How Good Are Summoners, Actually?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 มิ.ย. 2024
- 00:00 - Intro
2:00 - What Summoners do
4:52 - Map by Map Analysis
16:17 - Conclusion
Summoners are one of the more interesting classes in FE8, and are often thought of as one of the better classes in the game. I talk about what summoners do, and how useful they are in the context of Fire Emblem 8.
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Summoner is an absolutely broken class but Sacred stones is ridiculously easy. The image of summons as this absolutely broken mechanic comes mostly from what-ifs or ideas that don't really take into account the actual FE8 experience.
Indeed... though if you're playing creature campain (a very, very niche scenario) you're more than happy to have sacrificial pawns to bait the pesky dracozombies and siege "tomes".
Yeah, if they were in conquest, they would be so broken
Summoners in Thracia would be S-tier for their utility in negotiating a lot of genuinely hairy situations. Especially using suicide rescues to deliver flyers to attack ballistae in hard-to-reach locations.
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I think the funniest use of summoners I've seen was an LTC using Knoll's phantom to rescue drop himself over the 1 tile gap on the final map.
that is actually really cool
roflolmao amazing
I feel like you should also mention the “invoke” spell from gaiden/echoes that summon mechanic is very interesting seeing as each unit who can learn it summons different things. And emblem Veronica from engage. They feel like they’re good examples for data on if effects like this are good in the series.
Also invoke makes multiple bodies
Veronica has the issue of being DLC, plus her summons are too strong to reliably be AI bait, so I don't think the comparison is all that instructive
imo summoner is one of the coolest classes with so much potential held back by the fact it's only available in one game, and arguably the easiest one at that
I'd love to see the summoner class in more games so it could showcase just how strong it can be
That is the reason, why the idea of summoner units is dropped. It trivializes one of FEs major mechanics, depending on which sides they are.
In the players hands it trivializes risk-assesment. When you have a dangerous unit combo (for example a killing edge myrmidon and a mage behind him) you have to ask yourself if it is better to bait the duo with an armor unit that trivializes the killing edge but takes a huge hit from the mage or if you bait with a pegasus knight that can safely take a mage hit, but risks getting a huge crit from the killing edge. Phantom completely nullifies that question.
In the hands of enemies it is either a free experience farm or turns a map into an incredibly boring slog (looking at you, cantors from FE Gaiden/Echoes), where you can only advance little by little, since you have to fight the incoming summons to not be overwhelmed.
Either way, summoners screw with the game balance in one way or another too much to be properly implemented.
As a class it's only one game but as a mechanic it's present a few times and those all show how useful it is
yeah, and i dont think it's helped so much by the other primary usage of summoners which is in SoV. Because there you have the problem of reusing gaiden map "designs" and enemy units aggressively also summoning, which gives being able to DIY pseudo-walls in mass quantity to prevent overwhelm an outsized value
you can use the overclass dlc in fire emblem SoV to get gurus which have lemegeton: a summoning spell that summons most base class terrors from revenants to necrodragons
of course it's broken as all overclass units are beyond broken, but it's really really fun
Lyn: *summons doubles*
I usually find myself using a summoner simply because the summoning utility is more valuable than my worst combat unit. Sure im better off sending Seth or some strong unit with a javelin at an enemy, but Knoll isnt taking up their deployment slot. He's taking up Dozla's slot, who isnt strong enough in combat to do those things.
Yeah like I said in the video it's often good to deploy a summoner, it's just the contributions of the summoner also aren't usually that important.
Still better than the nothing you get out of deploying a 6th combat unit who won't do anything
Summoners are indeed broken, but Sacred Stones' easiness renders them redundant.
It's easy to imagine how amazing their utility of making infinite disposable units would be harder games like FE12, Awakening, or Three Houses (in terms of their hardest difficulty settings, of course), because being able to bait in enemies units is not such an easy thing for player units to do.
Imagine Summoners in FE6
@@mobgabriel1767 Finally a reliable counter-strategy to high avoid bosses on thrones: breaking their weapons with phantoms!
