Guild Wars 2

New to the game. New to the forums. I have a serious question.

Is there some hidden ritual I can do in real life to make my Flesh Golem do anything besides stand around doing nothing?

No really, is there something I can do so this thing isn’t completely worthless? I’m sick of watching my other 3 summons bringing their pain on the enemy and my Golem literally stands there doing nothing the entire fight. While I am circling around whatever enemy me and my other three summons are actually doing something.

Is the flesh golem supposed to be dumb and blind? Sometimes he just plain out ignores enemies he LITERALLY GETS HIT BY SEVERAL TIMES, to take his spot in the formation around me.

Why is the Flesh Golem worthless? Is there some secret I need to know about besides “summons are worthless”.

I’m contemplating on just transforming into a bear and dropping this worthless golem if all he is going to do is catch a few punches while staring aimlessly at me wondering why I’m attacking the enemy.

I want some answers.

The other three summons are amazing and are true bros, the second I attack something they are ALL OVER IT. This golem however, seems to be a lost cause.

Use his Charge ability. It’s the only thing he’s really good for.

He tends to be a lot more aggressive if you are close to the point where you summoned him, though. This is true for all minions.

Charge helps indeed, after that he starts attacking… until he bugs again.

Oh, I was referring to using Charge for Charge, not to get him attacking again.

^ What they said.

Due to bad minion AI, the quicker you think of Flesh Golem as just an unreliable knockdown/blowback that’s usually standing in the wrong place for it to work, the happier you will be. It’s also good for procing “on elite use” rune bonuses, because of the 40 second cooldown on Charge compared to the 180 seconds on our other elites.

I wish Anet would just make a pathfinding workaround for Minions already. If they get “stuck” in their pathfinding and stop attacking during combat for more than 5 seconds, then their AI should just reset, run back to the their master and try to find a new closest target.

I’ll give up on this worthless golem then. I’m sick of seeing him standing around doing nothing.

Why can’t games do summons right anymore? Why?

Ugh. Just gonna give up on this when I hit 80. This AI is inexcusably godawful imo.

darthdarticus.8962:

I’ll give up on this worthless golem then. I’m sick of seeing him standing around doing nothing.

Why can’t games do summons right anymore? Why?

Ugh. Just gonna give up on this when I hit 80. This AI is inexcusably godawful imo.

I can’t understand it either. I look back at MMOs around 1995-2005 where the biggest problem was usually that a summon didn’t use a special on CD, or wandered off temporarily for a couple seconds due to pathfinding issues. The ones I can think of were all fixed within months.

I never thought that in 2015 I would be playing an MMO where summons just stop attacking or never attack during a fight due to pathfinding, nearly 3 years into a game’s release.

In 2015, programmers that are this inept should usually be fired.

How can a game be over 2 years old and have pet AI worse than WoW 1.0…which came out over 10 years ago???

Even worse, they don’t seem to even notice (or know how) to fix it.

What programmer would be proud of that code? What company would allow such sloppiness? This is something most people fixed in Beta for games designed at the turn of the century.

If they made all minions ranged attackers instead they would work a lot better, the ranged ones and shadow usually work pretty great, or maybe if they burrowed underground like wurms and popped up to attack. Or make bone minions throw bones and the golem throw stones, then bone minions could throw explosive skulls and die for their command.

Sorry to break your bubble but this is not a case of programmers being inept or unable to do summons right.

ONLY NECROMANCERS’ MINIONS ARE WORTHLESS.

I recently bought the digital deluxe update so I unlocked the mist wolf and this thing works 100% of the time. It always attack, its Ride the Mistfire skill NEVER get stuck.

And I never, EVER have seen Illusions/Elementals/Turrets/Spirit Weapons or Thieves stay idle or stuck without attacking.

This has lead me to believe the necromancer’s minions aren’t bugged, but deliberate nerfed to make players avoid their use.

TL;DR

The current state of the necromancers’ minions is not the result of a bad AI or some impossible-to-detect bug. It’s the result of a deliberate nerf by part of GW2 devs.

Actually it is bad AI,it has terrain issues.
Most evident of this is right outside eb green spawn,where not only your minions get stuck but also the normal mobs.
Theres usually a skale there which is permanently stuck in one place.

It isn’t a deliberate nerf from the devs, that idea is absolutely ridiculous and you should take off your tin foil hat.

The reason minions seem to bug more often is because:
1. Minions are mobile, and AI issues are due to pathing. Turrets don’t bug out because all they have to do is find something in range to shoot at.
2. Minions are right on the edge of viable. Other summons are either bad, and so it is easy to not notice them having issues because you didn’t expect much anyway, or they are really effective without you paying any attention to them so you wouldn’t notice issues. Because honestly how many people who play say turret engi pay close attention to every single time Rocket Turret misfires and LoS’s itself?
3. They live longer than almost any other summon type. Ranger Pets, Necromancer Minions, and Engineer Turrets are the only pets in the game that can technically live forever. What ends up happening is the pathing issues that all AI will face are much more noticeable when a minion is summoned before combat and runs around a bit before combat starts rather than being summoned right at the location of the fight.
4. They have had a number of AI fixes throughout the past which have caused the current issues. They have had all kinds of problems, and it turns out fixing those problems caused other ones.

Observing how my minion team behaves, I’ve come up with a very effective workaround to their flaws. Do not target anything until your minions are around the “attack area”. If they are still far away, kite around the enemies for a second or two until the rest of your army arrives. Always keep an eye on the minimap. Targeting messes up their AI. If you have no targets while moving, they will prioritize coming near you. Once they are near the battle area, you can now target and initiate attack to trigger their aggressive mode (you can attack, but not target, ie. drop some staff marks on the ground). When moving to another area, release your target, so your minion team will stop their aggressive mode and move close to you. I practiced doing this tug and pull work around, and after a while, I have become accustomed to this and it became an intuitive part of the MM mechanic. You start ‘sensing’ if your minions are close enough or not, it becomes second nature to you, thinking or anticipating how the minions will react.