Guild Wars 2

So… what do you think about summoned units? I feel there’s some way devs could improve’em. I’ll be refering to ALL kinds of summoned units, so those summoned by runes too.

Atm there’s many kinds of summoned units (there are some that match multiple kinds):
-AI controlled moving units
-Stationary-like turret-behaving units
-Kamikaze units
-Effect triggering units

Now each category has its pros and cons but due to how the game works they don’t do very well in things such as dungeons, wvw and sometimes pvp.

Pros:
-They usually provide extra damage
-They are the perfect spike for immobilized enemies
-They make perfect meat-shields
-Annoy enemies in 1v1 (mostly due to targeting+camera issues though)
-They usually follow our target

Cons:
-VERY poor AI
-Usually target something you are not
-Will pull mobs in pve
-Due to usually bugged behavior might try to attack killed mobs or indestructible objects
-Will usually get AoE-d easily
-VERY low hp pool
-Some summons won’t even scale or don’t have skills scaling on your stats
-They usually waste too much time to get from enemyA to enemyB when switching targets.

Now I’ve come up with a couple ideas to improve’em in general

-Summoned units are unaffected by conditions and their hp bars are removed, instead they have charges and each charge is consumed upon hit (taken by the summon).

-Most summoned units could benefit an “upon-cast” effect which triggers once you summon the unit, thus granting at least one effect before fading into damage.

-Most summoned units could benefit an “upon-death” effect which triggers once the unit dies in order to give more meaning to summoned units with less/least charges

-More traits involving summoned units, maybe turning those that already exist into “affecting all summoned units in general” would be cool and might solve some rune-summons effects while allowing better/more build diversity.

-A new allied units section in the options which allows managing unit’s positions (like staying close to us) and behaviors (like heroes in gw1, they had to be microed sometime but those “aggressive” and “peaceful” behaviors might be what we need).

Now don’t you guys think necros are just too cool to have an everlasting golem? that’s kinda unfair considering I made an asura expecting to have a golem too (was day1) only to discover it’d last 40s max with crazy long CD.

What about this, we could make some summoned units work like pets in GW1, all that’s needed is having the skill/rune equipped and the unit will follow us, respawning out of combat if dead.

So what do you guys think? discuss how you feel about your summons, racials, runes’, class-specific and whatnot.

Seeing the lack of responses I suggest a mod moves this topic in the “suggestions” section of the forum and maybe change the topic name to “summoned units suggestion”.