Guild Wars 2

I know we as a group are typically seen as even subpar by other necros (mostly because of inconsistent AI with our uglies) but I, for one, love the mechanic and having attacks and damage going out even when you get knocked down or stunned.

My questions are these: What do you like about the current MM set-up? And, other than AI, what do you think could be done with minions that could make them a bit more viable?

My thoughts on the second question: Cleave 3 for Flesh Golem, Cleave 2 for bone minions (so it’s worth keeping them out a bit longer,) Pierce for Bone Fiend and a mechanic sort of similar to Life Blast for the Blood Fiend (small explosive hits that damage and/or siphon health from two or three enemies.)

I enjoy that it is more directly synergetic than anything else. You track them, activate their abilities, combo long CC/burst rotations, and make sure to use defensive CDs to keep them alive. The changes will help this even more.

Fixes, loosely ordered:
1) AI (duh)
2) Reduction of cast times. 1/2s to summon minions, all minion actives except heal should be instant cast.

Blood Fiend – passive heal should scale with your healing power, and should either ignore defenses (so the blood fiend simply heals you every few seconds it is alive, with its attack being totally separate) or split into passive and active healing (so some small heal per seconds plus a heal that needs him to hit is attack with) in some way

Bone Minion – active should blow up the minion closest to your targeted enemy, and they should stand directly to the sides of your feet when not aggro’d (like a dog that is heeling) to allow better blasting

Shadow Fiend – should cleave and the minion should take 1/2s to cast his ability after he is ordered to

Bone Fiend – active now has more noticeable particles so enemies can tell he is going to immobilize, and his active is now an attack-timer reset

Flesh Wurm – now combo finishes at your location before teleporting you away

Flesh Golem – cleaves 3 targets, no longer gets stuck on tiny pebbles, has a 1s noticeable animation before charging (but his active is instant cast), charge speed nerf is reverted, grants 3 stacks of 3s of stability every 3s

3) Death Nova should drop to Master Tier in place of Reaper’s Protection, which should be pushed to GM and appropriately buffed in some way
4) When minions are a certain range from their target (land distance, so the actual distance they’d have to run to get to the target) or further they gain increased speed for 1-2s to lessen how easily they can be kited by simply going up/down ledges

Can’t think of anything else atm, but there might be more.

Bhawb, you’re my hero. All of that sounds excellent

I would just make minions not doing anything without player input then add a little pet bar like the rangers over every minion icon on the utility bar or make a separate one in the same place as the ranger pets where the minion bars stack on each other. Then I’d give every minion an auto attack and 2 active skills. You’d have to press auto attack for them to start auto attacking like a player character as well. They would of course need to have their strength increased to reflect the now active player controlled playstyle. This would allow Necros players to use their micro skills. I’m completely against any sort of buff to them in their current AI controlled state.

I agree with what Bhawb says, but I’d add reduction of recharge times. Not on Bone Minions of course, cause that would give you infinite spammable bombs! But on the other minions, well they’re your utilities, it’s not fair that you should be locked out of them for 30-60" because they were too dumb to step out of a meteor shower!

I’d also love:
1. If transformation elites didn’t destroy minions. And I don’t think it’d be unbalanced either, I mean you’re still locked out of their actives, which is a big nerf, and I don’t see why Plague and Lich should be the only transformations in the game that work like this – they don’t die every time you go into Death Shroud, an elementalist’s elementals don’t die when he uses mist form, and a ranger’s pet doesn’t despawn if their vampirism #6 bonus procs.

2. If there were a new elite skill that summoned a bunch of short-lived temporary minions (maybe jaggies, maybe a new type) on a reasonably short cooldown. Something like the new Rise shout, but with a fixed amount of pets rather than the ridiculous 1/enemy stipulation.

Two things I wouldn’t mind seeing other then AI improvements.

1: Minions being more viable with condition builds (this means minions applying conditions.

2: Minions being able to apply boons with their active. (flesh golem gets stability, what if he shared it with his master ?)

Bhawb.7408:

Bone Minion – active should blow up the minion closest to your targeted enemy, and they should stand directly to the sides of your feet when not aggro’d (like a dog that is heeling) to allow better blasting

What would be even better is to have those minions go directly to the target and then blow up just like the mesmer clones.

I’ve had so much fun helping my son make his MM, I made my own necro. I’m totally new to the profession, so only a couple suggestions. These will hopefully help and make minions a bit more “active”

- Activating the minion skill (even if it’s on cooldown) will act like Ranger’s F1

- Hitting with minion special attacks gives a small bonus to skill cooldown

- Teach flesh golem to swim

I’m hopeful the AI improves in HoT. That one thing would be huge.

