I decided to make a thread for this type of build specifically, as I wanted a bit of discussion on it. Anyone else tried such a skill set?

I figured the best skill tree for one would be Witchcraft, as you can boost your pet's abilities will debuffing the enemy. Then I have a point or two in each of the other elements to summon any creature type. Seems good right? I went with mainly intelligence, then speed and perception decently close behind for the action points and whatnot. This build seemed great at first, but my lack of Constitution meant any enemy that targets me, can pretty much kill me in a couple hits. This proved worse as the game goes on. It also doesn't help that debuffs don't work on "boss" enemies like those big, hulking beasts from the void. Debuffs always seem to fail on them. Should I be spamming willpower loss skills to help fight this?

Any ideas or input on pet summoning would be appreciated. Thanks.

Wayfarer seemed to be intended as a druid/ranger-cross pet-friendly class to me, using ranged weapons/elemental arrows with pets running backup and interference. Starts out just a hair beefier than witch for early survival.

Maybe you need to gear swap to boost con over, say, perception.

Honestly, early on pet summing felt pretty good and easy. Later in the game, it feels like they all focus me, not my summon, and can kill me in a couple hits.

As for using a summon + ranged weapons, that actually sounds really good. Maybe it's better to be fully offensive in this game? My Witch character supporting his pets seemed to start off great, but lost power later in the game. Too much "baby-sitting" myself or the summon, I think.

Larian made enemy AI smart enough to target casters first. :)

Are you running as "Lone Wolf"? Can you rebalance things a bit with henchmen/companions?

Larian is a/the developer I assume? He sure did. Wish there was a taunt skill then.

What I did with my two heroes is this - I had my main guy as a de/buff pet summoner with stuff like Far Out and Glass Canon in order to always be able to support my pets from a good range and with many action points. No real attacks of his own, except for Destroy Summon and Ice Wall. My second character is a gal I call Shani the Shield (named and modeled after the cutie from first Witcher game, heh). She's pure tank with Man-at-Arms skills like Crushing Fist to support. No element skills for her though. Maybe I should have gotten hydrosophist, but I didn't want to waste points on Intelligence that could have gone to Constitution. She felt overly tanky for sure the whole game, as she rarely ever died though.

I'm about to restart my game again, hoping these new patches fixed some issues I ran into. Not sure if I'll do the ranger + summon thing, though sounds interesting. I do like the idea of my partner being full tank/supportive though.

Ohhhhh, Glass Cannon...that would explain it right there.

You take that back! I didn't make a mistake! Them's fighting words!

Okay maybe I did.. I guess it's probably only good for mages that do damage, not support. Hey, maybe that's the only thing I'll change then!

- Edit -
So this'll be my new guy. I think I shouldn't have gone with perception on him last time, and should have had some constitution. I'll basically lead with Intelligence. I feel good about this build.

Glass Cannon builds need Con and Speed (keeping Con just ahead of Speed for AP efficiency) along with Int in the case of mages. Perception doesn't help much.

As for summons, each elemental type is available at some point via its respective skill line, and earth magic also gives access to three beast summons: spider (poison), wolf (cold), and bloodswarm (not sure about its element). Witchcraft provides two skeleton summons. All of them also provide various buffs that can be used on the summons (and on other characters), though the effects vary from magic type to magic type.

If you really want a summoning focus and don't want to try to be an everything-caster then Earth and Witchcraft (which is exactly what the Witch starts with) are a solid combination since they'll give you access to a much greater range of summons.

Yeah, pretty close to exactly what I was thinking.

Though, I'd think to keep it this way: Intel > Con = Spd. I wouldn't think a pet summoner needs to be THAT tanky. Constitution and speed are up there to help with health and action points, while Intelligence leads to help with spell proficiency.

And it is too beneficial to have a lil' of every element. Things like Smokescreen (Fire), Teleportation (Air), and Ice Wall (Water) help keep the enemy away.

Glass Cannon means you won't be tanky no matter what you do, but the massive boost to per-turn APs will be wasted if you don't keep Constitution (which determines max AP capacity) up, and boosting Con also makes you a little less fragile than you would be (and the enemy AI *will* take advantage of it if you leave your health low).

In my game i had a character with lots of health but not much physical armour, it was usually target by melee fighter

The other didn't have that much health, but lots of physical armour, was practically completely ignored by melee fighters

Also remember to use rubies as much as you can, it boost all elemental resistance of the armour pieces is used upon by 20%, and if your resistance go over 100 your charter get healed by that damage instead of hurt

I found it pretty useful, especially later or, as you can use your resistance to heal yourself while your spellcaster literally rain down Fire/Lighting/Ice on your opponent head

I just started this game, so I don't know everything yet, and some things I don't quite understand (likethe +1 things you get during dialogues - i.e. +1 romanticism for the guy who jumped off the cliff). No idea what those affect.

I restarted once now fairly early after reaching the town and being not happy with a couple choices I made, and understanding how to use the environment better at that point. I started with a Witch and a melee tank.

I restarted with a Witch and changed one of her spells to "midnight oil", and for other character I chose a ranger, which can act as a mage using fire arrows, water arrows, etc. So for these early battles I've been covering the enemies with oil, then lighting them on fire with a fire arrow. Working great so far (especially with the arrow ability that hits multiple enemies when i need it). Also the ranger started with +1 to crafting and blacksmith and I switched a trait to the one that raises those to +2 right outta the gate. So he'll fill that role as well (the ability to craft those special arrows is very nice). I plan on hiring a melee tank and thief when i get that far to round out the team.

I haven't used summons yet (I think I changed the summon spider to midnight oil) so I could still use the witch to buff/debuff as well. So sorry for the off-topic post. I plan on using summons later as I gain levels. I think I'm going to stick to Earth instead of spreading it out as the ranger seems to fill the mage role with his special arrows.

Love this game so far

It is a glass cannon without points in CON and no decent CC to reduce incoming damage. :D

Since the limit is one summon per character, you can't really make a whole "summoner build" the way you can in some other games. Even support builds get to unlock damage skills for free. The only issue is hotkey bar real estate.

You could make sure most of your characters have an up-to-date summon, and then buff everything with your support main. But even then, a buffed up Madora will wreck more faces than just about anything you can possibly summon.

It's been a while. I'm trying to remember if there are AoE support skills. i think high-level Earth skills maybe? Maybe a few others? Basically the only way to improve over buffing Madora is to hit more targets for free. Unless I'm wrong.