Guild Wars 2

I know they have tons of bugs with them, but it feels like “minions > everything else”. Is everybody making Necromancer just for the minions? I know I didn’t make Necro for them at all.

wikipedia

Necromancy (/?n?kr??mænsi/) is a claimed form of magic involving communication with the deceased – either by summoning their spirit as an apparition or raising them bodily…

Well considering the definition of necromancy, I can see why most people believe this should be the main focus of the class.

Personally, I don’t really care, My perfect playstyle for a necro would be mostly damage over time abilities, with MINOR help from summoned minions, but I’m satisfied playing a condition necro without using any minions.

There should be viable playstyles though that allow someone to either play with strong minions but weaker character, or strong character/weak minions, or mix of both (with variations)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necromancy

I did not use minions back in GW1. The few times I did I was forced to do so to be accepted in group missions in Factions. But back then I was N/R and I had a wolf pet instead that I had called Cerberus. I like real alive pets, undead ones not so much. The ritualist chained spirits were really fun though, way more fun than minions. I was hoping minions would be more fun to use in GW2 but so far for me not at all, so I don’t use them. I just hope Anet will bring back the ritualist and the chained spirits.

The mesmer and the ritualist were the coolest classes in GW1. Unfortunately, the mesmer is not a mesmer anymore, Anet should have renamed the class the Illusionist instead; a mesmer who does not mesmerize anymore cannot be called a mesmer. I hope they fully bring back the ritualist ad the chained spirits at some point.

Never cared for Minions. Why put all your power in pets and minions when you can be the strong one?

My first ever Necromancer was in Diablo II, Poison Nova or Bonewalls ftw.

Not in GW2. Not gonna use minions even if anet fixes them.

At the moment minions are only really important because it’s pretty much a staple necromancer theme. However if they can’t get minions right I wouldn’t mind them changing all the minions over and opening up options for a new theme. I also don’t understand who thought spectral was a good idea. Quite frankly all of the spectral abilities are bland and suck. We have no utilities that expand on the vampire theme only traits. I also don’t see any utilities that should be capitalizing on a necros ability to cheat death or control life and death in the form of hardcore executes or health swapping etc. Even the signets seem more lackluster than other professions.

What I really liked about GW1 were the unique classes. Mesmer, Necro, and all of the expansion classes (even the Assassin) brought a skillset to the table that was at best rarely seen in other MMOs. I loved the spirits; loved the concept of the Mesmer, the Paragon, and, despite not playing melee in general, even the Dervish and Assassin were irresistible. How many games let you turn into a god’s avatar or play as a blinking, tanky rogue or…. They all had tons of flavor and originality (necro isn’t your run of the mill curse/MM, he also has stuff unseen anywhere before, like wells)

Really, GW1 necros brought something I never expected to see in an MMO: A swarm of minions larger than what you can reach in something like D2. I was disappointed to know I can only summon 5-6 in GW2, and further disappointed when I steadily moved away from the playstyle due to minions being inferior to wells. A similar issue I have with Mesmers (as Willow put it above) – my main was a Mesmer in the previous game, but I didn’t like the playstyle when trying it during the beta and changed to Necro. I won’t complain at length before making a Mesmer and leveling him to 80 and doing dungeons with him, but beamspam and clones was not what I expected (not that beams aren’t awesome).

I use the flesh golem for tank and interrupt/knock down and the misty guy (Sorry don’t know the spell name) for a blind. Then I use dual daggers and wells so that I AOE life siphon and blind every thing. Basically I tank as a necro. It’s a blast.

I rolled Necromancer for the pets. Not many games offer this type of pet play. AoC and Diablo 2 are the only games that come to mind.

Personally I’m not crazy about the minions.

They’re a good tool, though; many times leveling up I would take all minion utilities, all the while having none of the traits, and be able to solo a tough event, like kill a veteran a couple levels higher than me, or bumble through a cave of 287248902 dredge moderately safely.

