Summoner

Summoner symbol.

The summoner is never alone. Two hands are good, but in the summoner's opinion, four hands are always better. With the right tool for every job, there's no situation they can't handle.

Summoner is an archetype in Ashes of Creation.

• Summoners can shift their roles easily to fill gaps in a group's composition based on the role of the summon they are utilizing coupled with their choice of secondary archetype, which influences the role the summons perform best at.

Q: Summoner has been said to fill in the gaps in a party's role composition. What exactly does that mean in practice? Are they capable of speccing to be pure DPS, pure heals, or pure tank? Or instead are they supposed to be doing all three at a lesser level as needed?

A: It depends on the summon that they bring out. They will have a variety of summon options and they will have supporting abilities that enhance the role of that particular summon, or that can hybridize the role of that summon based on the ability they cast on the summon or support by attacking- by casting on the target either. So is something that is flexible based on the summoner; and then when you choose a secondary archetype as your total class, that- as a primary summoner- that will influence which category your summons perform best as a role. So if you go with a secondary archetype for your class selection that's more DPS oriented this summons from a role category perspective will be a DPS summons. You'll still have the flexibility, but it won't be as strong as if you had chosen a support or a tank roll and the summon benefits you would have as a result of those secondary choices. – Steven Sharif

Summoner classes

Class	Primary	Secondary
Beastmaster	Summoner	Ranger
Brood Warden	Summoner	Tank
Conjurer	Summoner	Summoner
Enchanter	Summoner	Bard
Necromancer	Summoner	Cleric
Shadowmancer	Summoner	Rogue
Spellmancer	Summoner	Mage
Wild Blade	Summoner	Fighter

Skills/abilities

The summoner uses many abilities that channel through their summon (also referred to as class skill pets). The summoner is essentially playing through their summon.

You gain your summons from your summoner class as an active skill and then skills can be further developed with points. – Steven Sharif

• Summoners can summon up to three Summons.
• Abilities from the summon appear on the summoner's hotbar.
• Summoner has control over their summon, unless the summon is under ancillary effects.

Summons adhere to the owner’s commands, unless otherwise under ancillary effects. – Steven Sharif

• Summoners can summon Tank, DPS or Support summons.
  • The choice of secondary archetype influences the role the summons perform best at.
• Summoner summons are not the same as combat pets.
  • Summoner's summons will add to the summoner's power when they are summoned, unlike combat pets, which take a portion of the player's power.

The Summoner archetype does not have that portion of power taken away when they summon their pet. That's part of their... power is their summon. – Steven Sharif

• Summons will exist until another summon is cast, the summon is killed, or the summoner logs off.
• Summoners will likely not be able to fuse with their summons (eidolons).
• Summons can be leveled through the application of skill points to their active skill.
• Summons will be able to use crowd control (CC).
• Summoners may be able to name their summons, but will not be able to change their creature type, which is part of the nameplate above the summon.
• Summons follow the same PvP flagging rules as players and share the player's flag status.

Summons follow the same flagging rules as players, if your summon pks someone, you gain corruption – Steven Sharif

Summoners summon different summons, depending on the class and augments they choose.

• Animals.
• Spirits.
• Zombies, skeletons and other undead creatures.
• Corpses (potentially).
• Some summoners may summon multiple things.
• Other summoners may only summon one powerful thing.
• Certain summoners may only be able to summon effects and/or temporary energies.

Augments from a secondary archetype can be applied to a summons.

For example: If your summon had a sweeping attack with a claw, or had the ability to bite an opponent, or rush an opponent; and you took teleportation, you could rush them similar to how I've given an example with the tank: Teleporting to a target instead. Or, its claws could combust on impact on a target dealing some burn damage that persists. Or... let's say your summon traditionally was some type of bear or bear cat, you could apply an elemental augment and now it could be a transparent flaming bioluminescent cat; and its damage would be fire based. So, that's how we want to influence the active skills with how augments apply; and that's how it would apply with Summoners. – Steven Sharif

Siege summons

War Beast 3D render. Modelled by Jessica Jennings.

Group summons are activated by a party leader with that ability in their class kit along with additive components from other classes that are part of the group.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Up to eight players of the same primary archetype can band together to create monumental effects during a siege.

• The classes will need to be in the same group or raid.

These are the types of systems that we want to put in place where groups of a single primary archetype can come together to summon these types of effects that play off of what the identity of that archetype is. – Steven Sharif

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Summoners can collaborate to summon larger summons, such as Golems.

• A siege summon will have an incremental size based on the number of summoners participating in that summon activity, with a maximum of eight.
• The number of summoners participating in the summon will determine its overall size.
• All summoners must be in the same party and the party leader must be a summoner.
  • The party leader initiates the summon and then takes control of it.
  • Once summoned, the party leader cannot be changed.
  • If the party disbands, the summon ends. There will be a grace period to handle disconnects.
  • The party may also contain non-Summoners.

It doesn't have to be just summoners, but it has to be a party led by a summoner with other summoners in it. – Steven Sharif

Summoner augments

• Classes with a Summoner secondary may grant augmented skills that summon weapons. These summoned weapons are not able to be equipped.
  • The word "equip" only applies to items. There are currently no plans to include summoning items into a player's inventory or character slots. It may however be possible to change the appearance and damage type/data of a weapon through the use of a spell.
  • There are summoned weapons that appear as a spell VFX to damage opponents for a period of time. These will not be able to be wielded, since weilding implies an item in a character equipment slot.

Summon appearance

A summon's appearance is determined by in-game choices.

• Class specific appearance.
  • For example: Summoner/Rogue (Shadowmancer) may have shadow summons.
• Race specific appearance.

Summoners can change the appearance of their summons.

• Through in-game items.
• Through cosmetics that will be offered.
• Potentially through a summon creation suite, based on the Animal husbandry system.

The other cool thing about the you know summoner that we want to implement is kind of a summon creation suite where you can customize the appearance potentially based on what you found in the world. Something that's already going to be implemented with the animal husbandry system; and there's no reason why we can't take that technology- that you know system and apply it elsewhere such as with the Summoner. – Steven Sharif

Timeline

The Summoner archetype was originally scheduled for release in Alpha-1 but may now be released "a little bit later" in development.

The other classes, particularly the Summoner and Bard, take a considerable amount of additional feature development in order for many of their skills to be the target skills that we have for those classes. – Steven Sharif

Artwork

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  2017-10-13

Archetype list

Icon	Archetype	Type.	Role.
	Bard	Arcane	Support
	Cleric	Arcane	Support
	Fighter	Martial	Damage
	Mage	Arcane	Damage
	Ranger	Martial	Damage
	Rogue	Martial	Damage
	Summoner	Arcane	-
	Tank	Martial	Tank

See also

• Archetypes
• Classes