Guild Wars 2

Reanimator is quite possibly the most hated trait that we necros have. Still, I’m not sure how much of the haters have ever actually used it or if they’re just parroting older posts on these forums. There are reasons why I say this, but first, I would like to go over the major complaints I see about it and refute most of them.

1. The Jagged Horror is dead before it can do anything from its own bleedout. This is true at the lower levels where the horror is half dead before its summoning animation finishes. However, at level 80, it sticks around for a fairly decent time without any healing involved or the minion health trait.

2. The Jagged Horror doesn’t attack anything. Not true. Minions in general have buggy AI, but the only times that the problem shows are when the necro is currently controlling 4-7 minions. I have never had minions fail to attack when I am controlling 1-3, and I run minions with regular frequency (though with exception of underwater, it is never a focus of the build).

3. The Horror’s bleedout keeps you in combat. This is the biggest one I see that makes me certain that people are parroting things they have seen on the forums and have never actually used the trait. This used to be the case, but it got fixed back in September. The only way a Horror can keep you in combat is if you are actually still in combat (that is, you are dealing or receiving damage or you have not left combat range)

4. The Jagged Horror aggros mobs and pulls them to you, making sure you die. Slightly true. The only place where this conceivably happens is in Orr where the mob density is very high. Since the Horror is a melee minion, it typically has to run up to your target to attack them. This may put it in the aggro radius of mobs you are not currently fighting. This does not make the Horror an agent of patricide. You yourself would draw that aggro if you moved into melee range. Even so, unless those mobs aggroed are melee mobs themselves, they would not move into the range where they will then switch their targets to you.

The other real time this happens is when you are skirting the edge of a mob’s aggro radius and the horror passes through the edge. In this case, chances are it wasn’t the Horror that actually drew aggro, you just want to blame it. After all, it was sticking within 5 feet of you if you weren’t fighting.

In Dungeons, mobs are in groups with communal aggro. If any one part of a group has aggro on you, the whole group does (barring extreme circumstances like pulling with Spectral Grasp, Backdraft, or Scorpion Wire). Thus, the Jagged Horror cannot pull extra aggro. The one exception in dungeons is in Twilight Arbor where it can pop the Deadly Blossoms and those kill you, but those do not have aggro. Jagged Horrors stick very close to you when you are not in combat.

5. Jagged Horrors are a free rally. I have never seen this happen in WvW, but I will freely admit that I have never had a situation in PvP where it would have come up. Given that there have been multiple Red posts saying it has been fixed, my impression is that the people saying this are, once again, parroting old posts.

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Overall, I see this as a useful trait. The Jagged Horror usually ends up dealing damage (not much, but some) and eating a hit or three before dying. Some people see this as a pathetic minion that isn’t worth the trait, but I see it as 1-3 Aegis on kill with a bit of damage thrown in on a random enemy. That is a very potent trait when you look at it that way.

So:

JH’s only die until you get to a level where having them live becomes a liability, the AI only fails when you get to a point where the MM bonuses are useful, the problems with MM are so bad that no one except you notices ninja fixes, and the only place that you think they cause problems just happens to be the major endgame area and in fractals dungeons, which happen to encompass most of the non-PVP endgame content.

I don’t see the problem either!

But the only hits they eat are aoe. There is zero reason to use targeted attacks on them, as the damage that the horror is applying to the player does not justify the damage you would not be inflicting on the necro by changing target. Any cleaving melee weapon will kill them without any added effort, and any aoe will outright kill them, or reduce their life span to something that can hardly be called useful. They’re marginally more useful in PvE, but they really are worthless in PvP.

I was underwater in Orr. I killed the last of the group that was fighting me. Its corpse spawned one of the little buggers. I was floating completely still, as I was waiting for my health to recover. I watched it as it swam over to an unaggro’d undead, and smacked it. It then died, and the undead it smacked and his nearby friends proceeded to swim on over and kill my still-recovering self.

A small nuisance? Yes. Yes it is. Very small. But that small nuisance outweighs any sort of benefit it provides. And there is no other trait that I know of that inconveniences me further than it benefits me. Other pets have gotten me killed, yes. But with those, I chose to put pets on my skill bar. I knew the aggro risk. But its stupid to force the entire toughness traitline to put up with one.

And if the raised Jagged Horrors are near-useless until max level, why is it a minor trait? Low level characters only have access to a few traits, and it seems silly to screw them over with one that is useless until 80.

No, they do not cause a problem in Orr. That is the only place where it is conceivable they aggro anything beyond what you yourself aggroed. Why do they do it? Because they are melee minions. You would aggro the same mobs if you were using a dagger as your main-hand weapon. Rangers would have the exact same troubles with the majority of their pets and your party would aggro them if you have a melee guy for an ally.

The trait is useless at level 16 when you get it, I will freely admit that. It starts living long enough to get attacked at level 30, roughly.

