Guild Wars 2

Make pet dodge with the player is THAT hard/game breaking?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

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.

And Banners!

…except they’re already 100% immune to everything including players…

Roy Cronacher.1576:

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.

Hmm. I see the concern. That’s unfortunate… because this kind of partial fix will probably end up hurting the chances of getting a good general fix in the long run.

Seeing the occasional use of player summons in the various PvP modes would have been a nice boost to variety.

How will this change affect armour-ignoring damage that doesn’t come from conditions, such as retaliation and (most importantly) lifesteal?

From what you’ve said in the OP, it looks like PvE enemies with significant lifesteal attacks will still be able to inflict full damage to pets with them, while also receiving the full amount of healing.

At the same time, this patch will make it much harder to follow the current advice to leave pets to die and make no effort to revive them when facing anything with significant lifesteal.

That sounds a bit worrying to me.

RSLongK.8961:

Make pet dodge with the player is THAT hard/game breaking?

That’s not an effective solution to this problem, although it probably would be helpful anyway for other problems that come with AI-dependence, like not being able to put the designed-in counterplay to certain skills into practice in PvP.

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.

Does this apply to my mount as well? Its pretty annoying getting knocked off of it when riding while the other players in my squad do the grunt work for my rewards.

C E P H U S.4102:

Roy, can we expect to see any changes to indestructible Warrior Banners?

I can safely say that the answer to this is no.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

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.

…don’t you already?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Piercing_Shards

Or any other similar skill.

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.

Using the AI at the right time, in the right place, and in the right way, is a kind of skill. Positioning static emplacements is a skill – Given the importance of banners, it is one you CANNOT gainsay, in fact. But one of these is a utility you apparently feel should be valued, while another is considered horrible, because an AI got involved – even though it’s the same player skill in either case. Eyeroll

Omg yes yes yes, I have been waiting for this fornmy necromancer, thank you so much

Rutee.1058:

…don’t you already?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Piercing_Shards

Or any other similar skill.

Checking what conditions a player has is much simpler than checking who their selected target is, since conditions are figured out by the server, whereas players’ targets are figured out by the client.

Figuring out who the player’s target is is clearly a thing they can do, as evidenced by the mechanic seen in fractals, but doing any given thing in a fractal is orders of magnitude cheaper than doing the same thing in WvW.

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.

Couldn’t this be accomplished with a zone wide buff on minions in WvW areas with a percentage of all incoming damage reduced or greatly increase their mitigation in some way and just have the dmg adjusted as it lands? This seems like it may be a good low hanging fruit option. Because right now any and all minions/pets and even those coming with the elite specializations will be useless absolutely utterly useless in any large scale fights.

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.

For WvW would it make more sense to scale minion health based on the number of nearby enemy players by some amount, like how the dynamic event system scales champion health instead? If you kept the check for player count on a moderately long timer, like 30 seconds or a minute, but instantly checked if a player used a portal or waypoint, would that result in any significant performance implications?

It sounds like the best way to deal with minion survivability in WvW is some sort of passive stat tweak, not specifically targeted vs untargeted damage like in PvE, due to those performance implications, but getting that to scale balance wise between zerg and solo fights is definitely hard.

evilunderling.9265:

Rutee.1058:

…don’t you already?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Piercing_Shards

Or any other similar skill.

Checking what conditions a player has is much simpler than checking who their selected target is, since conditions are figured out by the server, whereas players’ targets are figured out by the client.

Figuring out who the player’s target is is clearly a thing they can do, as evidenced by the mechanic seen in fractals, but doing any given thing in a fractal is orders of magnitude cheaper than doing the same thing in WvW.

Condition: Minion

Minions are last in the target priority line to start with, aren’t they? I’d think this is a thing the game’s /already/ checking.

The main problem would be that cleaving AoE probably shouldn’t care (Or at least, autoattacks shouldn’t)

I just wanted to give Roy Cronacher some major props for his communication here. As of the time of my posting, Roy not only started this thread, but he has responded nine (nine!) times in five pages, and every single post has contained useful information.

