Guild Wars 2

It’s widely acknowledged in the community that our minion AI has serious problems. The most severe problem is when minions stand by and do not enter combat with the Necro.

So let’s try to make some theories, test them, and perhaps we can give AN some good leads.

1. Not Unique. AI problems aren’t unique to Necros. I’ve heard at various points of Thieves having problems with their summons, Mesmers having problems with particular phantasms, etc.

2. Number of (Potential) Minions. Necros who are into minions can have more out than most professions. A Ranger has at most one pet out at a time. Elementalists could have two summons (Elemental and Lesser Elemental), but generally only use one. Thieves could have three summons. Mesmers could obviously have a boatload of illusions and phantasms, etc. Mesmer Illusions and Phantasms work pretty well — though I’ve heard complaints about some Phantasms just standing by sometimes — so the issue is not as simple as having many minions/summons/pets or having the capability of having many, but it could be a contributing factor.

EDIT: I spent the skill points on the Flesh Golem and have found that this single minion has issues. It does appear that melee minions have particular problems, which suggests Pathing issues…

3. LOS/Pathing issues. GW2 has some deep and lingering issues with LOS. This has affected teleport spells, Elementalist Ride the Lightning, etc, and most professions see erroneous Obstructed messages as they operate. Mesmers were recently hit with a huge nerf stick when their illusions/phantasms suddenly required LOS, and suddenly they were facing LOS issues. I believe that LOS issues could also cause or be related to pathing issues, so “LOS” may actually affect non-ranged minions.

EDIT: Based on my experience with the Flesh Golem, it appears that melee minions act a bit strange, even if they are otherwise working correctly. They don’t have particular problems following, but if separated from their target (the Flesh Golem charging through its target and beyond, for example) they can appear “confused”, sometimes as if they can’t figure out how to get to the target and sometimes they almost appear to think they are next to their master and out of combat.

It has been noted that minions may behave well underwater, which would also suggest pathing issues. (My theory being that underwater straight lines tend to work.)

4. Targeting and Entering Combat. I have a sneaking suspicion that target selection, playstyle, and entering combat have something to do with it. That is, when I’m wielding a staff, I can easily drop five Marks and even a well or two, and be in combat for a while without targeting anything. Certainly other professions are capable of opening with AoE or traps or other non-targeted skills, but I don’t really see a playstyle/rotation that is very common among other professions that actually does it.

Perhaps, if you have a target and enter combat by attacking it directly, minions are more likely to know what to do, but if you enter combat without a target perhaps subtle bugs may be triggered resulting in the minion staying out of combat for an extended period of time. This may also be why Mesmers have fewer issues than Necros even though they can have many illusions/phantasms out: they are almost always tied directly to a target that must be targeted when they spawn.

5. Traits. I haven’t voluntarily traited for minions in any way. Could a common minion-oriented trait be causing bugs in some way?

6. Minion Anti-Collision Code. PinCushion observed that it appears that Minions are coded to repel each other so they don’t stand in the same spot or pass through each other. Combined with Pathing (Item #3 above), a Necro with many minions in an area with difficult pathing may end up with minions that are stalemated and block each other from finding paths/LOS to the target.

7. Tab-targeting. Perhaps if you tab-target through nearby mobs, the minion may remember “targets” and run off to attack something you never actually attacked. (At least one person has noticed that this happens and is repeatable.)

8. Summoning while in combat helps. Several people have reported that minions summoned while you’re already in combat seem to act reliably. Which might indicate that there is something about the minion’s transition into combat that causes a problem.

Have you done any experiments or found any workarounds that seem to avoid minion AI issues, particularly minions standing around? Please share. (I think that issues of minions attacking random mobs are secondary to them standing and doing nothing, so would recommend we tackle that first.)

In another thread, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 mentioned:

On the minion AI topic, I have issues with them only when I have at least three minions out at once It’s quite possible that the game’s AI for pets is only properly set up to handle 3 “summons” at a time. If I only have Bone Minions, they are very quick to respond. If I have Shadow Fiend, Bone Minions, Bone Fiend, and Fleshie all out, then I start hitting issues with the bone minions watching a show and the bone fiend running up beside me in melee. Shadow Fiend and Flesh Golem have very good “attack this fool” commands.

This would affect minion-oriented builds, since traits like Necrotic Corruption, Fetid Consumption, and Vampiric Master directly benefit the Necro based on how many minions they have out, while traits that strengthen minions would make you want to use more of them.