As for “only eating AoE”, in s/tPvP, this is true. At least, if you opponent isn’t using any pets of their own. Pet AI is Pet AI and not the most easily controlled (save Ranger and Mesmer pets, as those can be locked on/have pre-defined targets) In PvE and dungeons, however, it is far from the case as mobs are fairly likely to target it as an “easy to kill” enemy. Yes, the Horror dies, but it prevented a number of attacks from landing on anything or anyone that actually matters.

And the AI problems with minions are a completely separate issue from this trait. Only running 1 or 2 minion skills and this trait, you will never see problems with the AI. Only the full blown minion army guys see issues, but whether they have this trait or not is irrelevant.

The problem is, although its not as useless as people make them out to be, its not quite useful either

• It usually dies before it attacks anything, and if it does attack, i believe it does a minimal amount of damage and inflicts a single stack of bleed. If the trait was reworded to something like – “30% chance to inflict bleeding after killing an enemy (30 second cooldown),” it would be more obvious as to how bad the trait is.
• In some situations – such as Arah explore, jagged horrors are worse than nothing – The jaggged horror runs up to Lupicus – which may give him a free grub requiring a reset.

• I also don’t believe anyone even targets the jagged horror – so it can’t really be considered an aegis. On kill traits are also not always useful in most situations – such as boss-fights.

• Its nowhere near as good as traits in the same position such as 50% permanent increase in endurance regen (Ranger), 10 secs of regeneration when under 75% health (Mesmer), etc.

Excio.9153:

The problem is, although its not as useless as people make them out to be, its not quite useful either

• It usually dies before it attacks anything, and if it does attack, i believe it does a minimal amount of damage and inflicts a single stack of bleed. If the trait was reworded to something like – “30% chance to inflict bleeding after killing an enemy (30 second cooldown),” it would be more obvious as to how bad the trait is.
• In some situations – such as Arah explore, jagged horrors are worse than nothing – The jaggged horror runs up to Lupicus – which may give him a free grub requiring a reset.

Interesting that you bring up Lupicus. The grubs and locust swarms he spawns don’t seem to trigger the trait (I never saw a jagged horror during that fight and I was running 20 in death magic). Outside of those, the only thing you can kill is Lupicus himself, at which point it’s irrelevant if a grub spawns on it.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Excio.9153:

The problem is, although its not as useless as people make them out to be, its not quite useful either

• It usually dies before it attacks anything, and if it does attack, i believe it does a minimal amount of damage and inflicts a single stack of bleed. If the trait was reworded to something like – “30% chance to inflict bleeding after killing an enemy (30 second cooldown),” it would be more obvious as to how bad the trait is.
• In some situations – such as Arah explore, jagged horrors are worse than nothing – The jaggged horror runs up to Lupicus – which may give him a free grub requiring a reset.

Interesting that you bring up Lupicus. The grubs and locust swarms he spawns don’t seem to trigger the trait (I never saw a jagged horror during that fight and I was running 20 in death magic). Outside of those, the only thing you can kill is Lupicus himself, at which point it’s irrelevant if a grub spawns on it.

I haven’t run Arah Exp since FotM was released, so I’m not too sure about that. Locust Swarms did use to trigger the jagged horror spawns though.

Imo, all minor traits should be made to be somewhat useful in all situations, and as it stands now, the trait is only useful in rare situations in PVE, and almost completely useless in sPVP (I’ve heard they also give 5 stacks of bloodlust/remove vengeance, however I haven’t verified this)

The minion itself just isn’t that good either, even if it were summon a jagged horror when hit under 90% health, it would be quite a useless trait in most circumstances – the jagged horror should be a suicide bomber instead that just inflicts X stacks of bleeding when it reaches the target – that way, at least there would be a guaranteed effect of some sort.

First of all ‘Hater’ does not mean disliking something. Hater means someone who is jealous.

2nd of all I run with this all the time, I am the tank for my minions and I got extra toughness for all minions I have up however short.

I love JH, why? i take death nova.. huzzah problem solved and i can explode my little buggers for damage and creation of a poison field. It really is the best solution as jh also creates a poison field, thus making it useful in its short life.

my major qualms with jagged horror is that it seems like a very specific trait to be there so early on. as well as I don’t want a little ugly thing that follows me being completely useless. This trait is only useful and liked by minion masters. as a dagger power/ vampire build I find it annoying to have a critter like that spend his lifespan at my shoes starring at the ground. for a few sec.

I read a great suggestion the other day that really should be repeated here:

Change the trait so that if your Bone Minion dies (due to detonation), it spawns a Jagged Horror (that behaves the same way it does now).

That gives you some measure of choice and control, which seems to me like the core problem of the ability — it goes off randomly and behaves unpredictably. I’m not saying its AI and other stats shouldn’t also be tweaked, but I think the trait as it stands is pretty unimaginative and unfun.

