Wow, very great idea and concepts, will there be more types of shards that do different things?
OMG ILLUSION hype
Okay, so Summoning is simpler in a way, because it would involve “spawning” a creature (that already exists in the game) which is agressive towards units that are hostile to you, while being entirely passive if there are no immediate threats to you. The difficult thing about this is that there are basic follower mechanics that need to be involved so that your summoned creature will not crash through your buildings 
Maybe it should be a little “sprite”, or ghost type of thing?
An example:
The summoner is more of a conduit to ancient power, that he can access in small doses and call forth various spirits. These spirits are akin to fairies/sprites/pixies, so they’re a) not large and do not obscure vision, b) hover near the summoner, which eliminates pathing problem. Example abilities:
• Offense: summon a playful pixie that attaches to the target and hinders its movement and targeting. This ability does minimal damage (if does at all), but offers means of control of the battle.
• Defense: summon a fairy that attaches to a friendly target (or the caster himself if there is no one targeted) which shields and applies a healing-over-time effect.
• Exploration: call forth a wandering spirit that takes you for a ride in the targeted direction (essentially a long dash).
Illusion is what I’m excited about too.
This is a vast sphere of magic that can include stealth, while being useful in exploration and defence. Example abilities from the top of my head:
• Offensive: character enters stealth, covered by illusions, which allows him to sneak up on an enemy and perform a surprise attack. Any action except jumps and walking destealths the user (no running while stealthed!).
• Defensive: characted briefly stealths and dashes back for a few blocks, while creating an illusion of himself standing in his original position. This illusion takes x4 damage and does not attack, but it CAN block vision and stand in the way.
• Exploration/Misc: an Illusionist can enchant an empty space to look like it’s occupied with a certain block. This illusion becomes transparent when you’re 1-2 blocks away from it. This way you can make REAL secret entrances that are much harder to find when you don’t know where to look.
What do you think guys?
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First: The idea with the shards is great, the presentation of the idea is really well done.
I usually only read and comment or reply to any thread when I have a good, constructive idea but this time I couldn’t resist to compliment you.
Now while I’m at it; regarding illusion: I had the same basic idea like Zouls a few posts ago and then I remembered something I had seen somewhere before which lead me to the idea I’m about to tell you.(can’t remember where I had seen it though 
) .
I thought about crafting a Block with an illusion enchant (?) that can distort the way the person sees things in an area (maybe screen effects like blurring or spawning random enemies just with less hp so you can just hit them once and the illusion of that monster is destroyed).
This way you could even create spooky forests or towns 
(I must admit I love spooky things).
To summoning spells: I don’t want to offend anyone who likes spirit summoning spells like animal spirits etc., but if there is a possibility to tame wildlife, summoning additional spirits of animals is pointless. All in all, I find animal spirits boring because it is nothing special. It’s just an animal which is a little bit transparent and glowing. The reason why I mentioned especially animal spirits is that in few games I had played (even in animes I watched xD), characters, who were able to summon many different beings, sticked to animals. Some might think now that I might not like animals etc. but the thing I’m trying to point out is: This is a ,literally infinite fantasy world, where you can do whatever you want, why wouldn’t you better try to imagine something that doesn’t exist like, I don’t know, a 3 headed stone golem who “swims” in the earth (yes, I thought it up the moment I was writing so sorry for being not so witty, it’s just an example xD)
I’ve played a lot of games until now and saw many great ideas which were implemented well, or bad, and in most of them, something was missing.
I’ll try to explain what I mean: Imagine that you took mage as your class. Until now everything is fine, you’ve got a lot of spells with cool, shiny animations. In the end, you are forced to use just a few out of these spells because these are in the end just better.
That’s what I like about DarkRepulsor’s idea. The Shards can be used for different things, not only for battle. You have a wide repertoire of Shards but all of them have their own field of usage.
Like I said before, this is just my opinion and addition to his great post… I think I should learn photoshop 
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How about if each tier shared is crafted from two or more of the previous tier’s shards?
