Guild Wars 2

Palador.2170:

SongOfDestruction.2984:

Any particular reason ya’ll went for a flat % damage reduction instead of giving minions .75 second distortion on evade? Rangers already give protection to pets on evade, coding-wise that sounds easy enough to extend.

If you have to use your evades to keep your pet alive, then that just creates a different problem.

Additionally, a lot of content is based not just on evades, but on stepping out. Players can leave the red circles. Pets can’t. Getting .75s of evade doesn’t help when your dumb minion just chills in the red circle and dies .1s after the evade ends.

Cant believe I havent seen this post til now. Best. News. Ever.

Really, it made my week. So awesome I dont even have any more words to describe it.

Also, something this big should really make the front page. I can imagine tons of rangers and necros who quit years ago seeing it and instantly coming back to the game and buying HOT.

I hope changes to WvW are in the thought process at least. Ranger profession mechanic (pets) dying by AoEs I dogged/avoided simply because it doesn’t/can’t is really painful.

So what about Chieftan/Svanir, Red&Blue Lord, Keep Lords, etc.?

I’m assuming that they have the same reduction when minion is not targeted…

After I re-read original post, I realized that

Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.

pretty much covered it.

Ranger pets and Mesmer clones are class mechanics and should have a base damage reduction when untargeted in all areas of the game, not just PvE.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mistlock_Instability:_Playing_Favorites

^ Ain’t that one of the counters to mesmers, kill the clones before the mesmer could shatter them?

HaxTester.9816:

^ Ain’t that one of the counters to mesmers, kill the clones before the mesmer could shatter them?

And you still can by targeting them. Often enough that is a single crit AA.

They would just get a reduction from splash damage.

Just make minions dodge when the player dodges.

Hi Roy,

Three questions:
1) If a Ranger pet attacks another ranger pet. With them being both minions, do they get the 95% damage reduction? Or are they counted as part of the player and get the full damage?
2) Will runes such as, Rune of the Ogre that summons a rock dog be consider a minion?
3) Elemental glphys weren’t mentioned as minions in your responses. Are glyph summons consider minions?

And people say HoT doesn’t have anything good…

minions should be meta for pvp. espically for necromancer, hence the name. those of you who say otherwise must not know the definition of necromamcer

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

And people say HoT doesn’t have anything good…

We need HoT for this change?

Sicarius.4639:

We need HoT for this change?

Nope, otherwise it would have been a mastery.

nice changes there
but i may ask to bring back spirits unbound for rangers with this please.

moving spirits for pve:
with this changes moving spirits should work verry well in pve,
i guess they are nearly never targeted by mobs and can survive verry good even when they stay near to the ranger now? (also because of druid, (would heave been amazing with the old version of lingering light, but ok…))
at least, it’s much more fun to use spirits when they follow and you can time the active skills on the right moment if you need them (things like blind, but for that they should stop dying from this)

moving spirits for pvp/wvw:
a lot of rangers asking to get moving spirits back for pvp/wvw and i can just say,
just bring it back, i see no reason to don’t let them move in player vs player situations.
and it would open more builds diversity for rangers and make shortbow a viable weapon again.

there is no real reason to be annoyed by ranger spirits as long peoples are ok with mesmer clones, it’s way more hard to deal with this then with ranger spirits.
every ai can move exept of spirits, they don’t even attack, please just think shortly about this, there is/was no sense to remove spirits unbound

sry for off topic, but this dmg reduce for ai in pve makes me feel like spirits unbound should still exist

All praise Anet, our LORD AND SAVIOR!

\[T]/

As an almost exclusive Engineer player, this is GREAT NEWS! Turrets will finally be viable in PvE again, and presumably Gyros too. Such a great change, thanks so much for it!

Sweeeeeet Laaaaaawd BABY JEEEESUS-AH!!!!! Can I get an Amen?!

Thank you very much Devs, with every update, my minions grow stronger.

On behalf of turret engineers everywhere, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

…this -does- affect turrets too, right?

