Goon Summoner Guide 1.1.5
Guide 1
Summoner works fine, did it with one the other day. It's a pretty easy class to play, just focus on the ranged summons early (Ritch Spitter -> Hydra -> Drake), get them all rank 5 with a couple points in other summons for utility, particularly the turtle for distraction. First cat point goes to Summoning (Advanced) for Master Summoner + Grand Arrival, don't need to max them fast because you're still limited by number of summons you can have out, 2nd category goes to Summoning (Augmentation) to increase summon duration + health, as well as letting you blow up summons so you can make a new one. DON'T get the thing that lets you control your summons, because when you use it the AI will take over your character and probably do something stupid like try to go melee an enemy or some shit. After you're cruising along you can start picking up the melee summons, the Minotaur is probably the most versatile with it's cone confuse, the stone golem is a bruiser too and quite tanky along with the turtle which taunts and heals everybody when you drop it with Grand Arrival. The War Hound I use mostly for the physical resist debuff, and I haven't touched Spider at all.
For generics you don't need a ton, I personally went and maxed racial skills 2 + 3 for the passive buffs and 1 point in the others, and went Antimagic for the AOE silence ability - got AM shield as well but it feels like a waste since stuff shouldn't be hitting me normally. I also put 3 points in Meditation to regen equilibrium faster and because at some points I've needed to manually use it to regen in combat since, while the summons aren't THAT expensive, you will be spamming them constantly in protracted fights and will eventually start failing. Get as many as you need in the healing touch skill to heal yourself to full also - you won't be using it on summons because you don't want to be near the fighting. Earth's Eyes / Nature's Balance could potentially be useful, I skipped them in favor of 5/5 Psiblades for the bonus stats and 5/5 Heightened Senses for the infravision, as well as a few points in see-invis skill.
Basic playstyle is to stand way way back and summon your ranged minions out ahead of you, for most of the early game they will just wreck shit. It's a good idea to lead with the Hydra usually, it's semi-intelligent and will try to avoid using it's powerful breath weapons if it would hit a friendly unit, so if you have a big clump of summons out it'll just default to doing shitty melee damage. Let it lead the way and destroy the chaff enemies, then summon other shit to mop up the survivors. The Drake is your big bomb, and can almost replace hydra after you've gotten it maxed out, although eventually enemies have enough health that both will be necessary. I'd still lead with the hydra though because, again, if you do drake-first the hydra probably won't use it's AOE nukes. And eventually you'll hit the point where hydra + drake won't just kill everything, that's when you'll be needing those melee units you skipped early on.
It's kind of a boring class to play honestly, just because it never feels like you are doing anything, even though you have to position yourself well and choose key spots to drop your summons for maximum effectiveness. If it doesn't sound appealing, Thalore aren't really a bad race for any class. Wyrmic honestly should have been able to tear it's way through there, you probably just got caught up in 'kill every enemy!' syndrome, which is NOT a good idea in that zone, just clear your way forward and ignore any non-elite that isn't directly blocking your movement, spam some AOE's when needed to thin the crowd.
