Guild Wars 2

Hi ArenaNet.

Probably everyone knows that minions in high-end pve such like dungeons are pretty useless. They die fast and deal subpar damage.
My suggestion is to split them even more in pvp and pve versions. I suggest copying stats of necro to minions.

For example, full berserker necro should have their minions deal significantly more dmg yet still have the same vitality/toughness as they have now.
Apart from that, some minion command skills should break stun from necro/give him boons (like exploding a bone minion giving 3 might + 5 sec fury etc)

The goal is to introduce more build variations, because in current meta there are like 3 master-skills and most of the others are situational/useless.

This would then have to be done for spirit weapons, elemental pets, ranger pets, possibly aspects of mesmer clones, and turrets. The you open way to many other needs, such as the problem of turrets being immobile. I am not saying your wrong by any means. I am suggesting that the problem may be a much deeper rabbit hole then it initially appears.

You are right, though it doesn’t mean nothing should be done with that. for me, it’s even more important now, it would open new builds for other classes as well

coglin.1867:

This would then have to be done for spirit weapons, elemental pets, ranger pets, possibly aspects of mesmer clones, and turrets. The you open way to many other needs, such as the problem of turrets being immobile. I am not saying your wrong by any means. I am suggesting that the problem may be a much deeper rabbit hole then it initially appears.

Necromancer needs this buff; necros are easily the worst dungeon class, other classes are fine.

P.S. rangers pets do have stats relative to the ranger.

Jelzouki.4128:

coglin.1867:

This would then have to be done for spirit weapons, elemental pets, ranger pets, possibly aspects of mesmer clones, and turrets. The you open way to many other needs, such as the problem of turrets being immobile. I am not saying your wrong by any means. I am suggesting that the problem may be a much deeper rabbit hole then it initially appears.

Necromancer needs this buff; necros are easily the worst dungeon class, other classes are fine.

P.S. rangers pets do have stats relative to the ranger.

No, they don’t. Mesmer Clones and Phantasms inherit stats from the Mesmer, and Minions inherit condition duration and condition damage from the Necro, but no other form of companion does.

Minions and other pets having independant stats allows for much more consistent minion behavior while also allowing some builds to actually function. They do not need to inherit (more) stats from their masters.

Though Blood Fiend inheriting the Necro’s healing power would be very, very nice, since it’s leech attack scales at 66% of its healing power.

The big problem is that surviving in this game is designed around use of the dodge function. This means that anything that cannot dodge is at a huge defensive disadvantage right out of the gate.

I think a good way to approach this would be to make pets, turrets, clones, minions, etc. have an innate resistance to AoE and cleave attacks.

For example, non-player targets should only take 33% of an AoE’s damage (so an AoE that does 1,000 damage would only do 333 damage to a pet).

Similarly, unless the non-player target is the intended target of a cleave attack (i.e. the target that is selected by the boss), the cleave should only do 33% damage to the non-player target.

This defensive boost would allow non-player targets to survive boss encounters long enough to actually do damage.

Many bosses use attacks that will 1 hit all of your minions even with that damage resistance.

Point you guys seems not to understand is that a glass cannon necro using minion should be rewarded with glass cannon damage like minions and same is to say for enginer and ranger. The issue is that the moment you play summoner you are automaticaly a bunker because none of those stat are tied to the master save for the useless stuff no one cares about. I bet lot of people would rage less against minion masters in pvp if they actualy didnt constantly run dire, soldier or cleric due to having no viable glass option.

While minion damage would not always be optimal due to boss aoe etc (again no build is perfect) they would still be a viable build pvewise for as long as the pets are up and hiting and actualy open up new possibility especialy in the case of less aoe centered boss such as mossman who prety much does single target strikes and would waste the majority of his attack hiting a minion at random.

kyubi.3620:

Point you guys seems not to understand is that a glass cannon necro using minion should be rewarded with glass cannon damage like minions and same is to say for enginer and ranger. The issue is that the moment you play summoner you are automaticaly a bunker because none of those stat are tied to the master save for the useless stuff no one cares about. I bet lot of people would rage less against minion masters in pvp if they actualy didnt constantly run dire, soldier or cleric due to having no viable glass option.

Why should they get glass-cannon damage out of minions? If you wanted glass cannon damage, you would spec for more damage (wells for utilities), not meatbags.

kyubi.3620:

Point you guys seems not to understand is that a glass cannon necro using minion should be rewarded with glass cannon damage like minions and same is to say for enginer and ranger.

Why does it have to? I mean so much things aren’t tied to armor stats(boons, signets, non damaging condition, blocks, evades, invulnerabilities,…), so why should minions?
Because it does damage? I don’t see why it should, I mean defense has also a set of statless stuff, but that’s accepted.

Theres a defrence between damaging tools and defensive ability. 50% to 80% of a summoner class damage comes from the pets, Its not normal that said pet dont rely on the character gear as it automaticaly force said character to be a bunker or a very bad damager. I dont see why a phantasm mesmer who clutter the map with ’’summons’’ (because yes no mather how you put it out these are summons as they deal damage AND eat damage) should be the only class to have a AI build wich can be scaled with the player stat.

