Guild Wars 2

Ogre runes are now a solid choice for PvE?

Is this the Diablo III Patch 2.1.1 for GW2 finally.

Thank the six gods…

Just to clarify, does this mean mini-pets will start to take reduced dmg from mobs?

Mightybird.6034:

Nike.2631:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey all,
…
We felt like minions were in a good place for PvP so we didn’t want to change them there for now. Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.
…

That’s a joke right? While ranger pets are more or less a thing because they have to be, Ranger Nature Spirits, Guardian Sprit Weapons, and Necromancer Minons and even Elementalist Elementals are extinct as an entire class of utility skills in sPvP and WvW. Even Engineer turrets have largely been bred out of the competitive environment and you can’t expect gyros or Reaper’s shambling horrors to change that.

On purpose. Remember when turret engi was a thing? How “fun” that was? No one wants to play against A.I./mobs in PvP… they shouldn’t ever be meta in pvp.

Problem is 1 class is forced to depend on that and has 30% of its total potential into it.

Nike.2631:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey all,
…
We felt like minions were in a good place for PvP so we didn’t want to change them there for now. Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.
…

That’s a joke right? While ranger pets are more or less a thing because they have to be, Ranger Nature Spirits, Guardian Sprit Weapons, and Necromancer Minons and even Elementalist Elementals are extinct as an entire class of utility skills in sPvP and WvW. Even Engineer turrets have largely been bred out of the competitive environment and you can’t expect gyros or Reaper’s shambling horrors to change that.

I am going to have to agree with this sentiment, if perhaps not the severity or anger. Specifically in the WvW setting.

As it stands now the only real minions that see a use in WvW are the necromancer minions, and that is more of a gimmick build that people run in full minionmancer zergs or for fun. I rarely see an elementalist running a greater elemental, maybe once a month, and I can honestly say I cannot remember the last time I saw a guardian spirit weapon or ranger spirit that was not my own little experiments.

I understand that 1.) These are specifically class balance issues, and a sweeping class wide change like this in a Player vs Player environment must be considered adequately, and 2.) That many people despise playing against AI builds. However, these are entire lines of utilities that see no use in WvW because of their undertuned nature, and while I can’t speak for other classes, the guardian forum has continually advocated for some form of reduced AoE damage to spirit weapons to bring them into line with other utilities’ power levels.

I strongly urge you to reconsider your stance, at least for WvW, if you wish to see a wider range of utilities be used. Like I said before, I know many people dislike playing against AI specs (most likely the turret engi juggernauts of old), but I believe in the case of spirit weapons the innate limited duration of the utilities combined with their lack of large amounts of buffs and CC would make them a lot less problematic to fight.

I mostly play guardian if that isn’t evident by now, so I don’t have a lot of experience with how a change like this would affect other classes’ minions, but I encourage people who do focus on those classes to share their feedback.

As a useful suggestion, perhaps we could see a different reduction in damage value in PvP or WvW? Possibly even different reductions per class?

Mightybird.6034:

Nike.2631:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey all,
…
We felt like minions were in a good place for PvP so we didn’t want to change them there for now. Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.
…

That’s a joke right? While ranger pets are more or less a thing because they have to be, Ranger Nature Spirits, Guardian Sprit Weapons, and Necromancer Minons and even Elementalist Elementals are extinct as an entire class of utility skills in sPvP and WvW. Even Engineer turrets have largely been bred out of the competitive environment and you can’t expect gyros or Reaper’s shambling horrors to change that.

On purpose. Remember when turret engi was a thing? How “fun” that was? No one wants to play against A.I./mobs in PvP… they shouldn’t ever be meta in pvp.

Good job you can’t see a Ranger in ESL.

in WvW, ranger pets get decimated in seconds by zerg aoe’s and are virtually non-functional outside of small skirmishing scenarios. the other areas you missed: engie turrets and other non-pet AI in pvp, theyre totally useless. spirit weapons, spirits, gyros and so on.

