So having experienced conjurers from inception to now. I've had a few hero goodie conjurers and a multitudes of hero neutral conjurers. I'd say at one point I had neutral conjurers mastered. I would rarely ever die to a servitor in the past once I knew what I was doing. The past three or so attempts during the past few years haven't been so good, at least in the lower levels. I've been told at some point they changed how conjurers work and since then neutral and evil conjurers have been nearly non-existant. I'll point out some changes that I don't really understand and think may have to do with it, at least from a neutral perspective.

1. Angels are now super aggressive. They've always been very dangerous, but you could call a 0 mana angel and put a 200 mana bind on one and fight evils and it would be happy. Now a 0 mana angel will turn on you after fighting hordes of undead in as little as 20 hours with a 600 mana bind. I never had one not turn on my way before timer was up even though they were always no mana conjure with strong bind. To a smaller degree archons are also much harder to bind now. With the first archon edge around hero they feel more in line with what they used to be pre-edge. It makes me wonder if they were set to be harder so that they are what they originally were like pre-edges to make up for edges making them too easy maybe? Either way, neutral conjurers have gotten a good bit tougher here, at least while leveling up/pre edge. I can't say what angels are like with edge/hero though because I never bothered to try one again since I already lost plenty of con to them.

2. Earth elementals get angry under water too quickly now. Previously I could get them to last a good while and were the only option for a conjurer to go under water since water elementals do 0 damage to most things under water. Now they turn after just a few hours underwater it seems like. This leaves conjurers with few options for fighting underwater unless they have one of the special items.

3. It may just be this last familiar, but it feels like warded familiar was nerfed a good bit. My familiar could die to single breaths attacks, whereas such a thing has never happened to me before at hero with warded/warrior familiar. There is a small chance I just never had a cat get hit hard before and it is vuln though, so I will give that possibility.

4. Pets aggroing into towns. There should be a way to turn this off I feel. I know other people and imps don't agree, but this is the only class that has their whole repertoire of abilities being turned against them mechanically in a way they cannot control. A conjurer can be near udgaard, many rooms away from any city, be summoned and AOEd on pets. They don't have to attack or anything. The attacker can then flee south into galadon, two rooms, and the pets will auto track two paces south into galadon and attack. Those two rooms are also two areas. Meaning the conjurer is two paces and two areas out of the protected town, never went into town, never attacked anyone, and is now wanted. That is a purely mechanical thing and has no immersion quality and could put a potential tribunal applicant who spent hours on their description/role/leveling into the trash. I strongly feel this should have some manner to be avoidable. The option to "elemental noarea" was added for a similar reason. It wasn't originally available.

5. Familiar agility. I'm not sure how I feel about this since this is my first time having it, but 20% dodge seemed to fire hardly every to make it worth having your pet out and vulnerable and the cost of the edge with edges being harder to gett now. I hear it's possibly great on a dark-elf conjurer but I think there is a reason you rarely see evil or neutral conjurers anymore... they are just too hard to play at this point and neutral conjurers used to be my favorite class for years.

6. I also think bindings and circles maybe were nerfed to make the edges put them at the original levels. They don't feel like they work as well as they used to, but this area I am much less sure of as I didn't test enough.

Dark elves just get 24 percent dodge from familiar agility. But I find any dodge is quite significant and simply having the skill seemed to make my evade fire more often. Evade being what it is though I could be imagining that.

Also cat is a relatively frail familiar. You want your familiar to survive aeriatoma's gas attack, you probably need homonculous, which iirc is the toughest of the neutral familiars?

Yeah, homonculous is my most favorite familiar. It is amazing. I've had it probably five or more times in the past. The normal one I had doing DEMOLISH and sometimes DEVATSATE on svirfs if they were softened and decalcified. I used mine to solo the dracolich, granted it took a couple hours, but was doable. I wonder what a quest version would be like. The perks on the homonuclous also make them one of the best for conjuring in general beyond being decent fighters. Granted, my quest cat I just had would have been doing 3x demolishes a round with soften, though I never got the chance to play with a transmuter to see it. Loved my cat so much, was the thing that kept me trying to be able to play as long as I did. Oh, and it definitely was not frail. I had almost no fear that a PK would be able to kill it. In fact, it usually hit them harder than they hit it the few times anyone bothered to attack it.

