Guild Wars 2

Necro Minions Do need fixing Test it outside of pve and not and the inquest golems in the mists and you will see that necro has a allot of skills that need fixing. Necro is my main btw.

Apolo.5942:

Dont bother, his point of view is essentially that he does not play necro, refuses everybody elses reality and substitutes it for his own.

I play every profession in actual fact, I currently mainly play Ranger and Elementalist but I do play the others. That has no actual bearing on this discussion though, and the constant raising of it is tantamount to running out of legitimate on-topic arguments.

As for the rest, I have not denied that there may be bugs that some may be encountering and perhaps others are not for some reason but the situation is far from as unilaterally broken as some like yourself seem to be making out.

I still believe there are some that may have greater expectations out of subordinate (pet/minion/summon) behaviour and/or reaction times than perhaps is realistic (it would not be the first game I have encountered that has players who hold comparably unrealistic views) and perhaps some of the more extreme critique of subordinate behaviour is a result of this.

I only really reject the “totally broken” stance and the assertions that go with it, most of which is total BS.

Never gonna fix min-ions
Never gonna fix fo-rum
Never gonna fix the Lu-pi necrid bolt
Never gonna fix go-lems
Never gonna be balanced
Never gonna tell you a re-lease date

Never gonna fix, never gonna tell…

Minion Master in GW2 has never worked correctly.
I remember complaining first year about my minions running and aggroing mobs that were not tied to the mob i was fighting. They fixed that, they fixed it so well they no longer run off and attack other mobs, or the mob I’m currently fighting. Sure they work “sometimes” but most of the time it’s " Zeh Minions..Zeh Du Nuthing!!".
What i cant fathom is why they have been broken for so long if not for anet wanting them to be broken.

Monk Tank.5897:

Minion Master in GW2 has never worked correctly.
I remember complaining first year about my minions running and aggroing mobs that were not tied to the mob i was fighting. They fixed that, they fixed it so well they no longer run off and attack other mobs, or the mob I’m currently fighting. Sure they work “sometimes” but most of the time it’s " Zeh Minions..Zeh Du Nuthing!!".
What i cant fathom is why they have been broken for so long if not for anet wanting them to be broken.

Dont know, but it certainly does not bode well when you have this line on your own wiki, for over 2 years.

“Some minions often become unresponsive after leaving combat and engaging in a different fight, often not attacking their master’s target unless an enemy attacks them or hits them with an attack while attacking something else.”

I have discussed the non-responsive aspect with a friend of mine who has played more MM recently than I have and they have pointed out that there is more to getting minions to attack than simply using an alpha-damage skill (although that is a factor). What they indicated was that the player may have to use a given creature’s own special ability to get it to attack targets under at least some circumstances.

In the example they gave me, with a Flesh Golem and a bunch of other minions if you use the Flesh Golem’s special ability on a given target the rest of the minion mob will follow it and attack that target. Apparently they will continue to do so even if you attack other targets. In this context, a minion/summoned creature’s special ability in general can be considered the same as a Ranger Pet’s special ability.

In addition, apparently there is a minimum player alpha-skill-damage level before a minion/summon/pet would consider a given enemy a target they are meant to attack. As they put it, one of the biggest barriers to minion effectiveness is probably their movement speed rather than anything else (such as the ability to control them which is actually working as it currently stands).

Dude it is a known bug in their god kitten wiki, stop trying to kitten against the wind.
Stop derailing the thread and go play a necro.

At least I am trying to be constructive and helpful rather than constantly whining (and swearing – since kitten seems to be the forum code word to cover expletives) about how the game does not work the way perhaps I think it should… unlike some I could mention.

The system does and can work if you are prepared to work with-in it’s limitations. It seems to me there are at least some who are not prepared to do so, or are not aware of the ways around some of the alleged issues.

Whether we are talking pets, minions, or summons they are all essentially the same thing at the end of the day.

WSG Delen.9203:

At least I am trying to be constructive and helpful rather than constantly whining

The first thing to be useful is acknowledging the kittening issue.

WSG Delen.9203:

the alleged issues.

There is no “alleged issue” you moron, it is right there a known bug spelled out for you on their god kitten official wiki. Could you be any more kittening passive aggressive.

You not only not acknowledge everybody elses reality, you are trying to counter what the devs are telling you its a bug and you insist it isnt.

I have already said there MAY be bugs that some are experiencing and others are not. If that is not acknowledging the concern then I don’t know what is.

I do not acknowledge the alleged bugs are as unilateral as you and perhaps others are making out. I do make use of subordinates quite regularly in game and their control is far from broken IME.

In my post before the last one, I have explained how the minion system can be made to work based on the experience of someone I know who does not participate in these forums for the reason that they would not put up with even half the BS back-biting I have received in this thread.

If anything is broken it is the overall sense of community in this game.

@OP:

Minions definitely need a nerf at least in PvP. They take zero skill to play and are effective.

In PvE, it is just a boring spec to play regardless of what ANET does with it.

Either they’ll be announced “fixed” when they show us the new engineer elite spec, OR, they’ll remain unfixed even though engineer is getting minions.

The engineer is getting minions? like for reals? well at least we know, either they fixed them or they never will.

@WSG Delen: I sounded a lot like you until I started experimenting on my lvl 80 Necro. It’s pretty bad and none of my theories worked out. It really boils down to the kinds of pets, the local terrain, and how events happen. I can literally end up with a pet standing there with their back to a mob and do nothing, even if I drag the mob in front of them.