Summoner definitely shines more in an Ironman Setting. I like to think of Knoll as a backup Support unit instead of an agressive tool, someone who can save your ass in case something went wrong. Summons can save your other units from a kill if they missed a hit, and if they take/drop another unit that means one more of your other units is free this turn. Also, knowing your Summon will drain a Siege Tome allows the rest of your army to ignore it entirely and push ahead, so there's no need to stall out the turns.
Knoll himself also shouldn't have a hard time reaching D Staves with some healing here and there, which would allow him to spam Torches in Last Hope. And from then on he provides Staff Utility for Creature Campaign I guess.
Overall I'd say it's good enough to deploy Knoll in the chapters where he can contribute, but definitely not worth dragging Ewan through Druid.
Impresive and compeling argument as to why use Knoll over Ewan, but have you considered the funny cbt element of training Ewan in the most hostile of enviroments? :,) trust me bro best 4 hours of my life...
Its interesting how nobody talks about summoners in Shadows of Valentia. Would love to see you analyze that ganes summoners as well
and sacred echoes, if lizard has played that
SoV summoners are broken, what else is there to say? Make a horde of disposeable mooks and rush the enemy forces. Because the enemy cantors are going to do just that.
I think storywise the summoner would have fit really well in awakening on someone like Henry or Tharja. Or even on Aversa or Robin. The ability to raise your own Risen to fight alongside your army against Grima's risen would have been really cool and fitting thematically.
I'd say summoners are at their best in Fire Emblem Heroes, actually busted what they can do there
:^)
*Shame*
In all seriousness, if it wasn't a 2nd rate mobile game. The idea of a summoner PC isn't terrible.
As it allows the idea of perma-death, but the PC can raise spirits of the fallen to fight in battles.
So you lose out on the social elements through death, but it doesn't halt your ability to finish the game.
Meanwhile it makes your character valuable to the MC and Villain, instead of being the character whose arse everyone wants to kiss. Due to the morbid nature of the necromancy power, interactions are a lot more solemn.
Just finished my first Ironman ever on Sacred Stones, opted to delay promotion for Knoll to get better stats, made sure to have him promoted for the Gorgon Egg map though. It would’ve saved some stress on Chapter 16 to have him promoted since I was in a pinch in some places, but there are some situations where Summons don’t help as much. Gorgon Egg they’re damn near essential to have at least one, but unless the map is designed for Phantoms their big value comes from baiting the AI or fixing small mistakes. Having Myrrh die because I had her blocking a choke and forgot she’s weak to bows… not the mistake you can fix with a phantom, but those “oh crap, these 3 enemies combine to kill this guy, let me throw a phantom in there to take one of those hits” are perfect for Phantoms, as well as baiting siege, stone, and enemies with any% crit on your frontline.
Sacred Stones focused video? I’m in!
The most useful summoners have been for me is when I did a 0% growths playthrough, where during the Fomortiis fight, since I couldn’t kill him turn 2 he’d actually get to use his nightmare ability, putting most of my army to sleep. They’d get ravaged by all the monsters he summoned. So what I needed a phantom for him to attack every turn.
Hi Lizard!
Great analysis, as always!
Summoner makes Ewan a good unit in negative growths
This isn't vanilla FE8 but it's funny that a trainee unit gets better so it should still count
Yeah I liked summoners in my 0% run as well
To be fair, Necromancy is one of the most powerful forms of magic in most fantasy genres that is enemy exclusive because its powerful.
Speaking of summoned phantom rescue strats, can you give a unit to a phantom or can they only take form others? There's a weird mechanic about rescuing (at least in FE7) where if the carrying unit dies on player phase, the rescued unit drops out and can immediately act. I only saw it mentioned once in an LTC, so I'm not sure about the exact mechanics (might require the unit to not have acted that turn, or might require the rescued unit to have started the turn not rescued or something like that). If that's still present in FE8, you could get some truly ridiculous effective movement ranges by giving a rescued unit to a phantom and having it suicide on an enemy (really easy with that 1 HP) to drop a mobile unit off and let it move on the same turn.