Armor stat isnt tied to anything actualy and thats totaly out of deal that anything becomes armor related when i talk stat scaling I mean power precision condition damage and critical damage aka the 4 main damage related stat so that pet spammer no longuer are forced to run a ’’bunker’’ build to maximise effectiveness. Less armor and tankyness more damage please.

Before anyone even mention power necro minionmancer ill just remind that this build could as well just NOT run minion and do twice the DPS with just the same amount of survivability. No mather how you put them minions are subpar to other utility (traited or not) and only are worthwhile because of the CC wich as a small reminder was nerfed to oblivion when flesh golem got its charge ’’fixed’’ Golem multihit charge behing MM biggest source of damage. I wont also mention that what makes this build even half viable is the ridiculus amount of self healing provided by the blood trait line and that running any MM build witheout blood of the master is somewhat suicide (this force us into running bunker gear).

You want less necro and engy bunker around? then make choosing dps over armor an actual serious option.

Plexxing.2978:

Many bosses use attacks that will 1 hit all of your minions even with that damage resistance.

Actually very few bosses do, minions have significantly more HP than most players in PvE. Traited Flesh Golem has around 33k HP IIRC, as well as heavy armor.

I really think that the summoned npcs should have a % of the owner status. This implies to Spirit Weapons; Elementals; Minions; Spirits; Turrets…

In pve whenever you dodge your minions evade as well.

Done.

Mikau.6920:

I really think that the summoned npcs should have a % of the owner status. This implies to Spirit Weapons; Elementals; Minions; Spirits; Turrets…

God no.

I think EVERY skill needs different versions for different game modes, would make things a little more balanced.

Holl.3109:

I think EVERY skill needs different versions for different game modes, would make things a little more balanced.

Pretty much, because mobs don’t play by character rules.

they drop damage that make any zerker drool, while taking hit after hit that would wipe bunker builds on the spot.

Never mind that nearly none of the big PVE fights come anywhere close to the capture point mechanic that is so central to the SPVP focused character balance.

At this point PVE and SPVP may well be two different games that happens to share art assets.

digiowl.9620:

Holl.3109:

I think EVERY skill needs different versions for different game modes, would make things a little more balanced.

Pretty much, because mobs don’t play by character rules.

they drop damage that make any zerker drool, while taking hit after hit that would wipe bunker builds on the spot.

Never mind that nearly none of the big PVE fights come anywhere close to the capture point mechanic that is so central to the SPVP focused character balance.

At this point PVE and SPVP may well be two different games that happens to share art assets.

Yup, i dont get why Anet doesnt go through with the idea.

Because it creates a nightmare for their team. The way the game deals with skills being different in each game mode is by having copies of that skill, same with how traits work. Just as an example, Necromancer staff has 5 normal skills in the database. It also has a sPvP only version of its 2 skill, bringing it to 6 total. Greater Marks then has a copy of every skill except the AA (I assume they don’t change out the AA since it doesn’t change), bringing it to 11 total. Soul Marks do the same, 16 total, and Staff Mastery as well, 21 total. Now those 21 are just the basic 6 skills, plus an extra version for every mark for each trait, except each of those versions only use 1 trait. So now you need one that is a combination of Soul Marks + Staff Mastery, Staff Mastery + Greater Marks, Greater Marks + Soul Marks, and all 3 together, so 36 total skills, for a single weapon set and its associated traits. Spiteful Marks might do the same thing, which would then increase it by a lot, since you’d need a bunch of extra combos (I believe it would bring it to 76 total), although I’m not sure how they deal with modifiers to specific skills instead of flat damage modifiers (since it only works on marks), however with how Lingering Curses replaces the skills with new ones that have 33% increased base duration it is entirely possible it works this way.

Then lets say they split it for each game mode. This would take all of those skills in the database, and multiply them by about 3 (slightly less, since staff 2 is already split). Every trait would then not just reference 5 skills in the database plus their respective combinations with other traits, it would reference 12 skills plus combinations. Essentially the more combinations you need, you end up multiplicatively increasing the amount of skills that the database needs to work with.

Simply put: it is a TON of work for them. It makes every single balance change harder, it makes bugs far more likely, it makes patches slower, and it lowers the general player experience by making you re-learn how a skill works in each game mode. The benefits of being able to balance each skill separately are arguably heavily out-weighed by how difficult and resource-consuming it would be. That’s not to say there isn’t any merit to doing it sometimes when absolutely necessary, but it isn’t a simple change.

Note: the stuff about staff isn’t strictly true number wise, I figured out. But its too much work to figure it out. Some traits change the database, some don’t, it’s weird.

“Hi, Anet, my minions do not res me when I am downed, mostly because they were downed, too. I am running FotM and TotM. I am happy that Reannimator no longer corrupts my mind while sleeping. However, I cannot help feeling insecure when I compare my damage and sustain to other OP professions lIke Ranger and Engi.”