Is anyone building a summoner?

I dont know about LH but in FE i never tryed it to be honest but thats mostly because i dont like summoner "class" and not because its not working. From the pics i ve seen it would be nice if the summoner trait works kinda like necromance where you summon hordes of undead for the duration of the battle

I'm a huge fan of Air Elementals.  In the early/midgame, they are rather powerful and fast, and can usually survive a hit or two.  So, yeah, I'm all about the summoning tree.  Plus the Air Elemental's impale ability is a nice way to whittle down the enemy stack a bit.  Their high movement rate is also nice when making a 'fast response' stack (i.e. a stack that moves 4 or 5 instead of 2).

Ice Elementals are also nice, mainly because of their 'slow' effect when they strike in combat.  Plus, they can generally survive a hit or two in the early/midgame assuming they aren't in a swarm situation or facing some epic creature.

The only 'disappointment' is the Familiar, which becomes available via the tech tree.  Too few hit points to risk in combat, and although they can also summon creatures, they are generally of lower level.  Summoned creatures are nice cannon fodder though, if you have the mana to spare.  They don't tie up city production when replacing them...

Finally, if you summon a creature during tactical combat, this can improve your odds in a fight, if your stack was full to begin with; summoning creatures in combat can exceed your stack size.  Of course, the creature goes bye bye at the end of combat should it survive, but if your stack was full to begin with, this isn't as big of an issue.

I tried to go for summoner last game... well it's weird. Varg helps a lot early on, but next summons need tooo much of exp which is hard to get and there are much more viable perks that summons. So summons should be returned to book imo, but they should be made weaker if you're not summoner.

Summoning is decent if you go the earth elemental route but any good summoner is worthless at everything else due to the huge Trait point cost.

The reason no summoning champions exist is for the same reason, it requires so many traits to do that no champion could ever be worth it, only a pure summoning Sov is good enough.

Also the random and limited summons really really bother me. Every Summoner is the same due to the horrible trait tree that forces you to pick ice then air, ect ect. Summoning needs to be affected by your general elemental traits and cost less traits. Also more diverse and interesting traits like allowing 2 of the same summon or an upgrade to summon a group of 3 instead of just 1 ice elemental late game.

This thread goes over summoner tree issues:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/442176/

The Summoner tree is great, but I wouldn't take the Summoner trait.  

The Shadow Warg is only good very early game, and +2 levels to summons just aren't that great.  It's certainly a much better trait in LH than it was in FE, what with getting the ability to summon things being an uncertainty in FE.  Still, I don't feel like there's a significant enough bonus.  +4 HP, +2 accuracy, +2 spell resist, and... that's about it.  Even when summoning a Skeleton Horde (which gives you 9 skeletons) I see little benefit to it.

Maybe it's not worth it on lower difficulties, but I play on insane/insane, and it's very good there.

Yeah, a summoner can be very useful, but i would not use the summoner profession, because, as Darxim said, it is too weak. The general profession (+ 25 % xp) helps the summoner a lot, because you reach the next summons much faster and if you take air 2 at the sovereign creation you can cast turtelage (+ 25 % xp) to reach the next summons even faster.

The ice elemental is nice (slow), the air elemental is great (damage and hit points, but no dodge?!?), the fire elemental is great (overpower) and the craig spawn is nice (defense and hit points), but as you said, the summoner tree is too long and the summons should be linked to the elemental traits.

The familiar is very powerful, because it doubles the amount of summons and it can cast support spells (haste, heal, ...), but i think it should have slightly more hit points and it should be in the summoner tree.

Overall I like playing as a summoner.  I agree the summoner trait is kind of weak though; +2 levels for many summonses is just 6-10 extra hp.  Some summonses like the whisp, increase their healing with level.  So i'm kinda reserving judgement as to its benefit at higher levels, since I ended up beating the game as a summoner on expert at lvl 9 (air was the farthest I had seen).

Anyways, here's some tips I picked up for getting the most out of the summoner.

