee Swarm gun...then yeah, those are guns...without bullets.
Awesome dude.

[JupiterJazz]

lol espically in hell it took me like 10 minutes so it was pretty gay. If i could just summon them from the ground uber diablo, meph, and baal would have been cake

Except for the fact that no summon necro could uber since they one hit KO summons. Especially Meph.

[werebear]

A few quick clarifications -

- Each elemental that has been summoned lowers your maximum amount of power based on the type of elemental summoned. The number of elementals of any given type is also governed by how many skill points have been spent on that type of elemental mastery. In practice with a build specifically geared towards summoning elementals I can get about 17 elementals into play at once.


So this means that you only pay a one-time cost for each summon in the form of a smaller power pool? As in, there is no constant draining of power?

It sounds like it but I just want to be certain, so could someone confirm pleaaase?

[JupiterJazz]

When you summon elementals they will take 30-50 from your total power. like if you have 240, and then you summon a fire elemental which is 40 power I think. Your max power will now be 200 instead of 240. Then when it dies your power will go back up to 240.

[The Punisher]

oic

[Geishe]

res thread!! Just don't want to make a new one if this is already here.

Can any beta players please be a dear and reveal the practical number of minions summoned?? How they work, etc etc.

[The Punisher]

For me there is no "practical" number of summons. For me the more the merrier :D

[Sp3tSnAz]

Well I played a summoner once... but I've seen others play them quite a bit.

What people usually do is make ones with 10 fire elementals and a carnagor. With the char limit of 22 this is about as much as you can get, combined with say 1 phase, 1 of the earth elementals and sometimes a storm elemental too...

However there was a guide someone wrote up, and with the correct gear with +skill stuff, you could technically get all the elementals out there but it's usually more practical to choose 2-3 that you like, choose a minion pet thing as well, and get some support skills like healing ones...

However the 10 fire elementals at the start of the game that we have pretty much own everything up :p

[Ebo]

One thing I didn't realise until Beta (only got to play a day's worth and then servers been down whilst they do more work ) is the the cool down for elementals applies across ALL elemental types. So there was me thinking "oh whilst I wait for FE to become available I can just pump out another EA etc . Still, once the main bulk is up it's pretty straight forward to replace the fallen. Then again when get to approaching 20 elementals prob won't be quite so easy to manage. I can't wait :D

[The Punisher]

In D2 I used to summon up legions of undead but the 1.1x patch capped it off but I still enjoy summoning up my max number of pets/summons/minions/etc regardless of their usefulness :D

[AceWhole]

not trying to flame anyone at all
but i played a summoner for a a few hours
it seems like HGL on ez mode :/
same with the engineer



evoker ftw

[ViciousXUSMC]

Its situational they are good in certian enviroments vs certiain mobs. However in others have it much harder than a stand alone player with no pets.

When surrounded your minions die off fast, or AOE type stuff really sucks.

Boses that have a huge aoe attack pretty much kill off your elementals before you can think about it and there is no way to summon them as fast as they die so at that point your fighthing as a super gimped evoker with no attack magic but life drain :/ and maybe your demon.