Hope you've had a good day
Hey, nice to catch a video on release, you and Mekkah made me start playing playing my first fire emblem games a couple weeks ago and I’ve been really enjoying myself since, thanks Lizard ❤
Welcome to the community! I hope you have a blast with the games :)
As someone who just started a fe8 randomizer a couple of days ago and got a Summoner Seth phantoms are great for baiting enemies in the early game to feed kills (or just soloing an enemy themselves) i didn't even have Seth cast Nosferatu once until like chapter 9 (which was actually a flux cuz saving the nos for midgame)
I love using summonings. The hand axe ones are especially broken same as the high level mob that gets a dodge in.
The negative on losing an important item sucks but they give you so much enemy coverage you just need a bit more planning
For me i always saw summoners to be the good type of situational but situational none the less like you are going to occasionally deal with enemies that are actually dangerous to enemy phase especially if they are in a group and then the main use making you able to play very aggressively yet safe on bosses that don't fold over in a second.
And i guess as a extra they would be useful for iorn man run as more safe move and a emergency button
Just wanted to chime in and say thanks for the content. You're my favorite new channel I've discovered this year. Keep it up!
This kinda reminds me of a Pokemon video that said Grass types are a big brain strategy in a small brain game.
I think the same applies here. Summoners can do some really busted stuff by virtue of being able to summon a free unit that you can mostly be sloppy with, similar in utility to like... maybe a dancer or a Pegasus Knight that isn't going to see combat. Like no matter what stats, movement is just the best stat in FE usually and the best skill a unit can have is.. coming back the next turn
and they have so much utility just by virtue of being a warm body that can hold a sword
but I think that utility is kinda based around the assumption of Big Brain Strats and FE8 is very much a small brain game. I used the summoner and while it was very useful sometimes it felt like doing complicated special fighting game moves and combos on a guy who thinks he is about to play Super Mario World.
I also think that we are slightly underestimating the staff utility, even if you are just firing off Heal and maybe Mend later, unless if Seth is getting his ass thrashed most units are taking chip damage and like all healers, hey they are creating their own experience too and that's worth something
If our trainer was early game snd could turn into a summoner. He'd be extremely broken like best hachet boi.
But most of the time i don't use the summoners much outside the main guy if i play it straight without grinding. It's a nice add on but not really needed
But it does get broken even in fates where you can replicate gale force your army to get double the value
You obviously mentioned it but I think the difficulty of Sacred Stones in general, is what holds Summoners back. I love Knoll but I can never find long term use from him since his combat is not so good and with zero Luck, I can never risk putting Knoll in range of anything. His little zombies are usually good in baiting long range tomes but otherwise, I send in Ephraim, Gerik or Seth and they just kill everything on a map and Knoll and his zombies can just end up doing nothing for an entire map.
As a child, summoner always had an addictive feeling to it- "getting away with something for free" has always been irresistible to me in strategy games. Nowadays i can recognize that the summoner dream remains alive in hopes of an FE8 remake/improvement
the hack Fire Emblem 4 Kings has a shaman who promotes to summoner and its hard enough that you'll want to use him despite his so so stats
I like your analysis
Ah, another episode of: "Yeah, this unit/class would be nice, but Seth can do that better and quicker".
Not a Seth thing really. If you deleted Seth from the game none of the arguments would change. By this point you have at least gerik, duessel, saleh, cormag, myyrh is coming up.
There's no shortage of units that can do great combat in fe8 endgame
On the topic of baiting with no kill being a bad thing, it was the opposite for me, personally i like to use phantoms as trainers for low level units when grinding, or even when not grinding, it guarantees a unit who can actually use the XP will be getting it
I remember when my phantoms would end up killing an enemy that drops an item and i couldnt get it back lmao
I feel like summoners fall into the same camp as dancers. Are they more useful than your 11th or 12th best combat unit? Even if they never summon on a map, they still have staff utility.
