Guild Wars 2

I think they’re horrible, annoying and rubbish because they do absolutely nothing except keep you in combat, when often all you want to do is run like heck. Putting it into perspective, fairly much every other class has something reasonable at 5pts into their toughness line.

Ele’s get +1Tou per level when attuned to Earth. That’s actually quite nice having 80pts of toughness!
Warrior, extra armour when above 90% health, not great, but better than a poke in the eye.
Ranger, +50% endurance regen! Oh yeah, who do we have to murder to get something like that? Heck at 15pts it’s still a bargain.
Guardian, get Aegis at 50%, which is not bad at all and stops you getting a poke in the eye.
Thief, Blinding dust at 25% health on a 90% cooldown, that isn’t a bad defence ability really and meant more than once the little buggers have gotten away…
Engi, 10sec of regen when under 25% health and being attacked, ok so thats not likely to help much in some cases, but its not completely horrible either.
Mesmer, same stuff but at 75% unconditionally activates with a 30sec cooldown

Qspec after never having had it happen to me, and almost all my builds running 10+ in death magic, I went out of my way to test it. It doesn’t revive you. And that kind of bullkitten doesn’t help our case at all. Nor do things like NB0008, or 75% of NB0081. It’s like some people on this forum have never heard the story of the boy who cried wolf. Or they just think they can get away with anything.

The bug list needs a hard cull. A few of the things on there are obviously features, a few were never even bugged, a few have been fixed, a few are beneficial, and of the few remaining, most are hardly gamebreaking. I want the bugs fixed as much as anyone, but the whining inaccurate feedback we give doesn’t help that happen any faster.

So that’s great mammoth you tested it, thank you for testing a bug which most of us still believed to still be bugged since we used to have players rally for no reason during 1 vs 1 fights and the jagged horror was the only thing that died. Now go test to see if it makes arah last boss any harder because of the horror. How about you see how often it runs off and try’s to attack a mob, or why does it cause us to be stuck in combat sometimes taking longer to get out of combat since we have to wait for it to die. Why is up after we kill or down a player, what god does 1 little horror do at that point?

Huh? Not sure i see the “problem” with NB0008 as right now going into DS heavily limits my situational awareness. This while going into any other transform retains this info.

As for NB0081, when marks do not trigger on “objects” it severly limits the usability of staff in various events and encounters.

As for fixed bugs, feel free to report them in the thread.

digiowl.9620:

Huh? Not sure i see the “problem” with NB0008 as right now going into DS heavily limits my situational awareness. This while going into any other transform retains this info.

As for NB0081, when marks do not trigger on “objects” it severly limits the usability of staff in various events and encounters.

As for fixed bugs, feel free to report them in the thread.

NB0008 is clearly intended. You don’t like it, fine, ask for changes. Don’t try to pass it off as a bug. They wrote the kitten game they know whether or not it’s intended. Real feedback. Likewise NB0081. On top of that, if they made marks trigger on objects, the staff would lose a ton of flexibility.

That something makes it to release in a certain form does not indicate that it works as intended. Just as likely it was overlooked for some reason or other.

Sure, marking it as a bug may be overstating it a bit. But that you need to take up with the maintainer of the thread, not me.

And what kind of flexibility would it loose exactly? i see only win in that i could then drop in under dragon feet and expect to hurt the beast, or drop it on various breakables and actually make a difference.

I drop it under/behind plenty of breakables but I don’t want it to blow up the object until something else triggers it. If I want to kill objects, I press 1. Or `.

JonPeters

It does not give a free res. These guys can’t rally you. Also they die in about 11 seconds, not 2 seconds. I would like them to have a bit more survivable, but the real problem is obviously them aggroing. Necro minions are supposed to aggro based on what you attack only, so if this particular minion is not following that rule that is the real problem. We are currently investigating it and will make any changes we think are necessary.

Perhaps I’m reading into things, but the way you worded this post makes me think you don’t know that every last minion necro has is currently broken. You do know that minions only sometimes engage what the necromancer is attacking, right? Like they do NOT work most of the time, right?

I’m not trying to be snarky, I’m seriously worried you didn’t realize this.

I’m a bit worried about the trait tree layout. Not for the same reason as the general idea in this topic, but as I went for a tankish build with staff traits (running pow/vit/tough staff/dual-dagger). And currently, the two traits (Reanimator + Protection of the Horde) feel as useless placeholders. I would love to see something like autoattack projectile speed boost or something else related to marks/staff.