Morveyn.9431:

On behalf of turret engineers everywhere, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

…this -does- affect turrets too, right?

Yes

TJgalon.5012:

reapex.8546:

Dragon.4782:

Will we see more pets aside from the ones seen in the beta? And suggestion incoming when we switch out animals (not like press the button from one animal to the other I mean changing one of the animals to another from your tamed list) can they keep their names? I switch a hyena from my hyena/snow leopard team for a moa for a short while and then when the hyena comes back into the line up his name isn’t there.

I think they said all the pets they told us about are the ones we’ll get. But I agree about the pet names issue, it would be nice if GW2 remembered Pet Names.

I remember them saying it a database issue, that take up way to much if they allow the remembering of every pet name x 64 possible slot and so on.

Do the math. If every account had a Ranger with every pet and they were all named with the maximum amount of characters, it would take up about 3.5 Gb. Double that for other database stuff. Still all the data would fit on a 5 dollar USB stick.

Or, you know, they could just store the names client side in a .txt file, then check them for inappropriate language on load, like they do now.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

TJgalon.5012:

reapex.8546:

Dragon.4782:

Will we see more pets aside from the ones seen in the beta? And suggestion incoming when we switch out animals (not like press the button from one animal to the other I mean changing one of the animals to another from your tamed list) can they keep their names? I switch a hyena from my hyena/snow leopard team for a moa for a short while and then when the hyena comes back into the line up his name isn’t there.

I think they said all the pets they told us about are the ones we’ll get. But I agree about the pet names issue, it would be nice if GW2 remembered Pet Names.

I remember them saying it a database issue, that take up way to much if they allow the remembering of every pet name x 64 possible slot and so on.

Do the math. If every account had a Ranger with every pet and they were all named with the maximum amount of characters, it would take up about 3.5 Gb. Double that for other database stuff. Still all the data would fit on a 5 dollar USB stick.

Or, you know, they could just store the names client side in a .txt file, then check them for inappropriate language on load, like they do now.

Yeah, but it also a database issue, which would take up resource, and then more and more. It something that not easy, and even coming from a ranger like myself and my partner, something not as important as other things. Just saying what I read.

TJgalon.5012:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

TJgalon.5012:

reapex.8546:

Dragon.4782:

Will we see more pets aside from the ones seen in the beta? And suggestion incoming when we switch out animals (not like press the button from one animal to the other I mean changing one of the animals to another from your tamed list) can they keep their names? I switch a hyena from my hyena/snow leopard team for a moa for a short while and then when the hyena comes back into the line up his name isn’t there.

I think they said all the pets they told us about are the ones we’ll get. But I agree about the pet names issue, it would be nice if GW2 remembered Pet Names.

I remember them saying it a database issue, that take up way to much if they allow the remembering of every pet name x 64 possible slot and so on.

Do the math. If every account had a Ranger with every pet and they were all named with the maximum amount of characters, it would take up about 3.5 Gb. Double that for other database stuff. Still all the data would fit on a 5 dollar USB stick.

Or, you know, they could just store the names client side in a .txt file, then check them for inappropriate language on load, like they do now.

Yeah, but it also a database issue, which would take up resource, and then more and more. It something that not easy, and even coming from a ranger like myself and my partner, something not as important as other things. Just saying what I read.

It would not take up any space at ANets end, nor would it require a database.

It is really that easy.

Just store the names in a client side .txt file with an identifier. When someone loads a pet, it checks the .txt file for the identifier associated with that pet, then checks if the name is appropriate, like it already does, then changes the name. When you change a name, it simply saves the name into the .txt file with the pets identifier.

If any of the programmers at ANet could not code that in a single day, they need to be replaced with someone that can because its a very easy thing to do.

Since you make the idea so easy, then it might not be at all. I learned that the hard way when it comes to any kind of coding,

TJgalon.5012:

Since you make the idea so easy, then it might not be at all. I learned that the hard way when it comes to any kind of coding,

Then they should take out the feature. If they cannot fix it after being live for three years, they have some serious issues, be it ressource management or coding.

