Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

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Beard Master Flex
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Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by Beard Master Flex » Tue Jul 09, 2019 1:51 pm

I like druids.

I'm not having a lot of fun with Elemental Swarm though, its ugly and awkward to use, summoning a boat load of NPCs that become incredible damage sponges (to the point that your 50+ AB 4APR animal companion whose weakness is being squishy can wreck stuff and not be touched) while at the same time being cumbersome and annoying to play with.

In my opinion controlling NPC characters has always been the most awkward, unenjoyable part of NWN over the other party based RPGs out there.

The other thing about Elemental Swarm is that it just sort of defeats the purpose of having a party. I either cast it and anyone I travel with is relegated to second fiddle, or I purposefully handicap myself and step back to allow my companions to feel useful and important.

I think the larger scope is that DnD is a cooperative experience where the strengths and weaknesses of individual members are overcome by the cooperation of the party. That's what makes dnd fun imo, the teamwork. Choosing to not play my class to the fullest so others can have fun is not fun.

Classes like the PDK or the Healer excel when working in teams, I think that's awesome. They get to be cool while making everyone else even cooler.

So far the most optimal way to play the Druid is by yourself so you can save your buffs for your summons, use your crazy spells that they're immune to (2 of the 4 summons have KD immunity I believe, or at least make the reflex save enough to not matter.)

TLDR; Elemental Swarm isn't a fun ability. I'd make it do some short term but useful affect, maybe an actual swarm of elementals that lasts for a turn. Or make it summon 4 spirits that provide a small short duration buff like a WoW shaman or something. Air = Mass Haste for a few rounds, Earth = Mass DR, Fire = Some Fire Damage Buff, Water = Some stackable Regen.

Give it a cooldown like Greater Restoration.

Or just revert it back to the way it was but make them ancient elementals. IDK. I never used the spell because it sucked before the change, and now I use it and wish that I didn't have to after the change.

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RedGiant
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Re: Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by RedGiant » Tue Jul 09, 2019 3:28 pm

Or....alter your play style depending on who you are with?

Why wreck a cool spell, arguably one of the pinnacles of summoning, just for your personal annoyance? As a long time player of Druids, I love the spell. Granted, I won't generally use it in party with sufficient melee potential....or...if I do, I throw it out only when it is necessary. I also wouldn't consider the alternative, i.e. using a single ancient elemental...who passively heals your party members, to be "handicapping yourself" in a party, its just smart.

In the same vein, summons "clutter" can be a problem even for a party with multiple single summons. Often your party members will vehemently suggest you dismiss or better manage your summons. Will casters feel "held back" in this situation? Maybe, but if your big-boned bear is blocking the weapon master from the fight, or pushing the 43 hp mage into the big bad, this is just not smart. The solution is for the caster, in all cases, to manage themselves and their assets rather than nerf the game.
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Griefmaker
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Re: Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by Griefmaker » Tue Jul 09, 2019 3:37 pm

I like the idea behind the elemental swarm, but found in practice for me, it was too cumbersome. Unless I was in a very open place, it ended up simply making cramped quarters all the more so. I also tended to not use it when I had companions. Or if they were druids too, sometimes we would just go apeshit and have freaking armies massacre anything which stood in our way (survival of the fittest!!)

But when it did work, I loved it. Plus being able to have a wolf pack, a murder of crows (ravens), or simply an army of the elements coming out to support the druid was pretty cool.

It was also quite strong and because of that, very useful.

But I totally get where you are coming from, beardy, and don't exactly know what would be the best way to go about it. Perhaps with haks the spell can be completely remade in some fashion. Maybe something like it does useful (meaning not wimpy and therefore useless) elemental damage from the 4 elements to a large area of foes whilst applying short term and dispellable/breachable/etc. buffs to the party in a certain range.

In the end, elemental swarm is definitely quite useful and powerful, but does have some drawbacks as well.

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Hazard
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Re: Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by Hazard » Tue Jul 09, 2019 8:44 pm

I understand your frustrations, really. Handling summons in this game can be just ... the worst.

But I also think it's a really fun and unique spell and I'd hate to see it removed or changed. I consider the clunkiness of them part of the balance. It is a large group after all.