Don’t get me wrong, I can still contribute and don’t mind the little bugger running around when I kill enemies, but it feels a bit forced and in my opinion, would suit better into a major trait (were one to focus on Minions fully) and be replaced with a more general minor trait that would enhance various builds.

+1
The only fix for the Jagged Horror is to remove it. Like the OP, I’d take a blank trait over Reanimator.

It’s that bad.

here is test i did today. I’m not sure tho, if my friend did more dmge to them maybe he would have rezzed if it’s like a pve mob. I never did enough pvp to encounter this bug if it ever existed. I definitely remember killing jaggal horrors before in spvp and being like “wut no rez, I thought there was a bug”.

A warrior with vengeance killed my jagged horror and got the vengeance removed from him yesterday.

Also, killing necromancer minions with a +x dmg per kill weapon used to give you dmg stacks. I haven’t seen this removed in any patch notes so I assume that is still the case.

JonPeters.5630:

It does not give a free res. These guys can’t rally you. Also they die in about 11 seconds, not 2 seconds. I would like them to have a bit more survivable, but the real problem is obviously them aggroing. Necro minions are supposed to aggro based on what you attack only, so if this particular minion is not following that rule that is the real problem. We are currently investigating it and will make any changes we think are necessary.

I’d rather have all minions aggro random mobs than them being idle like they are now!
The funny thing is ranger pets and elementals not having those issues. Its a Necormancer exclusive.
Also they need to be able to jump down cliffs and stop taking a huge detour like they are doing now.

Fiesbert.9816:

JonPeters.5630:

It does not give a free res. These guys can’t rally you. Also they die in about 11 seconds, not 2 seconds. I would like them to have a bit more survivable, but the real problem is obviously them aggroing. Necro minions are supposed to aggro based on what you attack only, so if this particular minion is not following that rule that is the real problem. We are currently investigating it and will make any changes we think are necessary.

I’d rather have all minions aggro random mobs than them being idle like they are now!
The funny thing is ranger pets and elementals not having those issues. Its a Necormancer exclusive.

This and other odd differences between profession abilities that one would think shared code hints towards a severe case of copy and paste during the development of this game.

“Thanks guys, we will take a look at this. It shouldn’t be dying so quickly and it certainly shouldn’t be drawing aggro on its own.”

Thanks for looking into this! I can also add to the statements that the minions do their own aggro thing. I was attacking Sons last night and my minions wouldn’t break their focus on the nearby dragon pillars/towers. Thanks again for following up on this!

@Jon Peters:
Please also consider that this trait is currently a huge detriment to your team in any Arah explorable path, due to the Risen Grub mechanic in the Giganticus Lupicious encounter.

I would take absolutely zero benefit from this minor trait over the current benefit just so I can run Arah with my build of choice.

JonPeters -
A) Put all bug fixes into the patch notes (like the Vampiric working of all skills)
B) For a fact i know that JH did revive downed enemies in hotjoin pvp since both me and a guildie who was using his necro (Evara) got enemies rezzing from the horrors if they actually got the killing blow on it (just as death nova from traits doesnt work with putrid explosion, kill =/= suicide. Or at least it seems like that).
C) Check all skills/traits/other stuff (runes, combo fields) both in spvp, pve and wvwvw, since right now there are a few traits that work in spvp, but not in other types of play (like the focus range increase/cdr).

Give the horrors the ability to leap to their foes. As it a stands a slow moving slug that reaches its target with 1 second of life left is not verry horrific.

I would almost be willing to spend a trait slot to disable it. That is how useless it is. But it must somehow improve death shroud?

Hexd.4796:

Give the horrors the ability to leap to their foes. As it a stands a slow moving slug that reaches its target with 1 second of life left is not verry horrific.

That or a range attack would indeed help, as then it spends less time chasing down its target and bleeding out in the process.

The problem is that it is compulsory in that trait line. a simple solution would be to make them an optional trait say at 10 points in the curses line and make one of the other traits that is currently available at the 10 point mark the compulsory 5 trait.

But lets all remember what the real problem is………It’s not that GW2 necro’s are the worst pet class i’ve seen in a MMO, its that the pets dont aggro “correctly”….riiiiiiight……..suuuuuure……..uh huh………

What I really, really want from this trait is just one change:

Don’t make it trigger the dialogue!

