Guild Wars 2

Nothing big, as I currently enjoy playing a MM in pvp I would like a nice red post confirming that minion and pet A.I. are being worked on for HoT, so ranger and necros can put more trust into their little zoo when facing other players.

By all six abandoned gods, please. I was really disappointed by playing minion-master. Nevermind that the minions don’t even look all that great, but they’re also dumb as rocks.

I really wanted to love the staff-general concept, but it broke from horrible AI.

While I agree with Gerrand here, I’d like to speak more to the OP’s actual meaning.

Simply put, I am tired of trying to run a MM build and having my minions conduct a tea party while they watch me get jumped by enemies they should be pounding on half the time.

As contrast, I recently jumped into GW1 again just to run around and have some fun and I’d forgotten just how aggro and in your face minions used to be. It was GREAT. They really lived up to “if its red its dead” mentality. Can we please have that back?

Yeah, MM here too. Nothing like having my bone minions spectate from safe distance as i’m getting my rear handed to me by another player..

You don’t like Audience Necromancer?

Well thing is i heard they are reworking it (along with mob ai as well). But silence since then.
I’d like some confirmation from a-net that that A.I. is still a thing and we are getting it.

They can work on mob AI all they like, but if that same AI doesn’t make it to pets/minions, it’s going to continue limiting Necromancer (and Ranger to a lesser degree) in build options.

I think a lot of the minion AI flaws is in dealing with terrain. Mobs get imperial climbing and navigation compared to minions. The slightest gradient or hill gives the minions vertigo, paralyzing them utterly.

Anybody have a video of this in action?

Knighthonor.4061:

Anybody have a video of this in action?

Of what, specifically?

Yeah, honestly, it is terrible the game shipped with this AI it is even worst they have no bothered to fix it.

You should probably specify that this in reference to combat against other live humans in WvW and PvP, because at least for a Ranger in PvE there’s no issue with the Pet A.I….at least I have none. So maybe they should have two separate A.I.‘s for Pets and Minions if that’s the case(though I know that’s a ridiculous request, it just makes more common sense), either that or separate A.I. for Minions and Pets.

Zaklex.6308:

You should probably specify that this in reference to combat against other live humans in WvW and PvP, because at least for a Ranger in PvE there’s no issue with the Pet A.I….at least I have none. So maybe they should have two separate A.I.‘s for Pets and Minions if that’s the case(though I know that’s a ridiculous request, it just makes more common sense), either that or separate A.I. for Minions and Pets.

Necro minion AI is god awful in pve. So it isn’t just pvp.

+1 for “little zoo”

Ah, Clickbait. The joy of precise words. There was a nice discussion titled “Tybalt!” which after receiving a fair amount of posts got its title changed to " Tybalt! (spoilers). Clickbait then…

But on with the intended topic.

I’ve played a minion Necro since launch. I found that sometimes activating their abilities fixes them. Sometimes not. Fine in PvE, sub-par in PvP.

What really annoyed me we with necro minions is when they nerfed an aspect of Flesh golem (because logic) and added a stronger version of the flaw onto Mordrem Terragriffs a few weeks later (because logic).

Flesh golems used to do a large amount of (un-buffalbe) damage if they charged someone against a wall – as the charge would hit the target repetitively until the flesh golem’s charge ended. The damage of the flesh golem was changed to only do heavy damage on the first hit and then near no damage on consecutive hits to the same target. Then the golem was changed to only proc a hit against enemies hit once.

Enter the Terragriff. The terragriff recieved a supped up version of this removed behaviour. Every time it’s charge hit a player, the player would be knocked and take heavy damage – but if the terragriff hit the player against a wall, the player would take so many heavy hits from the same charge that it would instagib a ascended gear Zerker warrior (and receive movement impairing knockdown on the spot in a continuous manner). Even better, given the size of terragriffs, they can become stuck on small rocks sticking out of the dirt while charging – and if you near this when it happens, instagibbed you are.

So yeah. Fixing enemy A.I shortfalls. Sort of. Minions, not so much.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Nothing big, as I currently enjoy playing a MM in pvp I would like a nice red post confirming that minion and pet A.I. are being worked on for HoT, so ranger and necros can put more trust into their little zoo when facing other players.

I can confirm to you that minion and pet A.I. will NOT be significantly improved in HoT. This is something ArenaNet has been trying to fix for 10 years now, with little to no progress. If they had finally found a way to make it work, they would have told us so about a dozen times now.

Here a former MM necro and main ranger.
I think the problem with the minions, i only think, is more about pathing than AI. I used to test the behaviour of the little buggers and sometimes you can see how they begin the animation of moving and then stop.
If the minion can’t calculate the path to the objective it does nothing (tea party) and apparently only do it once by target. So when you force them to target (using the skills) then thy begin to attack.
I don’t know why Anet doesn’t apply the same AI from the ranger’s pet to the minions. That would solve all the problems with them. At least they would attack when should.

With the pet we have other problems mostly that it behaves like a brain-dead minion. Having one pet that dies the first 3 seconds because it jumps straight on the AoE is no fun. If you keep it close for the F2 then the pet is mostly useless.

Behold the Necromancer Elite skill in action: