[Raigen.Convict]

Alright, ladies and gentlemen, it's that time again. With the recent addition of boxer and how it uses skills from Boxer to raise its Schwarz Sturm level, a friend gave me an idea. If Grand Summoner or possibly Summoner in general functioned similar to this. Where The Summoner uses skills from Summoner and its promotions only to buff the youkai and keep them stable through the fight while you act as a sort of battery, supplying them the fuel they need to protect you and stay alive, but the weakness is the fact that doing anything but concentrating on keeping them alive will weaken your maintenance on them and cause them to be easier to take down, like they are now.

Since isn't the whole point of Summoner to be that 'you' bring these creatures in and allow them to fight in your place, keeping you safe while you support them? As it is, Summoner is more like a type of mage that deploys fragile turrets and if they're destroyed you have no reliable means to recover them without sacrificing a large sum of Momentum with Reihou in Grand Summoner and if you're a Bonder, you can't revive them at all and are left with whatever offensive capabilities you have to fend for yourself, while with Bonder being a physical class utilizing both of you assaulting the enemy at once, this isn't the biggest problem. But as a Grand Summoner, losing your youkai is a pretty big deal since not only does it remove a bit of friendship but this also lowers your offensive power unless allowed to recover with Reihou, and even then most enemies won't let this happen with either silence, or knocking the invocation apart.

Most people tend to use a support class like Priest with Grand Summoner but in all Honesty, Grand Summoner should be a support class in itself with both the youkai being helpful offensive partners and the Summoner itself supporting them and possibly allies in a few special ways and be rewarding for sticking with the Grand Summoner and Summoner support skills.

"Okay you've addressed a lot but how do you plan to do anything about it." You might ask. Well my answer is this. We give either Summoner or Grand Summoner a passive that rewards the player for staying with skills from Summoner and its promotions and these rewards either diminish or dissapear when non-passive skills from other classes are utilized. This also encompasses any buffs you activate yourself as well such as 'Painproof' or 'Wraithgaurd'. But skills that activate passively such as 'Pacifists Boon' or 'Auto-Enchant' are fine. One idea i've tossed around for a while is the use of 'Energy Transfer' on your allies besides just youkai and being able to transfer your install to a nearby ally and grant them bonuses from doing this.

"This is starting to sound a little broken." You may say. And that's why it's becoming more of a support class that creates offensive allies to protect YOU rather than being able to zap everyone with youkai spells and defending your precious turrets like it is now. I'm also proposing that we tone down the elemental attack scaling for youkai skills just a bit in trade for maybe the passive effect I mentioned to as the battle goes on to give the youkai ramping power and defense possibly so they don't just all get instantly destroyed in both PVP and PVE. This way, players who rely on being quick and assassinating targets can easily do this since the summoner is still open early in the fight. While characters who get better as the fight goes on with preparation and buffs get an actual challenge instead of how things are now where the summoner could either A. Summon storm and never reach the target due to the generally 5 movement of most youkai coupled with 6 momentum meaning they only move once, unless the RNG of summon storm is nice to you and they appear close enough to the target. Even if one or two do make it to the target, if they're fast, they can dart through them and use positioning to wait them out, if they're durable, they can still move twice and use their durability to tank through the minimalized damage they deal at 40 resistance which is about 90 or so per skill at level 60 and let's not forget elemental resistances.

I also suggest we move Evoking youkai spells to an Installed youkai only so that way there's a depth of strategy to the class instead of just contracting as many as possible in order to shoot all the spells you want like it currently is.

For an example let's say the skill is something like this:

Passive: Grants the Summoner a buff that causes all currently summoned youkai to gain additional Elemental attack, Physical Defense, Magical Defense, Hit critical and status infliction chance equal to LV * 5 % up to a maximum of LV 8 for 40% more in these areas at max LV and if the summoner uses anything that is not from Summoner or its promotions these bonuses disappear instantly. The status infliction chance only raises at half efficiency.

The bonuses start at level 0 at the beginning of the fight and every round that you haven't used anything not from Summoner you gain a LV up to 8. These bonuses are strong but not over-bearing. I left out evade and crit evade, granted no youkai except izabe has ANY crit evade since it'd be a bit -too- much for them to gain that on top of the other things. Maybe though, adding in the side effect that for every youkai that dies, the LV of this passive is decreased by one or two would allow for evade and crit evade to make it into this passive. With the addition of this, keeping the youkai alive becomes a higher priority and gives incentive to summon them in the first place, while also giving the opposition more incentive to destroy them first in place of the summoner WITHOUT give the summoner something ridiculous like the Astral Aegis from Sigrogana Legend the first. (As long as one youkai remains summoned the summoner receives 1/4 of all damage for those who never played it.)

I also suggest lowering the elemental attack scaling on level 60 evoke skills to 310% of elemental attack. This being a thing makes them less of a threat early, but as the fight progresses causes them to hit 350% elemental attack essentially making them slightly stronger than they are now.

This would also probably warrant a look at the rest of the skills in Summoner and its promotions accordingly, Soul Chains for instance I feel could become much more than it currently is, as it is it's a nice set up skill for only one purpose. But if Soul Chains became capable of ally AND enemy use, it'd be useful as a support skill AND an offensive skill. Transferring your install onto a nearby ally to grant them the effects of install and maybe use Energy Transfer to replenish a bit of an allies focus reserves in trade of your own, bringing a completely new concept to the game. Just food for thought and maybe some discussion for everyone.