Anyone who consistently has issues with minions when you only have 3 or fewer out for a fight? Remember that if you more than 5 points in Death Magic you’re forced to take Reanimator which will spawn another minion when you kill a foe. (A Bad Thing, in my opinion.)

I’ve never had more than two out at once, and have never had a problem.

The few things I’ve noticed….

Ranged pets are much more responsive than non-ranged. Bone Fiend and Flesh Wurm attack the first thing I attack. Flesh Golem and Bone Minions stand around doing nothing.

I think this has to do with pathing. This is especially apparent with the Flesh Golem. Even when he looks like he knows what to attack, I see him walk all over the place trying to “Find the Path” so he can melee. This is worse in zones with detailed, broken terrain (i.e. Orr), and best in cleaner zones (i.e. Queensdale).

This seems to get even worse when I have multiple pets out, because they don’t generally want to stand on top of one another. They prioritize going around other pets over getting into melee.

And if I’m meleeing too it gets even worse! They now prioritize going around me! But, I have to dodge and move around, so now they have to go around me again. It’s a huge DPS loss.

Many times I just stand in one place and face tank stuff just so my pets don’t stop attacking while they do a Chinese Fire Drill around my target.

@PinCushion: Good observations. So pathing plus crowds — which might be worked around by AN if they would allow minions to freely pass through each other or stand on top of each other.

A theory that’s intrigued me is that perhaps the low-level actions (motions and mechanics of an attack, death, etc) of each minion are controlled by the minion object/thread itself, while the high-level actions (select a target, move into attack range, begin attacking) are implemented in another object/thread and that with more than 3 minions out a bug can result in the wrong high-level actions being sent to the wrong minion.

For example, minion A is ranged and minion B is melee and they are both at range. Close enough for A to attack, but too far for B to attack. The target is chosen and the wrong high-level command sent to each: A’s message to begin attacking is sent to B, who is out of range, while B’s messages to: a) move into range and b) begin attacking, are sent to A who is already in range and thus immediately begins attacking. So one minion seems to work fine and the other seems to just stand there.

But your observation idea that minions may be working too hard to not collide is even simpler. Thanks!

Anyone else?

I think ‘fire and forget’ minion missiles are probably a better work around (with some adjusted timers), target what you want chewed on and the critters run off and bite it until they or it, is dead. Rather than doing what they do most of the time-
A: stand around picking their bum
B: agro’ing something halfway across the zone

The other thing if we’re looking at an overhaul (which IMO is the better option than trying to ‘fix’ them- which has been tried and failed completely miserably since Beta), is that we get a couple of ‘spiritual advisers’ so to speak, which are just mob/npc transparencies which give buffs to people within a certain radius and would give us a certain ‘group appeal’ that Necro’s currently don’t have.

Reason being-
Mesmer pets aren’t great, but they do work ‘most of the time’ for their intended purpose and are proven code.
Ranger spirits aren’t great either, but also do the above and are proven code, just make them different buffs.

Druitt.7629:

Anyone who consistently has issues with minions when you only have 3 or fewer out for a fight? Remember that if you more than 5 points in Death Magic you’re forced to take Reanimator which will spawn another minion when you kill a foe. (A Bad Thing, in my opinion.)

I’ve never had more than two out at once, and have never had a problem.

I think you may be on to something here. On my Necromancer’s early days, when I was running around with a Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend and 2 Bone Minions, I never recalled having any problems with unresponsive minions. It was only when I added a Shadow Fiend/Flesh Golem to the mix that things started going haywire. It may be that the game’s code starts to break down when you have more than 3 types of minions out in play at once.

Also, as PinCushion pointed out, ranged minions usually have no problem at all. All it takes is for you to start attacking a target and Blood/Bone Fiends will join in the mayhem immediately.

The Flesh Golem deserves a special mention in that it seems to be stuck in its “combat mode” a lot. Most other minions are passive until you either attack something or are themselves attacked (and even then, only the minion that was attacked will retaliate. Other minions will continue to be passive until you attack a target.) If stuck in combat mode, the Flesh Golem will continually seek out red targets to attack, even without your direction. Fortunately it doesn’t automatically target yellow/white targets.