Minions should simply all be able to swim. Skales can do it just fine, so why can’t they allow our minions to do the same? Just give them extra animations for swimming.

I really don’t like the Flesh Wurm from a conceptual point of view. I like the teleport, but it has a pretty long cool down, and I hate having it stay behind, where it is useless. The fact that it isn’t mobile, is really bothersome. I wish there was a way for us to cancel the flesh wurm without immediately teleporting to it.

I also hate that there has to be a path towards the flesh wurm, for the teleport to work. It should be a true teleport, and not a shadow step.

Bhawb.7408:

I enjoy that it is more directly synergetic than anything else. You track them, activate their abilities, combo long CC/burst rotations, and make sure to use defensive CDs to keep them alive. The changes will help this even more.

Fixes, loosely ordered:
1) AI (duh)
2) Reduction of cast times. 1/2s to summon minions, all minion actives except heal should be instant cast.

Blood Fiend – passive heal should scale with your healing power, and should either ignore defenses (so the blood fiend simply heals you every few seconds it is alive, with its attack being totally separate) or split into passive and active healing (so some small heal per seconds plus a heal that needs him to hit is attack with) in some way

Bone Minion – active should blow up the minion closest to your targeted enemy, and they should stand directly to the sides of your feet when not aggro’d (like a dog that is heeling) to allow better blasting

Shadow Fiend – should cleave and the minion should take 1/2s to cast his ability after he is ordered to

Bone Fiend – active now has more noticeable particles so enemies can tell he is going to immobilize, and his active is now an attack-timer reset

Flesh Wurm – now combo finishes at your location before teleporting you away

Flesh Golem – cleaves 3 targets, no longer gets stuck on tiny pebbles, has a 1s noticeable animation before charging (but his active is instant cast), charge speed nerf is reverted, grants 3 stacks of 3s of stability every 3s

3) Death Nova should drop to Master Tier in place of Reaper’s Protection, which should be pushed to GM and appropriately buffed in some way
4) When minions are a certain range from their target (land distance, so the actual distance they’d have to run to get to the target) or further they gain increased speed for 1-2s to lessen how easily they can be kited by simply going up/down ledges

Can’t think of anything else atm, but there might be more.

I like this list with the exception of Bone Minion. I think they should continue to attack your targets.

I’d also like to add:
1. I keep bringing this up, buuuuuut…. make the Flesh Golem look spikey again like GW1’s!!
2. a health bar of some sort for the minions would be nice. Maybe add a small bar above the skillbar.
3. Minions scale slightly bigger for each trait point you put into Death line.

All of the current minions are in a good spot mechanics wise. They deal enough damage and have enough supporting effects; projectile finishers (bone fiend), strongest passive heal (blood fiend), life force generation and blind (shadow), damage and cripple (flesh golem), ect.

Hell, even jagged horrors have a place supplying us with life force and procing death nova.

The only issue with existing minions is how the AI gets hitched up so easily. The minion master builds are going to be a LOT stronger with how the blood+death trees are being changed, and reaper will synergize well with minions. I’ll hold judgment on any more “needed” changes until after HoT releases and we see where the minion master settles.

Well, this is some good idea but I think Death Nova should change in a way it become an interresting option for every kind of build instead of it’s actual shape that make it only relevant in a Minion build.

How it could become interresting (NB this is my own opinion) :
Only Jagged horror may explode and leave a poison field.
Reduce Jagged horror health pool to 1000 HP and keep natural decay.
Reduce summon cool down to 2 to 5 seconds.

The main point of this is that it grant :
Pro :
- better LF generation (defensive)
- may grant almost perma poison field (defensive/offensive)
- free extra damage.
- Not tied to any kind of build so usefull for all kind of build.
Cons :
- It feel like a loss for pure minions build

I’ve always felt that the Shadow Fiend is pretty rubbish. Instead of teleporting to a foe and causing Blind , it should teleport to a foe and cause Chill.

striker.3704:

All of the current minions are in a good spot mechanics wise. They deal enough damage and have enough supporting effects; projectile finishers (bone fiend), strongest passive heal (blood fiend), life force generation and blind (shadow), damage and cripple (flesh golem), ect.

This is one of those joke posts right? I have a hard time telling those sometimes on the ’net.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I’ve always felt that the Shadow Fiend is pretty rubbish. Instead of teleporting to a foe and causing Blind , it should teleport to a foe and cause Chill.

Chilling Darkness. Blind is fine as it allows you to do stuff with stomps, his only issue is taking 3 whole seconds to teleport.

It still feels very weak. Maybe it can blind more than just one target then. Maybe an aoe blind when it teleports?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

It still feels very weak. Maybe it can blind more than just one target then. Maybe an aoe blind when it teleports?