I think this comparison doesn't really add up bcos Dancer contributes more directly to your combat by allowing your best combat unit to do another action, which is almost always vastly more valuable than being able to bait AI for free
it's double so in warp skipping bcos then you either can warp 2 of your best combat unit to gang up on the boss, or if you manage to warp both the boss killer and the dancer then you can hopefully ensure your boss killer finish the job in the same turn
@@LeinRa-Reaction Certainly, summoner isn't even half as good as dancer is, but we don't need to compare to dancer, just the next worst combat unit. And in practice, either you already have a plan for every turn and only need summoner the one time it's especially useful, or you don't and might occasionally need the phantom to save yourself from a mistake or for whatever random use. Even if all you do is use staves all map, summoner is just as capable of doing that as other classes are, and still has the phantom in the back pocket.
summoner is a lot less capable of staffing than other staff units because they come with E rank staves in chapter 15.
The rest I agree with, a summoner should generally get a deployment slot, they just also don't do anything super important with it outside of chapter 18.
"are they more usefull than your 11th or 12th combat unit"
Yes because a dancer is effectively a clone of any unit i have in my squad... Including my best combat unit
The big thing about knoll is just how free he is. All he takes is a promotion item you probably didn’t have a use for and a deployment slot.
Not related to summoners, but to Knoll. It's not exactly an accident that the first chapter you can use him is also the chapter you get the Hoplon Guard. It was pretty obviously intended for him to use it. That said, promoting him to Summoner out the gate negates the risk of him facing crits somewhat simply by virtue of his job being less combat-oriented in that class.
Thing is the hoplon guard only solves one problem for Knoll. Him getting crit is one issue, but the rest of his stats still aren't exciting. Fe8 is a game where lots of units have low luck, so I don't think it's earmarked for him, a lot of units would love to spend some time with the guard
I agree that this doesn't matter as much in summoner though, you can just have him not bother with combat in summoner lol.
@@actuallizard Nobody likes being crit, but Knoll is the only character where crit is _always_ going to be a problem, no matter how you pick your fights. If he's taking damage, the enemy has a chance to crit.
I'm not saying that there aren't better options to hold the Hoplon Guard. I'm pointing out that it seems like it becoming available the same chapter as Knoll did was an intentional design decision. If Knoll was introduced earlier, he'd have to slog through chapters dodging crits. If he was introduced later, players might have already decided on who should get the Hoplon Guard or just not really been able to see just how powerful it can be. By making him available the same chapter as the Hoplon Guard, it gives players a chance to see his crit weakness while providing the solution so players get a good feel for the Hoplon Guard.
This could be the entire purpose behind Knoll's design. As you said, he's not good. But you are forced to use him in Eirika's route. Don't remember if he's forced in Ephraim's route. But it could be that the entire design philosophy for Knoll was for players to get a good feel for the Hoplon Guard in that level and then discard him for a better unit. Pokemon has similar designs, where the Pokemon themselves aren't good, but they show off a feature new to that game so players get a better feel for that feature and how it applies to other Pokemon. So basically Knoll is a tutorial character, and the tutorial is about the Hoplon Guard being good on low luck units.
I stumbled upon your channel after a heavy dosage of watching some of my favorite fire emblem creators play unicorn overlord. Good videos man! Also can you a video about Mechanist? Probably one of my favorite classes ever made in the series.
I've yet to actually play anything pre-Awakening (though the possibility does theoretically exist, if I can just get over the permadeath hangups), but this does seem like an interesting concept that would be fun to experiment with in another title.
Its common that people play permadeath fire emblem games as if 1 unit dying is a failure state and with the possible exceptions of the games with really big slow maps, they are pretty well balanced for that so dont let it bother you too much
There are mods for casual mode in some of the older games :)
Though it's not relevant in your average SS run, summons are quite handy in Lagdou Ruins. They save you a lot of weapon durability in a place that loves to throw hordes of chaff at you. By the time you get Knoll to max level, they become very powerful units too. They'll frequently spawn with killer axes or tomahawks and they can dodge tank really well against most enemies. The only thing that can reliably hit them are the dogs.