The only change I'd like to see to elemental swarm, is .. I would absolutely LOVE if it was affected by -stream.
So I could summon four fire elementals for example, or something. That would be really neat, along with your own elemental form you could really go for a thematic approach. Going to fight an ice dragon? Bring the heat!
Would this be OP? Probably. I dunno. It would be awesome, though!

blksabbath74
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Re: Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by blksabbath74 » Wed Jul 10, 2019 1:09 am

Beard Master Flex wrote:
Tue Jul 09, 2019 1:51 pm

TLDR; Elemental Swarm isn't a fun ability. I'd make it do some short term but useful affect, maybe an actual swarm of elementals that lasts for a turn. Or make it summon 4 spirits that provide a small short duration buff like a WoW shaman or something. Air = Mass Haste for a few rounds, Earth = Mass DR, Fire = Some Fire Damage Buff, Water = Some stackable Regen.
So basically, because you don't enjoy it, no one should be able to?

The simple expedient of not using it isn't enough?

I personally think that the devs need to remove anything someone doesn't enjoy using...


...perhaps we can narrow it down to just one class...

blksabbath74
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Re: Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by blksabbath74 » Wed Jul 10, 2019 1:09 am

Beard Master Flex wrote:
Tue Jul 09, 2019 1:51 pm

TLDR; Elemental Swarm isn't a fun ability. I'd make it do some short term but useful affect, maybe an actual swarm of elementals that lasts for a turn. Or make it summon 4 spirits that provide a small short duration buff like a WoW shaman or something. Air = Mass Haste for a few rounds, Earth = Mass DR, Fire = Some Fire Damage Buff, Water = Some stackable Regen.
So basically, because you don't enjoy it, no one should be able to?

The simple expedient of not using it isn't enough?

I personally think that the devs need to remove anything someone doesn't enjoy using...


...perhaps we can narrow it down to just one class...

Nevrus
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Re: Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by Nevrus » Wed Jul 10, 2019 1:25 am

Sorcerors, wizards, and clerics can kill groups of enemies, stop time, summon greater outsiders, make almost any monster into their minion, dispel every buff from an enemy, summon an unbreakable blade, raise the dead, destroy a target's level, the list goes on.

The two cool druid spells are Storm of Vengeance (which the cleric has) and this just-add-water party maker. I love it.
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DM Senke
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Re: Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by DM Senke » Wed Jul 10, 2019 1:48 am

blksabbath74 wrote:
Wed Jul 10, 2019 1:09 am
Beard Master Flex wrote:
Tue Jul 09, 2019 1:51 pm

TLDR; Elemental Swarm isn't a fun ability. I'd make it do some short term but useful affect, maybe an actual swarm of elementals that lasts for a turn. Or make it summon 4 spirits that provide a small short duration buff like a WoW shaman or something. Air = Mass Haste for a few rounds, Earth = Mass DR, Fire = Some Fire Damage Buff, Water = Some stackable Regen.
So basically, because you don't enjoy it, no one should be able to?

The simple expedient of not using it isn't enough?

I personally think that the devs need to remove anything someone doesn't enjoy using...


...perhaps we can narrow it down to just one class...
While it is fine to disagree with someone's points, this is not constructive to the discussion.

Beard Master Flex
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Re: Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by Beard Master Flex » Wed Jul 10, 2019 2:52 am

If people are having fun with the spell that's what's most important; its just not my cup of tea then and I'll try for other ways to spice things up.

I'd just find it more enjoyable to have something to compete for spell slots on the druid, or a reason to switch up my spellbook. Unlike some of the other spell casters I never have a feeling of going "Oh man, I wish I had more spell slots to take this fun spell!". They did some neat changes with some of the spells in the Druid's kit, but in most of the dungeons I've cleared -and I'm sure I've done almost all of them now- Elemental Swarm just feels like its playing the game for me or -at least in the really hard dungeons- that I don't need anyone else with me baring one or two examples.

Seemed like it would be cool to have to make a choice between maintaining a summon or using some other ability that would replace a summon for some sort of exciting short term affect. I'd look at it similar to Gate vs IX on the other casters, but with the potential to give the druids its own flavor.