SUGGESTION #1

I can see the CHALLENGE of trying to balance player’s AI in pvp. but the simple thing to do is just make them immune to 5-player aoe attacks (includes ele’s pbaoes, necros wells, etc.), but still keep the damage the same on CLEAVE and single target attacks, while slightly buffing some of their HP.

this basically means the opponent must at the very least aim or even select the AI he wants to destroy, instead of just facerolling aoe’s and pbaoe’s until everything is dead. I thought gw2 was supposed to reward skill-based play? wouldn’t minion/ai builds be interesting to pick apart over time? wouldn’t that require an additional layer of strategy as it buys time for the controller of said ai? wouldn’t this make the game more interesting?

I was completely against what you guys did to turret engies, even though I only play the ranger. previous to the turret changes, I enjoyed picking apart turret engies, blowing up their turrets one by one before moving in for the kill. instead of seeing opportunity in this and just slightly nerfing the HP of turrets, you guys knee-jerked the build into complete uselessness. when will you learn? when will you stop doing this?

SUGGESTION 2

the other option is to have a DYNAMIC system that takes into account how many aoe’s are on the ground, and just cap off how many affect the pet, i.e. max of 3 aoe’s at a time.

SUGGESTION 3

here is ANOTHER good suggestion that should be easy to implement in my opinion, at least for rangers. simply allow us to stow the pet in heavy aoe situations, and bring him out only when he is needed. i.e. we can enter combat WITHOUT the pet! once he is brought out, he has to be out for a while before swapped to the second one. this may indeed lead to his death, but at the very least he wouldn’t be following us into a zerg and getting melted, effectively reducing our effectiveness right off the bat. no skill involved, just silly mechanics.

these “systemic changes” for minions/ai mean absolutely nothing to pvp’ers who wanna play builds involving minions/ai. these builds are unviable competitively and have been for a very long time. hope u guys have a look at my feedback above.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Xyonon.3987:

Illusions included? _ plssayyes plssayyes plssayyes!!!

Yes. all player minions, all of them.

As a mesmer main who likes to pve: THANK YOU!!!!! <3

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Diovid.9506:

Just to clarify: Is this just for raids or for all PvE?

All of PvE, any creature attacks.

Do Guardian spirit weapons count as minions?

This is great for PvE, but are there any plans to fix PvP minions hit rate?

Well, this IS good news for me. Thank you.

As for the people suggesting something like this in PvP and WvW, I agree that it should be considered. But… not until they’ve tested this in PvE and seen how it plays out live and in large scale. While I’m a PvE player, I do have to admit that messing up the balance on something like this will do the least damage in PvE. So, test the idea there first, and then carefully move it to other modes if it still seems a good idea.

Mightybird.6034:

On purpose. Remember when turret engi was a thing? How “fun” that was? No one wants to play against A.I./mobs in PvP… they shouldn’t ever be meta in pvp.

Not many people seem to realize, but “meta” and “not completely worthless” are not the same thing. People asking to not be useless are not automatically demanding to be overpowered. I can bring a turret engi into PvP and every hammer warrior is one-shotting my turrets without even having to pay attention to them. It’s ridiculous to suggest that being worthless is where a class of skills “should” be, balance-wise, as others have done.

A weaker version of this update, like 30-50% reduction, would go a long way for PvP minions without necessarily making them overpowered. They’d still melt like sugar in the rain the instant any fight is more than 1v1.

Nike.2631:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey all,
…
We felt like minions were in a good place for PvP so we didn’t want to change them there for now. Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.
…

That’s a joke right? While ranger pets are more or less a thing because they have to be, Ranger Nature Spirits, Guardian Sprit Weapons, and Necromancer Minons and even Elementalist Elementals are extinct as an entire class of utility skills in sPvP and WvW. Even Engineer turrets have largely been bred out of the competitive environment and you can’t expect gyros or Reaper’s shambling horrors to change that.

