Summoner Minion Attack Speed

[IcyClaw]

I think the attack speed is fine, actually. Summoner needs insane stats to compete in NM, but compete it does when your gear is good enough. In fact, most of my builds don't even use traditional towers like harpoons anymore, instead, I have a phalanx of archers/mage for damage/blocking in one. It works very well for me at least. My archers can do 265,000 damage per shot now on a buff beam. Way way more than my squire's 120,00 damage per harpoon shot on a buff beam. So if it could attack at the rate of the harpoon it'd be completely overpowered. Granted, a harpoon can shoot through things, and shoots a LOT faster, but you might be surprised what you can do by letting archers be your single target dps / blocking and using the DU you save by not using harpoons on other things such as auras and traps instead (so very useful). Plus harpoons and other such things can't heal themselves. So you pay for extra attack speed for the risk it can be destroyed more easily. I think this is fair and don't think summoner really needs any changes, other than that I wish that you could make archers prioritize things like wyverns over anything else.

On a somewhat off track note, I like how this game does give you options for different types of playstyles. If you like to live dangerously but want fast runs and have good gear to handle it, you can just overpower everything with things like harpoons. My playstyle is different, I prefer sustainability with less than optimal gear in order to win difficult NM maps.

*starts wave 23 magus*

Without builder bonus:

Demoness with 1003 TD and 328 TA (pretty sure it caps at like 200 anyways)
Countess with 1130 TD and 999 TA

Buffed Harpoon
51445 damage
.15 attack speed
about 342,967 dps

Buffed Archer
81989 damage
1 attack per second
81989 dps

Unless it changes drastically at higher stats, it doesn't change the fact that minions are weaker than other towers. Add in the piercing and it will completely overshadow archers. We all agree that giving a faster attack speed would be overpowered since it would break the difficulty of the game due to the game being balanced for DU. It was not designed to be balanced for mu, which is why the class balance took a hit.

Pierce/splash damage is godly in survival. Traps/auras can take care of trash, but you want more than single target dps for ogres and wyverns.

Minions may heal themselves, but I don't think it makes them last longer. Spiders will be killed too quick for it to matter and ninjas will prioritize minions over towers. Ogres are the only thing doing actual damage to walls, but I never felt a risk of my walls dying. I have done several campaign maps to 20+ (too bored to reach 25) and I use flash heal on minions a lot more than walls or harpoons unless I am not using ogres (in that case walls are the leader in healing needed). It might just be that my stats are too low though.

[cirion0000]

*starts wave 23 magus*

Without builder bonus:

Demoness with 1003 TD and 328 TA (pretty sure it caps at like 200 anyways)
Countess with 1130 TD and 999 TA

Buffed Harpoon
51445 damage
.15 attack speed
about 342,967 dps

Buffed Archer
81989 damage
1 attack per second
81989 dps

Unless it changes drastically at higher stats, it doesn't change the fact that minions are weaker than other towers. Add in the piercing and it will completely overshadow archers. We all agree that giving a faster attack speed would be overpowered since it would break the difficulty of the game due to the game being balanced for DU. It was not designed to be balanced for mu, which is why the class balance took a hit.

Pierce/splash damage is godly in survival. Traps/auras can take care of trash, but you want more than single target dps for ogres and wyverns.

Minions may heal themselves, but I don't think it makes them last longer. Spiders will be killed too quick for it to matter and ninjas will prioritize minions over towers. Ogres are the only thing doing actual damage to walls, but I never felt a risk of my walls dying. I have done several campaign maps to 20+ (too bored to reach 25) and I use flash heal on minions a lot more than walls or harpoons unless I am not using ogres (in that case walls are the leader in healing needed). It might just be that my stats are too low though.

Well I have all maps on farm (even Talay wave 30) on NM as of writing this post, and I don't use walls only minion tanks. It just requires excellent gear. And the thing is, if they removed MU, this game would be impossible even if minions did get boosted, or next to it. Fact is, difficult maps like Talay require the extra build points to win it.

BTW a random fun fact.... the timer that your towers have lie. 0.11 second does not mean 0.11 second fire time :/ it's a misnomber sadly. So harpoons and such aren't even as good as you think they might be. They still outdps minions, but even my squire with 3600 tower attack cannot kill ogres fast enough before they get killed by the ogres (hence why I switched to minion tanks for difficult maps). Regular campaign maps sure, but those maps are a joke anyway.

Once you get to playing maps where no less than five ogres with 40 million hp each are hitting your defenses, you will see what I'm talking about and why you have to have a tank wall that can sustain itself (ie heal) and not just die like a brick falling in water.