I’m not saying that there aren’t other dev and/or community people who communicate well (there are), but Roy’s level of communication in this thread is pretty freakin’ impressive. Kudos.

On topic, I think these changes to minions sound pretty solid.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

NeuroMuse.1763:

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.

Couldn’t this be accomplished with a zone wide buff on minions in WvW areas with a percentage of all incoming damage reduced or greatly increase their mitigation in some way and just have the dmg adjusted as it lands? This seems like it may be a good low hanging fruit option. Because right now any and all minions/pets and even those coming with the elite specializations will be useless absolutely utterly useless in any large scale fights.

Things are rarely that simple. While you may be looking at that from a larger scale fight perspective and it would probably help there, it would create other problems such as making minions too strong and frustrating in smaller to mid scale combat with just a flat reduction always on them.

Roy, is mesmer continuum shift rift affected by this change in PvE? That temporal rift that spawns off their new shatter and it dies extremely easy to aoe in PvE.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Things are rarely that simple. While you may be looking at that from a larger scale fight perspective and it would probably help there, it would create other problems such as making minions too strong and frustrating in smaller to mid scale combat with just a flat reduction always on them.

Could we maybe get less mitigation and duration reduction and more base health and/or toughness? (I’m also curious, at -95% duration, does that mean they outright ignore all conditions shorter than 5 seconds?)

I get that the ground decal MEGA-DAMAGE bosses do is quite unlike player-administered damage, but for the most part pets and their AI are just bad. Bringing these tools up a bit in all modes of play and having less absolute dichotomy between modes would be a real plus for players building the right expectations about their tools. Teaching new players that their pets are decently survivable in AoE-heavy environments and then having them just melt with they come over to sPvP is not helping your players transition to new environments…

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 in all areas of the game 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.

Thank you Roy

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Sarif.1827:

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

If the cleave attack targets the minion then no reduction, if the minion is not the target of the cleave attack then yes it does get reduced.

ok guys my two cents here. As Irenio explained in the rangers subforums (thanks Irenio) the problem with the attacks are that all of them are treated internally like AoE. That means that you have two status: targeted and AoE. There is not something like AoE for real AoE attacks, the sword#1 that hit 3 targets is also AoE.

Within PvE there is no problem with that, PvE mobs will not complain. But can you imaging what would happen if your GreatSword attacks would do just 5% of the real damage because you don’t have the pet specifically targeted? (Or even the 50% for what matters)

So i think that’s the reason why Roy and the rest of the team can’t apply it now to any competitive environment : PvP or WvW.

As i commented before to Irenio in it’s thread one of the best ways to fix this is to increment the minion environmental awareness and add mechanics to avoid damage, but not permanent mitigation.
To accomplish this at least for PvP and WvW I would advise to make the pet behave closer to a player (because to change all the mobs in PVE seriously does not worth it and the damage mitigation is fine, although future mobs could use more player-like mechanic):

• This controls could be made on the player side, because there shouldn’t be more than 1 or 2 of those entities, shouldn’t be much taxating on the player computer. Could be handled within the pathing algorithm to check for the red areas.
• Can you obtain some object id unique to that attack from the AoE damage? That way you can apply the rule: if the damage is coming from the same Id more than one tick that means is sustained AoE area (firestorm, barrage) = Avoid.
• Can you know when the AoE area is marked in red circle? If the can can detect where the red circles are the pet can decide to avoid to go in and to get out when is inside, like a normal player would do.

Making all the AoE areas detectable to the pet (traps once activated too) would mak the AI to be able to behave consistently against those threats. Also would make pets viable in PvP/WvW without becoming overpowered (evade every X seconds for example) .
I wouldn’t apply this AI to all minions though, just to make difference between classes.
I would leave it for the smartest of all (a way to say this) definitely the ranger’s pet (it’s not something they can choose to exchange), and maybe some elites, like the meat golem from the Necro and minions from thief.
Other lesser minions or illusions is not advisable to use an smarter AI simply because of the spawning ability of those. Wouldn’t be much fun if in 1v1 would become 1 v mesmer an all his friends.