Actually ANET made the right decision here. Everything you mention is considered skill-less play in PvP. They don’t belong there.

In PvE, it is fine to buff the minions because it isn’t competitive and people can play how they want.

!!!!

I just….

Words…cannot…

Mesmer for three years, and…

https://youtu.be/oASYa-Wkroc

style.6173:

Actually ANET made the right decision here. Everything you mention is considered skill-less play in PvP. They don’t belong there.

In PvE, it is fine to buff the minions because it isn’t competitive and people can play how they want.

Skill-less maybe, but not un-tactical. Nobody just pulls a minion out of nowhere, they have to give up something to get it. Usually it’s a utility skill slot. If you see someone pull out a bunch of minions, you’ve already seen all their tricks.

I’m not a good PvPer, I’ll admit that. And yes, I play a turret engineer. And in some fights, I’ve been able to tell when a person has done a quick mental count of my turrets and realized that I’m all out of skill slots, and have only what my pistol and shield give me to defend myself with. The turrets don’t save me, then.

Which is why I’ll sometimes leave one in what might seem an odd location and move on. I don’t need skill to operate it, but I can’t use skill to make it perform better, either. So, it’s about tactics. Where and when is the right place to use it? Should I blow one up to put it onto recharge now, so I’ll have it ready to use again soon? And so on…

style.6173:

Nike.2631:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey all,
…
We felt like minions were in a good place for PvP so we didn’t want to change them there for now. Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.
…

That’s a joke right? While ranger pets are more or less a thing because they have to be, Ranger Nature Spirits, Guardian Sprit Weapons, and Necromancer Minons and even Elementalist Elementals are extinct as an entire class of utility skills in sPvP and WvW. Even Engineer turrets have largely been bred out of the competitive environment and you can’t expect gyros or Reaper’s shambling horrors to change that.

Actually ANET made the right decision here. Everything you mention is considered skill-less play in PvP. They don’t belong there.

In PvE, it is fine to buff the minions because it isn’t competitive and people can play how they want.

Ranger pet skill less? core mechanic
Necro minions skill less?
Supply crate skill less? elite
Thumper turret skill less?
Rocket turret skill less?
Net turret skill less?
Healing turret skill less?
Sneak gyro skill less? elite

seriously? It is not used (or rarely) because it is broken, do not confound it with “skill less”

Actually ANET made the right decision here. Everything you mention is considered skill-less play in PvP. They don’t belong there.

lol. as if shooting a gun or firing a bow in this game takes any more skill than a turret or a spirit weapon.

OMG ROY as a mesmer main I wasn’t prepared for this! THANK YOU SO MUCH! <3

This is a great change for PvE, thanks so much!

I will echo what many others have said regarding WvW, however. I mostly play a mesmer and our profession’s reliance on our illusions in order to use our class mechanic paired with horrible illusion durability in medium/large battles remains an outstanding pain point.

Maybe a fraction of this damage reduction could apply in WvW, but PvP is kept the same?

This is sooooo sweet no idea why it wasn’t done earlier (maybe tech problem) but it’s done now. Wooo!

Since people don’t know how useless ranger pets are in pvp, I will leave these videos here. Reminder ranger’s are balanced around pets doing 30% of their DPS:

So … you agree that all minions are equal, regardless if it’s a ranger pet, spirit weapon, elemental, illusion, necro minion – so they are all COMPANIONS???

points at the 6th bonus of the ranger rune pls

Does this reduction include cleaving attacks? or are those considered “targeted” attacks?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

We felt like minions were in a good place for PvP so we didn’t want to change them there for now. Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.

This made my day…

I think ANet needs to leave dev servers and do some PvP (ranked please…) or WvW using a ranger, spirit weapons of the guardian, necro minions, turrets of the engi (and even gyros… yay) and so on…

style.6173:

Actually ANET made the right decision here. Everything you mention is considered skill-less play in PvP. They don’t belong there.