The Pricipone's crown is essential for summoner.  Lets you sustain your "strategic" summons without manna cost.  

Your alignment (dark or light) affects which summonses  you get.  For instance, light gets whisp and light bringer, whereas evil gets skeleton and skeleton hoarde in their place.  Not sure if those are the only differences.  Haven't played evil, but I think they are missing out.

Mage tree pets can be cast anywhere on the battlefield.  If your hero has high initiative you can lock down about 4 enemy units fairly easy, just cast a tank summon in melee range, and they'll be stuck attacking that summons.

There's a spell (unit enchantment) you can find called summoner's boon, which increases the attack of all your summonses by 50%. 

If you make familiars, your familiars can summon anything you can.  If you really like lightbringer's u can make an army of them by making familiars to cast them.  They are a strategic spell so you can cast it out of combat.

Shadow worg is useful for creeping early.  Lets you send waves of wargs at mites, wolves, spiders, bear armies to soften them up for your sovereign's army to get exp.  You just weaken them, then come in with your army.

Later you can send lightbringers (light faction only) at much more powerful armies to soften them up.  Great tanks.  50% phys. dmg reduction.  Plus they get two area effect blind spells that stack (on summon and on cast).  Used them to tank everything, even juggernauts and such (with support from a whisp).  

Whisp (light faction only) is good sustained healing.  Healing scales with its level.   Good combo with lightbringer.

Frost - Didn't like that much.  He "slows" everything he hits.  Slow just isn't that powerful imo.  He's no tank, but does elemental damage so he can hurt most anything he hits.  

Air - got too late to evalute.  Didn't look too promising though.

I like building summoners, especially if I am in a situation where I can't gear up my heroes. The summoner requires very little gear to participate in tactical combat (+initiative, ranged dodge and mana reduction if possible). They are also very resilient against injuries, since almost no injuries impact their progress. If they do get crippling injuries they can still participate on the strategic level, unlike other heroes.

I think summoners are difficult to balance and to measure that balance because they are so different from how other heroes participate in combat. However, I would generally agree that unless you get a hero with very well picked magic schools (preferably water and then (earth or fire) then summoner is not worth pursuing.

Personally I would like to see an overhaul of playing a summoner where summoning is limited for each character based on its personal progress (levels + traits), but you could nevertheless summon multiple copies of each summon. There should also be more summons, to make the play-style valuable and this would mitigate the great summons (fire elemental and earth elementals) from being such huge power plateaus in the game. This was basically the idea we had for Goetia mod, but we never finished that.

+100000 what heavenfal said

+ 1 Karma

The summoning level determines the attack and, depending on the creature, defense, initiative, dodge, and other abilities. +2 levels usually translate into +4 attack. A level 20 Shadow Warg has 34 more attack than a level 3 one. Most people just don't know this and confuse summoning levels with regular ones.

I really can't speak about LH, because I'm not playing it, but I always found it kinda weak in FE. Mostly because there are so few summoning spells, and the one-summon-per-caster limit for each one. What is the reasoning behind that limit, anyhow? I really don't get it.

Must say I've been positively impressed by a default Procipinee investing perks in the mage class (obviously) and then pure summons - down to lightbringer and then onwards on the line to earth and grave elementals, only picking up a single non-summon perk (knowledge) as the first perk after getting the lightbringer. Those +2 levels on top of the perk level boosts and (eventually) shard boosts really add up, giving you a very powerful army compared to what the AI fields all the way until the endgame - and if you lose a unit, you can just resummon it immediately.

There's no room for magic development there, though if you get some air champions you can level them up a bit and eat their souls to boost your magic should you so desire for teleportation, and it does mean enchanting Procipinee with every enchantment known to man to boost her combat prowess and spending most of the time either whacking monsters in melee (for the swarm bonus) or casting haste and slow, but it works, and there's a sweet spot in the midgame where your one army with summons will trump anything the AI fields.