For reference my archers have 145k hp and mages have 85k hp. I can afk to like wave 23 in Talay before I even have to start healing my mages at all. And even then only if like 3 ogres are hitting it. My archers do 400k+ dps and mages do like 750k dps so I have no problems with killing ogres either. (3.6k tower attack, 3k tower HP)

My archers have so much HP that even on wave 30 I don't heal them once. Ever. Not even with six ogres hitting them at once. (And that does happen in Talay sometimes) And I never use flash heal once ever in the whole wave either. Keep in mind the mage heal is based on a % of max hp, since my archers have 145k hp, they get healed for a lot (almost 10k now)

[Eurafrica]

First off, you can't compare DU defenses to MU minions, as you are never restricted to using one or the other. That fact alone makes Summoners very powerful. As cirion and a few others have stated, Summoners are instrumental in successfully farming higher level difficulty maps on NMHC (insert Survival, Mixed Mode, etc).

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding attack speed, and there's actually a little known fact out there regarding its' multipliers. Minions DPS and attack speed (not just animation) will increase pretty dramatically when placed in an Offensive Stances. Offensive Stances meaning, Attack Target, Follow Me, Follow Target, Attack/Move. Hold Offensive/Defensive do not count. Test it yourself in the tavern and you will see a DPS gain on Night Elf Warriors, Archers, and Spiders when put into one of these modes. The other units scale too poorly with Attack Speed and receive hardly any multiplier. Obviously that means stack Tower Damage and Health as they scale well.

You also need to remember Summoners don't just use minions. Phase Shift, Overlord and Flash Heal are all very powerful tools. Overlord being amazingly good. Can a Squire summon 3 different units at once while repairing and upgrading anywhere on the map while being invincible/invisible? No.

I'll make it easy and we'll make a list of Summoners pros and cons.

Pros
-MU is independent of DU. Enough said.

-Minions scale well with damage and health. In Strength Drain and Buff Beams they are near invincible with Mages.

-Self sustaining walls/dps sources with Mages providing mana-free AoE healing.

-360 degree targeting. Too many people leave this out. An archer outperforms a large list of defenses due to this fact alone. (Wyvern/Fish/Spider defense).

-Freeing up DU by substituting its role with MU. I know many people (as stated above) that outright replace walls with minion walls because A. They do damage B. Have large HP pools and super longevity with Mages and C. Can target behind them.

-Spiders web targets at range (and will only web when put in Hold Defensive out of melee range) which slows the target and causes them to take double damage. They now web Ogres, at the cost of 80 mana and 5 MU you have a x2 damage taken debuff at all chokes...and the web will hit an area around the initially webbed target.

-Cost. Widely used units (Archers/Mages) are very cheap and will usually never die an entire game if being used in buff beams/strength drains (which they always should). I've since started adding one spider to each choke for the amazing debuff and they too are cheap.

-An Orc with reasonable Tower Health will have 150k+ Health fully upgraded at the cost of 6 MU (Basically 1/2 Ogre HP). These are often used as wall substitutes in many builds. (Aquanos).

-When out of phase shift/overlord my minions are giving me huge amounts of mana with my Tower Genie on. Meaning everything is fully upgraded extremely fast when used with Overlord.

-Phase Shift/Overlord instantly make you invincible once cast.

-Once you've summoned all your other defenses/minions Ogres can be summoned on top of any defense cluster, making them ideal final uses of MU and to make a buff beam cluster far more dangerous. Ogres have very good reach, poison attack, huge health and 500k+ damage a swing fully upgraded in a beam).

Cons
-Summoning time in combat. This cannot be sped up with Hero casting rate and is fixed at certain amounts depending on the unit being summoned. I.e. Ogre takes 30 seconds in combat, 3 seconds in build phase.

-No weapon attack. Need to manually control minions if a mob gets stuck. Chances are you're not on your summoner anyways.

-Cost of certain units can be high if used in earlier waves but the most often used ones are dirt cheap. See; Archer.

-Fragile when not in buff beams/strength drains. What isn't? This is Nightmare.

-Terrible Tower range/speed scaling. This is why buff beams exist. If your minions aren't in buff beams (aside from walls on certain maps) then what the heck are you doing?

Conclusion:
Supplement your defense or free DU up by using MU, use your Summoner as map wide maintenance (Overlord + Repair + Upgrade + Flash Heal + Genie = GG). You can keep an entire map's defenses alive single-handedly while your team fights let's say...the Goblin Battlecruiser for 20 minutes?. Knowing that your defenses will not crumble while you fight a lengthy boss battle is really nice.

And finally, do not be surprised if your archers/mage get crushed when an Ogre sits on them outside a buff beam/strength drain.

Oh, and get your Tower Health and Damage up.

[IcyClaw]

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding attack speed, and there's actually a little known fact out there regarding its' multipliers. Minions DPS and attack speed (not just animation) will increase pretty dramatically when placed in an Offensive Stance. Offensive meaning, Attack Target, Follow Me, Follow Target, Attack/Move. Hold Offensive/Defensive do not count. Test it yourself in the tavern and you will see a DPS gain on Night Elf Warriors, Archers, and Spiders when put into one of these modes. The other units scale too poorly with Attack Speed and receive hardly any multiplier. Obviously that means stack Tower Damage and Health as they scale well.

