Guild Wars 2

First off, this isn’t a QQ thread and I can beat both builds without moa – I simply don’t understand why turrets are given an obvious advantage over minions in this regard.

Good question, OP.

It should really be more consistent. Either moa leaves the minions or destroys other AI controlled objects as well.

Because grouch plays Engi

Elegy.2159:

or destroys other AI controlled objects as well.

I vote for this one.

I’ve seen Anet employees playing every profession. Grouch loving engi has nothing to do with it. I’m sure someone loves necromancer too.

I’m thinking this is either an oversight, or intentional. If it’s intentional I’d love to know the reasoning behind it, because I don’t see it.

Dredrum.2563:

Because grouch plays Engi

Grouch is not a dev!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Lishtenbird.2814:

Elegy.2159:

or destroys other AI controlled objects as well.

I vote for this one.

Well it would certainly give mesmers a slight buff in the current meta considering the number of engis about, destroy the turrets from supply crate (still have stun and bandages) + 10s window where they can’t gear shield.

I think thieves are mainly the reason for mesmers getting shut out of the meta. I haven’t seen top tier teams have too many issues with turrets, and it seems that supply crate is mainly used for the stun and secondarily for the bandages and turrets. With all the eles hanging around, I doubt those turrets last very long.

truthishly.9513:

I think thieves are mainly the reason for mesmers getting shut out of the meta. I haven’t seen top tier teams have too many issues with turrets, and it seems that supply crate is mainly used for the stun and secondarily for the bandages and turrets. With all the eles hanging around, I doubt those turrets last very long.

That’s not necessarily true, thieves have been part of the meta for a long time, but that didn’t stop mesmers – the shift away from mesmers wasn’t due to the introduction of thieves. Anyway, that’s a different topic completely :P

Random Weird Guy.3528:

truthishly.9513:

I think thieves are mainly the reason for mesmers getting shut out of the meta. I haven’t seen top tier teams have too many issues with turrets, and it seems that supply crate is mainly used for the stun and secondarily for the bandages and turrets. With all the eles hanging around, I doubt those turrets last very long.

That’s not necessarily true, thieves have been part of the meta for a long time, but that didn’t stop mesmers – the shift away from mesmers wasn’t due to the introduction of thieves. Anyway, that’s a different topic completely :P

Mesmers are less played exacly because of Thieves.

it should remove the engi when used on turret

Morwath.9817:

Random Weird Guy.3528:

truthishly.9513:

I think thieves are mainly the reason for mesmers getting shut out of the meta. I haven’t seen top tier teams have too many issues with turrets, and it seems that supply crate is mainly used for the stun and secondarily for the bandages and turrets. With all the eles hanging around, I doubt those turrets last very long.

That’s not necessarily true, thieves have been part of the meta for a long time, but that didn’t stop mesmers – the shift away from mesmers wasn’t due to the introduction of thieves. Anyway, that’s a different topic completely :P

Mesmers are less played exacly because of Thieves.

Did you even read my post? If thieves were the ONLY reason that mesmers are being pushed out, they would have been gone over a year ago.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Morwath.9817:

Random Weird Guy.3528:

truthishly.9513:

I think thieves are mainly the reason for mesmers getting shut out of the meta. I haven’t seen top tier teams have too many issues with turrets, and it seems that supply crate is mainly used for the stun and secondarily for the bandages and turrets. With all the eles hanging around, I doubt those turrets last very long.

That’s not necessarily true, thieves have been part of the meta for a long time, but that didn’t stop mesmers – the shift away from mesmers wasn’t due to the introduction of thieves. Anyway, that’s a different topic completely :P

Mesmers are less played exacly because of Thieves.

Did you even read my post? If thieves were the ONLY reason that mesmers are being pushed out, they would have been gone over a year ago.

I certainly don’t play at a high level, but I definitely feel that, as a mesmer, I am a detriment to my team simply by the existence of a thief on the other side, so long as he’s even marginally competent. I don’t know when the meta builds became what they are now, for thief and mesmer specifically, but under the current meta I can’t see a reason why mesmers wouldn’t have a place in it other than thieves being such a hard counter. They’re weak to condis, I suppose, but so are other classes like engi, and that class is the poster boy for the cele meta. Maybe I’m missing something?

Lore answer: minions are creatures from dark magic that follow their master. When their master turns to a bird, he’s unable to control them. Turrets on the other hand are internally coded to attack enemies within their range. There’s no magical tie to their creator, but are independent entities.

Smirgel.9460:

Lore answer: minions are creatures from dark magic that follow their master. When their master turns to a bird, he’s unable to control them. Turrets on the other hand are internally coded to attack enemies within their range. There’s no magical tie to their creator, but are independent entities.