I’ve just started using minions, namely the Shadow Fiend and the Flesh Golem. I find even with just the two of them out they will follow me around and remain out of combat perhaps 30-40% of the time even with just the two of them active (I do have Reanimator unfortunately). Once in this state they only seem to participate in combat when damaged by something, even running right up to the mob so they are in melee range seems to have no effect once they have decided they don’t want to fight.

Palmski.6419:

I’ve just started using minions, namely the Shadow Fiend and the Flesh Golem. I find even with just the two of them out they will follow me around and remain out of combat perhaps 30-40% of the time even with just the two of them active (I do have Reanimator unfortunately). Once in this state they only seem to participate in combat when damaged by something, even running right up to the mob so they are in melee range seems to have no effect once they have decided they don’t want to fight.

Hmmm… this is troubling.

Could you clarify exactly what you mean by 30-40% of the time. From your description, it sounds like occasionally they enter a bugged state and in that state 30-40% of the time they won’t enter combat unless damages. If that’s the case, how often do they get into this state and is there anything common to that? Particular regions, particular mobs, particular attack sequences (e.g. opening with Marks and no target selected).

But if you mean that 30-40% of your battles they end up entering a bugged state and staying in that state for an extended period, is there anything that might be different that 30-40% of the time? Opening with Staff or other weapon or a different skill? Minion recently resummoned, or perhaps very low in health, etc, etc?

I think you’re an excellent test case if the issue’s that obvious with so few minions out.

I was doing some map completion stuff in Lornar’s Pass and it happened all over the zone as far as I could tell although I primarily noticed it in the Dredge tunnels where I was in a lot of combat in a short space of time.

When summoning in combat there were no problems, likewise if I was to use the charge or haunt minion skills they would engage (or in the Golem’s case charge on past and engage the rest of the cavern lol).

I run a pretty standard 20/30/20/0/0 scepter/dagger and staff so I was initiating combat at range quite a bit which may have been a factor. I’ll try some more at the weekend and see what transpires and I’ll also try and be a bit more scientific about it if I can – these are somewhat subjective observations at the moment. I only just specced into this very recently so it’s just initial impressions really.

Thresher.3049:

I think ‘fire and forget’ minion missiles are probably a better work around (with some adjusted timers), target what you want chewed on and the critters run off and bite it until they or it, is dead. Rather than doing what they do most of the time-
A: stand around picking their bum
B: agro’ing something halfway across the zone

The other thing if we’re looking at an overhaul (which IMO is the better option than trying to ‘fix’ them- which has been tried and failed completely miserably since Beta), is that we get a couple of ‘spiritual advisers’ so to speak, which are just mob/npc transparencies which give buffs to people within a certain radius and would give us a certain ‘group appeal’ that Necro’s currently don’t have.

Reason being-
Mesmer pets aren’t great, but they do work ‘most of the time’ for their intended purpose and are proven code.
Ranger spirits aren’t great either, but also do the above and are proven code, just make them different buffs.

If we’re proposing solutions, I think you might be onto something here. I’d be fine with our pets being even more disposable than they currently are. Rather than try to shoehorn permanent pets into the game with all the pathing and LOS bugs that involves, why not make all our pets temporary and dramatically increase the performance of them.

Example, make Flesh Golem KD as soon as you summon it, NOT charge through targets (because it creates pathing issues to get back to them), do a lot more damage, but only last 10-20 seconds before it dies. If it’s still bad you could add a buff to the summon as well.

It’s kind of sad that it’s 4 months past release, and minions of multiple classes are still in an Alpha state.

Just wanted to thank the thread participants for proposing solutions and gathering data, rather than just complaining. Perhaps I’m naive, but I think it’s possible that the Necro community could find or propose something that AN says, “Hey, let’s do it.”

PLEASE KEEP POSTING your observations and suggestions. They can make our lives easier and perhaps help AN do something more quickly. (At a minimum, if we can document several workarounds, we could ease some Necro’s pain quickly and not dependent on AN doing something quickly.)

The example that comes to mind is the Bugs list and the issue (not a bug) that Moa Morph while you were in DS would keep your Life Force ticking down even though you got no benefit. It was noted as an issue, and AN acted on it and now DS is removed if you are Moa Morphed. Someone noticed a “gottcha” and essentially suggested a straightforward fix and it was done.

Palmski.6419:

I was doing some map completion stuff in Lornar’s Pass and it happened all over the zone as far as I could tell although I primarily noticed it in the Dredge tunnels where I was in a lot of combat in a short space of time.