It doesn’t mean I don’t use minions. It doesn’t mean that they don’t work most of the time. It does mean that I can never count on them doing what they should, though.

So far, on my mid-level Ranger, the pet has responded correctly 100% of the time. But I have no doubt that once I hit lvl 80 areas I’ll see some problems, as happened with my Necro.

So it depends on what you mean by “broken”. Does it mean it never works? Or that it is frustratingly bad in some zones? Or that it is inconsistent and hence you can’t count on it as you do your other skills. (And can’t do anything to fix it in situations where it doesn’t work.)

My latest theory is that it has to do with the horsepower of the machine you play on. My guess is that minion AI runs on your local machine, and only sends action updates to the server — just as your character runs on your local machine — so some people may experience situations where the AI always gets the short end of the stick.

WSG Delen.9203:

I have discussed the non-responsive aspect with a friend of mine who has played more MM recently than I have and they have pointed out that there is more to getting minions to attack than simply using an alpha-damage skill (although that is a factor). What they indicated was that the player may have to use a given creature’s own special ability to get it to attack targets under at least some circumstances.

In the example they gave me, with a Flesh Golem and a bunch of other minions if you use the Flesh Golem’s special ability on a given target the rest of the minion mob will follow it and attack that target. Apparently they will continue to do so even if you attack other targets. In this context, a minion/summoned creature’s special ability in general can be considered the same as a Ranger Pet’s special ability.

In addition, apparently there is a minimum player alpha-skill-damage level before a minion/summon/pet would consider a given enemy a target they are meant to attack. As they put it, one of the biggest barriers to minion effectiveness is probably their movement speed rather than anything else (such as the ability to control them which is actually working as it currently stands).

I tried that, also. You have offered no new strategies whatsoever. These have all been talked about before and they don’t work. Period! I have tried every single thing that you have suggested. I tried doing all of them in the same fight. They don’t help. When I tell the flesh golem to charge, it will do its charge then sometimes it will continue to fight, but it often will stop and gather dust with its back to the enemy.

Regardless, even if one of these tactics guaranteed them fighting, the fact is that they should be unnecessary. How could you possibly consider that everything is okay if you have to go through undocumented hoops to get the minions to attack. Bottom line, if you attack someone, or if you are attacked by someone, the minions should immediately attack that someone, without having to do some kind of secret handshake to get them going.

Druitt.7629:

@WSG Delen: I sounded a lot like you until I started experimenting on my lvl 80 Necro. It’s pretty bad and none of my theories worked out. It really boils down to the kinds of pets, the local terrain, and how events happen. I can literally end up with a pet standing there with their back to a mob and do nothing, even if I drag the mob in front of them.

It doesn’t mean I don’t use minions. It doesn’t mean that they don’t work most of the time. It does mean that I can never count on them doing what they should, though.

So far, on my mid-level Ranger, the pet has responded correctly 100% of the time. But I have no doubt that once I hit lvl 80 areas I’ll see some problems, as happened with my Necro.

So it depends on what you mean by “broken”. Does it mean it never works? Or that it is frustratingly bad in some zones? Or that it is inconsistent and hence you can’t count on it as you do your other skills. (And can’t do anything to fix it in situations where it doesn’t work.)

My Ranger is L80 and the pets work fine on the whole (even in L80 areas), they are not totally automated attack machines though and if that is what you expect from a pet/minion/summon then personally I think you have the wrong expectations. Where summons/minions are concerned there are the “special” skills which replace the summon/minion skill while the summon/minion is active and my impression is that these skills are meant to be used more often than perhaps they are normally.

I do not claim that subordinate behaviour is flawless, only that it does work to a much larger degree than some seem to make out… presuming you learn the ways in which they actually work rather than just assuming they are meant to work a specific way.

WRT what I have said regarding Necros specifically it is more than just theory, it is essentially the findings of people I know that play L80 Necro on (at least) a semi-regular basis.

You can experiment with builds and find they do not work in a way that suits the way you may personally want to play but that does not make the builds in question necessarily faulty or broken. Some builds require you to play them in a specific way in order to fully capitalise on the given builds capability.

Druitt.7629:

My latest theory is that it has to do with the horsepower of the machine you play on. My guess is that minion AI runs on your local machine, and only sends action updates to the server — just as your character runs on your local machine — so some people may experience situations where the AI always gets the short end of the stick.

Client machine CPU/GPU capability may be a factor as could be network/server latency and general bandwidth usage/availability. The potential technical issues with MMO gaming are very similar (if not identical) to the kinds of issues with distributed simulation projects. There are lots of potential things that could go wrong (in perhaps unpredictable and sporadic ways) and a lot of those issues are not completely mitigatable. The potential issues can be made worse if the front end hardware (i.e. what the gamers/users interface with) is not of a consistent configuration (even when the front end systems are consistent there are no guarantees). Without knowing the precise details of the technical architecture(s) and implementation that A-Net are using such speculation is pointless really and on the whole is probably better left to A-Net to investigate.

