f13.net

So my first char is a summoner.

I haven't decided how I want to build him up.

However, I have heard that you can have up to 40 elementals out, so I will be prepared to Play-to-Crush.   :grin:

You don't really have a choice. Spend points on the carnagor for tanking and fire elementals for damage. Bind summon fire elemental to your RMB; they die a lot.

There are no real viable alternative summoner builds using the warper, witch doctor, etc.

Actually, I'm nearly L11 and haven't spent a point yet.  Just find a weapon w/ +1 to the carnagor or fire ele's (or both in my case  :awesome_for_real:), and you can hold out quite a while.

I think I'm going to try a crazy earth elemental + witch doctor build.

Edit: Like this; http://hellgate.ingame.de/skilltree/summoner/?l=50&s=00000000001aa07000a005000510

Oh you can do it, you don't literally have no choice, you'll just gimp your character.

That's a good point.  Is there a way to respec in this game?

Carnagor + bee gun = teh win


level more

No.

How so?

You have a choice of 3 minions; tank, healer, or DPS. You need to choose one, because there's no synergy in the talent points and you can only have one up at a time. The tank is great solo. The healer and DPS are supposed to be good in groups, but there's no group content in the entire game. And no respecs.

Oh and no, the force elemental can't serve as an effective tank solo.

I've heard otherwise.

Go for it. The base game is pretty easy, you can still beat it with a non-optimal build and hell, maybe you'll discover something new.

Ya, that's what I'm figuring.  Besides, now that I've only spent 1 point, I'll feel stupid for not having an army of fire elementals early on to help me out.

Huh? In Beta I had the tank and DPS ones out at the same time. Did they change this right before release?

No, you could always have one minion and 2 sets of elementals simultaneously summoned.

minion: carnagor, witch doctor, warper, reaper
elementals: fire, spectral, force, etc

Summoners are too sissy to fight their own battles! 

/evoker giggling!

OIC I got the minion and elemental distinction confused.

I'm playing around with a Summoner as well as my Marksman. Is the little elemental pet supposed to be a psycho aggressive pitbull on crack? I'm only level 4 but it has a wonderful tendency to run into a room full of nasty shit, aggro it all and then promptly die, dropping a lot of hate in my lap.

Yeah, they're insane.  It gets a bit better once you have the tank pet to taunt the newly pissed off enemies.  I wish the little bastards would all focus on the same enemy too.

Yes, that's been my experience too. Get a Carnagor when you can, and he should be able to keep your Elementals alive against all up AE mobs and bosses. The Meat Shield (AE Taunt + Heal) is a massive help in that department too. But they still sometimes go off on their own, there really needs to be some sort of "Focus Fire" command for all your minions.

Speaking of such, I was thinking of going with this (http://hellgate.ingame.de/skilltree/summoner/?l=50&s=09a0a67100000000001000000500). I was thinking about Afterlife, but it just doesn't seem very useful beyond a couple points (may split between it and +Fire Ele damage).

That "Master of the Flame" seems like a bit of a rip off, ten whole points for only 10% more damage?  That only winds up equalling one more imp (at ten imps) and they only cost one point each.

It's 10%/level in game, the skill calculator is borked. (At least it says "Next Rank = 20%" in-game at 1/10, I assume it continues to scale like that.)

Yes, it does.

Ok, before the beta wipe I was up to level 13 in summoner, and have been re-playing the Summoner primarily because I wanted less little fire elementals around, and wanted one with more power. I also was using the Carnagor alot, but now that I have the witch doctor with a couple of heavy hitting fire elementals (instead of 10 weak ones) I am seeing much less use to having many many zerging uncontrollable elementals. At one point I grouped with another summoner who had 8 fire elementals, and then with my 6 there was just zerging fireballs everywhere, which didn't do a damn thing for fire resistant enemies.


Actually you can always have 1 minion, and as many elementals as you have spare willpower, and right now I can have a witch doctor, with a single Earth (tank), a single spectral (aoe), and three fire elementals. That's assuming I'm using the one setup of weapons where I have less feed on my will from weapons.. BTW Feed sucks, and once I make or am lucky enough to have all mods with no feed requirements, then I'll probably have zerging multiples with the witch doctor.

Really? I thought we were limited to two elemental types. That's pretty sweet.

Ya, I'm basically doing what Tao is.  Tao, how crazy are you going on the Witch Doctor's skills?

Don't really think I've added any more points to witch doctor skills yet, and they didn't seem like they'll be that terribly useful to add more pts too.. Only the one that increases healing seemed useful. I'm only level 16, and just got the witch doctor after using the Carnagor mostly and watching him feebly stand below flying  enemies, but my last skill pt was to add another spectral elemental, so now I can have 1 Earth, 2 spectrals and 2 fires.

Fairly certain that you can only have 1 spectral.

Are you playing live?

Actually, I added a point thinking it would add a second one, but it only increased the single spectrals power.. I had only just put that point in before logging out and hadn't gone out using it yet (but I thought I could have 2 spectrals). I must've been looking at the Earth Elemental's stats where adding a pt to that added another one of those.

