Guild Wars 2

What if instead of gradually losing health:
Jagged Horrors absorb damage that you would have received instead?

Possibly give them an effect that when they die they also “siphon health” from nearby foes and grant it to you, like how you gain life force when a minion dies?

If they absorbed damage that you would have received then that would give you something that other minions don’t and the “Rise” shout would be a sort of pseudo aegis or invuln.

This would also make Lich Form’s Mark of Horror skill an actually really good skill for once (currently sucks), giving you some (needed) survivability in Lich Form against focus fire.

According to the wiki Jagged Horrors currently have 8700 health. Some fine tuning is all that this would need. Or perhaps keep the health degeneration but lower their pace of health degeneration?

Making them absorb damage would be a mistake IMO. This class has enough problems as a result of deathshroud that giving them another ‘healthbar’ may be a bit too much.

To match your overall goal though they could do something like make Jagged Horrors pulse group protection to reflect them getting in the way of attacks and such. Plus that would give you some utility for a group.

Personally, I think they should just change them to each have the Locust Swarm. A handful of these guys each dealing melee damage and a pulsing mini damage while also AE crippling could be useful. Especially if you siphon life for each attack.

Atherakhia.4086:

Making them absorb damage would be a mistake IMO. This class has enough problems as a result of deathshroud that giving them another ‘healthbar’ may be a bit too much.

To match your overall goal though they could do something like make Jagged Horrors pulse group protection to reflect them getting in the way of attacks and such. Plus that would give you some utility for a group.

Personally, I think they should just change them to each have the Locust Swarm. A handful of these guys each dealing melee damage and a pulsing mini damage while also AE crippling could be useful. Especially if you siphon life for each attack.

The thing is they have extremely little health, they have counterplay (just cleave ‘em), and you’d have a way better time getting death nova off that way against PvE-Monsters that usually don’t cleave. I like it.

But I still think we should get undead ravens or a new type of ranged minion instead.

Or the things should simply not lose life and be made just a tiny bit more buff. I mean, seriously, they are only on an elite and now on a very conditional shout, they should be a little more powerful.

Or we could just exchange them for Bone Minions or Bone Fiends… Although that might a little strong.

Maybe make them like zerglings that move and attack really fast? That could have some extra good synergy with the minion lifesteal trait.

One alternative is remove the health degeneration and make the 30 second lifespan found on Death Nova apply across the board to all skills that summon Jagged Horrors.

That would keep things like “Rise!” under control. Even when traited for and hitting 5 targets, there would only be 2.5 seconds of having a 10 Jagged Horror army before the first group expired.