However, if client hardware/facilities is a significant factor then I may be one of the better off users on that score with an i7-4790K, GTX 770 4GB, and a mid-high end UK cable connection (60Mbaud down and 3Mbaud up).

redcomyn.4651:

I tried that, also. You have offered no new strategies whatsoever. These have all been talked about before and they don’t work. Period! I have tried every single thing that you have suggested. I tried doing all of them in the same fight. They don’t help. When I tell the flesh golem to charge, it will do its charge then sometimes it will continue to fight, but it often will stop and gather dust with its back to the enemy.

It could be due to alpha-damage you are dealing to multiple targets causing the Golem to get confused as to which target they should be attacking. I have seen a similar thing happen with my pet but not often as I have learned to focus my fire and work with my pet rather than just let them attack one target while I attack another.

redcomyn.4651:

Regardless, even if one of these tactics guaranteed them fighting, the fact is that they should be unnecessary. How could you possibly consider that everything is okay if you have to go through undocumented hoops to get the minions to attack. Bottom line, if you attack someone, or if you are attacked by someone, the minions should immediately attack that someone, without having to do some kind of secret handshake to get them going.

In general subordinates do attack what you attack and defend you when not attacking anything else IME, but sometimes (not that often IME) it is necessary to give subordinates a bit more direction. Actually using a special attack skill to get a subordinate to attack the target you want attacked is hardly a secret handshake.

If anyone expects our subordinates to basically work as a totally independent and automated attack/defence force then IMO they have completely wrong expectations.

I would expect minions/summons/pets to defend me if I got attacked when resource gathering for instance and in general they do IME. Pets generally will not though if you have them in Passive rather than Attack mode. When in combat I would expect them to follow my direction (albeit perhaps with some latitude to allow for self-defence) and that may mean I have to use certain specific skills (and perhaps avoid certain other skills) to get them to do what I expect and to keep them doing it. IME that applies to the current state of play.

There may be cases where the AI glitches but I have yet to encounter such incidents as even a semi-common occurrence.

And I already told you that I have already tried the special attack skill. It doesn’t work! Also, there is no such thing as passive mode for necromancer minions, and there are no commands that can be passed on except the special attack (read the first sentence about that, here).

I don’t understand how you keep missing this. You keep repeating yourself, and I and others keep telling you they don’t work.

redcomyn.4651:

And I already told you that I have already tried the special attack skill. It doesn’t work! Also, there is no such thing as passive mode for necromancer minions, and there are no commands that can be passed on except the special attack (read the first sentence about that, here).

I don’t understand how you keep missing this. You keep repeating yourself, and I and others keep telling you they don’t work.

Well they do work for at least some people, so either there is some kind of random circumstantial or machine dependent bug OR there is some kind of user error in play. All I can say is that based on the experience of myself and the people I know the issues in play are not anywhere near as severe as some are making out.

In my work, I have been at the developer end of perhaps comparable issues (user reported faults which are not replicable on even apparently identical hardware sometimes) and they are typically an absolute devil to track down (assuming of course the reported issue is not user error – which is not always obvious). In such cases, it helps if the developer and the user can walk through the problem together but I doubt if that is likely to happen in this case.

There are many potential causes for such issues in a heterogeneous networked gaming environment such as GW2 (or any other MMO) and not all of the potential technical causes fall into the realms of software bugs (nor potentially issues with the user’s system or facilities).

I still stand by my initial observation though – subordinate AI may be flawed but it is far from universally broken. Claims that subordinate AI has been broken since day 1 is just hot air IMO/IME, flawed perhaps (I have not witnessed any major issues) but not broken by any stretch of the imagination.

As for the Passive mode, personally I see no need for it where minions/summons are concerned.

WSG Delen.9203:

I do actually play a Necro, and a MM one, just not played it in a while. Stop the “You don’t know what you are talking about” BS please.

Subordinates in general tend to attack what the player targets and sometimes attack things that attack the player. They may be ineffective in PvP for some reason but at least recently I have seen enough PvE minion behaviour to say with a decent degree of certainty that they do behave well enough in GW2 (at least for PvE).

After speaking with a friend who plays Necro alot more than me, they have confirmed my observations. The only thing of note wrt PvP is that Minions generally do not attack beyond a certain range and work better against larger groups. They also have a pal who plays PvP MM Necro and they do not have any issues.

Comparing 2 potatos next to each other doesn’t mean they taste good like French fries. Ask your friend if he uses his minions for their normal attacks, or for their flip skills…. Because minion activated skills, especially the bone fiend Immob, can be quite powerful in that mode. But that doesn’t mean the minion AI, which is what this entire thread is talking about, is “good”- because I doubt he relies on it at all in his strategy.

The PvE side of things are a compound issue. The bad AI means they aren’t good for any strategy that doesn’t count them as fodder. And their poor durability in big fights, where they could make the most difference, makes their uptime (and usefulness) a problem.

Mesmers are the only class that got the minion aspect right. Despite being Fodder, you can generate them at a stable rate, they front load their effects, and they act as ammo for an easier to control skill. Necro Bone minions do this to a lesser extent; but their explosion damage is pitiful, and they take forever to come off cool down. Nature spirits and Spirit weapons suffer from this poor approach as well.

While its comes 3 years too late, Necro minions should have had Life Force casting cost, and a much lower cool down. This alleviates the durability problem by being able to replace them mid fight, and balance them as a momentum strategy (which was the balance focus of the MM in GW1).

