Necromancers with more then 3 summons

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I think more than 3 makes body blocking stupid easy. Your skeletons would therefore need to be one shottable or not body block. I dont see a point to this style therefore. Three plus a fourth from battle pet is probably almost as bad but possibly easier to balance.

So since I don't understand why one would want it I will ask you @Twosleepy what do you want to achieve with your 9 weak skeles? What mechanics would you need to make this a viable build in your eyes?

@SirChancelot the point system is fine but doesn't factor capacity to body block and how unbalanced that is the more summons you have.

The main advantage of a summoner is its second hp pool. The more you split, the less hits the pool can take. The more split the more effective the body block and therefore the less effective the defense on the hp pool must be. Now put that in a game with aoe moves. What's a 10 skele necro gunna do when more than half their skeles wipe from one aoe. Hence my question to our op necro.

Its not like I want it to fail. But there needs to be some sort of gameplan that makes that strat not an instant game over. There are a lot of ways to achieve that so I am interested in what ways they want that to work out for them (and I guess you too but your going brood warden 'tank' so I doubt swarm viability intersects with your own summoner gameplan.)

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I don't believe in game design where character select is where you win or lose a fight. Ashes does, however, so we might see that yes. I just think that way of approaching game balance will totally divorces active skill from combat outcomes and creates a game that strongly incentivizes nonengagement.

That's why I asked op the specific question I did. Because if you can make swarm necro prepared for the match up against a mage a 4-6 instead of a 3-7 or 2-8 match up without making it a 7-3 or 8-2 against Rogue, it will make for a better game all around.

You can make the answer swap to big summon, but now you have a big summon with a master unoptimized for big summons. If that's acceptable to a swarm summoner ok. But then what do they want out of that situation other than 'not dying.' Either way there needs to be a gameplan that needs to be catered to or it'll feel bad to play and I want to know what a real necro wants.

As for your side note only true total hp matters (that is hp after accounting for all relevant defense against incoming attacks.) I actually expect by neccesity 10 skeles have more hp on paper and less true hp to make up for the body blocking. So in the rogues case its more about attack speed and access to aoe weapon abilities or augments vs necros cost (both time and resources) to summon.

I expect it to be a 4-6 match up on paper for most rogues prepared for the match up unless IS makes summoner work in a way far beyond expectations (possible but unlikely, I have a lot of possible models I'm checking against when im giving my opinion on this topic.) There are only so many ways to grate your cheese.

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Because body blocking means you take zero effective damage and prevent spacing from being optimized and getting a melee attack off entirely. Once you have enough summons to shut down attacks, the trade off needs to be fragility. Period. Melee attackers need a way to win or it isn't a fight. Fighting requires there is a way for either side to grasp victory. Otherwise its just slightly delayed slaughter.

The way to give the melee attacker a win condition is by obviously ending part of the body block so they can hit even if they are tanking damage and forcing the necro to spend time and resources on resummon.

Alternatively skeletons don't have 'real' hp and its all just the necros. This is harder to balance and Intrepid has already indirectly said they don't have a large amount of skill for balancing. So I just assume they won't go this route.

To me this is a Necro

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Ashes currently has collision boxes. This prevents entity cramming. It also prevents you from walking through an entity. In most games this means you can't attack something behind said obstacle. Hence body: block.

Some one swings a sword at you and you hide behind your tank and the tank takes a hit and you don't (or the hit wiffs due to a lack of visual connection on you)? That's a body block.

Either way, body blocking limits engagement ranges. Ten is enough to garuntee a hard wall. 4 a 'soft' wall where you might get lucky and get an attack but if their spacing is good, much less likely.

There are many ways you can imagine what is happening. You can hair split about summon size vs master size etc, but I'm not here to argue imaginary numbers, just concepts. Body blocking will work in most standard models of summoning in most combat models with collision at the number of entities we are talking about.

You can argue 'well just let the attacks go through then' but that's closer to the 'skeleton hp pool isnt real' option. Feel free to discuss it but I am not interested in that half of the speculation as it would require a lot more skill at balance that I don't think IS thinks they have.

Feel free to reread my posts with this new understanding.

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Voluntarily becoming surrounded for one attack, maybe cc for big damage? Sure... Hope its the final blow. The 2 or 3 wins out of ten has to happen somehow right?

'I don't think you could ever garuntee a hard wall.' With enough entities you can. That's kind of my point. As is with max 4 entities I'd agree, but we were talking 9 or 10 here. Where that number is, no one has a definite answer without doing some basic geometry and pixel measurement. Im pretty confident in 9 being 'close enough'. But again it's all imaginary number hair splitting I want no part of if you really want to disagree there. We can agree to disagree in that case.

Either way what this really comes down to is you don't want one shotable summons. I agree with you. And with 4 entities I don't expect that needs to be the case. But balance needs to happen and at a certain point the only reasonable trade off for a vast swarm is complete expendablity. A trait I know many necros agree for the trade off for and even relish in. That's why I asked op the question I asked.

It sounds like you don't have an answer for what you would want to happen for the swarmers bad match up. So lets wait for the experts (swarm summoners) to answer and we can maybe take this theory crafting further from there hmm?

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Added to personal data. I'll update the post's data if the conversation leads in that direction.

If anything I suggest something simpler, namely, having a swarm all take up one summon slot and act together with a hivemind anyway. That way, the mix and match can still work. If you want 9 skeletons, then that, in ITSELF, is a specific ability that always summons 9 (or maybe 3 groups of 3, but at that point I'm just thinking about the specific design suggestion I had).

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I leave such concerns to her, as she is 'my Summoner'. She has the biggest reason to be concerned because in general, anything that is abusable that is overlooked, that makes a class strong, is balanced against, then the abusable ability is nerfed anyway leaving the class underpowered and frustrating.

But as you know, I've already given as much suggestion/analysis as it would be reasonable to give, so if Intrepid wishes to allow Summoner Body-blocking, then we'll just work with it and hope that she's allowed to remain strong or rebalanced properly if it causes the expected issues.