(edited by GideonAI.5341)
Summons and Area Damage
Either something of the kind should happen, or ANet should remove friendly AI.
problem is that almost everything in this game is AOE, you can’t just add minions AOE resistance like in Diablo or WOW because they would be unkillable…
you could use resistance to just ground targeted AOEs, but you would create another imbalance, because some weapons are just too focused on AOE and minions would become unkillable for them, fixing an unbalance with another unbalance isn’t a good solution imo…
Yea, as someone who absolutely loves the >idea< of a minion mancer, I just cringe whenever I see one. Not only is the “AI” not even close to having a semblance of “intelligence” (The last 7/10 fights on my necro had the ultiminion just stand there on a smoke break…), but the minions are worthless currently. They die in 1-2 hits, which makes sense if it is a single target attack imo, but with the amount of cleave in the game, minions are just a wasted utility skill slot.
Additionally, I look at the mesmer clones/phantasms (being a mes, I am a bit biased tbh) as a huge pain in the kitten atm. Again, they shouldn’t, imo, “tank” anything, but most bosses in dungeon/fractals will one shot them with an AoE attack. Additionally, phantasms are, for a lot of mesmers, a large chunk of their dps that takes time to set up, so the mesmer’s already lacking damage output is almost completely negated in AoE heavy fights. SW’s, I lose way too many phantasms before they even attack once due to a Tearagrif’s damaging line they leave behind on their charge. This is also whether I have the extra health trait/signet on or not… This isn’t even to mention their uselessness in WvW settings…
Same on my Guardian too. Those spirit weapons are just a wasted slot. I honestly don’t know why the devs didn’t already patch them out of the game already.
Minions in general, are a huge liability. Mesmers/Necro’s rely on them to help on damage output and their frailty (along with the TERRIBLE AI) makes them really hard to justify putting them on the skill bar when you can easily take ANY other skill and do as well if not better with. Not to mention the other traits you can take to boost other skills.
Right now, I honestly think that if Mesmers (like me) weren’t almost forced to use them, we would trait out for anything but phantasms. We already almost never see the 2 utility phantasms used, but looking at the other “minion” classes, you see that no serious necro or guardian uses minions/spirit weapons outside of a “look at this funny but completely useless gimmick build I made!” for a reason; You can pick any other skill and not have it wiped away before it’s done anything.
I fully support having a huge AoE damage resistance on minion type creatures. As it stands, outside of Mesmers (which are almost forced to use them), the pet traits/skills never see the light of day because of their frailty. Either give the minions about 25x the current health, or give them an AoE damage resistance buff to make them useful, otherwise, just patch them out please. No need to waste time on skills that have no use, it’s just added fluff as it is.
problem is that almost everything in this game is AOE, you can’t just add minions AOE resistance like in Diablo or WOW because they would be unkillable…
you could use resistance to just ground targeted AOEs, but you would create another imbalance, because some weapons are just too focused on AOE and minions would become unkillable for them, fixing an unbalance with another unbalance isn’t a good solution imo…
No, it’s a simple solution really. Make it so the target you have takes x damage but all other untargeted entities take 90% less aoe damage.
That way you can still kill minions if you choose to target them but you don’t just casually cleave them down.
What you people don’t understand is that ranger pets should not be killable to begin with.
Rangers and mesmers HAVE LESSER BASE DAMAGE NUMBERS COMPARED TO THE ABILITIES OF NON-PET CLASSES.
This means the classes are balanced on 100% uptime of these ai to be competitive with other classes.
Yeah Anet should get with the times and gives at the very least pets, if not summons too, 80% or so AoE damage reduction, just like WoW does. It took WoW years to reach this point, I hope we don’t have to slug through the same with GW2 for years.
Turrets should tank more AoE damage?
All the Turret-Engi haters will love you for this idea. ;-)
No.
Turret engineers are already too strong.
Ranger Spirits can be positioned out of the way.
Elementalists have the Earth Elemental if you want it to tank damage.
Rangers and mesmers HAVE LESSER BASE DAMAGE NUMBERS COMPARED TO THE ABILITIES OF NON-PET CLASSES.
This means the classes are balanced on 100% uptime of these ai to be competitive with other classes.
Is that why mesmers are one of the few classes capable of one shotting someone?
And why rangers can take off 80% of someones hp from a range of 1500?
Warrior 80 | Guardian 80 | Ranger 80 | Engineer 80 |
Thief 80 | Elementalist 80 | Mesmer 80 | Necromancer 80 | Revenant TBA
Thief 80 | Elementalist 80 | Mesmer 80 | Necromancer 80 | Revenant TBA
Easy fix is to just give minions the same iframes as the player when the player dodges.