To play into this, minion decay slowly over time (except for the blood minion), and regain health via triggers through Necro. On a basic level, minions heal for a small amount when a necro collects life force passively (when foes die nearby, or via Signet of Undeath) . Building on this, Death Magic should get a minor trait that allows the necro to pulse AOE heal minions while in shroud. Then add a GM trait to buff the damage output of Minions while in shroud (allowing you burn life force for better offense). When paired with skill that can generate a lot of life force through attacks, this gives the Minion master build the much needed potential to become a power house that scales with the battle intensity.

Azure.8670:

I know so many people that dont play ranger because of the pet AI, or quit the game due to it because they always main rangers. So many people dropped necro years ago and never picked it up again due to the awful AI.

It certainly gave me one less necro option. Turns out, I like Dee Dee Wells is my favorite necro now. =P

Really though, from art asset design to AI and such, it seems like necro minions were doomed to be unloved.
At least ranger pets try to attack things. Their AI is simplistic and prone to getting AoE-murdered, but I seldom have actual problems with them.

Rauderi.8706:

Azure.8670:

I know so many people that dont play ranger because of the pet AI, or quit the game due to it because they always main rangers. So many people dropped necro years ago and never picked it up again due to the awful AI.

It certainly gave me one less necro option. Turns out, I like Dee Dee Wells is my favorite necro now. =P

Really though, from art asset design to AI and such, it seems like necro minions were doomed to be unloved.
At least ranger pets try to attack things. Their AI is simplistic and prone to getting AoE-murdered, but I seldom have actual problems with them.

You’d have more of a problem with it, once you realize they make up 25% or more of the design balance of the entire ranger class. Its the reason builds that try to side step pets can’t achieve comparable baseline DPS (due to scaling on lower coefficients), and pets themselves are not reliable enough to shift power there to be truly worth the focus. Thats why you’ll notice the top ranger builds focus more on trait utility, because those scale well regardless of our stats.

We also rotate weapons more frequently then any other non-ele class, because our weapons are designed for wide utility, but not chaining synergy. As a result, the best setup for our heavy hitting skills are usually found on a completely different weapon. It also doesn’t help that most Ranger Melee skills are really unresponsive due to the heavy use of guided animations, which require an abnormally large amount of server interaction to execute.

Oh for the love of god, Just add the “Attack My Target and Avoid Combat” function of the ranger. Its already working in game and would take little resources to implement.
And make everyone happy!
Is that so hard?

Druitt.7629:

My latest theory is that it has to do with the horsepower of the machine you play on. My guess is that minion AI runs on your local machine, and only sends action updates to the server — just as your character runs on your local machine — so some people may experience situations where the AI always gets the short end of the stick.

That’s definitely not the case, both because it’s just a horrible idea in any MMO to let the client handle minion AI (which exposes it to cheats) and also because in practice minions continue to attack even if their master DC (and will continue to attack until their character times out).

Pandaman.4758:

Druitt.7629:

My latest theory is that it has to do with the horsepower of the machine you play on. My guess is that minion AI runs on your local machine, and only sends action updates to the server — just as your character runs on your local machine — so some people may experience situations where the AI always gets the short end of the stick.

That’s definitely not the case, both because it’s just a horrible idea in any MMO to let the client handle minion AI (which exposes it to cheats) and also because in practice minions continue to attack even if their master DC (and will continue to attack until their character times out).

There are ways and means by which the client can handle minion AI from the perspective of the user but there be some form of handshaking with the server to prevent cheating. In most distributed environments, the client does at least some of the processing and that processing may be replicated on other clients. The discussion is reasonably academic though. The theory that there could be resource (be it CPU, GPU, RAM, or Network Bandwidth) availability issues at play is as good a theory as any without any evidence to prove otherwise.

@starlinvf: I have played Ranger in both GW1 and GW2 and found the AI and behaviours more than adequate in both. I would not claim that subordinate AI is perfect but it does the job I expect it to. I could find several points where GW1 is possibly better than GW2, but the inverse is probably true too – it is not something I generally worry about. I have learned it is better to treat every game as different from any previous game I may have played (including earlier games in the same series) and learn how it works and it’s limitations then work with-in those parameters.

I would not be surprised if half the problem is caused by WoW convert fallout… i.e. WoW players expecting GW2 professions to map directly to WoW equivalents. If this is the case, then I think the individuals in question need to take a reality check.

Assuming the issues being highlighted in this thread are truly down to situational bugs then A-Net will almost certainly need more information (and possibly co-operation from the affected parties) in order to track down the root cause of the issues. Even then, there are no guarantees that they would be able to fix the underlying issues quickly.

I don’t know how ANet is expected to fix minions when the only feedback they get is “omg it’s broken! AI so bad!”.

You wanna see a change? Give specific feedback. What decisions in what situations are problematic?

Apolo.5942:

Very difficult to recommend a game when it has major features like minions broken since launch and that was years ago.

I seriously doubt it. I think minions, ranger pets, mesmer illusion pathing, etc. are just straight out doomed forever in this game.

Pandaman.4758:

Druitt.7629:

My latest theory is that it has to do with the horsepower of the machine you play on. My guess is that minion AI runs on your local machine, and only sends action updates to the server — just as your character runs on your local machine — so some people may experience situations where the AI always gets the short end of the stick.

That’s definitely not the case, both because it’s just a horrible idea in any MMO to let the client handle minion AI (which exposes it to cheats) and also because in practice minions continue to attack even if their master DC (and will continue to attack until their character times out).