Main problem with Syrene is that she joins even later than Knoll. Another flyer can be useful but by the point you get her you can have 2 or even 3 good fliers that have capped stats. Syrene offers nothing new.
Knoll offers a unique class (training Ewan to go the dark mage route is a pain) and joins earlier, if you pick summoner he can be further away from the front lines and if you make him a druid he can heal characters behind the lines. You can always use him offensively but he simply has a lot of flexibility and utility.
While most people are bringing up SoV Invoke for comparison on if Summoning was available in a more challenging game, but I think another comparison that can be made is with Replicate in Fates. Replicas do function as another body that you can use for combat, but rather than being infinite as long as the summoner is still alive, replicas create an exact copy of a unit, with the downside they can't make use of a unit's support bonuses. In my mind, Replicate is to me, a balanced version of Summon (apart from Invoke I think since it gives you more body blocks but you can't control them).
It’s definitely not exactly the same, but Tanith’s Reinforce is a weird pseudo version of this too!
In Echoes, it feels almost necessary to spam summons since enemies on Celicas route do it too and minimum damage being 1 instead of 0 really gets your good units chipped down.
For me any context in which you ignore the tower and ruins is an incomplete context. As most of the game's difficulty lies within the ruins. And the units themselves are made and balanced around the base game and the creature campaign. So certain values that are intended to thrive in the other settings that are within the game don't really show. In that context I've had max level max stat units bait an enemy then die enemy phase either from being chipped down from the sheer number of units attacking, or from just the fact the units there have dangerous stats and do damage in the ruins. Yes they aren't perfectly accurate but they are accurate enough that all combat is dangerous. (Also to clarify I split the game down to the three things the game is balanced around. Which is campaign, creature campaign/tower and ruins, and link arena. We typically ignore the link Arena, but also the link arena seems like it would be one of the harder things to get the data on)
In this context summoning has a lot value. However I argue that the summoners value isn't just in phantoms, it's value also lies in shared value with the druid. Nosferatu itself. Not only are you getting the ability to summon, but so long as you can take a hit, typically you can heal all of the damage with Nosferatu making the Summoner a unit I consider the absolute king of enemy phase. You get access to phantoms for breaking up groups of enemy and splitting them into smaller manageable chunks (Note I do not value the one at a time, but taking them on batches of 4 to 8 and not aggroing every single thing is extremely valuable to me.) Furthermore if you look at the phantoms stats and pay attention to that, you can alter that phantoms goal entirely based on the stats and items. A devil Axe phantom I'll play risky, Iron axe go bait, silver axe damage etc. Yes with knoll specifically the threat of crit is large, however Knoll isn't the only summoner, Ewan can also be one, and his value as a summoner still applies to the class.
The argument of "well Ewan could be X instead" is irrelevant. We are discussing Summoners ability. Therefore we only consider summoners themselves, and things that directly effect that utuility. For the sake of arguing summoners you are making the assumption that Ewan was decided to go down that path. Now arguing if other magic classes are better is a fair analysis as a whole. Do the do combat better? Do they do the summoners role better? Is a mage knight, or Valkyries move range equivalent to summoner phantom utility. At this point ti's less arguing a character, and more the class as whole utility.
My main point though, In the context of sacred stones, Ignoring "optional" content or post game content, yes the summoner, and in generally most units value is greatly diminished; however, it should still be noted, That these strategies and context do not apply to the game as a whole, but only a third of the game. And if you engage with other aspects of the game the unit may have value. In the context of challenge runs, that intentionally do not engage with a two thirds of the game this is accurate. If the other two thirds the units supposed value may not be applicable or be greatly altered.
I've only done one playthrough of SS and Summoners just seemed...niche? I didn't use Knoll as I already had Ewan in Shaman but maybe text time I play I'll use one to mess around with it
Summoner is probably the second best support class in the game. Staves and summoning is just super good. They can create a decoy that most enemies will prioritize, they can heal from a distance with Physic. They are terrible at combat, but amazing support.