But then why are they destroyed on player death?

+1 we need a dev to answer this question. Moa should destroy turrets.

ArrDee.2573:

Dredrum.2563:

Because grouch plays Engi

Grouch is not a dev!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

you are by far the most annoying forumer here. almost everyone who are in HOTM have already blocked you.

just wanna say that.

It’s a bug that was introduced at live. It has to do with how utility bars lock when a necromancer is transformed and has something to do with the unique coding in Death shroud (or so it was explained) and is why their elites were eventually made to say they kill monions on use, which was announced to be a temporary fix so people wouldn’t be surprised. Many devs didn’t even know it happened or forgot until i directly brought it up to Hammon and a few others last year some time and they vaguely confirmed it as a bug. Which should be obvious since it’s the only spawned pet that doesnt die (both spirits, turrets, clones).

There doesn’t seem to be many hardcore necros in ANet, much less MMs so we get pushed off a lot. Not to mention, no one has any understanding off the issues it has.

(ie, turrets get to be called objects so they are immune to critical hits and conditions too, hence they can be used in team fights where as mm Pets die in abiut 4 seconds and the MM can be trained down) and is why spirit guardians don’t even really exist.

I’m sure this is probably a case to make Moa kill turrets, but it really just needs to stop killing minions, the only people if affects this way. I wish these critical bugs were taken more seriously by the devs and not exploited as leverage to nerf unwanted builds.

My two cents ~ High Warlord Sikari.

this is actually a very good question.

Please devs do not ignore this . . .

ronpierce.2760:

(ie, turrets get to be called objects so they are immune to critical hits and conditions too, hence they can be used in team fights where as mm Pets die in abiut 4 seconds and the MM can be trained down)

Ron, I’m quoting this specific part of your post because I feel this is an issue as well, albeit an entirely different one. I don’t quite understand why turrets can’t be critically hit from a balance/design standpoint. AI controlled minions/pets/whatever are common, and the majority of them do take critical damage. I get that turrets are immobile and in a different structure category, but I’m not sure why this can’t be changed.

Having moa destroy turrets rather than spare minions might be where this is headed, but moa elite problems only scrape the surface of the overbearing problems with AI. I get that pathing is difficult to refine and may not improve in this generation of gaming, but AI controlled profession mechanics need to at least be balanced to be on the same playing field. There really are a plethora of builds that infrequently or hesitantly used because of problems like these.

Elegy.2159:

ronpierce.2760:

(ie, turrets get to be called objects so they are immune to critical hits and conditions too, hence they can be used in team fights where as mm Pets die in abiut 4 seconds and the MM can be trained down)

Ron, I’m quoting this specific part of your post because I feel this is an issue as well, albeit an entirely different one. I don’t quite understand why turrets can’t be critically hit from a balance/design standpoint. AI controlled minions/pets/whatever are common, and the majority of them do take critical damage. I get that turrets are immobile and in a different structure category, but I’m not sure why this can’t be changed.

Having moa destroy turrets rather than spare minions might be where this is headed, but moa elite problems only scrape the surface of the overbearing problems with AI. I get that pathing is difficult to refine and may not improve in this generation of gaming, but AI controlled profession mechanics need to at least be balanced to be on the same playing field. There really are a plethora of builds that infrequently or hesitantly used because of problems like these.

I can see the logic behind not being to crit buildings since they lack obvious soft spots (a person’s neck and their err… special area), but maybe they should be given another weakness to compensate? Could make them larger with 2-3 points that you can hit to make them susceptible to cleave damage and aoe, after all you would expect to take a turret down faster with a hammer than a bow.

Alternatively, give thieves sappers like in Team Fortress 2

I believe that moa removing minions was an unintended side effect that has been unoticed by devs. If they fix/change anything it will probably stop removing minions instead of buff even more and remove turrets.

I think the devs are having some issues with (non turret) pet builds and understandably so. Let’s builds are beyond effective and for little effort against poor(er) players. However in team play or against their many counters (including Aoe, also not a turret issue) or just good players in general, pets get lousy up time, are kitten y, weak to Aoe and the player has very little personal protection especially against CC. It’s such a hard thing to fix for them to be effective in teams and pro play, but if they gave them the attention they needed, not only would pros complain because people have such a strong bias toward twitchy burst play that they’d complain, but also new and poor players would get absolutely annihilated constantly by MMs. And the forums would be filled 24/7 with massive outcries about AI (even if the mm did most of the damage) which is understandable I guess.