You know, it is probably just very low priority, like it feels with most stuff for rangers. Three years to make pets viable in PvE, with the same move, Blizzard did years ago for Diablo3. This is not even creative, it is just a very late copy and paste.

Now the minion fix is nice, it is just late, like all fixes to the ranger.

Seems a nice bandaid, but minion skills and pets should work in any mode, not just one, like any other skills does after all.
And right now, despite what you may say, they are terrible in PvP and WvW. Saying that you’re fine with them right now means saying you don’t care for them being completely useless.
And seeing as Scrappers got an entire line of new minions in addition to the ones engineers already had, if they’re meant to be useless in two thirds of the game from the get go, then there is no meaning on having made them to begin with and no meaning for scrappers to have got them instead of something else that could have just worked nicely and be useful in any single mode.

Thank you so much for this change.

Nike.2631:

butch.8136:

The zoo meta was horrible in PvP. The turret meta was horrible too. We don’t need more AI in PvP.

I think there’s plenty of range between nuthin’ and 95% mitigation that could bring more variety to the current meager list of competitive builds. Saying things are “fine” right now is just cruelty to the abused and under used skills. Something that can move us back to a point between ‘horrible’ and ‘non-existent’.

Necro minions are being used.

I’m confident the balance team can pull the metrics and catch my drift .

No. There is no middle ground. AI builds take a lot less effort to make them work (basically close to no effort, judging by the past), the moment they become as good as any other build it’s not fine. AI carrying bad players against others way out of their league is not fine – spirit ranger, MM nec, turret engi have all been the focus of community outrage in the past.

Not every build deserves to be the same in terms of strength, in an ideal world hard builds are also the most effective ones and AI builds should be absolutely bottom tier.

Anet knew this in GW1, they nuked every single AI spec for Pvp by splitting the skills eventually making them useless. One can only hope they go back to their roots.

Honestly, i don’t care a bit about the effort required.
They exist, they must be as useful as anything else. That’s all.
They’re free to delete them and give something else that’s useful in every game mode, of course (albeit, having a class based on pet interaction, that isn’t exactly feasible).
But until then, they should be as useful as any other skill.

C E P H U S.4102:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

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.

I would like to point out that Banners, which can equally be considered as a portion of damage from a Warrior, remain indestructible. Providing a constant 170 Stat and/or 10% Boon Duration, to 5 targets within 600 Radius for 95 Seconds.

While a Banner does not have skills, nor will it target and destroy alone, it is still a major source of damage from 5 targets within 600 radius; that is irremovable and indestructible.

I suggest Banners take the same damage as any other object, that is placed as influence for incoming and outgoing damage. The actual Toughness and Health of the Banner could be adjusted with respect to the current function of ‘Last Man Standing’.

Good point there !

Nike.2631:

I think there’s plenty of range between nuthin’ and 95% mitigation that could bring more variety to the current meager list of competitive builds. Saying things are “fine” right now is just cruelty to the abused and under used skills. Something that can move us back to a point between ‘horrible’ and ‘non-existent’.

witcher.3197:

No. There is no middle ground.

You must be fun to split a check with after eating out.

AI builds take a lot less effort to make them work (basically close to no effort, judging by the past), the moment they become as good as any other build it’s not fine. AI carrying bad players against others way out of their league is not fine – spirit ranger, MM nec, turret engi have all been the focus of community outrage in the past.

Because ‘middle ground’ couldn’t POSSIBLY include tuning it so that the human component has to carry a certain amount of weight in the match up, and yet MAYBE be higher than the 0% mitigation we’re seeing now.

Not every build deserves to be the same in terms of strength, in an ideal world hard builds are also the most effective ones and AI builds should be absolutely bottom tier.

They don’t deserve to be NON-EXISTENT even in the hands of skilled players. But thank you for your vote for an equally brain-dead ‘minimum diversity meta’. Its truly a joy to have so few competitive choices and for the Ranger completely absent from the list of likely opponents you’ll have to know how to counter and deal with.

