Arch Summoner

[muddy19]

Hi...These forums are dead but i need help. I was playing as arch summoner and I found that he was quite weak. Here is my opinion.
Summon skills to summon ratio
Sadly the fact that he can only have 1 summon out at a time ruins his dps (Use as a tank in pvp? see below) when he is against enemies like elven archer. The fact is that when he has a golem out the other 2 become worthless skills. Unlike with other heroes who can use there skills all together wait for the reletivly short cooldown then cast them again.
Ultimate
Also his ultimate is a little.....weak. I tried to use it on item summons and it didnt work. There is so few heroes that actually summon things that this spell is made situational....Very situational. I recommend changing it somehow as its too weak when compared to other ultimates.
PVP as Arch Summoner
Also whenever pvp started in full team my golems where so worthless it was a joke. When the enemy stuns and kills you because your the weakest then totally ignores the golem as it poses no threat you tend to feel quite useless.
Last Words
Overall he was a good creeper but when it came to doing anything else he suddenly became so worthless that there was no point playing him. If im perhaps playing him wrong could you tell me how? Thanks.
P.S.
omg omg omg its arcane not arch....i'm an idiot

[Steelb_l_ade]

Hi! thanks for your post.
Summoner eh? He is in fact very powerful but requires a bit of know-how, hardly able to stand up to the more pvp orietated heroes in 1v1 getting started with him can be tricky.

Do not dispair!
Consider this: rightly so humans will ignore your golems and go right for you but his fast movespeed can allow him to out-pace many of the slower heroes in the game while his battle golems have one of the highest bash rates in the game and if they are ignoring them they can quickly stun-lock enemy heroes and interrupt enemy casters.
Chuck a net or slowing effect on them while they chase you then lay in with some ranged damage (because of his high intelligence the summoner can put up high base dmg, increase this with items like berserkers axe that really improve attk rate)


The sumoners real strength comes in the tactics he denies to the enemy team.

THE ULTIMATE (SUMMONS MASTERY)
For example purchasable summons such as "The Black hand" and "Shamanic Totem" along with mercs are essential for striving off tougher teams on the ritual. A presense of an Summoner means all these expensive summons can be converted to your team in one swoop with the ultimate and to make matters worse it has a fast cooldown and so is usually ready. The only summons immune to this are Mercenaries that have been signed to Perminant Contracts or the "Diamond wolf" a summon used for hunting out single heroes and this summon is not very useful in large team battles due to its relativly low HP. (It is in fact designed to combat Summoner strategies)

NEGATING ENEMY POWERS & BUILDS
The Arcane Summoner makes the Death Mage's zombie hordes worse than useless and gimps sneaky liches with the Book of Marrabesh from dominating.
He completly ruins Forest Guardian mass summons (The other big summons character) making thier trees far less effective and reduces the Pit Daemons ultimate into uselessness.
Diabloists lose thier great portal power as thier demons are turned against them and buying summons is a very risky buisness for the enemy team.
Also gone are the woes of large Barbarian mercenary armies all from one power!

THE BUILDS
Also as ony 1 Golem can be used at a time, try starting off with a battle golem and a few points in Blessing of the gods to get an early damage/hp lead on the other heroes who must put distribute thier points to thier powers first to be effctive.

You can also be sure of using the summoners great creeping skills to get an easy level lead early game to add to the misery.
(No demon or elven ranger is going to out-creep one early on without spending lots of gold)

When teaming with a witch hunter a summoner can negate many of the pesky undead tactics in the game.

THE RIGHT PLAN
To be effective with a summoner take advantage of the fact that your team can spam summons while theirs cant. The hero relies on powerful summons to get the job done for him.

Try grabbing "Charm of the seas" or a "Holy Icon" with a few 1 shot purchaseable summons and you'll soon have an army following you around. Take advantage of the Summoners real creeping power by tanking with defensive golems and using items like "Berserkers Axe" or "Hellfire Staff" to wipe out whole creep camps without getting injured. This lets you buy the items you need to combat enemy heroes and bring down those tough "assassin" classes.

THE LAST WORD
To summmerise the Summoner is a supporting class, he cannot go toe-to-toe with the true pvp orientated heroes or heavy nukers but he can hopelessly outnumber out-resource, out-level them and deny them valueable team tactics.

The summoner requires you to play a bit smarter than the "get 'em" approch can can potentially do a lot more than a pure nuker can.

[muddy19]

Ulti
I tried to use his ulti but even on non perma contract units it didn't work. So i don't know if its a glitch or not but something is wrong with it.

Support Problems
Again when it comes to other heroes you see the problem. He can only have 1 golem out. Well this may seem fine the other 2 skills are WORTHLESS well his first golem is out. Other heroes can use there other skills all they want making them a lot more useful. Also...Support? He is such a weak character that i bet any other hero could be more useful then him. Even if he can clear out creep camps without getting hit so can my elven ranger...Oh by the way he can creep faster just because of mercenaries followed by his barrage skill. I have outcreeped creeping heroes using him. Really i find it a joke when i see people say ranger cant creep. Sorta off topic but ya. Moving back to the issues he is a very strategic hero but because of other heroes pure dps and abilities he is put at such a disadvantage that i dont get how he could ever catch up. Also the golems cooldown is so long that you can get perhaps 3 or 4 hits of a normal dps spell in well a golem is on cooldown. Simply kill a golem and he summons a new one? the rock golem is useless in pvp....dont get me started on magic. Stunlock you say? No hero should beable to stun lock... or get anything close to it. Even more if its on a summon. Go get that fixed because thats a bigger no no then putting an insta kill hero spell on a hero. The most a single hero by itself should be able to get to is maybe 10/60 and that should be only things like roots and nets. normal stuns should be more like 5/60.

Finish
Overall arcane summoner is just a weak hero compared to the rest of the heroes. Again you can say he is support but even support heroes should not be that weak. I have seen amazing support heroes that where well thought out and well not strong on there own could do amazing in a group. Sadly i don't see the potential in summoner.

[Steelb_l_ade]

Well, personally ive managed to perform really quite well in game with him and don't see him as being significantly weaker than most of the other heroes.

In conclusion is it much easier to own with a Ranger than a Summoner? Absolutly.

But that dosnt necessarily make her more powerful, just much much easier to use.

[Steelb_l_ade]

P.s If I get the chance next time I play i'll be a summoner in the game and upload the replay.

[GunnarStyle]

Well, personally ive managed to perform really quite well in game with him and don't see him as being significantly weaker than most of the other heroes.

In conclusion is it much easier to own with a Ranger than a Summoner? Absolutly.

But that dosnt necessarily make her more powerful, just much much easier to use.

It hurts a little bit every time you use my old favourite as the easy-mode example ;P

[Steelb_l_ade]

I think most people find that hero their intial favourite simply because shes so straightforward to play, with a slow, magic resist and a powerful long range single shot nuke.


Tbh though I dont think she really measures up to the Ravagore or Disrupter when thier played by good players.

[chenlimin]

it's hard to play summoner if you plan to play it as a "spam all four skill and win" hero, most player often have a "summoner spams summon" belief, making it even harder to play arch summoner correctly.

Arch summoner's 3 skill allows him to handle all different types of hero, and titan.(battle golem for melee, magic for mage, etc).

In order to stand up against heros meant to be strong in a certain area , correct item build and golem will be needed.

Also ranger takes almost no skill compared to other harder class hero (summoner is quite hard). Most new players feel that easy hero is over powered and harder heros are super weak as they couldn't use them well.