I find nothing more entertaining in Sacred Stones than watching a Phantom dodge, counter, and drop 2-5 enemies in a single turn.
The A.I. being hellbent on taking down a Phantom because "1hp" will never not be funny.
it's the reverse dawn black knight tanking, gigantic hp pool and effectively invincible, but everyone want to break their weapons on him because no weapon equipped
Just clicked the video but hey my baby boy Ewan was there so it has to be good
Imo Syrene is better because she doesn't cost a promotion item to fill a similar role to Summoner Knoll.
Knoll is one of my favorite units in fe8, not because of summoner I genuinely just really like bad niche units. He's also a little babygirl I love him
I'm in the middle of the lunatic mode hack mekkah put out. Maybe summoners will be more useful in that context. Im playing the version where you play both routes and because of that i have ton of trained combat units for endgame so maybe knoll won't be that useful. Gonna find out soon enough.
It always feels like the end of sacred stones is kinda rushed to the finish. Like with how beefy your units get and how many awesome weapons there are, there really aren't that many maps to use them
In 0% growths baiting those draco zombies is pretty valuable considering they one shot a lot of your units and you don't have the warp range to get to the boss that quickly.
Yeah, in any non-vanilla context that makes the game harder summoner stonks go up for sure.
You can hit the big warp in 0%, but you need to save the energy rings for Saleh if you want 10 range warp. Not sure how consistent you can make the Lyon kill without growths though, Since in vanilla Myyrh wants some levels to do it.
I know you can do it with Cormag on lower warp range, but he has to hit pierces and also use a bunch of bulk boosters to survive the lyon attack. This one is a bit unreliable for my tastes lol
I never knew Phantoms could carry a unit given to them. That's a brilliant way to bait and kill a siege tome user. Outside of that yeah I agree Summoners are not that important in Sacred Stones. The game is too easy to justify frequent use of disposable decoys. It would be a different story if there were Summoners in Engage.
Also just gotta say that watching Cormag die in the last few seconds of this video physically hurt me. 😅
Ah, but what you forget, Lizard, is that Summoners are just objectively cool!
On a more serious note, I think the reason people find Knoll to be more useful than Syrene is the fact that Syrene is the fourth flier the player gets at that point, especially as the third Pegasus Knight. Knoll's uniqueness as a Summoner automatically makes him feel more valuable simply due to scarcity.
An excellent video, as always.
Best use for summons: Farming valni with 2 summons to not use weapon durability and well-equip everyone for lagdou.
I would love to see summoners back but instead give them a weapon to summon wraith whether it's a staff or a tome or even a miscellaneous item like the FE7 bard items
Summoning is a lot more useful in Echoes, where you can summon a group t tank hits for Celica's squishy team.
Sounds like a case of
"I only enjoy playing overpowered set ups and since I enjoy Summoners so Summoners must be overpowered!"
great video! a point you did not mention is looking at the summon ability in fe8 compared to the other fire emblem games. I certainly agree summoning isnt busted in fe8 because literally look at seth plus a few other reasons you mentioned. However compared to gaiden summoning where it has a significant hp cost and does not let the player control the summons, you wall yourself, clog up the battlelefield and cant move where you want, and then waste a bunch of time watching their stupid summon ai not doing what you want. fe2 summoning is worthless compared to fe8 summoning. If dark mages had this mechanic in fe5 and fe6 it would trivialize the siege tomes and status staffs in those games, and be an amazing utility option. fe7 and fe8 are far more enemy phase games so baiting units with a 1 hp disposable unit has less significant uses, therefore knoll is far less impactful in his own game than he could have been in other games. I also think knoll in D tier is kinda wild because he joins with the ability to summon, staff, and attack with dark magic all at base, giving him pretty great jack-of-all-trades magic utility. Hes no Saleh or Pent that's for sure but sacred stones is stupid easy and there are far worse units than knoll. Like i feel like a D tier unit would have problems finding something to do every turn, but knoll always has something to do, which provides great value
I think the perceived brokenness of summoners is that FE is a series that, before a certain point in the series (and Classic difficulty in later entries), teaches the player to be loss averse and summons are a weird loophole that allows you to put them in reckless danger without a worry.