This is no longer true unless it is only noticeable at high attack speed. I am pretty sure they changed it shortly after release so the summoner guide is outdated. I do notice it getting a little faster at higher TA, but hold offensive is currently useless unless you are on easy-insane.

1654 TD and 910 TA

Archer
Defensive: 14,251 dps (1 hit per second)
Offensive: 14,251...same

Ninja
Defensive: 27,114 dps (3 hits or 1 combo per second)
Offensive: 27114 dps....same

Spider
Defensive: 11,944 dps (3 hits or 1 combo per sec)
Offensive: 11,944 dps...same again

Not on buff beams and no guardians were used, but I doubt it would change.

[CrzyRndm]

They are second class b/c they are already ridiculously unbalanced. DU has to be split between auras, traps, walls, and turrets (turrets are normally <40% of my DU usage with no minions on the field). 100% of MU goes into the equivalent of turrets,

And finally, do not be surprised if your archers/mage get crushed when an Ogre sits on them outside a buff beam/strength drain.

This made me laugh, just b/c of the number of times I've been racing the timer on Palantir and ordered an archer to defend by accident. Half way through the wave it's normally going toe to toe with an ogre miles from any support. Great entertainment for the randoms playing with me judging by the comments when it happens

[Eurafrica]

This is no longer true unless it is only noticeable at high attack speed. I am pretty sure they changed it shortly after release so the summoner guide is outdated. I do notice it getting a little faster at higher TA, but hold offensive is currently useless unless you are on easy-insane.

1654 TD and 910 TA

Archer
Defensive: 14,251 dps (1 hit per second)
Offensive: 14,251...same

Ninja
Defensive: 27,114 dps (3 hits or 1 combo per second)
Offensive: 27114 dps....same

Spider
Defensive: 11,944 dps (3 hits or 1 combo per sec)
Offensive: 11,944 dps...same again

Not on buff beams and no guardians were used, but I doubt it would change.

Just tried it now, not sure why your numbers are different.

My spider (unupgraded no guardians or buff beams) does 13650 DPS when in Hold Defensive and 18k while attacking target. Not just the numbers, he is attacking noticeably faster. About 25% more DPS.

EDIT: You didn't read my post, as Hold Offensive still counts as a Defensive Stance. "Hold Offensive/Defensive do not count."

Offensive Stances: Attack Target, Follow Me, Follow Target, Move
Defensive: Hold Defensive, Hold Offensive

[Eurafrica]

They are second class b/c they are already ridiculously unbalanced. DU has to be split between auras, traps, walls, and turrets (turrets are normally <40% of my DU usage with no minions on the field). 100% of MU goes into the equivalent of turrets,



This made me laugh, just b/c of the number of times I've been racing the timer on Palantir and ordered an archer to defend by accident. Half way through the wave it's normally going toe to toe with an ogre miles from any support. Great entertainment for the randoms playing with me judging by the comments when it happens

<insert> "Unless your Archers outgear Nightmare Ogres, in which case you will be fine."</insert>

[IcyClaw]

Just tried it now, not sure why your numbers are different.

My spider (unupgraded no guardians or buff beams) does 13650 DPS when in Hold Defensive and 18k while attacking target. Not just the numbers, he is attacking noticeably faster. About 25% more DPS.

EDIT: You didn't read my post, as Hold Offensive still counts as a Defensive Stance. "Hold Offensive/Defensive do not count."

Offensive Stances: Attack Target, Follow Me, Follow Target, Move
Defensive: Hold Defensive, Hold Offensive

Sorry, jumbled info in my head again...>.>

Spiders
Follow Me: 11944
Attack: 11944
Follow Target: 11944 with some 7963
Move Offensive: 15926
Move Defensive: 11944

It seems to be more on timing on when the spider starts the combo. Or maybe your TA is just high enough for it to matter. I do remember it switching to 15,926 dps when I first switched it to hold offensive, but it went back to the normal counts after a few rounds. At least move offensive works, but not sure I would ever use that in a survival.

[Eurafrica]

Sorry, jumbled info in my head again...>.>

Spiders
Follow Me: 11944
Attack: 11944
Follow Target: 11944 with some 7963
Move Offensive: 15926
Move Defensive: 11944

It seems to be more on timing on when the spider starts the combo. Or maybe your TA is just high enough for it to matter. I do remember it switching to 15,926 dps when I first switched it to hold offensive, but it went back to the normal counts after a few rounds. At least move offensive works, but not sure I would ever use that in a survival.

My TA is less than yours if I recall correctly, so it will forever be a mystery.

Either way the offensive actions are pretty much useless (as you said), so you can basically ignore Tower Speed. The "Hold Positions" commands increase damage resistance so they are far more useful, not to mention them staying put ><.

[KholdStare88]

After this thread, is it worth it to get Minion Attack Speed over 2000 at all? Will buff beam help increase attack speed if I'm already at 2000?