2small =1medium, 2medium =1large, etc.
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I still think each time magic comes up and summoning and spells, etc is all too often dumbed down to simplistic systems that ultimately destroy the array of possibilities that could be achieved.
While I agree different types of shards is a brilliant idea, I think its important to remember that this is no form of traditional magic system when it is explained in the existing lore.
Where are the calm shards opposing the fury shards
Reduces attack speed of others
Reduces attack speed range for others
Reduces damage taken
Also While I love your idea’s id love to mix shards to whole new lvls just an example fury with growth you gain self healing but attack speed increases as your health lowers
Or Seer shard to detect nearby hostiles with vortex shards that decrease enemies seeing you
The more enemies nearby the stronger the decreased light value
Anyway really hope your idea makes it followed up by combining of gems/shards/skills into awesome cool stuff
You could add some interesting complexity and utility to this shard system by adding a component that flips a shards polarity.
Ex, transmute a fury shard with (what ever thing you make up to do this) and it becomes a tranquility shard with. Seer> vortex, etc.
I had an Idea based around the combining theme, but with RGB. Each color would have a different aspect
Red= Giving
Blue=Taking
Green= Sharing
then the secondary colors would have aspects similar to the combined affects of there parts
Purple= Giving and Taking= sacrificing to steal (ex. sac life to damage opponent
Yellow= Taking and Sharing= condensing
orange= Giving and Sharing=multiplying
finally, black and white would denote negative or positive effects. Combine the basic colors with black and white and you get spells
ex: black red= basic damage spell, black white= basic heal.
shards could be combined with items, or used as one shot spells.
Well I was agreeing and re-afirming that that specific idea was part of the shard system already.
I love the concept OP, this is definitely what I had in mind for a resource based magic system.
Fits oort, makes sense, very well thought out. +1
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But to follow the theme or non usual elements then how about using Aether?
i love the idea of it, although its pretty confusing xD
To step away from “usual elements” we first need to define what these are exactly 
I presume we’re talking about basic elements (fire, water, earth, air), and also light and shadow/darkness.
An interesting concept might also appear if we explore some other spheres (except those already mentioned in the original post), such as Movement and Stasis, for example. Movement branch coveres dashes/blinks and projectiles, while Stasis might be focused on shielding and control over battlefield (applying slows and roots).
the dashes and blinks are already there, you shouldnt focus too much on 1 element only doing one thing but rather mix them in, so there would be movement spread over the different elements.
so all elements kinda have utility, defense and offense. some more than others ofc.
but yeah ben told us to move away from the basic elements that you mentioned
the word i think you are looking for is kinetic instead of movement, which sounds better and allows to cover more. i think it would be cool to use that the game is actually build on physics.
Creating too many categories could be bad too: the abilities would be spread out too thinly. Maybe it’s better to focus on a base (like the utility/offense/defense that you mentioned) for each Shard type to shape them out.
some will focus more on some than others
like lets say the fury shards, they seem to focus on attacking faster or hitting harder or allowing to take more dmg, that is offense and defense focused, it might also allow you to enrage to run faster and jump higher for a minute or so, hence also allowing utility 
so i think the different elements would have some of each type of spell and not just one, and not just only combat.
This is exactly what I’ve been talking about in my earlier posts: each Shard type should have an impact on each of these activities.
ohhhhh. i thought you meant making a movement shard element hence a branch. my bad.
Haven’t read the whole post yet so forgive me if it’s already been said but maybe if the same type of magic shard is used in every piece of equipped equipment than a better more powerful ability is unlocked or all abilities that that particular type of shard give are boosted
Also with an invisible ability it would be cool if a ‘vision’ of the player continues to walk to where you were heading like in Halo where you point at where you want your hologram to go and it goes there but instead if the player staying visible the player turns invisible with a ‘vision’ of the player continuing on like nothing happened (hope I explained it well enough), great for ambushing unwary players
a hologram, decoy or illusion, yeah i know what ya meant.