Thoughts on Conjuration

[Dredi]

Okay!

Now to be clear as a preface for this, this is not a "PLZ BUFF" or "PLZ NERF" post.
Comments here come from playing a conjuror with access to multiple themes of conjuration and is mostly just trying to identify outliers, summons which are uniquely underpowered, overpowered or have bork'd stats.
I've already discussed some of this at length with SFP but I figured I'd put my thoughts down in writing.

Elemental
(This speaks for Ice, Fire, Water, Wind and Earth)

These are for the most part fairly balanced as a theme in and among themselves with the exception of ice which does not seem to scale especially well, Ice summons also do not literally scale very well and can become gigantic by tier 4-5.
Earth Elementals are incorrectly marked as being "Outsider" race, rather than elemental.
Earth is perhaps the most consistantly strong of all of the elementals, but it has the significant downside of taking up alot of room which tends to balance it out.

Issues with Ice Elements: The ice aura they havedoes not scale, either in DC or damage. Since the DC is 10 and the damage (appears) to be 1d6, this prevents it from really being impactful at later levels.
My thoughts for this: Ice elementals should effectifvely be earth elementals in terms of their effectiveness (Large monsters, should be bulky HP wise but not AC wise, mostly bludgeoning with SOME cold damage) but slightly weaker physically to earth, given it has the aura.
Overall I'd reccomend a bit of a buff to them regarding physical damage or a buff to their aura. But it depends on how strong you want the stream to be, currently its difficult to obtain and weak which is typically a combination we dont want.

Abberations
Abberations 1,2 and 3 I feel could use some rebalancing.

Abberation 1 is perhaps the strongest tier 1 summon in the game. Not especially strong upfront, but it is a ranged attacker that does not rely on AC or Spell resistance, which means its fairly consistant damage.
Abberation 2 is perhaps the weakest tier 2 minion in the game. It has average AB and HP, low AC, No spells and its damage is 1d2-2 (Yes, max 1 damage) with no other modifiers.
Abberation 3 is obviously very specific in its usage, but 18hp and a low AC with no concealment leave a little be desired. I'd suggest either enhancing its spellcasting (1 spell currently) or just bump its HP a little so its not killed by attacks of opportunity
Abberation 4 is.. Ehh. A bit below average, but certainly functional.

Astral
Astral obviously is much weaker in direct combat strength than other themes - for a very good reason.
However, I feel that the combat damage is perhaps a little too nerfed, especially of later ones (level 4 summon, damage is 1d3 +2)  further  Astral 4's Bolt attack does not actually do anything and is currently bugged even on a failed save (I believe this should be entangled)

Dogs
Each stage I'd say is fairly universally weak across the board - and it pains me to say that. I figure this is probably intentional, but a tiny little buff to this theme I think would go a long way to making them more viable than the base elements. When you consider they lack immunities that say Illusions or Elementals have (Mind-effecting being a major one) this puts them pretty weak, if still cool :)

Illusions
Overall i'm not going to comment on nstrength as I feel its in a good place. But I feel the races of each of the summons could be reworked (Should probably be Construct?) Some are listed as undead, some as magical beasts? - they're all over the place for something which should be Illusions.

[Easy To Remember]

I've more or less been using exclusively the dog theme, and I'd say they're underwhelming enough that I wouldn't do so if it wasn't thematically appropriate for my current PC. They have very high saving throws, at tier 4 and higher especially, to make up for a total lack of any other defensive quirks, but compare them to elementals at almost every tier and there's no contest. That said, it's not super egregious considering that dogs cost fewer summoning points than most themes, and it works out if their niche is meant to be cheap swarms.

Tiers 1 and 2 are very weak, tiers 3 and 4 have solid use, but the Mottled Planar Hound at tier 5 is quite a letdown; he's cute and cool, a good dog, but he uses his spit twice and his spells once each and then proceeds to weakly 1 APR melee for most of his time conjured.

The tier 6 is terrifying, solid within its niche especially if you toss a few buffs on it, and has an awesome model, but I'm not entirely certain its AB or APR actually increase when it casts Divine Power. It's difficult to test as, also, it often just refuses to ever cast it. Still though, a good dog.

As for other themes, I mostly agree regarding Astral. But the theme also has the big advantage of the summoned creatures lacking collision, letting you avoid boxing in your allies while five superimposed summons stacked on one another all bop down the same target. Tier 3 for Astral in particular, Summoned Psychic Hound, is very strong thanks to the spell it casts and is also, coincidentally, a good dog.

[Hierophant]

I haven't gotten far in the shadow theme, and tier 3 seems quite strong. Though I feel like tier 2 should not be a slinger, and should instead be a melee summon, and tier 1 should be slingers.

[Astegard]

Abberation tier 2 also has sneak attack. Need to look at all feats they have.
Some cool hidden stuff in there.

[Dredi]

I will concede that yes, Abberation does have Sneak attack 1d6. But I maintain my position, that definately doesnt redeem it.

[Dredi]

A little more

Celestial: Celestial 4 and 5 are both True neutral  -  Also, I am uncertain how 4 Fits into the theme, it is also one of the weakest tier 4's.