It’s also, in my opinion, a better homage to the skills from Guild Wars 1, when your fleshy minion died and turned into a pile of walking bones that were quickly falling apart.

it should be either:

- optional
- controllable

or at the end of the death magic “tree”

1) At level 80 it will last for 10 seconds, 3 seconds of the animation for it to get out of the ground and 7ish seconds for it to maybe attack something. Now it only living for only 10 seconds bothers me for many reasons.
-one being its on a 30 second cooldown, secondly and it is spawned after i kill something so great use that does since most times im done fighting already. not all the time but most times.
-those rare times in pve or pvp setups that a mob or player is left for me to fight. The JH and its damage is so small it might not even be there if it ever gets to the target
- if nothing is alive there is a small chance for it to run off and attack something so yeah, i do not find him helpful or wanted.

2) The issue is it a melee minions have to be right on something to hit them, and 7ish seconds is not enough time for it attack mobs or players most times.
- the AI plays a large part of the failure of a minion from hitting anything because it will run up to something and wont connect with its attack because the target is moving or it dies because it bleeds out
- other times it just stands around anyways regardless of how many minions you have.

3) That is great that they fixed this issue in September, still hate him for months that he did cause this to randomly happen.

4) The JH or even other minions like flesh golem have and still run off and attack mobs for you, large part to AI being so bad.
-I have not seen the shadow fiend, bone fiend. or flesh worm do it but fleshie, bone minion, jagged horror have all run around rocks, small hills, and even around walls to find something for me to fight.
- Fleshie did his very best to get me killed many times in twilight arbor. Not sure if JH ever pulled a mob in TA. Now i know he has pulled mobs in CA, AC, SE, CoF and Arah before the group was ready for more fighting.

5) I remember many fights in wvwvw when i was able to find some good 1 vs 1 fights, i would down a player, horror would pop up. He would die and right before my animation finished for down the player they would get up in most cases. Now this has not happened in sometime so i guess they did fix but it should never have been in aloud to happen in the first place.

6) Some fights he is a detriment to the team, along with other minions.
- Arah on the lupi fight. It is possible for a grub to be spawned on the annoying JD, does not happen all the time but it can happen which will make the next 2 phases harder then they need to be. I can kite lupi during phase 2 and 3 very well if i have the flesh worm up so minions are not bad during phase 2 and 3 just in phase 1 they could cause a problem.
- Someone says they fixed this but i dont remember seeing a red post or update about it so ill assume its still not fixed. Been over a month since i ran arah with the JH anyways and i am not just going to run arah for the fun of it test one trait.
-Another example is subject alpha. His aoes target all players and the players pets/minions. So having tons of minions around is a bad thing and the jagged horror can be spawned from the trash mobs subject alpha spawns during his fights so it happens more times then you think.
-third example TA last boss with all the spiders. Sometimes he would run up the giant tree and spiders from behind him would charge the group, other times this does not happen but the fact is it does happen.
- I am sure there are other boss fights he has caused me to have issues on, just cant think of them at the moment is all.

7) He does not act like any shield or aegis.
- He does not take a hit for you in anyway since most times in wvwvw/pvp you are being attacked by aoes or players will single target you, not your pet.
- In PVE those seldom times he does die from a mob hitting just him because more then likely it was a aoe that killed him,
- it does not does not benefit you at all since the protection of the horde no longer gives you more toughness once it is dead for the next 20 seconds atleast.

8) He is a horrible 5 point trait compared to other class’s traits. What’s interesting about comparing all of these is that ours is the only one that doesn’t immediately benefit us in combat like the others (we have to kill someone first).
Thief:
Use Blinding Powder when your health reaches 25% (90-second cooldown).
Ranger:
Increases endurance regeneration by 50%.
Guardian:
Gain aegis when your health reaches 50%.
Engineer:
Gain regeneration for 10 seconds when you are attacked while under 25% health.
Warrior:
Extra armor when health is above 90%.
Ele:
Gain 1 toughness per level while attuned to earth.
Mesmer:
Gain 10 seconds of regeneration when your health reaches 75% (30-second cooldown).

Make it optional or a way to turn him off, do not force us to use a trait that can actully cause us more harm then good.

I am quite sure Anet fixed grubs spawning off of horrors and other pets, or atleast it was mentioned in a red post

Funny the OP mentions people using old out of date information….

Only thing that bothers me is that he counts as a kill for vengeanced warriors, and going to assume people under illusion of life too.

Also, It’s still happening to me that I’m stuck in combat with the JH dying right next to me.

The Jagged horror keeps you in combat during pvp. I tested it last night.

That one bug alone is not enough to make me not use it though. I totally agree with it being a meet shield with a little dps. It saved me a few times.

The best suggestion for improvement I’ve seen is that the JH should have an invisible Confusion condition so that it damages itself as it attacks. So it still won’t be permanent, but it also doesn’t just die on its way to your second target.

I agree with Drarnor Kunoram that you have to be level 30 before it lives long enough to get even a single hit in against a second target that’s very close. I’m guessing a lot of us get terrible impressions of the JH because we (involuntarily) try it at lower levels and it literally does nothing.

I do find it mildly useful. How else would I know to collect my loot bags in WvW without it. Having that little rat pop up, notifying me that someone died is quite handy.