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Flashish
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Re: Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by Flashish » Wed Jul 10, 2019 3:14 am

Strategy-wise it's probably better to summon and buff the single, more powerful elemental you get with level 9 spells, but the outcome is far less entertaining. Plus you lose XP from the number of your summons more than their power, so having four plus your companion animal is a terrible idea.

Problematic spells in PWs are almost always so PVP reasons. Elemental Swarm is actually pretty bad in PVP. It takes minutes to buff all four Elementals. And there are a million ways to get rid of them. Any melee class will have you dead long before they die from the elementals if just throwing them out there is your strategy. I feel like this is just a fun and flavorful PVE spell and it's not even fantastic at high epic levels there.

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Hazard
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Re: Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by Hazard » Wed Jul 10, 2019 3:24 am

Flashish wrote:
Wed Jul 10, 2019 3:14 am
Strategy-wise it's probably better to summon and buff the single, more powerful elemental you get with level 9 spells, but the outcome is far less entertaining. Plus you lose XP from the number of your summons more than their power, so having four plus your companion animal is a terrible idea.

Problematic spells in PWs are almost always so PVP reasons. Elemental Swarm is actually pretty bad in PVP. It takes minutes to buff all four Elementals. And there are a million ways to get rid of them. Any melee class will have you dead long before they die from the elementals if just throwing them out there is your strategy. I feel like this is just a fun and flavorful PVE spell and it's not even fantastic at high epic levels there.
I've found a single elemental 9th circle is far weaker than all 4 together. Even a monolithic elemental (wildmage/weavemaster) gets shredded in mere seconds in dungeons where an elemental swarm can easily breeze through.

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Twily
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Re: Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by Twily » Wed Jul 10, 2019 5:02 am

Based on my experiences with my druid so far, I think Elemental Swarm is in a pretty good spot.

I find it does a lot more damage than a single IX summon does, but on the other hand they do have some pretty large weaknesses.

- Swarm isn't as good in parties, since the summons take so much space and block people from getting through
- Swarm doesn't have a +5 DR nor +5 DR Penetration. This makes them a bit worse against many mages, and means there are dungeons they'll get annihilated in that the IX summon can face.
- It takes 4x as many buffs to fully buff the summons, this is pretty significant when you factor in that my swarm has needed stoneskin in most high level areas I've been to so far, where as Ancient Elementals do not benefit from Stoneskin at all(they all have greater than 10/+5).
- It can't be spontaneously cast, requiring un-shifting to use.

So when I travel with party members, I get more XP, things die faster, I get to save spells for my party members, and it's less of a problem if my summon gets un-summoned; despite the fact I'm using IX instead of the swarm. (and that's not including that it's just more fun to travel with others)

There's also some dungeons that even if I was solo, I'd use the IX summon. Most notably is dungeons where a majority of the mobs have +3 Damage reduction penetration, and dungeons where there's mages that cast both Premonition and Horrid Wilting(some do these and Greater Stoneskin as well). The combination makes it hard for the swarm to interrupt the cast, where as the IX summon does such much more reliably thanks to bypassing Premonition and Stoneskin.


If you're looking for a high damage IX summon, give the fire elemental a try. I've been quite fond of it; it has a lot of damage while still maintaining a very reasonable amount of AC. I've seen my Ancient Fire crit for 100 on a few rare occasions(although usually it's more like 80).
It's still not as good as the swarm in pure dps, but it's a fair bit tankier and a great middle ground if you ever find yourself in a party.


In regards to PvP, i'm not sure yet.
I do think in the level 20ish range it's overpowered in PvP, but on the other hand there are a large number of ways to remove the summons as well. That said, it quickly turns into 'remove the summons or you lose the fight'.
I'm not sure how it'll hold up in max level PvP, but I get the feeling it may be notably weaker than it is around the level 20 range; I haven't seen enough to have an opinion on this yet.

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Dreams
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Re: Is Elemental Swarm Fun?

Post by Dreams » Wed Jul 10, 2019 9:26 pm

I love it. It is always a great backup to have ready, if you're in a party. If you're not in a party, it is probably the go-to for many areas. Adding to this is if you're in a totem pact, which leads to wonderful swarms.

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