“Nooooo! Not my minion!”
“That’s ok, they’re easy to make!”
“That’s ok, they’re easy to make!”
“Look, Life after death!”
“That’s o, they’re easy to make!”
“Noooo! Not my minion!”

Of course, all that stuff to make it useful is good too. But this one thing makes me ARRRRRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!

11 seconds? More like 6 seconds, it is simply pointless at low level.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soM9YcKGdJE

Recycle.5493:

11 seconds? More like 6 seconds, it is simply pointless at low level.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soM9YcKGdJE

Pretty hard to argue with that, care to change your statement Mr. Developer?

And don’t forget that it spends around 1/3 of that time in ‘summoning animation’

Ya I remember that. At low level the thing is worthless because I believe it scales with your life.

When you get ~20k+ it lasts closer to the dev’s 11 seconds.

But at low levels it barely stays alive. Dying in less than 5 seconds.

Cause the bleed it does to itself is constant, while the life it has is tied to the amount of health you have.

Actually the amount of life it has is tied to your level, not your health. But I agree it dies far too quickly at lower levels, and I personally don’t feel like it does much even when it’s alive.

I just hate seeing the red numbers pop up constantly while it bleeds out. That little bit of red in my peripheral vision often makes me go “ENEMIES? wait no”. Plus there are too many NPCs in PvP already.

Simple fix for ballence -

1 remove the blead on reanimator/ jagged horrors

2 move it to the 25 skill slot

3 limit the minion count *max jagged horrors to 3 out at a time

Easy fix, your welcome arena net

It does not give a free res. These guys can’t rally you. Also they die in about 11 seconds, not 2 seconds. I would like them to have a bit more survivable, but the real problem is obviously them aggroing. Necro minions are supposed to aggro based on what you attack only, so if this particular minion is not following that rule that is the real problem. We are currently investigating it and will make any changes we think are necessary.

Unless you are going to make it so that they live long enough to see multiple minions out (with a much shorter cooldown of, say, 5 seconds) then I still don’t see the trait being wanted or useful at all.

Better to go with a different minor trait altogether. There is plenty to do with the necromancer. I’ve listed tons of ideas in the past, here a few new ones:

• Gain toughness based on how much life force you have, 1 point of toughness per percent of life force.

• Poison someone when they attack you, 30s cooldown.

• Gain 10% life force every time you take more than 10% of your health in a single hit, 40s cooldown.

• 5% chance to convert a boon to a condition when an enemy hits you, 30s cooldown.

• Gain 10s Fury whenever you gain life force, 30s cooldown.

Mammoth.1975:

NB0008 is clearly intended. You don’t like it, fine, ask for changes. Don’t try to pass it off as a bug. They wrote the kitten game they know whether or not it’s intended. Real feedback. Likewise NB0081. On top of that, if they made marks trigger on objects, the staff would lose a ton of flexibility.

I would be hesitant to to say this with such certainty. I vaguely remember a post in which this was explicitly stated, maybe not as a bug, but at least as a mistake.

Found it: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/I-play-a-necro-but-I-traid-a-warrior-for-one-play-session/page/2#post116878

chuiu.4985:

It does not give a free res. These guys can’t rally you. Also they die in about 11 seconds, not 2 seconds. I would like them to have a bit more survivable, but the real problem is obviously them aggroing. Necro minions are supposed to aggro based on what you attack only, so if this particular minion is not following that rule that is the real problem. We are currently investigating it and will make any changes we think are necessary.

Unless you are going to make it so that they live long enough to see multiple minions out (with a much shorter cooldown of, say, 5 seconds) then I still don’t see the trait being wanted or useful at all.

Better to go with a different minor trait altogether. There is plenty to do with the necromancer. I’ve listed tons of ideas in the past, here a few new ones:

• Gain toughness based on how much life force you have, 1 point of toughness per percent of life force.

• Poison someone when they attack you, 30s cooldown.

• Gain 10% life force every time you take more than 10% of your health in a single hit, 40s cooldown.

• 5% chance to convert a boon to a condition when an enemy hits you, 30s cooldown.

• Gain 10s Fury whenever you gain life force, 30s cooldown.

Those ones you listed would be amazing as a minor trait. Too strong though imo.

Yeah that minor trait sucks. Look at the other classes’ toughness tree:

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).

What’s interesting about comparing all of these is that ours is the only one that doesn’t immediately benefit us in combat (we have to kill someone first).