Nike.2631:

Nike.2631:

I think there’s plenty of range between nuthin’ and 95% mitigation that could bring more variety to the current meager list of competitive builds. Saying things are “fine” right now is just cruelty to the abused and under used skills. Something that can move us back to a point between ‘horrible’ and ‘non-existent’.

witcher.3197:

No. There is no middle ground.

You must be fun to split a check with after eating out.

I LITERALLY lol’ed at that hehe

This is some great news for PvE. All sorts of pets/minions may finally get some use.

Although I am not one of those, I however feel for WvW players whose minions are subject to the same sort of AoE damage spikes. And to a lesser degree for minions in PvP. I understand that dealing with these game modes is much more complicate as making minions almost immune in 1v1 would have them too powerful (think at turret engies in the past), while having them take any less than 98% damage reduction in 50v50 vows them to instant death.

I suppose the technology does not exist at the moment in the engine, however it would be great if minions could also take reduced damage in WvW and PvP, with the coefficient actively varying between 25 and 99% depending on the number of enemy players within 600-900 range of the minion.

Kotte.2460:

minions should be meta for pvp. espically for necromancer, hence the name. those of you who say otherwise must not know the definition of necromamcer

Hmm, rather strong accusation for one who apparently hasn’t researched the topic much. Necromancy is just magic that specializes in working with the dead. Sure, creating minions is an aspect of necromancy, however by no means the only one. Communicating with the dead is actually more prevalent in the “history” of necromancy than raising them. Also, manipulating life/death is a large part, such as stealing life force from other to prolong ones own life. Weakening others by disrupting their life force (think debuffing) is often more prevalent as a necromancer.

Overall, in games some of your more recent ones have chosen to focus on the minion piece of it, but if you go back to the roots (D&D) and even beyond up to only just recently you’ll find that minion creation just became populerized with a few recent additions to its long history.

witcher.3197:

No. There is no middle ground. AI builds take a lot less effort to make them work (basically close to no effort, judging by the past), the moment they become as good as any other build it’s not fine. AI carrying bad players against others way out of their league is not fine – spirit ranger, MM nec, turret engi have all been the focus of community outrage in the past.

Spirit Ranger made you mad because AI invalidated skill? Spirit Ranger is the single worst plausible example you could use here, because there is no AI – the kitten things just followed you. They executed attacks only when the ranger used the sequence skill. If this is an example you have of ‘AI invalidating skill’, y’all are /bad/. Not because you lost or won to spirit ranger, but because you don’t know what AI or Skill mean.

And were they the focus of community outrage because they were OP (it’s generally hard to balance minion builds – a concern that MMOs have struggled with for literal decades, generally without players making this laughable claim of ‘zomg it doesn’t show the player’s skill’), or because of the claim you carry on? Because my understanding is turret engi was meta because it was much stronger, and that drove its nerf, not because of ‘ai having no place in PvP’.

Not every build deserves to be the same in terms of strength, in an ideal world hard builds are also the most effective ones and AI builds should be absolutely bottom tier.

In organized play, making AI do the things the team wants is a very real concern that has to be accomplished by player skill, especially since they’re usually relatively easy to winnow out if you’re organized.

Really, if this were an fps, this complaint might make some manner of sense, but you’re not aiming, so your airs of ‘zomg only the skilled allowed, no ai helping people’ seem vaguely cute.

Anet knew this in GW1, they nuked every single AI spec for Pvp by splitting the skills eventually making them useless. One can only hope they go back to their roots.

I can only hope they don’t, as someone who’s loved pet builds since the dawn of MMO time.

My Necro and Mesmer are sooooooo happy with this news! Thank you. :-D

It will aply to Gyros? if yes it will be great.

Based on some arguments presented here all AI should be avoided in PVP as they are not skill dependent, this includes Mesmer illusions, Necro minions, Engi turrets/gyros, Hunter pets/spirits, Ele elementals, and the Thief’s thieves.