It’s not a lack of skill required to hold someone down with Guard Scepter skills long enough for spirit sword-and-hammer to work them over, its a lack of up time and those tools getting cleaved into oblivion. There’s TONS of other skills that get more play that take less coordination or timing. Why are banners ‘skillful’ and Nature Spirits aren’t? Oh, because the difference isn’t skill its one of them’s invulnerable. Auto-target has also come a long way since you could hide behind your zoo.

How will this work with Phantasmal Defender?

Kitty.1502:

Since people don’t know how useless ranger pets are in pvp, I will leave these videos here. Reminder ranger’s are balanced around pets doing 30% of their DPS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBZtYUa-pLg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7DWcU3ULtw

I’d love to see the dev post that states ranger pets are 30% of the profession’s overall dps, because I don’t think I have seen it yet, so if you could, please provide a link!

The videos are not very indicative of an actual fight situation. Although they are amusing and I enjoyed the music!

It mostly showcases the problem with AI pathing that effects us all and even some attacks we use.

Sarif.1827:

I’d love to see the dev post that states ranger pets are 30% of the profession’s overall dps, because I don’t think I have seen it yet, so if you could, please provide a link!

The videos are not very indicative of an actual fight situation. Although they are amusing and I enjoyed the music!

It mostly showcases the problem with AI pathing that effects us all and even some attacks we use.

I will see if I can find the post, this was said shortly after launch when people complained about pets. You are right that the video isn’t indicative of an actual fight situation because in that situation dodges/CC would be used meaning the pet most likely will miss more often.

Fizz.8763:

How will this work with Phantasmal Defender?

Ssshhhh!

It might make it useful.

This made my day. I can finally run MM in pve.

I love MM in pvp as it is, except for when I get moa’d and they all vanish and leave me defenseless. -_-

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Blackarps.1974:

When you say that they are remaining the same for PvP, does that mean WvW too? Please say yes.

This is only for creature attacks against player minions. Player attacks against minions keeps the same functionality as it has right now. This is for everywhere.

What about minions vs minions in PvP? If I blow up my bone minion with enemy illusions around it, will it do normal or reduced damage?

Sledge Stone.9017:

This made my day. I can finally run MM in pve.

I love MM in pvp as it is, except for when I get moa’d and they all vanish and leave me defenseless. -_-

not gonna happen anymore. You can even run lich at a minionmancer now, transforms dont make your minions go away anymore

I am worried does this change also include World Vs World. Although I am not a WvW player I can only imagine the consequences if this effect applied to WvW. I can only imagine firestorm hitting minnions doing no damage. Over 100 people using MM necro/reaper and just swarming and winning fights because aoe counts 5 people and ignores the rest.

There is something hilarious about certain players arguing that Pet classes require no skill in PVP and thus shouldn’t exist…

Its like they’re completely oblivious to over a decade of PvP in MMO’s

So no more pile of NPC fighters in the first minute of the Giant at Nageling. What about non-targeted AoEs? It would certainly make the NPCs more durable.

Akyl.8647:

I am worried does this change also include World Vs World. Although I am not a WvW player I can only imagine the consequences if this effect applied to WvW. I can only imagine firestorm hitting minnions doing no damage. Over 100 people using MM necro/reaper and just swarming and winning fights because aoe counts 5 people and ignores the rest.

Um. The second part of your post? The “because aoe counts 5 people and ignores the rest” part? That’s how it is right now. Do you see “over 100 people using MM necro/reaper and just swarming and winning fights” right now? No?
That’s because there is a LOT more aoe abilities in this game than there are minion abilities. Not protecting minions against that aoe death just leaves minions where they are right now: useless in WvW.

Behellagh.1468:

So no more pile of NPC fighters in the first minute of the Giant at Nageling. What about non-targeted AoEs? It would certainly make the NPCs more durable.