I just don’t know, it’s frustrating. There is no right answers but I think instead of trying to make it work at all they just sort of gave up and ignore them all together and just keep an eye on making sure they’re not TOO strong 1v1 to avoid the forum riots.

The other thing is people tend to ignore their weaknesses. Most off here, though, turret engies dont really share with Necromancers and Spirit guardians, which is why they get play more so than the others.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

I can see the logic behind not being to crit buildings since they lack obvious soft spots (a person’s neck and their err… special area), but maybe they should be given another weakness to compensate? Could make them larger with 2-3 points that you can hit to make them susceptible to cleave damage and aoe, after all you would expect to take a turret down faster with a hammer than a bow.

Buildings, yes. Turrets are on flimsy looking little stands though. I imagine hitting something like that with a hammer, you could certainly hit a weak spot. Break the barrel off rifle turret even, for the sake of roleplay. If the devs need to call crit damage to turrets something else, that’s fine with me.

The point is, they’re at an obvious advantage over other AI controlled minions anyway. They don’t rely on pathing, only LOS. Sure, they can’t move, but they have a respectable range which can be extended further through traits. Players can choose to increase the health and armor of them through traits as well. Turret engineer is easy mode for a profession with so much potential – I’d love to see turrets more in line with other similar skills, if only to incentivize active over passive play. Other professions with AI controlled skills can’t rely on their performance the way engineers can rely on turrets. I’m in no way suggesting that turrets are a good build to run, just that the reward/effort ratio is laughably disproportionate compared to what other professions have access to.

does moa remove spirit weapons tho

Yeah, as far as risk/reward, it’s certainly an upperhand turrets have. One, they have practical team uses. They’re also mostly ranged so they can be strategically placed and be very effective immediately where as the other two pet builds (save Mesmer and phantasms) have to be spawned at the player, then locked toward a target, catch up then do some damage. And unlike turrets and phantasms they aren’t bursty so they need a decent amount of uptime to really pay off for the 1.5 second spawning casts and in real play, especially team fights, that doesn’t really happen. Then of course on top of being ranged and being able to work around say turret placement, you have almost no control over minions except that they prefer your last target and are effected by control effects which can cause their abilities to go on full cooldown with no effect at all, they take full condition damage, which is tuned around having some removal which means pets did within a few bleed stacks or if they stand in a burning field for more than a few seconds.
And beyond all that, it’s held down by the biases of dueling situations where admittedly MM does pretty well against certain builds that have close to no Aoe, which is honestly much less common than it once was it seems.

I don’t expect any changes and with player attitude against AI who don’t out much thought into the mechanics beyond recognizing the player isnt controlling it directly, it’s probably a lost cause. I used to post all the time and was a pretty notable MM, top 20 for a good while (despite my hate for conquest). It just wasn’t really worth it because the devs paid no attention.

Also another special note: Turrets can better function in khylo because they can be positioned accordingly. Minions pretty much all die to a catapult regardless of the necros ability to dodge, essentially making it useless in its only role, home bunking.

Simon.3794:

does moa remove spirit weapons tho

Does it? Pretty sure it didn’t always. I know I’ve tested phants and spirits from Rangers and turrets, they don’t die. I’ll test guardian weapons later.

No matter what they do to AI builds, there’s always going to be a skill vs reward issue simply because the AI is doing most of the work (new players don’t have to worry about working to get both dps and survivability, experienced players can’t manipulate them to evade attacks or easily reposition them). They can either keep them as they are and put up with less experienced players flaming about them, or make them completely useless except for very bottom end pvp.

This is not the topic though, still waiting on a dev to appear and answer the topic.

Exactly. That’s the problem I have because I’m sympathetic of those players. I understand the frustration. I just love playing minion master because I enjoy playing the “Controller” to allow my pets to attack, and while I have passive offense, I have to focus more on personal survivability where as say, a meditation guardian or dd ele focuses on their offense and defenses are “passive” though a generalized rotation from Boone and self healing simply by playing. It’s just two opposite extremes, but people don’t really see it that way unfortunately. Doesn’t really stop me from enjoying it but I do know we’re not likely to get fixes we direly need, though devs clearly have no issues nerfing mm or not fixing critical bugs that come up, because the MM base is much smaller than the base that hates them deeply. It’s an unfortunate truth.

OT though, I do hope they fix minions and moa and not make all pets die. Because that would have to extend to mesmer clones/phants and guardian spirits too which simply don’t need more issues.