Nike.2631:

Could we maybe get less mitigation and duration reduction and more base health and/or toughness? (I’m also curious, at -95% duration, does that mean they outright ignore all conditions shorter than 5 seconds?)

Course not. You take fractional damage. It’s the same way .5s of condition damage added to a skill is treated. So a 4 second Condi from a boss landing on a pet will deal .8 of a full second of damage.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

NeuroMuse.1763:

Couldn’t this be accomplished with a zone wide buff on minions in WvW areas with a percentage of all incoming damage reduced or greatly increase their mitigation in some way and just have the dmg adjusted as it lands? This seems like it may be a good low hanging fruit option. Because right now any and all minions/pets and even those coming with the elite specializations will be useless absolutely utterly useless in any large scale fights.

Things are rarely that simple. While you may be looking at that from a larger scale fight perspective and it would probably help there, it would create other problems such as making minions too strong and frustrating in smaller to mid scale combat with just a flat reduction always on them.

Could this possibly be done to scale the buff based off an approximation of players in the general vicinity ? like 1-5 it’s 0% 10+ it another figure etc..? Or a stacking based buff that applies 1 stack of mitigation for 10+ more for 15+ players so it’s not fixed. It would take time to find a radius from the player to count from that would feel right but seems like a much more realistic approach. Compared to what would need to be done to have everything calculated from individual players out especially on the server side of things w/performance.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

NeuroMuse.1763:

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.

Couldn’t this be accomplished with a zone wide buff on minions in WvW areas with a percentage of all incoming damage reduced or greatly increase their mitigation in some way and just have the dmg adjusted as it lands? This seems like it may be a good low hanging fruit option. Because right now any and all minions/pets and even those coming with the elite specializations will be useless absolutely utterly useless in any large scale fights.

Things are rarely that simple. While you may be looking at that from a larger scale fight perspective and it would probably help there, it would create other problems such as making minions too strong and frustrating in smaller to mid scale combat with just a flat reduction always on them.

Maybe possibly look at the pets stats in WvW then… Currently they die so fast it is worthless… The new Ranger pets in HoT are a step in the right direction, they have more Hitpoints and seem to survive better with evasive techniques.

Otherwise a zone wide buff is in need… Maybe make it part of Bloodlust buff. 5% Reduced damage to all minions per Stack of Bloodlust… This gives Rangers/Minionmancers incentive to take the Ruins on each map…

Rutee.1058:

Nike.2631:

Could we maybe get less mitigation and duration reduction and more base health and/or toughness? (I’m also curious, at -95% duration, does that mean they outright ignore all conditions shorter than 5 seconds?)

Course not. You take fractional damage. It’s the same way .5s of condition damage added to a skill is treated. So a 4 second Condi from a boss landing on a pet will deal .8 of a full second of damage.

Um, 4 seconds hit with -95% duration turns into .2 seconds… and .2 seconds of burning does nothing last I checked. Guards haven’t been getting ‘fractional damage’ out of their burns ever. If you have a full second it ticks, any less and it does zilch.

butch.8136:

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.

The zoo meta was horrible in PvP. The turret meta was horrible too. We don’t need more AI in PvP.
Necro minions are being used.

there was never a zoo meta. Turrets were never used as turrets, only mass knockdown. Neither of these were issues caused by AI.

I hate this stigma against AI that has absolutely no substance or backing at all.

Question:
Why not give all minions Protective Spirit? For PvE, they already have a massive health boost, seems unnecessary.

It’s almost like you’re putting too much thought into it, take a note from Tahlkora, as she spammed the hell out of it on my minions!

Nike.2631:

Rutee.1058:

Nike.2631:

Could we maybe get less mitigation and duration reduction and more base health and/or toughness? (I’m also curious, at -95% duration, does that mean they outright ignore all conditions shorter than 5 seconds?)