This is a pet change, not an NPC one. They will still all die…

Roy Cronacher.1576:

…

Thanks for listening. Let’s see how it turns out. Next step: WvW

MUST. FIND. MOAR. MINIONS.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey all,

As some of you may have seen in raids during the last BWE, we were trying out something new with player minions. Basically, in that final BWE, player minions did not take damage from boss attacks. We thought that made minion-based professions feel so much better in combat, but that change did expose some problems such as minions being able to withstand a damaging attack indefinitely.

We wanted minions to not die left and right, but we did want them to have some attrition instead of being completely immune to attacks. This problem is mainly prevalent in PvE as we have huge attacks all over the place that are meant to be dodged by players but unfortunately for minions, they can’t dodge.

After reviewing BWE results, we wanted to create a better system to accomplish this as a global change for minions. To do that, we made it so that unless a minion is specifically targeted by a creature, they will be dealt drastically reduced damage and condition duration from attacks. Currently, this is set to 95% reduction as we feel like it’s a good starting place, but we’ll continue to monitor and adjust it. This means if your minion gains agro from a creature it will still take full damage, but if there is area effect damage hitting your minion, instead of usually killing it instantly, it will slowly attrition it down.

We felt like minions were in a good place for PvP so we didn’t want to change them there for now. Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.

The change is for all player minions, this includes things like engineer turrets and ranger spirits as well. This will be in for HoT Launch in a few days.

Wha-What about Guardian Spirit weapons?…… Roy can you please ask Karl to do something about them

Basaltface.2786:

Sledge Stone.9017:

This made my day. I can finally run MM in pve.

I love MM in pvp as it is, except for when I get moa’d and they all vanish and leave me defenseless. -_-

not gonna happen anymore. You can even run lich at a minionmancer now, transforms dont make your minions go away anymore

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Balance-discussion-on-twitchcon/first#post5529299

We still loose all minions in pvp when we get moa’d. Completely removes all the toughness granted by the minion trait too since the minions vanish instantly and goes on full cool down. People will moa the MM necro and instant burst them. I’ve seen it plenty of times. But I still love playing MM.

I know this isn’t the place for it, but Roy could someone confirm how many hero points we need to unlock elite specs and their utilities?

This is huge for rangers’ spirits also, thank you ANet, it was a much needed change.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Behellagh.1468:

So no more pile of NPC fighters in the first minute of the Giant at Nageling. What about non-targeted AoEs? It would certainly make the NPCs more durable.

This is a pet change, not an NPC one. They will still all die…

Duh, “player” minions. Some reason I think of NPCs as “players” and since they aren’t high damage as “minions”

This is great news.

One question I do have is about threat. For example TA Up path, prior to Malrona when pulling individual groups of spiders, some spiders will run right past us (group of players) and go directly for my Frost Spirit. I’m not using my activate control leaving my Frost Spirit on passive.

Will minion threat still be an active concern in encounters? and how/why can Frost Spirits (stationary non combatant minion, unless activated) gain threat in the first place when not placed between the raid/group and the encounter/boss?

Fizz.8763:

How will this work with Phantasmal Defender?

And bulwark gyro? how these two deal with the damage split is a very important factor.

Kinda hoping pets get this in WvW atleast. When theres 30 people in a ball the only thing my pets can do is just look at that and tell me to go shaft myself. I don’t like my pet telling me to go shaft myself. Even if tis not 95% something like 50% would actually make it potentially possible to sneak a pet through a ball into an enemy backline. As it is now though…good luck with that.

What if I want my minions to die?

The PvE change to reduce AoE wiping of minions is generally good, though an alternative I selfishly prefer is to have cast time and respawn cool down cut.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Blackarps.1974:

When you say that they are remaining the same for PvP, does that mean WvW too? Please say yes.

This is only for creature attacks against player minions. Player attacks against minions keeps the same functionality as it has right now. This is for everywhere.

Well this makes a lot of sense …
.
I really don’t know why the team doesn’t just do this stuff across the board and then tweek as needed.

I get that this is not a good thing for PvP and fully support not having AI dominating classes, but in WvW … common, everything melts in a second during large battles.