This discussion was brought up in the Interlude section of the forums, but I hoping a GM or some other knowlageble person could answer a few questions about Soulless:
First, I would really like to hear the justification for Soulless to have a mana drain placed upon the summoner when he is present. When looking at his stats next to Unicorn Merrow...
The two summons are roughly the same, but unicorn merrow has a stronger attack, better evasion, and a much stronger AoE spell than Soulless. I would really like to hear the reasoning behind the mana drain placed upon him, because, as it stands, it seems fairly unbalenced. It should also be noted that Merrow's pdef was lower to start with to compensate for it's high evasion, but in one of the patches, the pdef was raised to be the same as Soulless and Kai with the evasion being kept the same.
Also, I would like to know why Soulless was given weak spells like posien cloud and corpse burst compared to Merrow's AoE Aqua spash. Corpse burst has no use in PvP and virtually no use in PvE. I am not really complaining here, but I would just like to see the justification as to why things are the way they are. Why does soulless have so many more weaknesses than unicorn merrow or Kai for that matter?
Originally the AOE water attack sucked too. The necro corpse burst got improved in C4 or C5 but soulless wasn't changed. The contract payment is to account for the fact that he has two abilities as opposed to the other pets which have 1. Lame justification i know but that's what it is.
Remove the poison. Up corpse burst to necromancer's standards.
Poison is worthless, the corpse burst (even now) can have some limited application. Doubling its power (a balancing move deemed appropriate for the necromancer), remove the poison, remove the mana drain, and we'll have an absolutely wonderful servitor.
Even better would be to tune the AoEs such that the mana drain was warranted.
Example:
-Mana drain left in
-AoE poison -> AoE Decay
-Corpse Burst -> toggle which auto-casts corpse burst on any target the Soulless lands a killing blow on.
*Dark magic swirls around the soulless*
Swat, Squish, BOOM!, Splat!
Now THAT would be soulless.
All wishful thinking...
Edit:
I'd also support Maline's plan, although removing poison cloud is altogether unnecessary IMHO.
I am glad I am not the only one who shares these concerns. I just really hate soulless's AoE attacks because, as already stated, posien doesn't do much damage and Corpse burst isn't useful in AoE groups until most of the monsters are already dead or near death.
Why where these AoE spells given to soulless anyways? Was it simply because, being a demon, a posien attack and exploding corpse just fit his evil persona? Or did the designers really feel we would get any use from these attacks?
The other irony is our Mass Debuff skill is for wind damage, which niether our poison or corpse burst uses that damage table. Making the Mass debuff useless unless one is grouped with a SH.
I would really just like to hear from one of the designers why Soulless has the AoE spells he does and why they decided tpo put a mana burn on him. Also, I have wondered why ESs get a summon who has and AoE water spell and an AoE surrender to water spell while the other summoners don't...
I seems unbalenced from my perspective, and again I am not really complaining, I would just like to hear some good reasoning to back-up why the Phantom Summoner and Warlock (especially the PS) seem to be in a weaker position than the Elemental Summoner?
I would switch to an Elemental summoner, but the thought of using pansy-looking ponies instead of demons just doesn't appeal to me. :P
Well, honestly the summoners do NOT have to be exactly alike... indeed the mana pact would make sense if the soulless' abilties fit in with its skills.
AoE surrenders do not necessarily need to fit together perfectly with the pets as frankly Kai would need some sort of Fire ability and one of the shadow pets would need a wind ability... also the Elem summoner's PvP pet would have to fire water instead of Wind.
I don't mind that summoners share some powerful points, and others don't match up so well.
Elemental summoners have great AoE damage pets, but frankly their party pet is significantly less powerful than Queenie and argueably less useful than the PS's paladin-esque one as well. Kai's special is even more lame than even soulless', but the tradeoff is the party pet.
Other classes have massively useless abilties as well...
Just ask the spellsingers how often they use Ice dagger, or the SH's how often they use AoE poison.
Pretty much any DoT is useless in game and indeed this needs a change. Either upgrade the damage to scale with bsps, or lower the mana cost. Even if Soulless's AoE poison DOUBLED in damage per tick with a pet Bsps, it still woudln't kill anywhere near as fast as what other classes can already do.
Even if they do this, Soulless currently has no advantage which makes its mana drain justified.... that and people bleeding (mana) is so annoying as to tempt group leaders to punt you.
Well said then Thanlenduros, Nightshade does have some pretty awsome healing/debuffing abilities, where an ES's Seraphim doesn't have much going for it. I was actually just thinking about that, however I stand frim in my belief that Soulless's mana drain currently seems unjustified.
while this subject is on summons I have a question purtaining to them that has been bugging me......What is with the xp cost for these summons if they already cost crystals do the summons lvl up as well or have their m.atk increase? I have an SPS with all her summons but don't use them much, haven't quite figured out why they won't recharge my MP or use spells
lol, they are too low to recharge your MP, you have to be a true summoner to keep lvling your summons up. Everytime you buy the next summon skill with your SP, your summons gains 2-4 lvls and becomes stronger. The MP recharge on youyr boxer is too weak to recharge you now.
Remove AOE Poison, raise the effect on Corpse Burst and have it poison as an after effect. Make soulless a sword type and have it share the mana pool with the summoner instead of draining mana from the summoner.