Unsure if any of you guys understand why it happens with Necro minions. I’ll explain it now if you don’t get it: This was unintentional, but was accepted by ANet as a fun quirk to the game. The intentional affect was to have minions die on the Necro going Lich, or else the Lich+Minions would become OP. It is assumed the code never specified Lich and now actually works on any transformation, which wouldn’t mean anything since it was meant for necro’s transformations… except mesmer can transform others. This created the unintentional, but allowed, effect of moa killing minions.

Dondagora.9645:

Unsure if any of you guys understand why it happens with Necro minions. I’ll explain it now if you don’t get it: This was unintentional, but was accepted by ANet as a fun quirk to the game. The intentional affect was to have minions die on the Necro going Lich, or else the Lich+Minions would become OP. It is assumed the code never specified Lich and now actually works on any transformation, which wouldn’t mean anything since it was meant for necro’s transformations… except mesmer can transform others. This created the unintentional, but allowed, effect of moa killing minions.

Thanks for the clarification, I knew I was forgetting how it all tied together. But they need to fix it. This isn’t just an issue for moa (granted it’s the biggest), there are pve transformations too that this screws us over with. They just need to buckle down and fix it.

I’m imagining the necros frustration. But then I see how their AI is better than ours and get even more frustrated.

Saiyan.1704:

I’m imagining the necros frustration. But then I see how their AI is better than ours and get even more frustrated.

It’s a “little” better. It’s still miles from phants or just good in general. All ai in the game needs updated.

I’ve never really understood why it destroys the minions in the first place. I think the reason it doesn’t touch turrets is because the game handles them in a different way.

Random, if you want a dev to appear here you need to put “matchmaking” in your title. Do it “why matchmaking benefits necros over engies” and VOILA! Justin in your thread.

(I just hope he won’t appear to beat me now…)

Yamsandjams.3267:

I’ve never really understood why it destroys the minions in the first place. I think the reason it doesn’t touch turrets is because the game handles them in a different way.

It was explained pretty well.

For balance reasons minions were killed when the Necro transforms using his Elite skills. However the coding probably just said if the Necro transforms, period.
The Mesmer forces a transformation on the Necro which triggers the “kill minion” mechanic. arenanet left it as such because they thought it was an interesting quirk.

If I use my human racial transformation it also kills my necro minions.

Yamsandjams.3267:

I’ve never really understood why it destroys the minions in the first place. I think the reason it doesn’t touch turrets is because the game handles them in a different way.

Because turrets are stationary, mechanical and semi-independent things that have 5min duration.
You can summon them at your spawn point and run to another corner of map w/o them disappearing.

Ranger pet and minions are creatures that have a “bond” with caster.
Despite minions work in similar way like turrets, they still need to be in certain caster’s range.

Because nobody grasps the ORIGINAL issue, even before anyone was even talking about elites+minions and such, I’m going to clarify it once and for all.

At launch you could go underwater, equip and summon minions, get out of the water with non-minion skills and still have your minions alive. They changed this and it automatically broke with elites too and later they just accepted it as a skill fact. It had NOTHING to do with balance, it was just a byproduct of another balance issue. (Potentially having pretty much two heals, and 6 utilities, flesh golem can’t swim so no elite minion though).

Now I think better question is to ask: Why don’t minions mechanically get killed with DS? Assuming that DS is a transform (does anyone deny it? and if so, based on what? I believe anet said it was a transformation) and assuming any transformation or changing the utility kills the minion.
Obviously minions don’t get killed with DS which leads us to the point that one of these assumptions is factually wrong. This actually leads me to believe that it has less to do with transformations and more with changing utilities because the original issue revolved around changing utility and still gaining the benefit. That still begs question: Why doesn’t DS kill minions? If I had to guess, I’d guess Anet has two ways of “disabling” utility skills: Hiding them (they exist but are unusable) and changing them to a blank during transformation (they don’t exist at that moment on your skill bar at all). Hiding the utilities instead of changing them to a blank in DS could just be an artifact from the time when it was necromancer’s downed state (Which coincidentally also doesn’t kill minions despite them not being on your usable skill bar at that moment.)

Then again I could be completely wrong, considering how Anet has coded things in past.

DS is a spectral form not a transform.
L2read.

Tao.5096:

DS is a spectral form not a transform.
L2read.

What’s the mechanical difference in utility skills between DS and transforms if not something I tried to describe. Also the “spectral form” is just a tooltip description. Not a color coded skill type or anything.

Targuil.3741:

Tao.5096:

DS is a spectral form not a transform.
L2read.

What’s the mechanical difference in utility skills between DS and transforms if not something I tried to describe. Also the “spectral form” is just a tooltip description. Not a color coded skill type or anything.

That’s easy! In one your toon changes into something else and in the other…your toon… aw shucks! :-)