Guild Wars 2

Hello.
I have an iteresting idea to tweak summons in all of the game modes.

So here is list of actual summons:
- Elementals (Elementalist)
- Spirit Weapons (Guardian)
- Minions (Necromancer)
- Fellow Thieves (Thief)

(Mesmer’s clones and phantasms skipped becouse they are working in good way)

Problem:
Summons deal damage same damage, no matter of player stats.

- Hey, isn’t that great ?
Actually in some part this is great, in other part it’s bad. Why ?
Let’s take a look at 2 player’s:

1. Jake is Necromancer Minionmancer with maximum possible deffence stats (Healing Power, Vitality, Toughnes). He doesn’t deal much damage at all, but his little helpers (minions) deal nice dps while he is hard do kill.
Effect: Full bunker build deal “big” damage.

2. Kate is also Necromancerer Minionmancer but she played lot’s of pve and she love’s to wear berserker amulet. In PvE her minions doesn’t deal much damage so she must swap it to another build. In PvP she deals real nice damage by her own, but minions can’t critical hit so lots of her stats is wasted. Additionaly enemy quickly understands that she has less surviability than her summons -> She’s being targeted.
Effect: Full “glass cannon” deals less damage than she should be.

Ok so how to fix it ?
My idea is simply:
- Reduce damage of all summons by 20%
- Make summons scale from player’s Precision and Ferocity -> Let them critical hit

This will nerf the very bunkerish summonners and buff some more offensive ones.

Ps. Sorry for my bad language, english isn’t my native one.

Makes sense I suppose. Would the traits that effect the summons damage still be available? I know that Necromancer has one that increases minion damage a percent, I’m assuming Gaurdian does too.

@WhiteRose
Of course it would be still available.
Guardian Spirit weapons need more traits to change their role. Like new 2 traits to engineer turrets and now they are awsome on PvP.

So wait you’re asking that players who are given utilities that matches their stats should be nerfed because it matches their stats and not another?
It’s like asking for conditions to scale with power since when power users use condition skills they don’t get much damage from it but players with condition damage do.

Agreed, though while also bunkers zoobuilds should deal less dmg their summons should also benefit from toughness and vitality.

And traits that reduce incoming dmg for the spawns should be changed into reduction to AoE damage, making fights in more benefit for people who solely focus one of the spawns in order to cripple a part of a summoner build rather than for instance a staff ele destroying all spawns quickly and effortlessly with meteor shower.

Let’s not skirt around the issue, this isn’t a tweak, it is a nerf to all bunker and condi based summon builds, and at best a way to make zerker builds better (even though zerker summoner builds will never be very good). The second you introduce scaling, you set a break even point: how much power/precision/ferocity do they need to equal what they do now. No matter what you set that to, you end up nerfing and/or buffing certain builds.

The reality is that scaling doesn’t fix anything that people want it to. Zerker builds don’t work as full summoners in this game because you need a lot of personal defense for the summons to do their effects over time, but do you want zerker necro with bone minions dealing 6k damage on a 20s CD because you made Putrid Explosion crit now?

Scaling doesn’t make summon builds better, it just shifts things. If you nerf the damage tanky builds do, you simply remove full summon builds from the game (trust me, I understand them well enough to say that as a fact), if you buff damage, you simply increase abuse cases of gimmicky summon builds dealing tons of damage.