LE Conjuration is stupid. Fixing it would be good.

[CuteUnit]

Things probably not correctable:

Summons have bad ai, tending to prefer ranged combat they are weak at to melee combat where they are strong ( and more useful)

Summons have collision, constantly blocking tunnel passageways and preventing the player from passing.

 

Things that should be correctable:

Summoned atronachs have static level and gain no power from conjuration skill or any items. Level 8 forever flame atronach, for example.

 

Risen undead don't live long enough to justify their long ressurect animation. The fight's already over by the time they get up, and they ash before the next fight.

 

50% strength bonus to atronachs perk actually just replaces atronachs with "Potent Atronachs" who are a few levels higher. Level 10 flame atronach, whoopdee doo. Useless.

 

Conjure Dremora Lord a hundred times stronger than all the Atronachs combined, and does not benefit from any perk in the tree at all. Really no reason to use any other spells, or

even play the game yourself for that matter, once you have Conjure Dremora Lord. If you have twin souls for two Dremora your biggest challenge will be to get around them in corridors, the rest of the time you'll watch them beat the game for you. Oh, and they're level 42 whatever level YOU summon them at.

 

Master conjuration spells useless, they're just permanent versions of the lower level spells, which is meaningless since you just spent a ton of perk points and level up getting to 100 conjuration for trivial mana costs to summon your pets. You cannot heal your pets in any way making resummoning them the way to go, which you will. You'll resummon them just to get them to stop blocking the damn tunnel. It takes only 3 seconds to summon one no matter what. Perma pets are useless. Master conjuration spells should be something else.

 

 

Bound weapons don't scale. They start off being like Steel then they're about like Orcish if you spend feats on them. What's the point here? Skyforged Steel, blacksmith sharpened, from whiterun is better, and that's available at level one.

 

Bound weapons don't last very long and have to be re-conjured every time you swap to cast any other spell, unlike an actual weapon.

 

 

So, how would you guys fix this? I'm not sure what mouth breathers at Bethesda designed the magic system in Skyrim but I've never scratched my head in befuddlement over outright bad design as Skyrim has done to me so far.

[Vagrant0]

Not sure about the bound weapon stuffs until a CS is released. Ideally the solution would be progressively stronger versions based on conjuration skill or some way to upgrade the base spell.

 

About the AI, that's actually probably the easiest to fix. The strength of the summons can also be adjusted to level with the player if it's anything like Oblivion/Morrowind. It might even be possible to adjust the damage of their spells based on their level depending on how the spell system is setup.

[Tair]

So, how would you guys fix this?

Honestly, after all this time, EverQuest's Magician class still has the model to beat for a Conjuration-based caster, and it isn't too far from what Skyrim's Conjurer aims to be. What that means for Skyrim is semipermanent pet conjurations (read: they last until they die or you summon a different pet), pet-specific heals, and pet augments (either passive perks or spell-based buffs) that bring conjured pets up to your level. Similarly, scaling ranks of conjured weapons and armor.

 

If I were to set out to make Conjuration a more viable tree, I would aim to make conjured pets or risen skeletons long-term, viable replacements for followers or companions.

 

Since skeleton NPCs can already use weapons, it might be cool if a Conjurer could equip his skelly pet with summoned weapons. This might provide some meaningful choice between using a skeleton versus an elemental aside from just the basic Elementalist vs. Necromancer choice.

 

Another interesting idea (again, stolen directly from EverQuest) would be a Reclaim Energy spell—the Conjurer could activate this spell to dismiss his pet, instantly regaining the Magicka originally spent summoning it. Potentially useful for switching pets if, for example, a fire pet was useful for ranged DPS, and a frost pet was better for tanking.

Edited November 22, 2011 by Tair

[frenchcheese]

I am actually working on the conjuration stuff. I want to add all the 'daedric' items to the list of 'bound' spells. I have already completed a bound dagger spell and I have made a mod that overhauls the mystic binding perk by adding two more ranks to it. I would also like to look at the conjured creatures eventually but for now my life is quite busy. Edited December 11, 2011 by frenchcheese