Valiant Force Forum

Summoners are indeed strong and they help a whole lot in PVE. But to nerf them for PVP might hurt them in the PVE scene as well. 

I'm going to agree with @vuun on this. The arena itself may need the rebalancing and not the (summoner) Heros. Limiting each players turns to 5 may require more critical thinking/tactics than spending 3 turns of doing nothing but adding pawns on the field. This limit may deter people from putting too many summoners in an Arena team, which I think is a good thing. 


Unless these changes only affect PVP and not PVE... This also paves way for balancing GvG in the future.

As many of you know, Summoner Heroes have recently been more commonly used in the Arena and many players are taking advantage of the current summoner mechanics to manage the cooldowns of the skills for their team (more pets = more moves = more cooldown in one cycle). As a result, the dev team has been focusing on the task of balancing summoner heroes. Here are some of the concepts we have been testing

• Pet death = 5 points: We have been testing this and it currently seems to be a feasible choice as it gives value to the other team whenever a pet dies. There are currently 3 ways for a pet to die: sacrifice, killed by other team, or its summoner is killed. 
• Pet death = summoner loses 20% max HP: This is another possible way to add value for the other team when a pet is killed. 
• Reduce Arena pet limit to 2: Limiting the number of pets that can be summoned in the Arena will help reduce players abusing summoners to get more turns in each cycle.
• Pet moving will not trigger CD on your team: When a pet attacks, it will not cool down the moves on your own team.

Other Alternative Ideas
Of course there were several other possible solutions that have been proposed.

1. Summoning sickness: Pets will not be available for action once summoned. We find that this will hurt the summoners’ value too much, as the 1 or 2 summoners in the team are sacrificing their turn to do nothing in the first cycle.
2. Pets cannot capture flag points: This solution was thought to prevent pets from simply gaining points by blocking the tiles, but it resulted in overly lengthy games which lasted up to 30-40 rounds when facing other summoner teams. We want to shorten your gameplay, not lengthen it! 
3. Skill delay on summon/sacrifice: We also tested out skill delays on the caster when pets are summoned/sacrificed. When they are summoned, the extra turns will still allow you to cycle back to the summoner to re-summon. When they are sacrificed, simply using other units will render this solution unviable.
4. Turn-sharing between pet and summoner: This turn-sharing mechanic was thought to be the best solution, but instead, it either does not solve the issue of cooldown (if there is no summoning sickness), or it made the summoners overly disadvantaged (when pet sacrifices, summoner’s turn ends)

A combination of the ideas have also been tested and thus, after the first few rounds of testing, these solutions proved to be not as effective as the first 4 ideas written above.

The Testing Continues
All the balancing solutions that we have listed above are still undergoing developer realm testing. We are still looking for the best balance to keep summoner heroes fun and exciting in the new Arena meta, but not overpower the hero pool that we had already put in place. It is still too early to tell whether or not there may be another meta that can break through without summoners being essential. We are still monitoring the meta changes closely to ensure balance in the Arena.

Which balance solutions do you think are the most effective? Do you have any of your own ideas on balancing the Arena meta? We will continue to watch the forums and fan page for more ideas and feedback from the community. Thanks for reading this dev blog, and we will see you in the Arena!

Sound analysis overall! It's always hard to say how changes will ultimately turn out, but hopefully we can avoid turning summoners into Kiera while making non summoner teams more than free wins.
 
Regarding pet death:
Would like to highlight some concerns with managing pet death, although right now I do agree its a little punishing to target summons in arena, especially when they will just be summoned again, and taking out the (often squishy) summoner also takes out the summon. For one, the summon using its skill shouldn't award points to the enemy or damage the summoner beyond stated skill effects, and the death of the summoner shouldn't award any additional points to the enemy if the summon is alive. That would just make using summons too punishing. (You guys probably already realised that but it's helpful to clarify anyways).
When an enemy does kill a pet I would be moving more towards damaging the summoner than awarding points since I've always looked at summons as Stands anyway! I must admit that I was expecting more awesome poses from the summoners though! 

However if you do decide to award points, I would cap the number of points awarded by a summoner's pets to 15, and the number of points awarded should be subtracted from the summoner's point award should they die. Example: If a summoner summons 3 times and all 3 times the pet is killed by the enemy, the summoner should award no points upon death. You can tweak the numbers, but reasoning should be: As a single unit the summoner should not represent an unbounded risk to field.