Actually, it probably is the case. Most MMO calculation takes place on the client, and the client sends info to the server which basically checks if the info is sane or not and if its sane it accepts it.

Dahkeus.8243:

I don’t know how ANet is expected to fix minions when the only feedback they get is “omg it’s broken! AI so bad!”.

You wanna see a change? Give specific feedback. What decisions in what situations are problematic?

This has been done repeatedly. I had an entire thread a year or two ago where I spelled out conditions I was seeing on Necro pets. After I’d spent quite some time like you and others arguing that things basically worked fine and it’s specific issues with other folks that cause problems. We talked about certain zones, uneven ground, uphill targets, minions squaring themselves off to align with their masters, ranged versus melee, attempting to get them unstuck, etc, etc.

It’s my impression that Ranger pets work better than Necro minions, but then it was my impression that Necro minions worked just fine for most people. Until I ran into the problems others were describing and there were no work-arounds.

WSG Delen.9203:

@starlinvf: I have played Ranger in both GW1 and GW2 and found the AI and behaviours more than adequate in both. I would not claim that subordinate AI is perfect but it does the job I expect it to. I could find several points where GW1 is possibly better than GW2, but the inverse is probably true too – it is not something I generally worry about. I have learned it is better to treat every game as different from any previous game I may have played (including earlier games in the same series) and learn how it works and it’s limitations then work with-in those parameters.

I would not be surprised if half the problem is caused by WoW convert fallout… i.e. WoW players expecting GW2 professions to map directly to WoW equivalents. If this is the case, then I think the individuals in question need to take a reality check.

Assuming the issues being highlighted in this thread are truly down to situational bugs then A-Net will almost certainly need more information (and possibly co-operation from the affected parties) in order to track down the root cause of the issues. Even then, there are no guarantees that they would be able to fix the underlying issues quickly.

This has been addressed repeatedly in threads over the last couple of years. Several of us spent quite some time experimenting with Necro minions and coming up with situations and why we thought those situations triggered issues. This is not a WoW-convert problem. It’s more widespread than you give credit.

@Druitt: I would argue that while it may be prolific amongst a certain group it is not prolific unilaterally. As I have stated several times in this thread, the AI is not perfect but it is not totally broken either from a more general and wider perspective.

As highlighted by Dahkeus, the devil is in the details. If people think the AI is broken, say explicitly how or summarise the problem cases and link to historic threads that describe the problem(s) in detail. It does not help your case to just cry it is broken and has been discussed elsewhere.

From some recent game play time and messing with some of the player settings the main issue highlighted in this thread (i.e. minions doing nothing) may be more to do with generic things like “select nearest target” which may have a detrimental effect to subordinate AI under specific circumstances. Whether you encounter the reported issues or not probably mostly depends on how you play the game, this is not to say there is some kind of secret handshake or such, but the vast majority of builds require the player to play a specific way to get the most out of them and some builds may not work well at all.

It may help to spell out our individual expectations of how we each expect minions to behave (c/f as I have tried to do earlier in this thread) and then let A-Net clear up the matter of how they expect minions to behave.

@WSG: I am not claiming what you think I am claiming.

First, the burden that ANet will do something in light of feedback rests upon you. Others of us have spent hours gathering feedback and experience and ANet has done nothing about it. We have made our case, and it hasn’t been acted upon or even acknowledged, beyond a “keep up the good work” remark we once got.

We’ve done the work. You’re just talking.

And your talking is the issue here. You’re blaming people’s expectations from WoW, you’re blaming ridiculous stretches like “select nearest target”. You’re blaming play style — which is of course blaming the person who doesn’t play as you do. You’re blaming people who have done hard work for not repeating it again, or linking to it in a way that you expect, or whatever.

There are two sets of extremists here: those that just say “minions are unusable!” and you who says, “minions work fine and it’s up to you to prove it for the fifth or sixth or hundredth time or I won’t believe you.” Been there. Done that. Said the silly thing you’re saying, then actually dug into the matter.

This is one of the reasons why I pretty much shelved my necro outside of crafting (she is my cook/jeweler). Looking forward to trying out Reaper though.

Druitt.7629:

Pandaman.4758:

Druitt.7629:

My latest theory is that it has to do with the horsepower of the machine you play on. My guess is that minion AI runs on your local machine, and only sends action updates to the server — just as your character runs on your local machine — so some people may experience situations where the AI always gets the short end of the stick.

That’s definitely not the case, both because it’s just a horrible idea in any MMO to let the client handle minion AI (which exposes it to cheats) and also because in practice minions continue to attack even if their master DC (and will continue to attack until their character times out).

Actually, it probably is the case. Most MMO calculation takes place on the client, and the client sends info to the server which basically checks if the info is sane or not and if its sane it accepts it.

I would dispute that, but there’s such a glut of F2P MMOs these days that I can’t honestly say I know if that’s true or not. What I can say, however, is the few F2P MMOs I tried that do let the client handle anything more than the basics (rendering and player controls) always had oversensitive and obtrusive anti-cheat protection. They were also crippled by rampant cheating and open discussions of ways to circumvent the protection on the various cheat forums.

After a year and a half of playing I haven’t seen anything that suggests this might be the case for GW2. Granted this is all conjecture, but short of actually picking apart the processes with a memory viewer it’s all we really have.

Druitt.7629:

@WSG: I am not claiming what you think I am claiming.