Good information. Sorry to ask so many questions, but if you could talk about the 30-40% again: was it a) 30-40% of engagements they did not enter combat quickly or at all during that particular engagement, or b) 30-40% of engagements would throw them into a state where they wouldn’t enter combat then or in following engagements until you did something to break them out of it.

That is, are they non-participating in one fight, then the next fight they’re fine, or are they participants up until some particular fight after which they won’t participate in future fights until you do something to kick their butt.

In terms of kicking their butt, I’ve heard mention of commanding minions that can be commanded to take offensive actions, and also dragging minions until they are actually damaged. Evidently, destroying minions that can be destroyed then resummoning them would also work, since I’ve seen multiple mentions that minions that are summond in combat don’t seem to glitch.

Druitt.7629:

Palmski.6419:

I was doing some map completion stuff in Lornar’s Pass and it happened all over the zone as far as I could tell although I primarily noticed it in the Dredge tunnels where I was in a lot of combat in a short space of time.

Good information. Sorry to ask so many questions, but if you could talk about the 30-40% again: was it a) 30-40% of engagements they did not enter combat quickly or at all during that particular engagement, or b) 30-40% of engagements would throw them into a state where they wouldn’t enter combat then or in following engagements until you did something to break them out of it.

That is, are they non-participating in one fight, then the next fight they’re fine, or are they participants up until some particular fight after which they won’t participate in future fights until you do something to kick their butt.

In terms of kicking their butt, I’ve heard mention of commanding minions that can be commanded to take offensive actions, and also dragging minions until they are actually damaged. Evidently, destroying minions that can be destroyed then resummoning them would also work, since I’ve seen multiple mentions that minions that are summond in combat don’t seem to glitch.

Minions I summon in combat very rarely glitch, with one glaring exception. It’s very common for my Flesh Golem, despite being summoned in combat and immediately charge/KD to the enemy, to charge through the enemy (knocking it down) and never come back. He’ll just wander around on the far side of the field where his charge ended. If the melee lasts long enough he’ll EVENTUALLY get back to me, but fights are normally too quick for that.

After a few of those I quit using it.

PinCushion.7390:

… my Flesh Golem, despite being summoned in combat and immediately charge/KD to the enemy, to charge through the enemy (knocking it down) and never come back. He’ll just wander around on the far side of the field where his charge ended.

Does the Flesh Golem ever face the original enemy, or does it wander while facing away, as if it couldn’t see the enemy that was suddenly behind it?

Do people see any indication that minions have a a “vision cone” and only sense things in front of them? Perhaps some dev thought it a good idea for PvP or something strange?

(This could tie back into Drarnor Kunoram’s observation that minions seem to try to avoid passing through or co-locating with other minions: perhaps jostling minions tend to face “the wrong way” if facing matters.)

Druitt.7629:

PinCushion.7390:

… my Flesh Golem, despite being summoned in combat and immediately charge/KD to the enemy, to charge through the enemy (knocking it down) and never come back. He’ll just wander around on the far side of the field where his charge ended.

Does the Flesh Golem ever face the original enemy, or does it wander while facing away, as if it couldn’t see the enemy that was suddenly behind it?

Do people see any indication that minions have a a “vision cone” and only sense things in front of them? Perhaps some dev thought it a good idea for PvP or something strange?

(This could tie back into Drarnor Kunoram’s observation that minions seem to try to avoid passing through or co-locating with other minions: perhaps jostling minions tend to face “the wrong way” if facing matters.)

If I had to give it a anthropomorphic description, I’d say he looks like he’s thinking about how to get back to combat (lots of walking starts and stops), but he’s just very very stupid.

“Man, the guy I just knocked down is way over there but how the heck do I get up that hill? Maybe I go left….no that isn’t it. Maybe right…..nope. How about straight…..yeah, maybe straight…..oh, he’s dead. Nevermind.”

Edit: Differing elevations seem to give melee pets way more problems. I need to test this sometime to see if it’s where the problem comes from.

PinCushion.7390:

If I had to give it a anthropomorphic description, I’d say he looks like he’s thinking about how to get back to combat (lots of walking starts and stops), but he’s just very very stupid.

Hmmm… You mentioned elevation changes and I could see a minion that charges over terrain that would require jumping to return might get stuck. They might apparently “decide to join the fight” when the target moves enough that a clear path is available.