Regarding Summoner limit:
I would not completely rule this out, but if summoners are balanced well enough there should not be a need for this. 

Regarding alternative ideas:
I think you are pretty spot on.

Additional comments:
Would also like to suggest in addition to removing CD ticking from summoned unit moves, to also add heal over time and damage over time ticks to the list for pretty much the same reasons.

Case in point: Right now I have a Luthor. Adding 2 summoners to my comp gives me two extra ticks of healing per cycle, which is a whopping 40% increase in overall healing if my two pets can move without being disabled. 
Damage over time does not experience such a buff since to my knowledge there are no heroes with a persistent damage aura (which sounds pretty cool come to think of it), but I think it should be treated the same just for consistency.

In closing I would just like to say I think you guys are doing a really great job, and am quite excited for the international release. I have a feeling this game's popularity will explode once that happens.

Pet Death = 20% hp lost -> Will this apply for pet skills? If it does, this is going to eat a lot of zerk sven's hp.

Pet Death = 20% hp lost -> Will this apply for pet skills? If it does, this is going to eat a lot of zerk sven's hp.

As the statements says, it will count on top of that O.O but fret not, cause' previous post, was just what they have tested, not everything will be in the one final balance =D

As many of you know, Summoner Heroes have recently been more commonly used in the Arena and many players are taking advantage of the current summoner mechanics to manage the cooldowns of the skills for their team (more pets = more moves = more cooldown in one cycle). As a result, the dev team has been focusing on the task of balancing summoner heroes. Here are some of the concepts we have been testing

• Pet death = 5 points: We have been testing this and it currently seems to be a feasible choice as it gives value to the other team whenever a pet dies. There are currently 3 ways for a pet to die: sacrifice, killed by other team, or its summoner is killed. 
• Pet death = summoner loses 20% max HP: This is another possible way to add value for the other team when a pet is killed. 
• Reduce Arena pet limit to 2: Limiting the number of pets that can be summoned in the Arena will help reduce players abusing summoners to get more turns in each cycle.
• Pet moving will not trigger CD on your team: When a pet attacks, it will not cool down the moves on your own team.

Other Alternative Ideas
Of course there were several other possible solutions that have been proposed.

1. Summoning sickness: Pets will not be available for action once summoned. We find that this will hurt the summoners’ value too much, as the 1 or 2 summoners in the team are sacrificing their turn to do nothing in the first cycle.
2. Pets cannot capture flag points: This solution was thought to prevent pets from simply gaining points by blocking the tiles, but it resulted in overly lengthy games which lasted up to 30-40 rounds when facing other summoner teams. We want to shorten your gameplay, not lengthen it! 
3. Skill delay on summon/sacrifice: We also tested out skill delays on the caster when pets are summoned/sacrificed. When they are summoned, the extra turns will still allow you to cycle back to the summoner to re-summon. When they are sacrificed, simply using other units will render this solution unviable.
4. Turn-sharing between pet and summoner: This turn-sharing mechanic was thought to be the best solution, but instead, it either does not solve the issue of cooldown (if there is no summoning sickness), or it made the summoners overly disadvantaged (when pet sacrifices, summoner’s turn ends)

A combination of the ideas have also been tested and thus, after the first few rounds of testing, these solutions proved to be not as effective as the first 4 ideas written above.

The Testing Continues
All the balancing solutions that we have listed above are still undergoing developer realm testing. We are still looking for the best balance to keep summoner heroes fun and exciting in the new Arena meta, but not overpower the hero pool that we had already put in place. It is still too early to tell whether or not there may be another meta that can break through without summoners being essential. We are still monitoring the meta changes closely to ensure balance in the Arena.

Which balance solutions do you think are the most effective? Do you have any of your own ideas on balancing the Arena meta? We will continue to watch the forums and fan page for more ideas and feedback from the community. Thanks for reading this dev blog, and we will see you in the Arena!

Sound analysis overall! It's always hard to say how changes will ultimately turn out, but hopefully we can avoid turning summoners into Kiera while making non summoner teams more than free wins.
 
Regarding pet death:
Would like to highlight some concerns with managing pet death, although right now I do agree its a little punishing to target summons in arena, especially when they will just be summoned again, and taking out the (often squishy) summoner also takes out the summon. For one, the summon using its skill shouldn't award points to the enemy or damage the summoner beyond stated skill effects, and the death of the summoner shouldn't award any additional points to the enemy if the summon is alive. That would just make using summons too punishing. (You guys probably already realised that but it's helpful to clarify anyways).
When an enemy does kill a pet I would be moving more towards damaging the summoner than awarding points since I've always looked at summons as Stands anyway! I must admit that I was expecting more awesome poses from the summoners though! 

