Ok, here’s my 2 cents for what it’s worth. The gists of this thread is that there are a number of people in the GW2 community that are unhappy with the Necromancer profession because it does not operate like the GW1 Necromancer class. I feel that it is important to note that the entire design philosophy of GW2 is a reaction to the classic “rotation” based combat system of most other MMO’s with the exception of a few like Terra, Defiance, FireFall, etc… Games like GW1 and WoW, and their predecessors (Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot) are all based on the idea that your character unlocks large numbers of skills while leveling and each one of those skills is added to the combat rotation in a manner that makes sense. That design philosophy eventually ends with players playing the most efficient rotation over and over and over and over again as a one size fits all solution to tackling each and every combat situation. It is, in my opinion, beyond redundant.
The opposite side of the spectrum is the “action” combat MMO. Third person shooter MMO’s, Hack’n’slash MMO’s, and FPS pseudo-MMO’s (I’m defining this as a broad category so I’ll use Borderlands as an example) rely on a smaller number of options to be used more frequently. Attack, dodge, jump, throw grenade, and usually a single class based special power are the crux of this type of game. Positioning and player based accuracy in a fast paced environment are key in this style of gameplay.
With all that out of the way, now to get to the point of why any of that really applies to this discussion. Arena Net, as far as I can tell, has adopted a hybrid philosophy about it’s combat for GW2. You have access to a medium sized set of skills during any combat engagement. About half of which have fairly short cooldowns and are meant to be used in almost every fight. The other half, give or take a few, have longer cooldowns and short durations. A larger set of skills than an action game, smaller than standard MMO’s. These are only meant to be used in some fights. If you do encounter a situation where you have to use one you have to weigh the benefit of its use now, versus the cost of not having access to it in the near future. So you have to make a tactical decision as opposed to simply including that ability in a “combat rotation”. This helps to vary the combat from fight to fight. Your dodge ability is also a strategic use defensive ability that all professions have access to. So now positioning plays a role in the combat, but not to the same extreme as a true Action game. You have a lock on mechanic like more traditional MMO’s and the more strategic elements of positioning of action games.
Because of all that ^, It would be very difficult to create a profession that follows the same mechanics as traditional MMO’s without unbalancing the current play style. Balancing any MMO is already a delicate process, but balancing an MMO that follows hybrid approach to gameplay is verging on the impossible. Things that worked great in GW1 simply will not work in GW2. While rotations still play a part in the moment to moment gameplay, it’s only a small part. And let’s face facts, even GW1 for all its unique approaches to its business model and character customization still relied on “refining the rotation”, just like WoW and all the others in the vein.
Now, as far as I can tell, the complaints specific to the Necromancer profession are derived from the personal perception of the individual making the complaint that this class “should play a specific way, and it doesn’t, so it’s obviously broken.” That’s a fallacy, and the worst kind of fallacy. This game holds a different design philosophy, this profession is not the same profession from GW1, and the player is not the game designer- the development team designed the professions and as the intellectual property owners they hold all proprietary rights to the game, which includes the design of each of the professions and how they interact with the in-game environment.
Then the minion would actually perform as intended by retaliating to the incoming threat.