Minions/pets/turrets/clones being able to stand in the Megadestroyer’s lava when players cannot is broken in the same way phantasms being unstoppably onehit by CoE’s Subject Alpha is broken.
The problem is rarely, if ever, minions dying from standing a long sustained AoE. It’s them getting killed instantly by instakill AoEs that players, but not minions, can dodge.
Invuln skills, blocks and evade frame skills (say, thief Pistol Whip) should continue to protect only the player, but hard dodges should have that iframe protection extended to minions as well.
I disagree. I use a S/D Cantrip Ele, so I have a lot of AoE.I have been doing a lot of ranked PvP lately, but I have noticed that I can hold my own in a one-vs-one against most builds that I have faced so far, the three that give me the most problems are minnion Necros, turret Engi, and well let’s just say that mesmers almost always murder me when I fight them on my own. Eles are known for having some of the best AoEs, yet AI builds usely kill me. Also note that my build is designed around out living my targets.
“Blue team for life.”
“They can’t see me. I can’t see them.”
Michael J. Caboose ~ RvB
“They can’t see me. I can’t see them.”
Michael J. Caboose ~ RvB
Saying to just give them aoe protection means you don’t really understand the game.
What counts as an AoE ability?
Lava Font? Yeah, of course.
Hundred Blades? Sure, that sounds like an AoE.
Necrotic Grasp? Uh, it does damage in a line, so maybe?
Every melee attack? They all cleave, even daggers, so do they count?
Non AoE abilities are basically just single target, instant cast CC abilities like Chains of Light and Doom. kitten near everything else is an AoE.
As an alternative that still makes summons useful when well-positioned, some AoE attacks could be converted to a Shaped (just pulling a term out of the air) damage attacks. A Shaped damage attack would be more powerful than a typical AoE in terms of direct damage, but each target would add some portion of its defense rating to the next target’s defense rating. The order of targets would make sense positionally (meaning, in a cone attack, the closest target would be first, the one behind it next, etc.).
Aside from giving minions more use as meat shields, it would also create opportunities to play a tank role in groups by positioning a high Toughness or heavy armor character in front of a glass cannon.
Ceterum censeo Sentim Punicam esse delendam
To be honest powerful AoE attacks should be a hard counter to heavy AI builds, by which I mean minion mancers, turret engineers, and mesmers. The problem is only two of these three professions are able to CHOOSE whether or not they want to bring a build that revolves entirely around having minions. Mesmers should have some sort of damage option that isn’t completely reliant on phantasms.
Necro minions could stand to be a bit tougher, though. Either that or make their cooldowns when destroyed shorter so a necromancer, after losing all their minions, will only be at a massive disadvantage for 10-20 seconds instead of 30-40. Or shoot, you could do something like allowing them to spend Life Force to summon their minions despite being on cooldown. That way a necromancer can choose to take a chunk out of their life force pool to bring their minions back after the Meteor Shower ends.
Ranger pets are probably the biggest issue as far as AI goes, though. Rangers can’t choose to not have a pet and the pet is suppose to represent a chunk of their damage and utility. A lot of the problem here is that if a pet dies they’re punished severely for it even though it’s often out of their hands. Remove the downed pet penalty on pet swap and they’d be in a much more comfortable place.
Turret engineers… Are fine. Honestly turrets could stand to be a bit squishier if anything.
I think the AoE protection could be determined on a case by case basis. Right now, EVERYTHING is an AoE. EVERYTHING being AoE adds to the issue of minions/pets/illusions being super squishy. My mesmer can’t not create phantasms as a decent chunk of their damage, most take time to summon (taking away from my, already low, personal dps), and a single AoE from almost any source can 1 shot them. In dungeons, I can expect to get one attack from my iSwordsman. Necrominions are the same, a massive C/D for negligible damage that probably won’t even occur due to the quantity of AoE’s in this game.
EVERYTHING AoE’s in this game. It’s not that there is a select few builds or a select few bosses that make minion based classes useless, it’s that there are a select few builds or a select few bosses that make minion based classes viable. Like Ehecatl said, Rangers are punished by something they can’t control, Necro/Guard/Engie at least have the option to use useless things (engie’s only saving grace is that the turrets are rooted and ranged, which means the engie can place them (relatively) out of harm’s way). Same for mesmers, we have no choice really to not use them and we are punished by their frailty and their useless AI.