I too have noticed a dearth in evil and neutral conjies. Evil's basically went with Scion, IMHO because despoil was just SO good for an evil conjie.

Neutral conjies seem to suffer pretty badly from changes made way back in the day for alignment to matter more. Elementals just aren't that good (and are very limited and die fairly easily) and you have to work harder to get the full oomph out of the Aligned servitors. Demons and Devils do seem to be way way easier to keep happy though...

Re: 1) My experience with neutral conjie and angels doesn't match yours. I too will call zero mana angels (for ranking purposes), but haven't had one turn unexpectedly on a decent chr conjie basically ever. I will say this as speculation:

a) Angels have zero tolerance for killing good and very little for use against neutrals. If you've done any killing of good or neutral, they'll turn. Even when it is their fault (pillar!).

b) I don't believe bind strength has anything to do with them turning. In fact the only thing I believe more mana into bind gives you is a better chance to land the bind. Duration and turning aren't effected in the slightest.

c) Bind also boosts their mood (I think), which is why my archons and angels are always more effective right at the start of conjuring than later, regardless of what activities I've been doing. This seems to be a weakness in the neutral conjie... No matter what you do, archons and angels just won't stay happy. If the scale is something like happy, content, mediocre, unhappy, angry, they will just slide toward mediocre, regardless. Archons especially seem to not give a #### what you are doing... They just won't stay happy.

Re: 2) My experience is that only para-elementals can be used underwater for anything beyond basically 1 kill. I would argue that since you have angel/archon and demon/devil, it would make sense for there to be elemental/para-elemental. It would also inject some much needed utility as well as shoring up a serious weakness and ditching the silly hoarded unique items. Honestly, when fighting a conjie I will almost always just murder their elemental, even if I can't kill them. Worst case scenario it takes enough damage to get pissed and become useless and/or turn... If you kill it, you've basically crunching kot'd them for up to 48 hours.

Re: 3) Not all familiars are created equal. They're a bit like shapeshift forms. Some are complete losers. My current has cost me nearly 2 con. Honestly I hate the con loss aspect and wish it was turned into ranger bears style nuking. Conjies eat enough con loss due to the nature of the class, having a little mook that follows you around and behaves like a retarded merc that also takes a third of your con with it when it dies isn't fun. That and some of them (looking at you original familiars) pale in comparison to things like phase wasp so bad it makes you want to roll the bones on familiars.

Re: 4) Tribunals are chumps. Just murder them. I just can't get behind this one, or help... Don't go into town if you are worried. It isn't that hard.


Re: 5) I've never had this. Nor would I ever take it, but then the number of times I want my familiar next to me in a fight is generally incredibly low since they are such a liability.

Re: 6) My experience doesn't match this at all. As far as circles go, they're basically good for 3 ticks vs. turned servitor and more vs. one that you just summoned (5-ish) which is plenty of time to do whatever you need to do. That or you die and that's on you. That's all zero mana circle too. I honestly don't know how long one would last with more mana. I'd assume roughly 1 tick per 100-300 mana but I've never tested it. As for binding, I think you misunderstand what they do. It is all basically a way to blow all your mana to replace spellcraft. I'd love to take a conjie and get spellcraft instead and see how that went someday, but I don't see that happening.

One thing I'd love to see if someone (finally?) fixing the servitor bugs that disallow area affects and cause stuff like cabal inners to hit servitors/familiars. Because if any class is set up to use offensive wands/talismans/scrolls it *should* be conjie, but the fact that you will hit your own servitors with area affects makes that a death sentence.

It's not just a notice. I played a massive amount of neutral conjurer prior to 2007. I'd say I had them mastered even though back then people thought they sucked. They had limitations compared to goodie and evil but I loved them for exploring more than goodie.

1) I'm not convinced. I have angry elementals always attack if I put no mana in the binding right before they left, but they never did if I just put a 50 mana bind on them. Duration of them being here isn't affected by binding, no. You are 100% wrong about archons. A transplendant archon can come angry and they will heal you sometimes at 100hp. If you imediately go kill some evil things, I believe ones that give exp, they will get happier and happier. You will know they are happy when they start giving out the 200hp heals instead of 100hp and follow you quicker. They tend to heal a bit less often than they did pre-2007 though and seem to be harder to bind than then. Angels were just a total pain, as I said, since they ALWAYS turned on me this char even when solely ranking on evil mobs and not killing anything else. That didn't use to be that way at all. In fact, before you could use angels and archons to kill goodies, they would get angry, you then go back and kill evils a ton and they get happy again. This I can confirm still works with archons at least. Since I did it.

2) I used to rank with earth elementals, explore with them, etc under water because they were the ONLY useful elemental down there. Air and fire would get angry super fast. Earth got angry super slow. Not the case anymore as this has definitely changed.

5) My familiar often did more damage than my elementals, up to 3x MANGLE a round. Never had a worry about it in pve or pvp to be honest. It was a beast. Just certain really powerful mobs have insane gas breaths since the change that can do 2k damage in a single hit. I love my familiar though and thought it was amazing. This was really not a big concern of mine, just a note. Really just 1, 2, and 4 bothred me. As a class only 1 and 2 caused problems.

>It's not just a notice. I played a massive amount of neutral
>conjurer prior to 2007. I'd say I had them mastered even
>though back then people thought they sucked. They had
>limitations compared to goodie and evil but I loved them for
>exploring more than goodie.

To put it bluntly: You either A) Didn't have them "mastered" (which is my feeling due to lack of understanding of binding/turning) or B) You've forgotten everything you knew and replaced it with wrongness.

To put another way, is it possible you are simply remembering the past with rose-colored glasses?

>1) I'm not convinced. I have angry elementals always attack if
>I put no mana in the binding right before they left, but they
>never did if I just put a 50 mana bind on them.

If you are having elementals turn right before they leave, you are doing it wrong. You are either:
1) In a place they don't like (underwater, cold, etc.)
2) Letting them get beat to #### (I'd guess this)
3) Really low chr or something else I don't know about.

Honestly, the most likely is number 2. Elementals will basically *only* turn if you've done 1 or 2. I've essentially never had one turn that I didn't know was going to and 200 is the most I think I've ever put into a bind.


>You are 100%
>wrong about archons. A transplendant archon can come angry and
>they will heal you sometimes at 100hp. If you imediately go
>kill some evil things, I believe ones that give exp, they will
>get happier and happier. You will know they are happy when
>they start giving out the 200hp heals instead of 100hp and
>follow you quicker. They tend to heal a bit less often than
>they did pre-2007 though and seem to be harder to bind than
>then. Angels were just a total pain, as I said, since they
>ALWAYS turned on me this char even when solely ranking on evil
>mobs and not killing anything else.

I'll concede you may be right on Archons, but the frequency is the determining factor for me, not the strength of the heals. Maybe they're sitting at content, but not happy (on my made up scale)?

If you let an angel get repeatedly beat to ####, it will turn. Angels and Demons are less prone to this, but since Angels can't be made happy as fast, they're harder to recover. The only additional factors for angels vs. elementals is fighting non-evils and possibly their auto-attack prog firing. The first makes them angry and the second (probably) makes them happy.

>That didn't use to be that
>way at all. In fact, before you could use angels and archons
>to kill goodies, they would get angry, you then go back and
>kill evils a ton and they get happy again. This I can confirm
>still works with archons at least. Since I did it.

I'm sure this can work. I would personally never do it, especially as a neutral conjie. You have other tools for this.


>2) I used to rank with earth elementals, explore with them,
>etc under water because they were the ONLY useful elemental
>down there. Air and fire would get angry super fast. Earth got
>angry super slow. Not the case anymore as this has definitely
>changed.

I have never been able to use anything underwater other than para-elementals. If something has changed here, it is a very old change... which since you seem to be comparing to a decade ago, may be the case.

>5) My familiar often did more damage than my elementals, up to
>3x MANGLE a round. Never had a worry about it in pve or pvp to
>be honest. It was a beast. Just certain really powerful mobs
>have insane gas breaths since the change that can do 2k damage
>in a single hit. I love my familiar though and thought it was
>amazing. This was really not a big concern of mine, just a
>note. Really just 1, 2, and 4 bothred me. As a class only 1
>and 2 caused problems.