High-level, skilled gameplay doesn't value summons because you can do the same thing better with units that have more utility and robustness, but casual gameplay values them because they're free 'units' that allow you to cautiously poke away at threats and wear down dangerous, low durability weapons on enemies with ease when perfectionist players might be playing at a snail's pace, regardless.
I think you second half of the statement is inherently flawed. What is high skill? LTC, but is it when LTC at this point is mostly solved? Is it Iron manning? Is it clearing the hardest difficulty, is it playing modded versions? We don't have high skill quantified and frankly it would be hard to quantify is there isn't a way to objectively quantify that.
In my case I play fire emblem with level caps in effect. The Level caps are determined by the maps boss unit. Furthermore, I can't use promoted units until the enemy has a promoted units. Current LTC strategies have zero application to how I play. And often lead to game overs. If all units are over leveled it's an automatic game over, If my only viable combat units are over leveled, there's a good chance my lower level units won't be able to make it. Ironman strategies are applicable to an extremely limited extent Unless the rely on being carried by only one unit. Therefore is how I play considered high skill? Because if it is, Summoners are without a doubt the best unit in the game. You never have to worry about being over leveled. No single unit offers greater utility then a summoner that can always stay below level cap and be useful and accomplish frankly any goal and effectively do combat through phantoms, and if need be can briefly tank with nosferatu. (Not optimal and only used in RNG emergencies, when not RNG screwed, and when the boss is high enough level that threat of being over leveled isn't a concern.)
So in the context of how I play would that be considered high skill game play? This is what I mean. It's not necessarily high skill gameplay. Its in the context of what you consider to be valuable to specific challenge runs, or to how you personally play the game. In that context it may be high skill for that type of challenge run, but some things may not be transferable to other skilled variants of the game.
I LOVE KNOLL
Okey but, what about summoning in shadows of valentia? You can abuse them (thats how i finished my first fure emblem game ever) by using them to finish every enemy but duma, but also they can be very undewhelming with bad luck on stats groth, but man, ghost myrmidons are busted
I haven't seen the old video, but D tier for knoll is way too harsh for something that can easily cover for any mistakes and provides a lot of QOL if you're not playing LTC. I'm sure you have a bunch of units in D tier that can't even do that. Also making one of the more annoying maps (ch18) easier, is a huge win especially on a blind playthrough.
If you aren't warp skipping and you want to keep everyone alive, summoners are a great and safe tool even in an easy game like SS. If you're warping skipping and iron manning then you don't lose sleep if you lose a filler combat unit.
Also I think your ending comparison is off. Lute and Natasha need to be fed kills/heals to get up to a point where they can serve their function, slowing down your play to give them that needed exp or spending time in the tower grinding. When people say "summons are better if you go slow" they mean "if you aren't warp skipping, want to keep everyone alive, and actually plan to kill everything/get every chest". Knoll needs no exp to function as a summoner, and the enemies summons aggro set up safer kills for the rest of your team.
Summons are cool yeah, but Druid has a cooler crit animation.
You are talking about how some of the aspects of late game Sacred Stones gameplay work against Summoners, but I think there is an important one working for them. The high deployment limit means that even if their contribution is not really necessary, it's still genuine contribution that's mechanically unique to that class. At least it's better than whatever other Combat Unit you would have taken with you without Knoll. That results in Knoll basically always being an auto include in your party by the moment you get him, which puts him in my mind above quite a few other characters who are very interchangable. I don't know if I'd take knoll if I could only pick 7 Units for a chapter but at 12+ units it's easy.
Similarily Dancers are worse in Chapters with very few deployment slots. Nils is a great Unit, but at I usually don't take him in The Berserker when you only have 2-3 deployment slots.