My favorite way to play is condition, followed by power. I hope they make power viable. If they fix condition, it will probably be strong, but it will always have the problem of stacking conditions that are easy to remove, and if a condition necro starts getting focused his damage goes out the window. Positioning, positioning, positioning.

I’d say that if you don’t care about minions at all, you might have been better served choosing another class. I don’t mean for that to sound flippant: Thinking off the top of my head, 6 of our available skills (1 an elite) are dedicated to the summoning of minions: Blood Fiend, Bone Minions, Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend, Flesh Wurm, and Flesh Golem. They’re clearly intended to be a major feature of the class, and while there certainly are – and should be – builds that do perfectly fine without any of them, their proportional representation means that if they offer a play style that people aren’t finding terribly effective or especially enjoyable, something needs to be done with them (whatever that might be).

Personally, I feel like they’re a mess of poorly-thought out concepts that were more or less phoned in. I’d be happy if they reduced the total number of skills dedicated to minions (would anyone really miss the formless black blob known as Shadow Fiend?) and retooled the utility, number, control, and AI associated with each of them. As it stands, if I utilize that portion of my skill set, I feel more like a dude in a dress with a weird little motley crew of mentally deficient mutants than an unholy force commanding a small army of death.

That said, our other issues should be addressed too :P

I made a Necro more for the blood mage vibe. While health sacrifice is gone I’m enjoying the lifesteal (as weak as it is) tanky build and stacking a bunch of (non damaging) conditions like chill, weakness, immobilize, etc. More like a Death Knight of sorts, but I like the overall style aside from some balance/design issues.

I did choose necro because of minions. I did not like how minions in GWs had to be constantly healed due to their health degredation. I was hoping minions in GW2 would be more fun.

The current AI and bugs of the minions make them almost useless. I still use the flesh golem at times, but none of the others. I also think that the other necro skills still make the necro a fun class to play.

When I’m alone, I enjoy my minions, they provide me some good support by being oh-so-useful meat shields. That’s all I think about them when out-and-about on my own.

When in a group situation, I tend to ignore them. My ability to lay down dots and debuffs far out-weighs anything those walking meat bags can do, and, personally, I enjoy that type of casting style more than just another “pet class.”

And in PvP, I doubt I’d survive long enough to make decent use of those meat bags. So instead, I’d focus on laying down a crap load of conditions. After all, a lil’ revenge from the grave is never a bad thing.

Yes, meat bags is a technical term. Just ask a certain ’droid.

Once I got to 80 I specced out of pets entirely, and have never looked back. Anet will have to do some kind of mad wizardry with these lolsauce pets to make me ever consider them viable. Perhaps they should check out CoV Minion Master….best working example of the concept I’ve ever used /shrug.

I agree that necromancers are most commonly associated with raising the dead, but I like how they use darkness. I can definitely agree with Lumines. I would much rather be the source of power, as opposed to minions. I would like to see that every build we make can be successful and suit our play style, like ANet said we could do.

I want Plague Signet fixed so I can go for a martyr build. I think I’m done with GW2 until they fix that.

I wouldn’t care except I like some of the major death traits but that 5 point minor keeps rallying enemies.

I like playing a dark caster, but have never been very fond of pets. The one exception was in Age of Conan. The ranged caster pets looked bad azz.

I don’t run minions at all, I much prefer just using my wells for utility, oh and signet of locust for massive heals. Lets me aggro huge mobs and kill them while staying healthy.

Kinda hard to care about something thats 100% useless.

since GW1 I was always more into the curses and blood more than minions not that I hate minions I just prefer to be the one thats hard to kill

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Kinda hard to care about something thats 100% useless.

I can tell you are not using minions right.

They are not like in GW1 where they were a MMs main source of damage. In GW2 minions are a source of utility and survivability with a small amount of sustained damage-over-time.

Having a full force of minions will not allow you to snowplough through zones like it did in GW1, but between meat-shielding, interrupting, snaring and blinding they will sure as heck make you much tougher to kill and adaptable.