I see the reasoning and Arenanet probably should do something about it but the aoe-resistance of other games won’t be a good solution. At least not for PvP.
Mesmers and Engineers(maybe even necromancers) would be even stronger than they are now. Arenanet had to nerf those two classes in the same moment and that probably would break them. Because with that aoe-resistance they had to do significantly less dmg with minions.
The dmg had to be the same as now just over a longer period (because it takes longer to kill dmg source). Probably not so much of a problem for engineers because they just switch from turret build to the next effective one. Mesmers though would be a little kittened considering they are pretty much based on illusions and clones.
Just make the minions move out(like right next to the border of the ability) of obvious AoE effects like barrage, meteor shower, lava font, stuff like that. Probably would help a lot already.
(edited by Nanashi.6297)
Alright, what if Anet “field tests” this idea out by implementing it on Spirit Weapons? Nobody complains about them being overpowered, and everyone would see if this shindig works or not.
It’s funny how almost all of you here can’t seem to see past PvP. Minion health is no problem at all in sPvP and they’re fairly well balanced. The problem in PvE, where them getting one-shotted by AoEs every three seconds or so completely invalidates some builds and entire classes in some situations. The proposed changed will be a great idea in PvE, and can be kept out of sPvP entirely.
WvW is a little more troublesome, since we have both massive AoEs in zergs, in which minions could use a buff, and small scale skirmishes, in which the buffs would make the minions rather overpowered. An elaborate solution would be to have the game figure out which situation you’re in and apply the correction accordingly, but it’s probably simpler to just leave things as they are now.
It’s funny how almost all of you here can’t seem to see past PvP. Minion health is no problem at all in sPvP and they’re fairly well balanced. The problem in PvE, where them getting one-shotted by AoEs every three seconds or so completely invalidates some builds and entire classes in some situations. The proposed changed will be a great idea in PvE, and can be kept out of sPvP entirely.
WvW is a little more troublesome, since we have both massive AoEs in zergs, in which minions could use a buff, and small scale skirmishes, in which the buffs would make the minions rather overpowered. An elaborate solution would be to have the game figure out which situation you’re in and apply the correction accordingly, but it’s probably simpler to just leave things as they are now.
I don’t sPvP, so I have nothing to say there. I think that Anet could make changes that PvE content adds in an AoE resistance, while sPvP doesn’t have that buff? I think that’s a fair point. In WvW, could you scale the AoE resistance(or maybe health) of minions/pets based on the number of players present? Similar to PvE bosses scaling depending on the number of players present?
I think your right, it is much simpler to do nothing, but doing nothing makes entire skill/trait lines completely useless as it is. I think if they aren’t going to do anything, they should just patch the skills out of the game.
Some of the problem I see here is lumping all the summoning skills into one group spirits are closer to banners than they are to minion, but if they are going to be stuck in that place they need redesigned to be more similar of the elemental from the glyph skills.
Pets have been hidden due to rising Player complaints.
Some of the problem I see here is lumping all the summoning skills into one group spirits are closer to banners than they are to minion, but if they are going to be stuck in that place they need redesigned to be more similar of the elemental from the glyph skills.
Yeah, banners are basically stronger spirits that cannot be killed and can be moved around without needing a master trait.
I don’t sPvP, so I have nothing to say there. I think that Anet could make changes that PvE content adds in an AoE resistance, while sPvP doesn’t have that buff? I think that’s a fair point. In WvW, could you scale the AoE resistance(or maybe health) of minions/pets based on the number of players present? Similar to PvE bosses scaling depending on the number of players present?
I think your right, it is much simpler to do nothing, but doing nothing makes entire skill/trait lines completely useless as it is. I think if they aren’t going to do anything, they should just patch the skills out of the game.
Yeah, which is why you’re one of the few people who aren’t attacking the idea. Scaling each minion to the number of players present would be an ideal situation, but I don’t know how difficult that will be to implement.
The reason I suggested they do nothing for WvW is that the affected classes are sort of alright anyway, and by doing nothing you avoid a balance nightmare. Not every build can be viable for every situation, and in the case of WvW maybe we should just accept that minion-based builds have more of a place in small-scale skirmishes than in larger fights. In zergs mesmers and rangers do have places as ranged snipers, while necros and guardians are indispensable in the zerg itself. Engis are less used but it’s not because their turrets can’t survive. This isn’t the case in PvE, where you only take necros and rangers if you have no other choice, and mesmers are absolutely useless at bosses with any form of AoE.
This needs a fix. You may be able to patch out spirit weapons, minions and turrets but you can’t patch out phantasms and pets.