I just added a pt to the Witch doctor's nostrum skill after playing some this morning, and I assume it's an extension of heal, but with all the elementals summoned I didn't have the willpower to cast it to try it out yet. I didn't think controlling a monster (the other witch doc skill) seemed all that useful, but now I'm thinking I need to find a way to free up more willpower feed somehow. 


The multi-player beta was extended until Nov 7, and I've been playing online, so yah I am on live even without buying it.

I don't even know why you're still playing. You've been such a sandy vagina about it, I figured you would've run back to SWG or something equally terrible.

I keep hoping for the magic patch that's going to make all the fail go away, and in the meantime continue diligently testing while sending reports about bugs. I still don't think it's worth spending money on, and probably won't own this unless it's a gift (which my diablo addict friend hinted at), but for the time being crashing every two hours while wanting this game to improve is enough.

I have an aversion to throwing money at half done games, but obviously with you all paying money for this while I'm still bug testing, I'd have expected more sandy vagina posts coming from you people.

Bullshit. You play MMOGs. By definition, they're half-finished, and most of the time they're only half that.

And who knows how much money you've sunk into them. At least Hellgate has a beginning, middle and absolute end. Not to mention reasons to replay.

Fact of the matter is, you're just f'ing crazy. And that's fine, you can be crazy. But at least try not to be a complete clown when you publicize your craziness.

What's the deal with the different types of elementals?  Are some definitively better than others, or are they just different types of damage? I'm level nine and hoarding points.

I'm crazy? You're the one who's being a troll stalker, following me into threads where I was totally on topic and then lambasting me.  I may be crazy, but you sir are twice the lunatic insane person I am, the main difference being I don't post in every thread you respond to saying what a basket case you are. Get a fucking grip, and lay off the personal attacks.


They aren't really better than each other, and yes they do different types of damage, which makes some of them more useful than others. The fire ones, of course cast fire, the earth one is just a physical brawler tank, and the spectral one casts a spectral wave AOE around itself... The storm casts electric, and last is poison, but I haven't gotten there to see if it's a melee or missle attack.

As you progress some enemies don't take damage from certain effects, so there's different situations for each one as far as I can tell. I wouldn't horde the points for too long though, and at level 9 I'd say have at least two pts in master of Flame, making the fire elementals do more damage, and then possibly save the rest for spectral and Witch Doctor (15).. Unless you wanted more tanks.

Also seperate from the elementals, there's the "minion" which is the pet you cast that'll have a health bar, and your Blood link will heal. The Carnagor is a straight tank, Witch Doctor a healer, Warper probably warps, and the Reaper probably reaps.. and the minions also have specials which you can cast, to make them somewhat better.

Just a heads-up if you run across a weapon with Ember X, like...

(http://percentsign20.com/files/hgl/ember-skill-gun.jpg)

It is a lie. It caps out your Summon Fire Elemental skill at that level instead of simply being +1 (so, with that gun, I could only summon one Fire and one Storm, instead of five Fire and one Storm like I should have).

Also, I picked up a focus with Word of Fear 3 on it and it really didn't seem to do much of anything. It was about as powerful as a Priest's Psychic Scream in WoW, except that it only works on demons. I can see how it might be useful if shit hits the fan, but it seems all too situational with how many decent places there are to put your points into.

Finally, has anyone played around with Drain Life? Is it any good? Does it prevent you from shooting or moving or anything else silly?

which stat r u dumping into as summoner? as in primary & secondary.

Main stats for mine are Stamina and Willpower. With Accuracy being tertiary since I love the cabby guns.

Also, working on an elite mode summoner now. My tip? Max that fucking carnagor armor, pet heal and meat shield. You'll need em.

Update.

I'm L24 atm.  I put 7 points into the witch doctor and mainly use force and storm elementals, with the etheral one thrown in every now and then.

I stopped using witch doctor @ l21.  Warper rapes ass.  I found myself needing more DPS around that level as my stat points were really hurting.  You need a ton of will to have lots of elemental summons until 30 when you can get that will cost lowered for elementals skill.  But as is, I don't have enough stats to put on armor I'm finding or use guns I want to use.

So basically, I dumped all my points into the warper, and just summon 4/6 force elementals, 4/5 storm elementals, 1/1 etheral elemental, and the warper.  Left over power: 59, or just enough to cast blink (item) or elemental nova (item).

With that many elementals, Elemental Nova must be awesome. I can never really find a time to use it since the Fire Elementals are usually out of position during my Carnagor's taunt. I like using it when I get ambushed around corners, and it just decimates groups (even with just 4 Fire with 6 in MoF and a 1pt Spectral).

Also, Afterlife is super-cheap and Drain Life kinda sucks. Brom's is okay (not so much now that I have Afterlife and don't even need health packs, although it's nice on bosses), but I certainly hope that Elemental Drain will be nice considering the points inbetween are kinda meh.