First, the burden that ANet will do something in light of feedback rests upon you. Others of us have spent hours gathering feedback and experience and ANet has done nothing about it. We have made our case, and it hasn’t been acted upon or even acknowledged, beyond a “keep up the good work” remark we once got.

We’ve done the work. You’re just talking.

And your talking is the issue here. You’re blaming people’s expectations from WoW, you’re blaming ridiculous stretches like “select nearest target”. You’re blaming play style — which is of course blaming the person who doesn’t play as you do. You’re blaming people who have done hard work for not repeating it again, or linking to it in a way that you expect, or whatever.

There are two sets of extremists here: those that just say “minions are unusable!” and you who says, “minions work fine and it’s up to you to prove it for the fifth or sixth or hundredth time or I won’t believe you.” Been there. Done that. Said the silly thing you’re saying, then actually dug into the matter.

You and others are saying (or at least implying) they are unusable under ALL circumstances which is complete and utter BS. Not only that, but there is the general extrapolation that if there is an issue with minion AI then there would notionally be fallout for other forms of subordinates as well since I suspect they all share a large portion of the base behaviours.

If there is a major game breaking issue as some seem to make out, then there are at least some of us that have not witnessed it despite having put in collectively at least 1000’s (if not 10000’s) of hours with our characters. If that is not “doing the work” then I don’t know what is.

I am pretty certain that if I were to dig deep into one area or another of this game I could find an argument to say that some Feature X is broken, that it is game breaking and should be fixed and then proceed to B&M about it till the cows come home (without giving any solid details) and also find that the very same feature is not seen as broken nor game breaking by another section of the community.

At this point in time, there have been little or no specific details about how the AI is supposed to be broken so if anyone is “just talking” it is those that are complaining that it is broken. At the very least provide links to the threads that offer details to support your premise rather than simply dismissing the personal experiences of players who have not put an insignificant amount of time into playing the game and have been playing it since before release.

Whether A-Net are likely to act on such evidence is moot at this point in the discussion, since it has been mostly just hot air so far.

WSG Delen.9203:

Druitt.7629:

@WSG: I am not claiming what you think I am claiming.

First, the burden that ANet will do something in light of feedback rests upon you. Others of us have spent hours gathering feedback and experience and ANet has done nothing about it. We have made our case, and it hasn’t been acted upon or even acknowledged, beyond a “keep up the good work” remark we once got.

We’ve done the work. You’re just talking.

And your talking is the issue here. You’re blaming people’s expectations from WoW, you’re blaming ridiculous stretches like “select nearest target”. You’re blaming play style — which is of course blaming the person who doesn’t play as you do. You’re blaming people who have done hard work for not repeating it again, or linking to it in a way that you expect, or whatever.

There are two sets of extremists here: those that just say “minions are unusable!” and you who says, “minions work fine and it’s up to you to prove it for the fifth or sixth or hundredth time or I won’t believe you.” Been there. Done that. Said the silly thing you’re saying, then actually dug into the matter.

You and others are saying (or at least implying) they are unusable under ALL circumstances which is complete and utter BS. Not only that, but there is the general extrapolation that if there is an issue with minion AI then there would notionally be fallout for other forms of subordinates as well since I suspect they all share a large portion of the base behaviours.

If there is a major game breaking issue as some seem to make out, then there are at least some of us that have not witnessed it despite having put in collectively at least 1000’s (if not 10000’s) of hours with our characters. If that is not “doing the work” then I don’t know what is.

I am pretty certain that if I were to dig deep into one area or another of this game I could find an argument to say that some Feature X is broken, that it is game breaking and should be fixed and then proceed to B&M about it till the cows come home (without giving any solid details) and also find that the very same feature is not seen as broken nor game breaking by another section of the community.

At this point in time, there have been little or no specific details about how the AI is supposed to be broken so if anyone is “just talking” it is those that are complaining that it is broken. At the very least provide links to the threads that offer details to support your premise rather than simply dismissing the personal experiences of players who have not put an insignificant amount of time into playing the game and have been playing it since before release.

Whether A-Net are likely to act on such evidence is moot at this point in the discussion, since it has been mostly just hot air so far.

No, that is not what we said. I don’t know anyone that has said that it never works. What we have said, repeated ad nauseum, is that it often doesn’t work.

redcomyn.4651:

No, that is not what we said. I don’t know anyone that has said that it never works. What we have said, repeated ad nauseum, is that it often doesn’t work.

Dont bother, he doesnt play necro and is trolling, he does not acknowledge they are bugged even when its explicitly stated on Arena nets own wiki.

redcomyn.4651:

WSG Delen.9203:

…

No, that is not what we said. I don’t know anyone that has said that it never works. What we have said, repeated ad nauseum, is that it often doesn’t work.

And as I have pointed out ad nauseum that does not tally with the experience of myself and others. Hence the request for specifics, as far as I can tell thus far this is just a general B&M thread full of hot air and no substance.

I am not the only person to point out that the necessary details to describe the problems being encountered are severely lacking. Whether A-Net actually act on the information is one thing, but if the details are not spelled out then A-Net have no information to act on. From the information posted to date and the apparent reluctance to actually define the problem being encountered could be any of the following: Hardware/Network/System related issues, faulty user expectations, actual bugs in the software, or a combination of two of more of them.