I use the minions while solo leveling. IF managed effectively (i.e., staying away from anything you don’t want to kill lol) then they are “fine” I guess lol… but in group setups I run wells and ae’s and I love it!

I’ve never played GW before so when someone said that the designers did necro’s different from, say, EQ1 (yes I’m an EQ1 baby… sorry ;P lol) I imagined that necro pets would be reactive on something dieing and then raising it for a short spurt but can be a disruptive sorce of power. I imagined it working like a dot: Lots of damage in a short time and then it’s gone.

So no, I don’t mind the pets at all… I can still lots of things with or without them.

The ONLY true thing I wish GW2 would do is take off that stupid “summons a blah blah when something dies every 30 seconds…”

Talk about having to weigh your options in pvp… do I kill him/her or just suck it down to nothing and let someone else kill it as I run off? lol… OR don’t count them on the kill count for someone to get back up! Either way, I’d be happy with it.

They’re the reason I played a necro. I try to use signets and wells, but it just doesn’t feel right to me and I end up filling my bars with them again even though I know they suck.

I gave up on minions at level 20-something. Now at 32 I’m happy I did.

I just wish they’d replace that useless and annoying trait for the Jagged Horror (more like a Jagged Gerbil), then all would be fine.

Fundayz.6185:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Kinda hard to care about something thats 100% useless.

I can tell you are not using minions right.

Theres a right way to use them? Lets see:

1. they cant be commanded like ranger pets so you cant control them
2. they reuse to regen health so they die every fight but I cant tell them to back off see #1
3. they refuse to attack targets half the time but I cant tell them to attack cause see #1
4. they refuse to do an acceptable amount of damage to bring a MM in line with other classes that give up utility skills for DPS.

For example a signet build warrior using a greatsword has 0 utility cause he traded his utility for DPS. He does Awesome DPS and stuff dies fast. Thats they way a MM should be. We sacrifice any and all utility in order to use utility slots for pets yet we still do crap DPS.

Agreed, minions as of now do not do nearly enough to warrant occupying precious utility slots.

It would be great if most necro players wouldn’t care about minions, because it would be a consequence of a class tha can be adjusted for many roles.
Now it is different though. Many necro skills don’t synergise together, builds made from player curiosity don’t lead to niche and fun experience, so people turn to what is iconic to the class – minions. And whine when they realise those are useless . Not because they would particularly care about the minions, but because it is one of things the class is somehow guaranteed to have as a strength and it isn’t fulfilled.

I don’t really like minions. I don’t have a lot of experience with them so far (only have one, newbie here!), but I plan to use them only minimally.

On one hand, my blood fiend is a handy tool in battle for restoring my health. On the other hand, I hate having an overgrown floating flea trailing after me most of the time unless I make a point to kill it off after each battle it survives. And I don’t like how I can’t control it like a “real” pet, yet it doesn’t just die after it is out for a short time like my Elementalist’s summoned elemental does.

Having looked at the Necromancer utilities in the wiki, there are plenty that do not involve minions, and I will definitely try those first. I won’t significantly disadvantage myself by refusing to ever use minions, but they will be my last choice when it comes to choosing utilities to slot in my bar.

I don’t use minions, when i first made my Necro I did but then using noxxic’s guide i don’t use them any more.

Noxxic only have one build that uses any minions and that is PvP support. other than that they don’t advise using them at all.

I know this is kinda irrelevant but on WoW i play a Warlock which is essentially a Necromancer and seeing as WoW forces the use of minions its nice to play a Warlock/Necromancer class that doest impose the use of minions

Can’t stand em. Wells for me!

I loved the idea of minions, but then I looked at them – they’re ugly, and not in that good horror kind of way.

When I think of Necromancers, I think of a mage that can raise the dead (as in Zombies), not some kind of spiny demon, they aren’t warlocks. It should be human/norn/charr/asura/sylvari undead (racial skins with degradation from being in the ground). AND they should come from the ground, not thin air – that’s just a thematic idea, I can see not doing it for ease of animation.