Moreover, does anyone have numbers on the damage it does? I have a feeling it could be immune to damage, auto-tele to an enemy and still be underwhelming… but this is just whining. Any actual numbers on it?

QSpec.4298:

Yeah that minor trait sucks. Look at the other classes’ toughness tree:

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).

What’s interesting about comparing all of these is that ours is the only one that doesn’t immediately benefit us in combat (we have to kill someone first).

Moreover, does anyone have numbers on the damage it does? I have a feeling it could be immune to damage, auto-tele to an enemy and still be underwhelming… but this is just whining. Any actual numbers on it?

It literally bleeds on the target it attacks.

Hey don’t forget our other awful minor trait, 66% chance on crit to bleed for 1 second.

I’m loving my warrior’s equivalent, 33% chance on crit to bleed for a full 5 seconds. 2.5x better.

Also I am trying to come to grips with minor traits having a compulsory 30 sec cooldown. Seeing they are not optional in the trait line and cannot be avoided/withheld during use, isn’t it a bit counter intuitive for them to carry a cooldown. If it a matter of nerfing the ability then adjusting the raw damage/healing is a far more equitable way rather than a cooldown on a trait-line-mandatory skill.

Edit: My understanding is that cooldowns are to make you value a resource and when you chose to use them. These passive but mandatory trait skills do not fit this type of resource/skills management.

Berullos.6928:

chuiu.4985:

It does not give a free res. These guys can’t rally you. Also they die in about 11 seconds, not 2 seconds. I would like them to have a bit more survivable, but the real problem is obviously them aggroing. Necro minions are supposed to aggro based on what you attack only, so if this particular minion is not following that rule that is the real problem. We are currently investigating it and will make any changes we think are necessary.

Unless you are going to make it so that they live long enough to see multiple minions out (with a much shorter cooldown of, say, 5 seconds) then I still don’t see the trait being wanted or useful at all.

Better to go with a different minor trait altogether. There is plenty to do with the necromancer. I’ve listed tons of ideas in the past, here a few new ones:

• Gain toughness based on how much life force you have, 1 point of toughness per percent of life force.

• Poison someone when they attack you, 30s cooldown.

• Gain 10% life force every time you take more than 10% of your health in a single hit, 40s cooldown.

• 5% chance to convert a boon to a condition when an enemy hits you, 30s cooldown.

• Gain 10s Fury whenever you gain life force, 30s cooldown.

Those ones you listed would be amazing as a minor trait. Too strong though imo.

I agree most of them are too strong, I purposely did that knowing the devs would water them down if they used my ideas. However I truly feel that:

• Gain toughness based on how much life force you have, 1 point of toughness per percent of life force.

• 5% chance to convert a boon to a condition when an enemy hits you, 30s cooldown.

Are perfectly reasonable the way they are and I would love to bring those as minor traits.

Even IF the Jagged Horror had proper AI, didn’t cause random aggro, and didn’t give free rallies in pvp, it’s STILL be a completely worthless piece of ####, it never lives long enough to get in a single attack, and even if it does, it’s attack does such miniscule worthless amounts of damage as to be completely useless. If they removed it’s bleed out time and just made it a normal minion it would be kind of ok, but as it is it’s just a waste.

@ Chuiu. I think those traits would be better at like 2nd tier and not first.

And I think Last Gasp should be a tier one trait in the toughness line.

The convert condition>boon one makes more sense than the minion toughness trait we have now.

The minion one only makes sense if you go full MM. Otherwise its completely useless to the other builds. So taken as a whole we have two minor traits that are complete trash.

Hell most people don’t even use minions so the minion trait is useless for them.

Engis have that convert minor trait but I don’t know what CD they have that on.

I feel like the toughness one is on par with the Warrior armor trait (100 toughness when HP >90%) and the Ele earth attunement trait (80 toughness in earth attunement).

If anything Necromancer has it worse off because you will rarely have full DS in Spvp as you will constantly be shifting in and out of it. It should more realistically be in bulks. 1-50 DS gain 50 toughness, 50-100 DS gain 100 toughness.

I agree with Last Gasp, it could make a nice T1 minor trait in toughness line. Then putting the toughness per life force trait and bumping it to 1.5 toughness per % life force.

QSpec.4298:

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).

All of these traits offer increased survival at the 5 point mark. Why is ours the only trait that doesn’t reward durability for investment in the Toughness trait line? I would much prefer something akin to what the other classes receive.