I guess I just keep getting unlucky with the ####ing monkey on my neutral conjies then. I've used familiars effectively, but even being not overly risk averse, they just aren't worth the con loss to me. Breath attacks have always done giant damage if you don't save, and sometimes even if you do. IIRC gas breath (and most other breaths) are damage based on current NPC HP, so if they gas breath early and you don't have REALLY good saves + DR, you can just get flattened. It's why that stupid Morton gas-breath guy is such a pain in the ass to deal with.

I still think of conjurers as a semi new class. The point isn't to debate with what you think now and what I think from then, but to point out that neutral conjurers are in a bad place since whatever changed between the two.

Also, the monkey isa fun familiar too and can do decent damage. I am pretty sure I soloed the dracolich with a monkey once too, sine blunt is king against skeletons.

>I still think of conjurers as a semi new class. The point
>isn't to debate with what you think now and what I think from
>then, but to point out that neutral conjurers are in a bad
>place since whatever changed between the two.

I happen to agree with you that neutral conjies are in a bad place, but I have a hard time lending credence to your arguments when so many of them don't match my experience or are, IMO, factually incorrect.

>Also, the monkey isa fun familiar too and can do decent
>damage. I am pretty sure I soloed the dracolich with a monkey
>once too, sine blunt is king against skeletons.

I think you are on crack. But then I don't really try much with the monkey because the risk just isn't worth it, and steal isn't really that good for me, though I suppose others might make excellent use of it.

Unfortunately, I can't track code changes prior to 2010 because backups r hard, but I'm really skeptical that all of the changes you're asserting took place. 2006 was a long time ago, but I know the class hasn't changed that much since 2010 and I don't believe it changed so dramatically from 2006-2010 either. If nothing else, I've seen at least a couple neutral conjurers that struck me as plenty powerful since 2010 (maybe you? I dunno...), and many more good/evil ones.

In a similar vein to my original response, I just don't have the time or desire to try and separate out what aspects of this feedback are congruent with reality and which aren't. I appreciate your experience with the class and the feedback itself, but it's simply a rabbit hole I don't feel like diving down right now. If anything, I'd suggest you give the class (maybe even a neutral one) another try, possibly after considering some of the ideas and advice that other players in this thread are sharing. Like I think you said yourself, fuzzy memories of 2006 are only so relevant today even if it does feel like yesterday in CF nostalgia time.

Like the binding thing. I know you don't want to address them directly, but perhaps shedding some clarity on how they work now would go a long way toward changing the perceptions around the class and making them more playable. If you don't feel like digging through the code, I totally understand.

Some off the cuff examples would be things like:

Does increased mana into conjuring go into:
A) Increased servitor level (which I assume affects HP, Strength of Attacks and specials, "class" of servitor (transplendant, luminous, etc)

or,

B) Increased duration of summons (I've never had one last more than 2 bindings, but perhaps that is possible?)

or are there additional factors/possibilities?

What are the factors in servitor happiness (this has probably already been vaguely answered)... i.e. environment for elementals, taking damage, killing good/evil etc.

Why does monkey suck so much?

I'm totally ok with the answer being no, but if KhoeKhas can still be fundamentally wrong about some things after a decade of playing conjies, perhaps it isn't intuitive enough to be figured out in game and some spoon is necessary?

I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night so, here goes.

>Does increased mana into conjuring go into:
>A) Increased servitor level (which I assume affects HP,
>Strength of Attacks and specials, "class" of servitor
> transplendant, luminous, etc)
>
Yes, it can increase level which can change Angel, Archon, Demon, Devil's type and how nasty every conjurable mob considers. Lesser Archangel/Transplendant/etc being hooded, then going in reverse down.

>or,
>
>B) Increased duration of summons (I've never had one last more
>than 2 bindings, but perhaps that is possible?)
>
Yes it can also do this. As for why it's the first sometimes and this one others, I'd chock it up to luck. I've put in an enormous amount of mana at times and gotten the lowest level servitor and that caused it to stay around for a very long time, 3 bindings.

