Alright, I noticed this with BOTH my characters, see my signature. The Argonian is the 2nd playthrough, entirely fresh.

What I noticed on my first play through with my mage, is that my summons usually never appear. What I mean is that despite charging it up and casting it on a valid terrain and distance, my Flame Atronach never appears. Sometimes, it uses my Magicka and STILL the Atronach isn't there. I finally figured out why.

On my second spellsword play through, I was raiding the Lunar base, you know the one at Whiterun. I decided to cast my lowly wolf and what did I notice? Again my Magicka is drained without any appearence. I turned around and I saw it being spawned a good 150 feet away in the Giant Camp. provoking a Mammoth which I battled and WON on level 7, expert level. After that, I got surprised by a Sabre Cat and still managed to survive it.

TL:TR: Does anyone experience buggy Conjuration on the XBOX360 with the 1.2 patch?

I had buggy Conjuration on pc, I think you have to use it DIRECTLY ON THE GROUND LOOKING DOWN, to get anything. and sometimes they spawn 10 seconds after you've casted to spell so...:shrug: no idea

I tried everything really. My mage had the perks to cast it from a distance, it was buggy and unreliable as hell. It also got me killed many a time because I couldn't cast the damn thing. It's still apparant and I can see my Argonian will curse many a day.

I think...this was caused by Spell Absorption, though I have had it happen very occasionally on my Altmer.

Hm, never had that issue here. :confused:

Awww :brokencomputer:

I was planning on playing a conjurer/restorer/alterer on my next playthrough :cryvaultboy:

WHY? WH-AAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIII?

I play on PC and my main is a mage/conjurer. I haven't seen any problems thus far. It may be singled to an xbox issue. But I'll get back later if I experience any issues.

Spell absorption is also a problem. You can absorb your own summons if you are an atronach

So, what I'm gathering from this...If you want to play a mage, master level destro spells are useless (long casting time, no dual cast), and there's like a 50/50 chance conjuration is borked.

The coolest magic I've seen in the game is being a pacifist with illusion/restoration.

It seems to me like the entire magic system could use an overhaul. Right now its pretty much s**t.

I play Xbox. Have never had any problems with conjuration. They are always conjured where my crosshair is pointing.

My mage indeed used the Atronach stone but my spellsword didn't have any absorption active. It exhibits the same errors and such as my mage. Beside, absorbing your own summon is another issue that has to be addressed.

In situations where an enemy has become alert (appearing as a red dot on my compass), but the enemy cannot reach me, I have noticed that a summoning will sometimes cause the summoned creature to appear where they can reach the enemy. Summoned creatures appear in combat mode if the player is viewed as engaged in combat. Maybe the path detection to get to an enemy might be influencing where the summoned creature materializes.

Well I was outside any combat and the reason those Mammoths went after me is because my summon was materializing 150 feet or so BEHIND me. It was a hilarious view granted but in narrow confines or facing multiple mages I want my summon to be cast at will or else I will be eating too many fireballs.

That is very strange.
It has not happened to me outside of combat, so I am not sure what difference between our games might be contributing to your summons acting like that. Out of curiousity, when you put your crosshair over objects is it detecting the object properly, or is it off by a bit. Like for instance, if you put your crosshair over an object it doesn't say anything, put if you move it just to the side it shows the object's name.

I only get this to a very minor level, to me it seems like the game is trying to find suitable places of where to spawn the summoned creature and my guess is there is a glitch you're getting around this functionality in someway.

Doesn't explain how I could cast with a 100% success rate on patch 1.1 and now this requires me to cast it around 5 times on patch 1.2. Something has gone wrong, terrain or combat has nothing to do with it. It usually spawns wherever you point at.