[hide=] You are a disgrace to high levels. How on earth you even have any patience to play Runescape at all with that attitude is beyond me, but Summoning is one of the best updates of the year, if not one of the best updates Runescape has EVER seen. You may train it like RC, but when using your charms to summon you are able to receive exp at up to 750k exp an hour. So while collecting charms may be time consuming, the actual using of them is rediculously fast. Also, if you were a SMART player, you'd train Summoning alongside Slayer, and then you wouldn't spend a dime on the skill. In fact, you'd make profit. Also, the charm drops aren't as random as most rare drops from boss monsters. They have a steady drop rate. I always make between 50-60 Crimsons every Abyssal Demon task of 150-199. So trust me, hun, they aren't that random. Yes, sometimes the familiar (they aren't called summons) can interrupt what you are doing, but if you were a good player you'd know the ways to get around that. I'm not going to divulge simply because you don't deserve to know if you haven't already figured them out, but come on, use your head. Cats were there simply to annoy you when people brought them in. Familiars fight for you, giving them an actual use. Also, yes, one of the only things I agree with you on is the fact that sometimes you don't always click your familiar, but perhaps this could be one of the updates Jagex makes in 2009 like they are talking about. If you want it fixed, tell them instead of griping about it on the tip.it forums. Summoning gives combat levels because EVERY familiar adds to your combat. You have to be a complete moron not to see it. First off, any beast of burden gives you the ability to hold more food, potions, or armor. This means that while on monster hunts, tasks or in pvp, you are at an advantage over someone who is the same combat level WITHOUT a familiar. Healing familiars such as the unicorn or bunyip are essentially free food and can also be considered insane defense. If you take an average of 8 hp (bunyip) or 12 hp (unicorn) per minute away from the damage a monster or player can do to you, without wasting inventory spots on food, then my god, how can that possibly BE any better? That's an insane ability. If they added a "restore hp x8 prayer" you'd use it ALL the time AND wouldn't have any problems knowing that it's adding to your combat because it's prayer, right? Familiars should be able to fight in single combat, I do agree. But Jagex has their reasons for doing this. Whether they think it'd be overpowered or that it would make things too easy or what, it's their decision. And most spots when doing slayer that are single combat you'd be better off using a healing familiar anyway. And to counter your last rediculous remark, did you ever stop think what would happen if Jagex made their defense and hitpoints a lot lower? People WOULD attack them, and they WOULD die, and using a familiar would be absolutely useless. Familiars were designed to be a COMBAT BOOST, much, much, much like prayer. It means that usually 1 out of every 2-4 attacks against monsters or 1 out of every 3-4 attacks against players will hit, and increase your max amount of damage done that turn. Try this little experiment: Go to a training spot where you normally can kill over 100 of the monster per hour and take your best familiar. (In this case, your geyser titan) Make sure it is multi-combat. Use your familiar at all times while attacking the monsters yourself. See how much exp you got and how much exp your familiar got for you (meaning, train with melee and use a ranged familiar, aka your geyser) and see how much it totals up to be. Now, do the same thing for one more hour MINUS the combat familiar. Just you. See how much exp you made. You probably made about the same that YOU made the previous hour, but without the added exp the familiar made for you. For me, this usually totals about 4-12k exp depending on what familiar I use and on what monsters. If I can increase the exp I get by up to 12k an hour with a familiar, then I would say Jagex has every RIGHT to make the skill raise your combat level. So for God's sake, why don't you equip yourself with some intelligence and maybe research things before you really judge. Something in my gut tells me you don't ever take combat familiars out with you to even know how useful they are. It's the players today. A lot of them are like you. Ungrateful for the fact that Jagex is constantly making this game easier for them by adding updates such as Summoning, and never satisfied with what they are given. Go play WOW if that's who you are. [/hide] Actually i agree with trembake, Summoning is a pretty good concept, and would be a great skill, sure theres many non combat familiars and all that, but its really not that useful in combat considering the time it takes to train the skill. For example, i would say summoning is harder than prayer to train, now i have 42 summoning, and 43 prayer. Summoning gives the same combat levels as prayer, and yet prayer is about 10 times more useful for me, the damage is like 7, and when training on monsters it takes 10 years to actually start attacking in which the monsters basically already dead. The AI is stupid, they walk around like idiots, don't attack, can't be used effectively with range and mage, can't be used in a single combat area (why?, its not that strong anyway) and to top it off they do hopeless damage. Sure, if jagex increased damage BY A LOT and decreased HP BY A LOT, people might attack the familiars, but if it was balanced, as opposed to stupidly high defense and hp like it is now, people would use summoning more often. No monster ever brings my familiars even close to death. Summoning charms can only be gained effectively at a higher level, it is in effect a very high level exclusive skill. No other skill i can think of is so limited in its options that you need to either spend millions with ice burst, or have an extremely high level to actually level up properly. Hardly any low level monster has a decent drop rate of charms. It just dosent happen, I'm almost better off waiting for genie lamp's than actually training summoning. Not only that, there is basically no useful combat familiar until level 57, i mean come on, its a combat skill, why is it only half useful when your at 57 summoning. Why are their such limited options in terms of scroll hats, and why are most of them fighter related, where are mage hats? Oh yea i forgot, they don't exist. Try using summoning in practice while training. At least at my level, which is low. I often safe spot monsters, and sunrise the familiar can't help, Or its a single combat area surprise! Familiar can't help again, and if I'm versing something i don't safe spot by the time my familiar attacks, not only dose it normally hit a zero, the monster is basically already dead. So yes, i have a good reason for not liking summoning, it really isn't that useful. Why can't they just attack when you attack, Is it really so hard to do? Why can't they get half way decent AI. Why is it so unbelievably hard to get charms. Sorry, summoning WOULD be a great skill. Unfortunately it isn't.