Course not. You take fractional damage. It’s the same way .5s of condition damage added to a skill is treated. So a 4 second Condi from a boss landing on a pet will deal .8 of a full second of damage.

Um, 4 seconds hit with -95% duration turns into .2 seconds… and .2 seconds of burning does nothing last I checked. Guards haven’t been getting ‘fractional damage’ out of their burns ever. If you have a full second it ticks, any less and it does zilch.

I distinctly remember fractional condition damage being added sometime after the big condition update. Am I wrong here?

Diovid.9506:

[…]
I distinctly remember fractional condition damage being added sometime after the big condition update. Am I wrong here?

You are not wrong. The ‘fraction’ is dealt as a final smaller packet of damage.

Is there a possibility to use this effect on combo-fields or fields that are continously ticking damage from players as well?

For example:
Necro wells → damage reduction for minions
Guard symbols → damage reduction for minions
Ranger traps → damage reduction for minions

Ele meteor → no damage reduction for minions

This would help a lot to break the current stupid boring meta in WvW.
There would finally be a counter to mindless aoe spamming.
This would improve the build diversity in PvP as well, making minion master necros, ranger spirits and turrent engis a little more viable again .

There would be a counter (not a debuff!) to ranged AoE spamming!

I would love to see that. <3

Rutee.1058:

Condition: Minion

Minions are last in the target priority line to start with, aren’t they? I’d think this is a thing the game’s /already/ checking.

The bit that’s hard is telling who a player has targeted, not telling whether or not an attack has hit a minion.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Why not give all minions Protective Spirit? For PvE, they already have a massive health boost, seems unnecessary.

I spoke to my phantasms about this, and they said that it’s a great idea. In fact, they felt it was such an amazing buff that they’d happily take a 90% nerf to their maximum health pools as compensation.

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.

For Ranger pets, would it not be possible to do this on the pet side? Whenever it takes damage, check to see if the damage came from someone targeting it. If it wasn’t targeted, then halve the damage?

It would be sorta like the Mistlock Instability: Playing Favorites except that you don’t check on players dealing damage, you check on pets taking damage.

Although, that is a lot of checking… Could always just cut and paste the code from Companion’s Defense to baseline Ranger and exchange the Protection for Evade.

evilunderling.9265:

…I spoke to my phantasms about this, and they said that it’s a great idea. In fact, they felt it was such an amazing buff that they’d happily take a 90% nerf to their maximum health pools as compensation.

Just nerf them to 55 health and give em regeneration as well

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Just nerf them to 55 health and give em regeneration as well

I was trying to be a bit more subtle about it than that xD. Especially since phantasms can already get regeneration from a trait.

Joking aside, I’d also be concerned that a protective spirit type mechanic would leave us in the situation where all minions would survive exactly the same amount of time in any given fight, no matter how fragile or beefy they were supposed to be.

I’m still worried about how this 95% thing will interact with lifestealing enemies, unless PvE enemies using lifesteal against ranger pets was specifically addressed at some point without me hearing about it.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Morfedel.4165:

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?

The damage transferred works like it normally does, the minion takes a percentage of damage the player would have taken. The change is only from creature attacks against player minions, nothing else is different. I mean, sure, the defender will live longer because it dies to less AOE so it can soak more damage, if that’s what you mean.

The question being would that damage then get reduced by 95% or remain unreduced? My assumption is the latter but I just wanted to check to be sure.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Diovid.9506:

[…]
I distinctly remember fractional condition damage being added sometime after the big condition update. Am I wrong here?

You are not wrong. The ‘fraction’ is dealt as a final smaller packet of damage.

If that’s the case that’s very good to hear .

evilunderling.9265:

The bit that’s hard is telling who a player has targeted, not telling whether or not an attack has hit a minion.

I’m kinda saying ‘ignore the whole ’who are you targeting thing’.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Safari Tank.6238:

Just to clarify, you mention minions, spirits, and turrets, but this does NOT include Ranger pets, correct?