>or are there additional factors/possibilities?
>
Both of these can be augmented via edges, although you still have some randomness, and the edges lowered the amount of mana needed to call stronger servitors, when I took them.

I used it to solo-rank in my guild for a couple ranks after I took warded familiar.

1.) I think bind works differently then you do. I think the amount of mana only increases the chance of landing the spell and maaaybe the duration but doesn't have any affect on morale(without edges) or on difficulty of a servitor to break it. I guess I could be wrong though.

2.) elemental morale is based on what environment they are in. Being under water really pisses off non water Elems and always have. Maybe back in the day you were a svirf and that bought you a little extra time but I never finished a single ranking pass without them turning. Co jurors are really good in lots of places so being weak underwater vs npc seems fine to me.

3.). It's just your last. Detect hide fams die fast and easy. Detect camo fams are a melee middle ground and the non detect ones tend to be rather sturdy.

4.) that's just a drawback to the class. Be careful.


5.) the dodge is based on racial dex and is more useful with a tanking familiar then a scouting one.

6.) I don't think anything has changed.

Neutral conjurers are harder then good/evil which is cool because they have a lot more flexibility. Dieing to yourself is a unique part of the class and a fair trade off for how grossly powerful you can be with little investment. I had a 100 kill svirf conjurer so I know they can work but even that char took me like 150 hours to get the rythme sorted out.

Well, I can tell you from at least a dozen or more hero conjurers that bind works this way, at least prior to 2007. You conjure with no mana, anything, that is angry and put a no mana binding and it will turn before timer is up. You put a 50-200 mana bind on it and it doesn't. I can tell you 100% this is how it worked before. Maybe it isn't a stronger binding but makes them a little bit "happier" at the start like someone said but I am not sure since I can't see the code.

Neither of us is authoritative, obviously, but unless Umi confirms, you should start believe laxman and I's way is the way bind actually works.

>1.) I think bind works differently then you do. I think the
>amount of mana only increases the chance of landing the spell
>and maaaybe the duration but doesn't have any affect on
>morale(without edges) or on difficulty of a servitor to break
>it. I guess I could be wrong though.

This is correct. The only thing that extra mana impacts is the chance of a successful binding.

The only way that any of the binding spells will impact servitor morale is when certain edges are in play, and those are static bonuses that aren't dependent on whether extra mana is used or how much.

Hilarious how mana people I've seen dropping huge bindings. I generally just shore up the circle slightly, put the bulk of the mana into the conjuration, and spam base binding spells until it works.

Sometimes this ends in a broken circle and a dead conjurer, but that's usually when I'm lazy and don't buff the circle beforehand.

Always worked for me. I think it's in the helpfiles as well, but I've clarified it on newbie just to be sure.

I honestly don't have a good enough grasp of the conjurer class to respond to most of this, but I can offer this insight:

In the past few years there have been very few changes to the conjurer class, and they include:
- Devils were updated a couple of years ago such that they no longer get happier just for casting certain spells, and instead rely primarily on attacking and killing things. (Read: it used to be easier to keep devils happy whilst being lazier.)
- The benefit of various buffs in conjuring elementals was reduced slightly. This would've brought the power ceiling down for a conjurer who had lots of edges and was maximizing various other conditions that impact elemental power. (This should have impacted "really good" conjurers far more than average ones.)

And that's really about it since 2010.

Conjurers are, for the worse in my opinion, one of those classes that is playable without edges but comparatively lacking for anyone who has had the experience of playing one with all the edges. If I was concerned enough and interested enough to make changes, I'd probably increase the strength of conjurers across the board (and make them slightly more forgiving to neutrals) but also lower the ceiling of their power substantially, which may upset more people than it would please. But then I'm not interested in working on that right now so that's all moot.

Looking through my logs it looks like 2006 would have been my last strong neutral conjurer, so sometime after that probably. My time frame in CF I always find is a little odd as I realize things I think are new are ten years old... I can't necessarily say what happened, but archons and angels are both definitely much harder to keep than they used to be as a neutral conjurer to the point it's not fun really. Anyhow, maybe something to think about in the future someday for other players who would like to play them. Thanks.