However if you do decide to award points, I would cap the number of points awarded by a summoner's pets to 15, and the number of points awarded should be subtracted from the summoner's point award should they die. Example: If a summoner summons 3 times and all 3 times the pet is killed by the enemy, the summoner should award no points upon death. You can tweak the numbers, but reasoning should be: As a single unit the summoner should not represent an unbounded risk to field.

Regarding Summoner limit:
I would not completely rule this out, but if summoners are balanced well enough there should not be a need for this. 

Regarding alternative ideas:
I think you are pretty spot on.

Additional comments:
Would also like to suggest in addition to removing CD ticking from summoned unit moves, to also add heal over time and damage over time ticks to the list for pretty much the same reasons.

Case in point: Right now I have a Luthor. Adding 2 summoners to my comp gives me two extra ticks of healing per cycle, which is a whopping 40% increase in overall healing if my two pets can move without being disabled. 
Damage over time does not experience such a buff since to my knowledge there are no heroes with a persistent damage aura (which sounds pretty cool come to think of it), but I think it should be treated the same just for consistency.

In closing I would just like to say I think you guys are doing a really great job, and am quite excited for the international release. I have a feeling this game's popularity will explode once that happens.

+1 @obsothoth 
Mostly I agree with ur Insight, & it also not easy to determine the right course, & i also like how u delivering ur idea, ur not pushing the dev to whatever ur way, but pointing out the probs might pop, based on ur analysis
+1 @ leviathanofuda, in regard of the idea about defrentiate between arena mechanics & PVE Mechanics about how Summoners works
+1 for developer & admin because ur now more open about ur upcoming game changing feature implementation in detail, so we can examine the probs together before u implemented it, in this case "summoner rebalancing", because like in other post, U(Developer) usually to give us glimplse of info, & do beta on the run(it feels like u put a fire, & when it's bigger, it's already too big to put down), like a beta run on Guild for example, so for this change of manner i really apreciate it .

Im really looking forward to these changes!

Off-topic, will there be no archer/guardian/thief summoner? Will matilda be the last one? Thanks!

my guess, maybe they will, after they have solution mechanic for summoner

As many of you know, Summoner Heroes have recently been more commonly used in the Arena and many players are taking advantage of the current summoner mechanics to manage the cooldowns of the skills for their team (more pets = more moves = more cooldown in one cycle). As a result, the dev team has been focusing on the task of balancing summoner heroes. Here are some of the concepts we have been testing

• Pet death = 5 points: We have been testing this and it currently seems to be a feasible choice as it gives value to the other team whenever a pet dies. There are currently 3 ways for a pet to die: sacrifice, killed by other team, or its summoner is killed. 
• Pet death = summoner loses 20% max HP: This is another possible way to add value for the other team when a pet is killed. 
• Reduce Arena pet limit to 2: Limiting the number of pets that can be summoned in the Arena will help reduce players abusing summoners to get more turns in each cycle.
• Pet moving will not trigger CD on your team: When a pet attacks, it will not cool down the moves on your own team.

Other Alternative Ideas
Of course there were several other possible solutions that have been proposed.

1. Summoning sickness: Pets will not be available for action once summoned. We find that this will hurt the summoners’ value too much, as the 1 or 2 summoners in the team are sacrificing their turn to do nothing in the first cycle.
2. Pets cannot capture flag points: This solution was thought to prevent pets from simply gaining points by blocking the tiles, but it resulted in overly lengthy games which lasted up to 30-40 rounds when facing other summoner teams. We want to shorten your gameplay, not lengthen it! 
3. Skill delay on summon/sacrifice: We also tested out skill delays on the caster when pets are summoned/sacrificed. When they are summoned, the extra turns will still allow you to cycle back to the summoner to re-summon. When they are sacrificed, simply using other units will render this solution unviable.
4. Turn-sharing between pet and summoner: This turn-sharing mechanic was thought to be the best solution, but instead, it either does not solve the issue of cooldown (if there is no summoning sickness), or it made the summoners overly disadvantaged (when pet sacrifices, summoner’s turn ends)

A combination of the ideas have also been tested and thus, after the first few rounds of testing, these solutions proved to be not as effective as the first 4 ideas written above.