(And, of course, when it works with a default leader, I'm sure it works even better with a custom summoner, so long as he gets her headband.)

It is a bit of a one-trick pony act, though, going the dedicated summoner route, and I'm not sure how it would work out for the empire faction. That whisp+lightbringer combination is so very, very, powerful, and using the wisp tactically to heal multiple summons at the same time every 5 rounds is an important part of the empire summoner tactics.

Just a quick note.

I generally keep my Sovereign Mage/Summoner in the back, with some sort of missile weapon.  Sure, the enemy likes to concentrate missile fire her way, which is why defensive buffs/items are a good idea. 

I let the summoned creatures and any other handy units do her dirty work, while she snipes at wounded creatures and such.

The Summoner tree might do well to be condensed a bit, but then really most/all trees could benefit from this.  I think that either:

1) Picking more traits every level, so more of the tree comes into play.  This could be limited, i.e. can't pick '2 deep' down any trait tree when you gain a level.

2) Less XP to advance a level.  This will help Champions/Sovereigns gain HPs faster in the late game; the HP thing could be addressed another way, but this idea also allows more traits to come into play in the later game.

3)More XP's awarded overall (another way to accomplish what 2 does, the +1 XP per turn idea has been discussed in other threads).

I'm obviously missing something, though.  You guys are talking about other summoned creatures I'm not seeing yet.  Time to do some research...

Oh, and completely unrelated, Ancient Grave Elementals are da bomb!  Well, I can't say they are definitively THE toughest Elemental as of yet (still figuring out the game), but they are quite hardy in combat.  That regeneration ability is very helpful, and I love that 'Death's Ward' ability...

This makes me think that a spell to resummon Shard creatures when they are lost might be nice, but then I like higher unit counts in my games to begin with.  More units = better smoothing of statistics.

Let's just say that the "no XP without combat makes using a hero as administrator pretty much meaningless except for the base unrest reduction" and "25% chance for 1XP/turn for heroes in the faction specific adventurers guild is pretty much irrelevant given the xp requirements to gain levels" remain as relevant and fundamental flaws in Legendary Heroes as they were in Fallen Enchantress, and that combined with "XP in combat is shared between heroes", most heroes are destined to spend most of their drab, wretched, lives as lowlevel -5% unrest reducers OR being sacrificed so the sovereign can steal a spell level.

The game mechanics of leveling heroes and hero utility just don't mesh all that well.

Summoning has great potential. It just needs a little more love As I suggested elsewhere, why not give Summoners opportunity (perk in the hero path) to summon two creatures of each kind?

BTW have you tried wisp or lightbringer? This combo seemed to me damn powerful...

Actually it is the opposite. Summoner is very strong in early game and it is viable choice for insane/insane game. Do you need better recommendation than that ? Please keep in mind that wisp and lightbringer are (at the moment) superior to skeletons.

Empire side summoners do just fine as well.

The single skelly is 'menh' but at least you can quickly toss it in front of some unit that might hurt you a lot (Ie, cheap 1 turn meatshield).  It wouldn't hurt if this mage trait got boosted beyond just having the single skeleton.

Being able to drop 9 skeletons (and they have random gear - mixed sword/shield, spear, axe combo) between you and the enemy is very nice.  Toss in the Imp and you get 18 units in between the two armies.  Add Archers/multi-hex damage spells and you're golden.

Not to mention swarm... dropping a full surround on an enemy champion and then 'commanding' a skeleton to act makes them very powerful.

and well, you get the mass-death spell at the same time as the skeleton army, so you can just 'wail' the enemy to death while happily sitting in the back of the map.  Bonus points for adding death cult to your faction (grave seal/infection combo -> insta gib any army with your summons).

graveseal/infection is also a great reason to have your imp around.  Beastlords as well benefit from it.

To really make a summoner worthwhile, maybe allowing X summons per X related mana would allow more significance to summoners in late game, especially on a large map. That or include boosts in the magic tech trees, to be unlocked at varied time as game progresses.