Guild Wars 2

I remember trying to play as a minion mancer one the game went live as I have loved DoT based pet classes in other MMOs (EQ Necro, WoW Lock, DAoC Bonedancer). It was just a terrible experience. Pets wouldnt attack half the time, or wouldnt assist you, did horrible DPS and couldnt take hits. Also pretty sure they didnt even regen health.

Since its been around a year since I last played was wondering if minions have gotten some love and are actually worth using?

They’ve come a long way. Our rotten little friends are pretty decent now. All except the sacrificial minions now regen out of combat on their own, they are still a tad slow to jump on a target, but they are far more responsive than what you experienced. There’s plenty of tricks to get around that though, like opening with a few auto attacks instead of aoe spam, begin attacking well before they are in range and the minions will “lock” onto them and have higher response time once you are within range, and knowing when to use their skills instead of spamming on cooldowns makes a huge difference. They are currently pretty popular in pvp, and since all pets in the game got a hp buff across the board, they are pretty decent except the most extreme aoe heavy content in pve.

Mixing them into builds is a lot more viable now too as opposed to being holed into running full MM or not at all. I’ve made several builds utilizing them for their minion skills and finishers. I don’t think they’re perfect by any means and I surely hope the devs haven’t given up on polishing them, but they are in a pretty respectable place right now. Strangely enough, they are one of the few stable and reliable things our class still has going for us.

They had some big work done. Such as they won’t pull floors of dungeons down if you ‘jump/skip’ bits.

They still ‘wig out’ and will watch you fight quite often.
They still don’t follow your focus/attacks. Tho this sometimes works as a advantage. Say you attack a target, have another 2 come up, flip to staff and shoot thru a line of them. Different minions will attack a different mob each. It doesn’t make sense, but kinda works.

They have had there life beefed up. They are totally OP vs world trash mobs.
But, they still useless vs any real fight, like a world boss.
Other games have a max % life taken per hit. But minions will still get 1shot in this game.

Huge problem with them now is ‘scaling’. Each minion is classed as another player. Making events/living story/etc much harder.

Also, Elite still die’s in water getting 1min CD. (And still only a undewater condition elite skill, and minions still has synergies with power, even more so now as there heal on hit dose more damage based on power.)

Bweaty.9187:

Also, Elite still die’s in water getting 1min CD. (And still only a undewater condition elite skill, and minions still has synergies with power, even more so now as there heal on hit dose more damage based on power.)

That is SO, SO annoying -.-
To the point i dont use it anymore if i am in WvW outside of EB.

Oh yeh, I forgot… Chill/Cripple/etc still auto-transfer from your minions too you, even if they out of Line of Sight.

Bweaty.9187:

Oh yeh, I forgot… Chill/Cripple/etc still auto-transfer from your minions too you, even if they out of Line of Sight.

Ummm…what? I’ve never seen this happen. Are you running Plague Signet?

thanks for the replies might give it a go again. Also if anyone else played a Bonedancer in DAoC maybe they can make minions like BD pets were when the class was first released lol.

Minions are much better than at launch. They attack quicker and more accurately, they deal nice damage with siphon trait, and they just got a nice HP boost in wvw/pve.

Minionmancer is a VERY strong 1v1 spec. It becomes less potent against multiple foes because you cannot keep your minions up and you rely on them for condition clears/healing.

They’re fine. 1v1 they are still pretty strong, 2v2 with the right partner is really good as well. Most of PvE, and roaming WvW they are fine too.

There are still some fixes that need to be done, but overall minions are usable in most situations, so long as you aren’t zerging.

Bhawb.7408:

There are still some fixes that need to be done, but overall minions are usable in most situations, so long as you aren’t zerging.

They seem pretty useful while zerging too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbvjWD0W4SU

Okay, barring that you have a massive zerg of all “petting zoo” (if just one player with summons is a petting zoo, what is a full zerg of them? a herd?), they tend to not be good.

With a ton of them though, yeah.

Bweaty.9187:

Oh yeh, I forgot… Chill/Cripple/etc still auto-transfer from your minions too you, even if they out of Line of Sight.

Got some proof of that? Cause I just watched mine get chilled and crippled and it did nothing to me. If you’re using plague signet, then I suppose it would be possible for it to bug out and transfer even out of range.

Only thing my necro plays, that and some wells in WvW. I can honestly say my usual fractals group adores me, I bring on call weakness through bone minions, TONS of damage, even in PVT gear ((Since minion damage doesn’t scale based off your stats, the little buggers will hit their top damage no matter what))

They took the PVE health buff, along with flesh of the master the bigger ones have upwards of 33k HP. Our jagged horrors just took a buff, allowing more out, more touchness from our minor trait, as well as 3 to 4 little death nova bombs if you snag that trait.

Responsiveness is still a bit shaky, strangely enough last patch I could get them to attack and defend on the milli-second but they’ve seemed to sliow down a slight bit recently. Even so it only takes a second and a half or two for them to go. “Hm, Master is fighting, lets help.”

you can get nice army of jaggeds now.. but yeah they still reach kinda slow time to time and take their time to get to enemy (would be great if you could trait for swiftness for summons or some sort charge at start of the combat. )
but the one weakness that makes them completely useless in dungeons is still there. They die instantly when aoe damage starts.

Bweaty.9187:

Oh yeh, I forgot… Chill/Cripple/etc still auto-transfer from your minions too you, even if they out of Line of Sight.

Are you sure you didn’t mean that slowing effects on you also affect your minions? This is especially noticeable when carrying the orb in spirit watch.