This skill has HUGE problems. It is neither viable for min/max players that care about performance, nor is it enjoyable for casual/RP players. This skill really misses all of the marks possible in design and implementation. What makes it worse is that at 5 points you as a designer are forced into making it ineffective. Certainly at higher trait tears this skill could be made without a bleed effect attached, and could even be limited to 2 simultaneous Jagged Horrors. But because of its current placement, the pet must be framed within bounds of utility relative to our investment.

This skill should not be a 5 point trait. It should be 20+, made more viable for those that DO enjoy it currently, and a replacement that is more akin to what all other classes receive should take its place.

Julius Seizure.4985:

QSpec.4298:

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).

All of these traits offer increased survival at the 5 point mark. Why is ours the only trait that doesn’t reward durability for investment in the Toughness trait line? I would much prefer something akin to what the other classes receive.

This skill has HUGE problems. It is neither viable for min/max players that care about performance, nor is it enjoyable for casual/RP players. This skill really misses all of the marks possible in design and implementation. What makes it worse is that at 5 points you as a designer are forced into making it ineffective. Certainly at higher trait tears this skill could be made without a bleed effect attached, and could even be limited to 2 simultaneous Jagged Horrors. But because of its current placement, the pet must be framed within bounds of utility relative to our investment.

This skill should not be a 5 point trait. It should be 20+, made more viable for those that DO enjoy it currently, and a replacement that is more akin to what all other classes receive should take its place.

Yeah, I would love to see a swarm of those little things running around. That would certainly add to the minion master feel.

Berullos.6928:

Ya I remember that. At low level the thing is worthless because I believe it scales with your life.

When you get ~20k+ it lasts closer to the dev’s 11 seconds.

But at low levels it barely stays alive. Dying in less than 5 seconds.

Cause the bleed it does to itself is constant, while the life it has is tied to the amount of health you have.

Yet another reminder that the focus is sPVP, where everyone is 80 and exotic, not PVE…

QSpec.4298:

Yeah, I would love to see a swarm of those little things running around. That would certainly add to the minion master feel.

I totally agree. This skill needs to be made viable, but as a 5 point trait it simply can’t be made effective because trait investment must balance reward. The developers are pigeonholed into making this skill “balanced” as a 5 point trait, which just doesn’t work.

It should be made into a good skill for Minion Masters or Condition builds since it can bleed. This will never happen if as a developer you must balance it as a 5 point trait, and by doing such you are hampering both Minion Masters and non-summoners alike.

We really need an option to deactivate traits we do not want.

I absolutely hate this minor trait, I have to take it because I need other traits in that line, but I do not choose that trait line for the minions as I do not play a minion master.

I think it is absolutely ridiculous that we are forced to be stuck with a minion we do not want in the first place.

Even if it get’s fixed to not randomly aggro anything in sight, it will still run in and aggro everything in the area when you are trying to pull certain mobs. This means every time this minion pops up I have to stop what I am doing and wait for it to die while hoping the mobs I just killed do not re-spawn in the mean time.

It is incredibly disruptive and annoying, so please give us the option of deactivating it.

As a possible solution, I certainly wouldn’t say no to Deadly Strength (Death Magic: 25) being moved in to take Reanimator’s slot, haha.

Whose kitten do I have to drown to make my minions at least on par with the mobs from MINECRAFT? Yeah…I said it.

Even if it gets fixed, it’s still a horrible trait. They don’t do a whole lot of damage, are very slow, and can work against you in PvP due to bouncing attacks. I like the staff skills and I don’t want a pet, so for the love of grenth don’t force one on me.

/rant
That’s been my major issue with their skill point system to begin with though. I HATE being forced to take certain stat points because that’s where say staff traits are. I hate getting minor traits that are absolutely useless for my build but due to the trait line I have to take them. On some of my characters I put 30 points in a line just for the stats and might not gain any use out of the traits. The whole trait system needs overhauled. The previous system was better where you could pick what minor/major traits you wanted, however I’d remove the stat points and make them their own system. So you pick major/minor traits then you pick what stats you want. Heaven forbid we are able to pair up 300 condition damage, 30% condition duration, 300 vitality, and 300 toughness. Instead we get power, condition duration, toughness, boon duration, etc. Of course then we just need ArenaNet to balance the stats…
/end rant

I think that trait should be completely changed, I mean the functionality to something completely different, without a minion, I have that just to have the bigger staff wells, I don’t need that minion AT ALL; not a minion master, not using minions.