If they throw in zombies, I’ll start using minions. As it stands, I avoided Necros in the beginning because I didn’t like the look of the minions. When I learned of Dagger/Dagger builds and how to use wells (and that I didn’t need to touch one of those lame looking minions after lvl 5) I started playing them again. Now, I feel like I have truly iconic necromancy powers (stealing/swapping life, condition modifiers, etc.). I do miss not having undead minions, as that is iconic as well, but I actually find the class playable now.

Like with weapons skills, I would have preferred they made more choices of what we summon/add more weapon skills and allow us to choose how things look.

@OP

this may get a little off topic, but definitely has to do with minion appreciation.

…yeah, i didnt read all the following posts after yours, more like skimmed…

but i did notice that a lot of people mentioned they werent too into the minion thing. I too am not into it. However, i just spent my second night of theory crafting for sPvP. I have changed my mind, only to the extent of making pvp doable. I was pretty much using a Knights Amulet and went for a spite, death magic, and blood build … yeah all traits were for pets, aside from one in spite that i used for DS as retaliation for a litte protection and the one in blood for #4 in DS to heal surrounding allies ( this includes pets and minions ).

That being said… I had about three guys on me mesmer/engineer/theif …. could be wrong on the last one… but definitely the first two. I pretty much just held a point all by myself and even downed one of them… this is before the mesmer realized Moa destroys all my pets. But that didn’t last long. Between the regen from weapon smacks, my staff #2 healing both me and pets, the regen from all my pets dropping health on me from each attack and stacking mostly vitality (sitting at 29k hp ) I was near industructible, not to mention I barely touched DS… only for Life Transfer and to use choice moments of fear and retaliation.

A little more testing with that led me to believe that its not only why the hp regen is so tiny on weapon hits but also why some people might think that DS can make a necro Overpowered. It really wasnt hard, and although my dps was absolutely terrible (even with 20 in spite) my pets absolutely cut down on any foe near me…. the extra % for hp/damage really did help them out. If their AI was more on par, it would be even better….

all that has made me redifine my like and dislike for pets/minions… honestly id rather be the dark caster with curses/vampiric life drain, but I guess thats how arenanet wants it done. And for the record, this build is better then my previous bunker/wells build i would use. Best part is if my group is smart i can still switch to traits that provide support using wells with this set up.

Funny thing is that before release I planned that I’d use some sort of Dagger build or possibly Conditions.
After trying out Minions in the game I actually found them to be fun!
There’s just something cool about my Necro pointing at a foe and one of my Minions obeying orders to use an ability.
I’ll probably use them quite a bit when they get fixed.

I’ll mostly just use Scepter/Dagger+Staff and spread conditions in WvW for now.

Whatever Minions ‘are’ what is available now on live just sucks because of response time to enter combat and switch target when I switch target, they are too slow.

The minion AI is so bad it’s more frustrating than helpful. Many times I would be killing a mob and then my minions go and aggro some more. It just makes my field of aggro a lot bigger than I want it to be.

The only time when I use minions is when I want to run through a valley of doom ( a long tunnel which has 10-20 mobs which can trap you in and quickly destroy you) and stop training. I set my blood minion and it aggros enough mobs for me to escape and not train.

right now minions are just a cosmetic.

Yesterday i way playing a few tournaments and 2 of 3 minions refused to attack the kitten door.

After 5 seconds of fooling around they slowly moved to the door just to turn around and smell at some flowers.

Flesh golem is the best. If hes not chasing around critters hes propably busy looking for delicious mushrooms while his master gets gangarped by some 8 inch norn guardians….

Minions I could take ‘em or leave ’em. I’d like to try them someday if and when they become more viable via their A.I. getting a swift kick up the backside, but I hate minions for a bigger reason – minion usage dominates the Toughness tree. If I want survivability I have to put up with minions. Two out of three minor traits are dedicated to minions or the usage thereof. The third one (5% Toughness into Power) is directly benefitted from by it’s predecessor Protection of the Horde. This is again confusing because out of the 12 Major Trait choices in Death Magic only four of them actually bolster minions. The rest of the minion traits lie all over the place – Spite and Blood Magic trees.