I mean the video actually directly says what you just said, too. He's just saying that people tend to overvalue Summoner as a class, and that they're just "good" and not amazing.
It's a shame that Summoners did not appear in Fates. Because of the prevalence of Poison, summoners could have been a huge help.
I have a feeling that if summoners were in conquest they'd be so mind numbingly broken they'd trivialize certain aspects of the game considering how powerful player phase actions are in that game even if you have no stats
Poor Cormag...
So, i get why you would judge them based on what they contribute but if we do it that way we need to remember that seth can literally solo the game with ease, so that would mean every other unit is low tier as they dont contribute anything unique.
I don't think Summoners are that good however they are an unique and fun aspect of Sacred Stones so I almost always use one
Yeah. Summoners are great for anyone that does more than 'hit enemy without any strategy'.
You literally gets a decoy for free. You can bait any enemy unit to the middle of your units without any cost.
Before watching, Summoner is meh because low Staff rank + Dark tomes are bad in Sacred, and the enemy quality is low/player unit quality is high so there's rarely if ever a scenario in which Phantoms are specifically useful, barring self imposed challenges. In a more difficult game, Phantoms would certainly get more mileage and by extension, Summoner could be good, pending availability of the class.
My opinions on summon has went down hill over the years. These days I just think they’re a crutch to help someone out if they mess up positionally
As a kid, I always thought summons were pretty bad because they might steal xp, but appreciated the ability to body block. Now that I'm older, I also appreciate the take shenanigans. But yeah, they feel underwhelming. I think Engage did summons better by making them actually pretty strong, able to survive a round of combat most of the time, making them really great ways to get in chip damage or actually block a choke point. The RNG element of them is a nice nod to FEH, and like in FEH, it can be really f'n annoying to not get a good summon. It's not broken, it's just good. I hope they continue to play around with this kind of mechanic.
Sure, buuuut... they're freaking cool. I don't need to know any more beyond that.
TLDR
The only reason Summoners are not completely broken is that they only appear in a game that's too easy to make good use of them.
Phoenixmaster1 is the best summoner
There was a Reddit thread about a week ago about Knoll and I got downvoted for saying basically the same things you're saying here. Summoning has some niche value and I'd rank Knoll above the really bad units like Amelia and Ewan because of it, but it's far from broken.
I did a Sacred Stones iron man draft a couple years ago and I got Knoll and made him a summoner. There are a few scary enemies that it's nice to have him bait out, like a Devil Axe Berserker on Ch 15, but overall I find myself using him to heal more often (Natasha was the only other magic unit I drafted and she died early).
thats nice and all but it depends on the playing style of the person.
thank god knoll exists, or the summoner class would be so ass. I am NOT training ewan 20 levels for that, lmao.
I think another thing is, the worse you are at Fire Emblem, the more valuable Summoners are to you. Me personally, I haven't beaten Sacred Stones on Difficult, because I'm very terrible at Fire Emblem (though to be fair, my last attempt was years ago, and since then I've beaten Engage on Hard Classic), so when I attempt to beat that difficulty I'm very likely to bring a Summoner.
Also, I'm sure Summoners would be way more busted in a player-phase game. Like imagine placing the class into max difficulty Shadow Dragon
The worst part about summoners is how ugly they are. Druid is a much better looking class!
Nah, druid looks worse
I actually like both. It is a pity that Dark mages are such a rarity in FE....
QUITE
Yup. Summoners are just great, but their OPness is directly proportional to the game's difficulty. Hence why I'd say Invoke from Gaiden/Echoes is more useful than Summoners. Having a disposable shield every turn is incredibly overpowered if you're negating a lot of damage or preventing a death, but worthless if you are negating almost none. A summon is most useful mitigating risk to nigh zero. Also, summoning is a lot better than you'd think at power leveling a unit. That fixed 10 exp is very good at capping a unit for basically no cost, assuming you want to play as optimally as possible. Granted, that's only siginficant if your summoner is a good combat unit.