Interestingly, we already have that. The problem is that the radius is small. As in, launch untraited marks-size small. The chance of it actually blinding more than one foe is tiny.

what is wrong with minions is they don’t have any good command skill like Ranger
they attack when you attack first

with ranger i can ask my pet to attack first so he hold the Argo and am on a save spot
and with a good bear that is already a good tanker i have nothing to fear

will be a great idea if the elite minion have a command skill like ranger
and maybe he can be a tanker to ??

good for solo pve players like me

There is no need for a command skill if they just made it work like it should. Command skills only matter because they act as aggro resets, much like many minion active skills currently work. If ANet can’t quite make the AI work properly, then a check that periodically checks if each minion is currently following a target when the Necromancer is in combat and if not resets aggro would do the same thing.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

striker.3704:

All of the current minions are in a good spot mechanics wise. They deal enough damage and have enough supporting effects; projectile finishers (bone fiend), strongest passive heal (blood fiend), life force generation and blind (shadow), damage and cripple (flesh golem), ect.

This is one of those joke posts right? I have a hard time telling those sometimes on the ’net.

No, it’s not. In my time PvPing I haven’t had many an instance where all my minions functioned and I lost a 1 v 1. The vast majority of the time I lose fights, it is because my minions stood around doing nothing reducing my DPS by a huge percentage.

The biggest weaknesses for a minion master build as of right now is the lack of stability, and lack of condition removal. Both of which are addressed by the HoT core class trait changes. This only leaves minion AI as a glaring issue.

From top of my head:

1. Boons for minions. I’m happy we get that protection on DS leave trait soon, but retalliation is a huge hole in the wall. Unless i’m willing to lose 2 bone minions on a well of blood for 6s retal. Which I’m not.

2. Bone minions need love. Seriously, there’s no reason at all to not blow them up the second you can. Even lame jagged horror gets bleed on attack. Give me some incentive to try to keep my bone minions alive, a-net!

3. Flesh Golem charge is bad. Easily misses needs 3/4s cast time from necro himself, only 1s knockdown and 1 lousy stack of stability for 15s. This is gonna be a running joke for quite the time.
Change charge into a launch rather then kd. Instant cast, make it a stunbreak.
Instant cast for necro – golem itself can still have a visible windup for balance’s sake.

4. Flesh Wurm. Teleport is awesome, but the auto-attack is lacking. It’s strong but the cd is too big. Even if a bone fiend has less DPS it has a double projectile finisher with a faster cooldown. I suggest changing wurm’s aa to blast finisher and making it small AoE on impact.

Generally, while i know minions aren’t pets, i would still like to see a MM playstyle where fighting to keep your undead horrors….“alive” reaps viable rewards.

Maybe something along the lines of them getting stronger as fight progresses, or getting a powerful set of boon when combat starts, to give incentive to keep them around at least for a while.

Also a condi-heal minion would be nice. And i don’t mean that GM trait , that let’s be honest, under heavier fire will remove one to two condies every 10s (flesh golem and wurm), and that’s being opimistic.

And yeah, blood fiend needs some love, it’s non-scaling passive heal, 0 condi cleanse and party play make it a very unappealing option among necro heals.

striker.3704:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

striker.3704:

All of the current minions are in a good spot mechanics wise. They deal enough damage and have enough supporting effects; projectile finishers (bone fiend), strongest passive heal (blood fiend), life force generation and blind (shadow), damage and cripple (flesh golem), ect.

This is one of those joke posts right? I have a hard time telling those sometimes on the ’net.

No, it’s not. In my time PvPing I haven’t had many an instance where all my minions functioned and I lost a 1 v 1. The vast majority of the time I lose fights, it is because my minions stood around doing nothing reducing my DPS by a huge percentage.

The biggest weaknesses for a minion master build as of right now is the lack of stability, and lack of condition removal. Both of which are addressed by the HoT core class trait changes. This only leaves minion AI as a glaring issue.

Interesting. Just off the top of my head, Warrior heal signet has the strongest passive heals, not blood fiend. Also, actives on the minons take way to long to be effective. You end up having to be a master of prediction or you miss half the time or you just get plain lucky.

Main problems I see with minions are long cast/activation times and awful AI.

Sometimes I wish there was a way to de-activate minions. There are times after fighting when I DON’T want them following me around and there isn’t deep water nearby.

Is there a way to de-activate them that I don’t know about?

Endless Soul.5178:

Sometimes I wish there was a way to de-activate minions. There are times after fighting when I DON’T want them following me around and there isn’t deep water nearby.

Is there a way to de-activate them that I don’t know about?

If you change your utilities they disappear. Wish there was some easy way to just de-activate them though, like you said.