All of these abilities represent a significant portion of character potential in GW2 and almost all of these AI are linked to an activated ability as well as the passive effect of having an AI. To say all summonalbe units should be removed from PVP since they are “not skill dependent” is absurd, it implies that all passive effects should be removed from PVP as well (such as signets and banners).

Rutee.1058:

Really, if this were an fps, this complaint might make some manner of sense, but you’re not aiming, so your airs of ‘zomg only the skilled allowed, no ai helping people’ seem vaguely cute.

To continue with that thought, if the goal was to winnow out all choice and only measure skill we’d have to restrict desktop specs, control bandwidth, and remove all player choice.

PVP -> MLP. One class. One build.

Yet GW2 is an RPG, which typically present character choices and different builds.

This argument is nothing new, having character choices gets people all bristly when their choice does not work for all circumstances (myself included).

Roy Cronacher.1576:

reapex.8546:

Hi Roy,

Three questions:
1) If a Ranger pet attacks another ranger pet. With them being both minions, do they get the 95% damage reduction? Or are they counted as part of the player and get the full damage?
2) Will runes such as, Rune of the Ogre that summons a rock dog be consider a minion?
3) Elemental glphys weren’t mentioned as minions in your responses. Are glyph summons consider minions?

1) Nothing different happens, this is for creatures attacks against player minions as mentioned in the original post.
2) Yes.
3) Yes.

Literally anything you summon/control as a player is a player minion. Turrets, spirit weapons, ranger spirits, ranger pets, gyros, phantasms/clones, necro minions, etc.

So does this now mean I have a 5% chance of killing a players Mini pet? :P I would like to kill that ho ho tron!

@Roy Cronacher, would it be possible to use this same type of system except a maybe 25% damage reduction on pets in WvW? Pets die instantly in WvW battles and it would help immensely to make some class features available in WvW… Of course percentages can always be tweaked until a balance is found.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Otaur.9268:

@Roy Cronacher, would it be possible to use this same type of system except a maybe 25% damage reduction on pets in WvW? Pets die instantly in WvW battles and it would help immensely to make some class features available in WvW… Of course percentages can always be tweaked until a balance is found.

This is not currently possible. For this change we made creatures, at the base AI level, look at what they are targeting and what they hit to adjust damage accordingly, it has nothing to do with player damage interactions. Doing this for WvW. adjusting outgoing player damage to minions, is not tech we are currently working on and likely would cause some perf issues as well. Players attack much much more often then creatures. So doing checks on each one of the damage targets from a player can become expensive very quickly. Though, that’s not to say that we won’t ever consider investigating it, but for now this change is specifically for creatures attacking player minions and we’ll be balancing it and seeing how it goes.

Thats…unfortunate. It means rangers will still be limited to mid-small scale engagements in WvW. Theres plenty of those don’t get me wrong. But it does mean well still have that feeling of being less than usefull in fights for keeps or towers where aoes tend to be concentrated into kill zone’s.

Edit: Either way this is still a good change for PvE.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Otaur.9268:

@Roy Cronacher, would it be possible to use this same type of system except a maybe 25% damage reduction on pets in WvW? Pets die instantly in WvW battles and it would help immensely to make some class features available in WvW… Of course percentages can always be tweaked until a balance is found.

This is not currently possible. For this change we made creatures, at the base AI level, look at what they are targeting and what they hit to adjust damage accordingly, it has nothing to do with player damage interactions. Doing this for WvW. adjusting outgoing player damage to minions, is not tech we are currently working on and likely would cause some perf issues as well. Players attack much much more often then creatures. So doing checks on each one of the damage targets from a player can become expensive very quickly. Though, that’s not to say that we won’t ever consider investigating it, but for now this change is specifically for creatures attacking player minions and we’ll be balancing it and seeing how it goes.