The Testing Continues
All the balancing solutions that we have listed above are still undergoing developer realm testing. We are still looking for the best balance to keep summoner heroes fun and exciting in the new Arena meta, but not overpower the hero pool that we had already put in place. It is still too early to tell whether or not there may be another meta that can break through without summoners being essential. We are still monitoring the meta changes closely to ensure balance in the Arena.

Which balance solutions do you think are the most effective? Do you have any of your own ideas on balancing the Arena meta?

We will continue to watch the forums and fan page for more ideas and feedback from the community. Thanks for reading this dev blog, and we will see you in the Arena!

(*) These possible changes will only affect PvP and not PvE

1. Agree on this. it equally worth when pet quickly get 15 point by any Heroes waiting for active skill.
2.It's OK on Talissa and Matilda. Certainly,bad nightmare for Berserker Sven to summon every Wyvern.
3.Probably limite the same summoner (Have to choose between job path) 
4.This is most effective idea to balance summoners and heroes.
Alternative ideas
 agree 2>3>4>1

Pet death = 5 points: Possible, but you need to double the point award. Don't think many players will try to kill the pets but they go aim for the summoners instead. Doesn't make sense to give us a inferior reward for spending turns killing the pet which in most cases its stats is almost similar to having an extra hero on the team.

Pet death = summoner loses 20% max HP: Don't see how this will work for the other summoners besides Sven. 
 I need to dedicate and spend turns to killing the pet while other non-summoner heroes on the opposing team is either :
           1. Continue wrecking ball on my team
           2. Healing the pet or the summoner
           3. Dedicating their turns to killing my heroes which awards them full 15 points.
           Oh, and not to mention for each turn we spend killing the summoner's pet, the summoner hero's skill is coming off CD each turn. 
           So what we kill their pet?By the time we kill them they can summon again. MAGIC!

Reduce Arena pet limit to 2: This *might* help balance. Might. Just a change limiting summoners heroes to 2 isn't good enough as a Sven/Talissa combo parked in the backline is still pretty god damm OP. It needs to be a combination of changes above.
           
Pet moving will not trigger CD on your team: Dunno what this means. Prolly cause every time I match against a summoner team i get pissed off and just /auto and resign myself to fate lol. 

Honestly the killing pet suggestion is crap unless it awards the same amount of points. The main flaw of these suggestions is the summoners skills currently have low CDs and continue to tick even after the pets have been summoned. This is good in PvE but retardedly OP in PVP. Going towards the direction of killing the pet and not fixing the absurd low cooldowns just creates the scenario where the summoned pet is a decoy target which I have to dedicate my precious turns killing the pet, getting a inferior amount of points and the opposing team's non summoner heroes are at the same time killing my team and getting full points. But of course fixing the summoner's CD renders them obsolete. Should have thought carefully before implementing this class eh?

My humble suggestion : nerf the ATK/MAGIC stats (depending on class of summoner) the PET, not the summoner, in PVP to 75%  This way, the pet is less offensive in PVP,  (damm Sven pet OP). HP/DEF doesn't have to be nerfed as it makes the pets too squishy. Same concept as how Taunt is applicable in PvE but not in PVP.

At the same time, split the points awarded for killing an opposing summoner between the summoner and pet, with killing the pet getting a minimum of 10 points. Like another guy has posted an example , say I kill the pet. This nets me 10 points. Killing its summoner next nets me 5 points. Believe this is justified by virtue of turns spent to kill the 1 extra unit as well as the concept of the summoner class as the class revolves around the pet. Without the pet , the class is useless. Therefore we can say the pet is more impt than the summoner so killing it SHOULD award more points.  

By nerfing the offensive capabilities of the pet, they are less OP in arena and don't one shot enemy heroes.We can still exercise the option of expending our turns to kill the pets for some points or ignore them and go all out on the summoner for full points. Not nerfing the HP/DEF ensures that they are still viable and not become complete tofu in PVP which totally renders summoner class obsolete.

Glad the devs are finally recognizing that players are abusing summoners in arena after so much grief. I have mentioned in another thread before. This reason this game attracted me and I believe other players as well is the unique aura system. Looking at the other popular metas in Arena - Archers (super aura dependent) ; Tank/Mage (Tanks soaking for Mages/health Shield). These metas were aura dependent. I don't see how these summoner classes are aura centric. Just need to have 2 summoners in the backline and auto mode.

I do support nerfing of summoners, but I would just like to advise the devs to proceed with caution. Nerf just enough, but not completely make them useless in arena.