Guild Wars 2

Talking with my guild mates we find that minions have very little to offer in dungeons for many reasons.

1. There are a lot of AOEs in high end dungeons, and many bosses have to spam constant AOEs to present themselves as a threat. This translates into minions barely getting time to deal damage, or spending most of their time dead.

2. Minions get in the way of a LOT of mechanics be it manipulating aggro or other effects. For example: summoning any sort of minion in the lupicus fight will make him heal himself a LOT due to his life siphoning AOE, they may get in the way of the Arah path 4 sparks boss, cause the moletariate/ice elemental to create additional AOEs, ect.

3.Minions offer extremely little as far as utility is concerned. You get one melee range AOE blind on a 20 second cooldown, a 4 second single target immobilize on a (50) second cooldown which doesn’t deal extra damage AND has a 1 second cast time (seriously?), and 2 passive single target 1-2 second cripples every 3 attacks or so on the flesh golem and bone fiend. The flesh golem charge, bone minion putrid explosion, and flesh wurm teleport are the saving graces here.

4. The Ai is still very iffy, the melee minions afk a lot, which hinders the ability to use the bone minions at all.

5.traits: the minion traits ONLY buff the minions themselves. This leads to them falling off a lot in the later level dungeons as they spend most of their time dead. By that point you will probably be better off putting your traits elsewhere to get more damage out of your abilities that aren’t dead.

All in all, minions die too easily and leave the necromancer wanting heavily while they’re dead. Minion traits or the minions themselves need to offer more while they’re alive or give the necromancer something when they’re dead in order for them to be viable for PvE, and they need to attack your targets on the spot to work in PvP to any extent.

note; all changes will be in bold text.

Training of the Master: increases minion damage by 30%. Additionally, increases the master’s damage by 2% per minion utility on cooldown.

Minion Master: reduces minion cooldown by 20%, additionally reduces minion command ability cooldown by 20%.

Flesh of the Master: increases minion health by 50%. Additionally increases the master’s vitality by 2% per minion utility on cooldown.

Vampiric minions: Minions siphon health. Additionally, the master also siphons health for his allies based on the number of minion utilities on cooldown. (if 5 utilities are on cooldown, then he siphons 25 health for each ally in range.)

reanimator: summon a jagged horror when an enemy dies or when a minion dies. (30 second cooldown)

Rigor mortis: instant cast time, 4 second root to the blood fiend and target, 40 second cooldown.

Haunt: 14 second cooldown teleport to target and blind adjacent targets. 3 second duration.

Flesh golem: Finally learned how to swim.

Lich form: No longer kills all minions.

YES!!!! but why stop there. i long for the days is gw1 where you were playing in for aspenwood and when you see a minion master, you need ALL of your team to help kill him/her….. times have changed. Minion masters are now a joke, they need to be the ultimate undead commander like they once were.

i like some of the improvements, however life of the master seems to good. 10% extra hp is kinda nuts. 10% extra vitality, maybe.

However, i would still much prefer if they dumped the “commands” all together, and went back to the gw1 system of MM’s. Where you could summon as many minions as your death magic trait line(or in this case, soul reaping) would allow and as many dead bodies were around, and there could be duplicates. This mean you would only be required to main bar one minion and could still rock an army of bone fiends. Or you could go more diverse and main bar 2 minions. Obviously in this system some of the minions would need a rework.

Blood Fiend: Keep the same, but make it’s sacrifice ability heal your other active minions as well as yourself. Limit to one at a time.

Bone Fiend: Ranged attacker, attacks inflict 1 second bleed attacks once every two seconds.

Bone minions: Summons two bone minions per dead body used mainly for death nova

Shadow Fiend: Has a PbAoE with a slightly higher hp/def stat then most other minions.

Flesh Wurm: Immobile Siege minion, has a ranged AoE KB (1s) attacks once every 7 seconds. relatively squishy if focused.

Flesh Golem: 1 active at a time, Extremely tanky minion, charges at foes once every 20 seconds for a 1.5 sec KD, otherwise cripples with auto attacks.

I want to avoid the requirement of dead bodies whenever possible. That system in GW1 was very limiting when it came to dungeons, leading to most (human player) necros having to run spiteful spirit to be useful.

I also want to retain the command abilities as they keep the minion master highly active (as far as the actions he needs to preform).

SwickHobo.5096:

i like some of the improvements, however life of the master seems to good. 10% extra hp is kinda nuts. 10% extra vitality, maybe.

duly noted.

striker.3704:

I want to avoid the requirement of dead bodies whenever possible. That system in GW1 was very limiting when it came to dungeons, leading to most (human player) necros having to run spiteful spirit to be useful.

I also want to retain the command abilities as they keep the minion master highly active (as far as the actions he needs to preform).

SwickHobo.5096:

i like some of the improvements, however life of the master seems to good. 10% extra hp is kinda nuts. 10% extra vitality, maybe.

duly noted.

I always brought a MM in dungeons in gw1 personally, there never seemed to be a shortage of dead bodies. Imo if its limiting in anything it’d be sPvP.

I do like the command abilities, i just think its a shame that for you to be a minion master you have to devote everything to it. Considering we are “Necromancers” i.e, masters of death i think every necro should have undead with him. As long as the command abilties exist its impossible to have a minion army without devoting all your utility slots.

I miss the gw1 days of actually needing corpses to make minions and of them slowly decaying and you fighting to heal them and keep them alive, was so much fun in gw1.