Ranger pets are included.

You’re my hero Roy! You’ve fixed one of the most glaring problems that have been asked for since launch. Thank you.

(I assume you didn’t do it personally, so that’s a plural you for the team)

I am sorry to ask this Roy but I would like to know:

Why do you put HP on minions and not rather a timer?
-> Minions being impactful for a short time, but still useful even if they are there for a short time. And It could be used in EVERY game modes.

Because with your “weird system” you can only fix PvE for processing problems and not PvP and WvW where it would impact too much the game by non desired server calculi. And even, you do not really know if the creation of multiple minions in Raids will not impact the game experience (let say 6 necros with full minions and a lot of attacks around).

Nieguen.6235:

I am sorry to ask this Roy but I would like to know:

Why do you put HP on minions and not rather a timer?
-> Minions being impactful for a short time, but still useful even if they are there for a short time. And It could be used in EVERY game modes.

Because with your “weird system” you can only fix PvE for processing problems and not PvP and WvW where it would impact to much the game by non desired server calculi. And even, you do not really know if the creation of multiple minions in Raids will not impact the game experience (let say 6 necros with full minions and a lot of attacks around).

That does raise another question of why would you have 6 minion master necros in a 10 man raid. O.o

SelenaDread.2814:

Nieguen.6235:

I am sorry to ask this Roy but I would like to know:

Why do you put HP on minions and not rather a timer?
-> Minions being impactful for a short time, but still useful even if they are there for a short time. And It could be used in EVERY game modes.

Because with your “weird system” you can only fix PvE for processing problems and not PvP and WvW where it would impact to much the game by non desired server calculi. And even, you do not really know if the creation of multiple minions in Raids will not impact the game experience (let say 6 necros with full minions and a lot of attacks around).

That does raise another question of why would you have 6 minion master necros in a 10 man raid. O.o

When you do code you have to test it and debbug it. It is just an example to know if the game can be impacted by a non desired amount of calculi implied by this “new” system of damage management for minions.

Thank you! Thank You! THANK YOU!

Roy Cronacher.1576:

NeuroMuse.1763:

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.

Couldn’t this be accomplished with a zone wide buff on minions in WvW areas with a percentage of all incoming damage reduced or greatly increase their mitigation in some way and just have the dmg adjusted as it lands? This seems like it may be a good low hanging fruit option. Because right now any and all minions/pets and even those coming with the elite specializations will be useless absolutely utterly useless in any large scale fights.

Things are rarely that simple. While you may be looking at that from a larger scale fight perspective and it would probably help there, it would create other problems such as making minions too strong and frustrating in smaller to mid scale combat with just a flat reduction always on them.

For PvP and WvW.
Give all minions/pets/summons/clones etc a limitation that they cannot take more than x% of their max health in damage per second. Tune it a bit the different game modes, maybe 8% to 12% hp loss maximum per second might be a good point. They still can be killed easily but it can help minions not be so extremely worthless in any larger pvp/wvw encounter without being so significantly more powerful in smaller encounters.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

NeuroMuse.1763:

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.

Couldn’t this be accomplished with a zone wide buff on minions in WvW areas with a percentage of all incoming damage reduced or greatly increase their mitigation in some way and just have the dmg adjusted as it lands? This seems like it may be a good low hanging fruit option. Because right now any and all minions/pets and even those coming with the elite specializations will be useless absolutely utterly useless in any large scale fights.

Things are rarely that simple. While you may be looking at that from a larger scale fight perspective and it would probably help there, it would create other problems such as making minions too strong and frustrating in smaller to mid scale combat with just a flat reduction always on them.

If so why on earth dont u give us the Option to play without our Pets in WvW and buf our dmg instead and let us execute the proffesion skills of the pets?

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.

Considering my phantasms in pvp are dying as soon as I summon them before I can even shatter, I really have to disagree with you.

Holy necromancy, Batman!

Guardian Spirit Weapons?

Edit:…..wait…is this from 4 months ago?