The details are the important part here, without them spelled out any presumptions/assumptions about the root cause (inc. user error) is fair game. Just because you may have tried some potential solutions or work-arounds does not necessarily mean you have covered all the bases. There could be something that has been overlooked for example.

Apolo.5942:

redcomyn.4651:

No, that is not what we said. I don’t know anyone that has said that it never works. What we have said, repeated ad nauseum, is that it often doesn’t work.

Dont bother, he doesnt play necro and is trolling, he does not acknowledge they are bugged even when its explicitly stated on Arena nets own wiki.

Yeah, I think you are right. He is saying that he is right and everybody else is wrong. Can’t argue with someone like that.

Apolo.5942:

redcomyn.4651:

No, that is not what we said. I don’t know anyone that has said that it never works. What we have said, repeated ad nauseum, is that it often doesn’t work.

Dont bother, he doesnt play necro and is trolling, he does not acknowledge they are bugged even when its explicitly stated on Arena nets own wiki.

As I understand it, the wiki is not strictly speaking written by A-Net but rather the community thus the information in it can be considered not necessarily 100% accurate. Even the bug description in the wiki is lacking in precise details and is too vague to even be considered a true bug description, and I do not believe myself or the others that I have discussed the problem with outside of these forums have come across it in any case.

As for trolling, I can only see one person really trolling in this thread and it is not me.

redcomyn.4651:

Apolo.5942:

redcomyn.4651:

No, that is not what we said. I don’t know anyone that has said that it never works. What we have said, repeated ad nauseum, is that it often doesn’t work.

Dont bother, he doesnt play necro and is trolling, he does not acknowledge they are bugged even when its explicitly stated on Arena nets own wiki.

Yeah, I think you are right. He is saying that he is right and everybody else is wrong. Can’t argue with someone like that.

Try again… it is not just my personal experience being considered in this case and I have not said there is not an issue at all just that I believe that based on the experience of myself and others the actual bug may be being blown out of proportion.

The fact the wiki states “Some minions” would seem to point at a degree of randomness and it is possible that some players may never encounter the issue while others may not encounter it.

It is probably worth mentioning that A-Net only seem to manage/audit the wiki and the majority of it seems to be written by members of the community. Given this, the information with-in it can probably be considered incomplete or inaccurate in some cases. Just because an issue is listed as a bug does not mean everyone or even most people would necessarily encounter it.

Have I disputed there may be a bug? No, I have only said myself and others have not seen it (or at least not noticed it if it did occur).

Have I asked for a better description of the issue? Yes.

Have you and others done anything to elaborate on a better description of the issue? No, instead you just moan and gripe and claim I do not know anything.

If you do not describe the issue properly how do you expect A-Net to fix it (assuming it is an actual bug – which I am not 100% convinced of on that score… there are MANY potential secondary causes that could cause similar symptoms based on the description I have seen to date).

Hi guys,
I see you’re generously feeding a troll. Can I get some food too? I’m just passing by.

Zero Day.2594:

Hi guys,
I see you’re generously feeding a troll. Can I get some food too? I’m just passing by.

Yes, they are either military or police issue, judging the way the person refers to summons (, i.e. pets, minions) as subordinates.

Just for funsies, I dusted off my lvl 80 necro as a MM, and yes, the working of a minion perhaps 50-60% of the time is still an issue, the biggest issue why I stopped playing MM as I did early on. At the least Anet could give Necro MM’s an F1 skill which would command the Elite Minion to attack the PC’s target, rather than stand there and look stupid. Tbh, I’ve only about 800 hrs. on Necro in the past 2 years.

As a side a note (I’ve 3.5K hrs.) as a Ranger, and whilst gathering lumber in Mt. Maelstrom last week (pet set on guard), my idiot Stalker just stood there while a host of Risen attacked, this happened subsequently at the next node, so I killed him <g>. I survived, of course. still it was rather disconcerting. Would love to be able to make my pets dodge, move or do something at times, considering that 40% of my damage depends on them.

dkspins.4670:

Zero Day.2594:

Hi guys,
I see you’re generously feeding a troll. Can I get some food too? I’m just passing by.

Yes, they are either military or police issue, judging the way the person refers to summons (, i.e. pets, minions) as subordinates.

Just for funsies, I dusted off my lvl 80 necro as a MM, and yes, the working of a minion perhaps 50-60% of the time is still an issue, the biggest issue why I stopped playing MM as I did early on. At the least Anet could give Necro MM’s an F1 skill which would command the Elite Minion to attack the PC’s target, rather than stand there and look stupid. Tbh, I’ve only about 800 hrs. on Necro in the past 2 years.

As a side a note (I’ve 3.5K hrs.) as a Ranger, and whilst gathering lumber in Mt. Maelstrom last week (pet set on guard), my idiot Stalker just stood there while a host of Risen attacked, this happened subsequently at the next node, so I killed him <g>. I survived, of course. still it was rather disconcerting. Would love to be able to make my pets dodge, move or do something at times, considering that 40% of my damage depends on them.

Scrumptious, thanks!

dkspins.4670:

Zero Day.2594:

Hi guys,
I see you’re generously feeding a troll. Can I get some food too? I’m just passing by.

Yes, they are either military or police issue, judging the way the person refers to summons (, i.e. pets, minions) as subordinates.