Hey Roy, the question has been floating around about what’s going to happen with creatures that split damage, such as phantasmal defender and bulwark gyro. We haven’t heard anything yet, could you explain to us what happens when those are in play?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Otaur.9268:

@Roy Cronacher, would it be possible to use this same type of system except a maybe 25% damage reduction on pets in WvW? Pets die instantly in WvW battles and it would help immensely to make some class features available in WvW… Of course percentages can always be tweaked until a balance is found.

This is not currently possible. For this change we made creatures, at the base AI level, look at what they are targeting and what they hit to adjust damage accordingly, it has nothing to do with player damage interactions. Doing this for WvW. adjusting outgoing player damage to minions, is not tech we are currently working on and likely would cause some perf issues as well. Players attack much much more often then creatures. So doing checks on each one of the damage targets from a player can become expensive very quickly. Though, that’s not to say that we won’t ever consider investigating it, but for now this change is specifically for creatures attacking player minions and we’ll be balancing it and seeing how it goes.

Well since it’ s been 3 years that rangers have been asking for this, I’ m sorry to say that You should work on this. This is one of the reason why me, a ranger, hasn’ t bought the expansion yet. Make ranger able to use his F skills whenever he wants like all the other classes and maybe I’ ll reconsider my decision. And i bet there are many rangers around who share my same thoughts.
3 years Roy. Come on

Invictus.1503:

Kotte.2460:

minions should be meta for pvp. espically for necromancer, hence the name. those of you who say otherwise must not know the definition of necromamcer

Hmm, rather strong accusation for one who apparently hasn’t researched the topic much. Necromancy is just magic that specializes in working with the dead. Sure, creating minions is an aspect of necromancy, however by no means the only one. Communicating with the dead is actually more prevalent in the “history” of necromancy than raising them. Also, manipulating life/death is a large part, such as stealing life force from other to prolong ones own life. Weakening others by disrupting their life force (think debuffing) is often more prevalent as a necromancer.

Overall, in games some of your more recent ones have chosen to focus on the minion piece of it, but if you go back to the roots (D&D) and even beyond up to only just recently you’ll find that minion creation just became populerized with a few recent additions to its long history.

Necromancy has it’s roots in the Necronomicon, a book used by a type of shamanistic/prophetic priesthood that glorified death. The first thing they taught to inducties? How to summon the spirits of the dead to serve as spies, informants, and guardians. They fully believed that if they summoned an undead spirit during a ritual that anyone outside the ritual would be torn apart by the spirit.
So yes…Necromancy goes hand in hand with summoning and controlling the dead, minions.
THAT is the root of necromancy, including the word itself as the high priests were called necromancers.

When one talks of roots, they always go beyond games. However, since you brought up D&D and I own the original rulebooks… D&D the highest spells a necromancer can do is create golems and undead minions…the highest spell in the original D&D rulebook? Army of Undeath, you literally raise an entire legion of undead.

So yeah…kind of a big deal to make minions viable in ALL gameplay if you have necromancers.

Shoe.5821:

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.

An action taken by a player is always more skillful than an AI running around doing its own thing. I’m actually surprised that people don’t understand that.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Vavume.8065:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

reapex.8546:

Hi Roy,

Three questions:
1) If a Ranger pet attacks another ranger pet. With them being both minions, do they get the 95% damage reduction? Or are they counted as part of the player and get the full damage?
2) Will runes such as, Rune of the Ogre that summons a rock dog be consider a minion?
3) Elemental glphys weren’t mentioned as minions in your responses. Are glyph summons consider minions?

1) Nothing different happens, this is for creatures attacks against player minions as mentioned in the original post.
2) Yes.
3) Yes.

Literally anything you summon/control as a player is a player minion. Turrets, spirit weapons, ranger spirits, ranger pets, gyros, phantasms/clones, necro minions, etc.

So does this now mean I have a 5% chance of killing a players Mini pet? :P I would like to kill that ho ho tron!

Mini pets can’t be attacked.

I beg to differ! The fire shaman world boss in Iron Marches can kill your mini’s with burning. Oh and engineer Slick Shoes can knock them down.