I don’t like being pidgeon-holed into a certain build just because I want to grab some Toughness. Compare with Guardian for example and their trait line Valor – sure it’s beneficial to grab a shield but it’s not necessary – none of the minor traits punish you for not going sword and board, and it’s generally a broad enough choice in major traits to make it a beneficial line to go down. Death Magic isn’t that – it’s minions or go home.

It’s certainly seems that the majority of PVE (and quite a few pvp) players seem to use minions a lot, great meat-shields but thats about it.

Personally I prefer using Wells + staff skills. I can maximise AOE damage with this setup, so when I get swamped through down the wells (well of suffering, well of corruption, well of darkness) and I can happily stand still whilst they do all the work whilst keeping myself safe.

I did test out minions early on in the game, but I didn’t like the lack of control I have over them. If I do well or bad, I want it to because of my actions, not that I was relying on my minions to do my work

@OP

not just minions – every necromancer skill (or just about) is bugged to crap

Working minions would at least give the Necro 2 VERY different styles of play. Conditions or Minions master. Once we have a true viable siphon/evil leach vampire style fo play, you could say the class is “fixed”. IMHO

@Binnes: Yes, it is what necromancy is but i have a thought here

Necro minions should be more powerful and have long CDs. I hope you get what i mean.
We can summon minions with really short CDs and they are so weak.
That could be a solution like an elementalist’s “Ember” or “Stonegolem”.

Stronger minion with longer CDs…

I should copy/paste this at suggestions.

I just want my golem as a perma pet. He’s better than any of my minions. That wee wifey in Metrica said golemancy was tied to necromancy so, I mean, you know… gimme.

those developers must read this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necromancy
they talk about summoning skills and they never talk about life steal and transform like death shroud. life steal and death shroud are ruining necromancer class.
and i hate jagged horror because it looks exactly same like bone minions with small size. it should be flying suicide minions or different looking minion.

I love em. Even with all the bugs I had a blast getting my necro to 80, and the spec I use really helps in boosting them and keeping me alive.

I don’t care for undead minions, especially the ones in this game, which I guess makes me a pretty mixed up necromancer. I do like the idea of health drains and dark sorcery, however, which is why I’m drawn to the class.

I’d like minions but the deal breakers are certainly:
1. Minion AI (or lack thereof)
2. Pet Pathing
3. Zero control – how do you want to play tactical if you cannot tell minions what to attack, to go into aggressive mode, defensive mode or simply “stay there” combined with “aggressive” mode

The other things which make them simply “unfun” are…
1. They die easily and have no out of combat regen – not even if you spec into Death
2. The damage is simply low
3. There is no real penalty for killing our fragile minions, thieves and warriors just run into their midst and aoe them down along the necro (Death Nova doesn’t do much)
4. Switching Forms despawns minions and water the flesh golem – seriously, the one who came up with these ideas should be flogged publically
5. Some oldschool zombies would be cool because the necromancer using minions looks more like a Pokemon-Mancer or a Pervert-Mancer simply because the flesh golem looks as if it has a huge p3nyz on his nose.

I wasn’t using any minions, until the elite skill. Even that, just because none of the other 10 pt elites seem worth using (why is Plague so weak?) and I don’t have the 30 pts to test the next ones, yet.

I’m not a big fan of minion classes. I like the flexibility of GW2, in that I can make a non-minion necro build (more than I can say for Ranger). I just wish they’d balance its viability a bit better.

I am interestd in minions I think they could be fun and make a nice build, my problem with them is of course that they have broken AI and they don’t really siphon health to you so that trait is not working.

My second problem is the way they look, they just don’t cut it for me, specially the bone minion/ heal minion / and the flesh golem doesn’t look that intimidating at all unlike the GW1 which looked awesome.