WRT me being from the military/police/similar-government-or-civilian-organisation, nope… you know what they say about assumptions. I think there are some that need a lesson in the definition of a troll though…

In Internet slang, a troll (/?tro?l/, /?tr?l/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory,¹ extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response² or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.³

That is NOT what I am doing while those referring to me as a troll or my posts as trolling could be considered doing exactly that. My posts to date have been intended to actually try get at the truth behind the matter and perhaps help find ways to workaround the issues. That is the last I will say on those points as it is off-topic and irrelevant to the matter at hand.

dkspins.4670:

Just for funsies, I dusted off my lvl 80 necro as a MM, and yes, the working of a minion perhaps 50-60% of the time is still an issue, the biggest issue why I stopped playing MM as I did early on. At the least Anet could give Necro MM’s an F1 skill which would command the Elite Minion to attack the PC’s target, rather than stand there and look stupid. Tbh, I’ve only about 800 hrs. on Necro in the past 2 years.

Interesting, how do you command your minions to attack or expect them behave exactly? As I have pointed out earlier, there appears to be a minimum alpha damage level that needs to be dealt to a target before they are considered a valid target for subordinates in general if you are primarily relying on the alpha-damage method. The pseudo-F2 special skill of the Flesh Golem should result in both the golem and any other minions attacking (and continuing to attack afterwards) the enemy targeted by the player at the time of using the skill (at least as I understand it).

dkspins.4670:

As a side a note (I’ve 3.5K hrs.) as a Ranger, and whilst gathering lumber in Mt. Maelstrom last week (pet set on guard), my idiot Stalker just stood there while a host of Risen attacked, this happened subsequently at the next node, so I killed him <g>. I survived, of course. still it was rather disconcerting. Would love to be able to make my pets dodge, move or do something at times, considering that 40% of my damage depends on them.

I use a Fern Hound as my primary Ranger Pet and the only time I have had occasion to swear at them for doing nothing (in defence of me) is when I have set them to Passive (Avoid Combat) mode and forgot about it (I normally have it set to Guard mode). Have them in Aggressive (Guard) mode and they defend perfectly well (at least IME).

The only thing I have noted that I think is wrong with pet behaviour appears down to auto-targeting behaviours (which they seem to use when completing an attack) because they seem to not always select the most appropriate targets (sometimes ignoring near by targets in favour of ones further away). If minions/summons are falling foul of this issue too then there could be cases where they are targeting enemies they can not reach by a direct path and so may appear to be ignoring attack-orders.

There is also the related potential issue that even if given a direct order a subordinate may not actually attack the desired target due to path finding problems. This would only be evident in certain sections of various maps though, in open areas without obstacles of any significance then there may well be no apparent issues at all.

As another thought, if the AI for subordinates is actually being run on the server (or relies on some kind of handshaking with the server before commencing an attack) then there could be an unpredictable degree of command-to-action lag simply due to the nature of network communication on the internet (not 100% reliable/predictable). If that is the case, then it is very possible that some people may never witness the problem while others (perhaps only in specific areas – internet service and perhaps local networking conditions could be part of the reason) may witness it on a regular and perhaps repeatable basis. This is just a hypothesis and I am not sure how we could prove or disprove the premise, but it is a possible explanation for why some may experience the issues more than others.

Ranger pets are roughly in a decent place. Sort of. Like a first-generation game’s AI that I would expect. Considering many other MMOs have worked on more robust AI, I find ranger pets lacking, but workable, assuming they can survive. But pets and minions are not afforded damage resistance to AoE like in other games, nor are they very tough, so the moment a monolith boss does anything interesting, “Pet down!”

A studious ranger can make use of come/attack commands to avoid AoE, so there’s a skill and judgment component. Necromancers have zero control in that regard. Not to mention that the slightest bump in the terrain causes minions to get severe acrophobia and be utterly paralyzed, sometimes for the duration of a fight. Not 100% of the time, obviously, but it happens often enough that I switched from a staff-wielding minion-herder to wells and dagger/dagger.

@Rauderi: WRT pet toughness, it depends on the pet and the Ranger build – my Fern Hound for example perhaps has more health and toughness than the average Ranger with Exotic armour. Depending on the enemy, a melee pet may not be the best idea which is why I tend to use a Devourer as my alternate pet in PvE. Pet death penalty can be avoided in the main with tactical swapping of pets, as with all builds/professions there are strengths and weaknesses. Eliminate the differences and the game becomes so dumbed down it would be hardly worth playing IMO.

AR of subordinates is one area that possibly needs to be addressed. Perhaps they should share the AR of their owner?

Would be interesting to know exactly what you mean by “the slightest bump” an example location in game might help to clarify that point.

WSG Delen.9203:

@Rauderi: WRT pet toughness, it depends on the pet and the Ranger build – my Fern Hound for example perhaps has more health and toughness than the average Ranger with Exotic armour. Depending on the enemy, a melee pet may not be the best idea which is why I tend to use a Devourer as my alternate pet in PvE. Pet death penalty can be avoided in the main with tactical swapping of pets, as with all builds/professions there are strengths and weaknesses. Eliminate the differences and the game becomes so dumbed down it would be hardly worth playing IMO.

AR of subordinates is one area that possibly needs to be addressed. Perhaps they should share the AR of their owner?

Would be interesting to know exactly what you mean by “the slightest bump” an example location in game might help to clarify that point.

Dont feed the troll.

Apolo.5942:

Dont feed the troll.

Yes! Don’t feed him. Feed me instead!