Unless AN actually knows what the bug is and they haven’t fixed it because it’s very hard to fix, I really, really think they need to add a console command like “/petstatus” that displays something like: “Your Flesh Worm is bored (92% HP). Your Bone Minion is attacking a Centaur Basher (25% HP). Your Jagged Horror is looking for something to attack (10%HP). Your Flesh Golem can’t reach a Centaur Archer (92% HP).”

Otherwise, we’re forced to be amateur Minion Psychologists. Maybe that kind of console detail would be too useful for bots though.

Don’t mess with my cheer squad.

I feel much more important and the ego boost is greatly enhanced when my personal audience only decides to help once I shown them for 10-15 seconds that this truly is a worthy fight.

1. It`s wrong . i have thief and mesmer both at level 80 with more than 100 h each and never had a problem with the summoning/phantasm ever . the theif tank pet or summon how do you want to call it , it`s very effective and take the aggro from u all the time and the dps one it`s just awesome . the phantasms are really good too and it helps to mitigate some damage all the time . my 2 cents
with the rest i agree !

Xym.9417:

Don’t mess with my cheer squad.

I feel much more important and the ego boost is greatly enhanced when my personal audience only decides to help once I shown them for 10-15 seconds that this truly is a worthy fight.

How about if they fix the problem, but then allow you to trait for it? Call the trait, “Admiring Minions: Your Minions will not enter combat for 2 + 0.1 * Level seconds after you do, but will instead emote randomly. You receive the Admired boon, which makes you feel proud of yourself for 20 seconds or until out of combat.”

Qareens.5362:

1. It`s wrong . i have thief and mesmer both at level 80 with more than 100 h each and never had a problem with the summoning/phantasm ever . the theif tank pet or summon how do you want to call it , it`s very effective and take the aggro from u all the time and the dps one it`s just awesome . the phantasms are really good too and it helps to mitigate some damage all the time . my 2 cents
with the rest i agree !

The key is that YOU have never had a problem. I’ve never had a problem with a minion on my Necro but that definitely doesn’t prove there aren’t problems. I have watched youtube videos where thief summons stood around, and I’ve read Mesmer accounts of certain Phantasms not attacking properly. (Not an issue of summoning, which is not a problem with Necros, either, but rather an issue of not acting properly.)

I also have a Thief and Mesmer while I haven’t used Thief summons, I can say I’ve never noticed problems with Mesmer Illusions or Phantasms not acting. Then again, I assume they’re acting and never really have time to watch them carefully and see that iBerserker really is whirling every N seconds.

I’ll admit that I just did a quick search of the Mesmer forums and couldn’t find the problem I remember reading about. Though I did find a report about ranged Phantasms having to be within half of their range before attacking (running from their actual range halfway to the target before attacking), which is similar. Gotta run, but I’ll research it more later.

So I’m not a big minion fan, but I’d like to see them work well. In the interest of experimentation, I got the Flesh Golem since that seems to be strong and regen health OOC. And…

Yeah, he’s pretty stupid. It really feels like that when he charges he loses track of where he is. At times, it looks like he thinks he’s beside me and out of combat. Puzzling thing is, he seems to have no trouble following me. Going to do some experiments with Elementalist summons to see if that yields any clues.

you know is sad that the community is able to find the problem and solution better then the ppl who are actually getting pay to do this and what makes it worst is that they try to fix game issue by doing the exact opposite of what the community tells them.

In another thread Bichpwner.4012 said:

After hundreds of hours on the necro, I’ve seen minions can bug out and refuse to attack in absolutely any situation. I’ve had multiple minute long 1v1 fights in WvW where minions did not attack once, this despite using their respective skills. There is something in their code that bugs them out, it’s just so inconsistent that it’s really hard to nail down a particular scenario which will trigger the bug 100% and even when they haven’t attacked for some time, they may randomly return to ‘normal’ and fight again.
It’s all well and good to be looking for a way to fix their AI but in the mean time, with such a simply and obvious fix, it’s pretty annoying we’re still left to deal with this.

Something I just posted in another minion thread, but would probably be better off in this one:

At first, I fully understood why the Flesh Golem would start attacking enemies when I wasn’t in combat (Fleshie is the only pet I have issues with attacking enemies I’m not in combat with). I could just be standing still somewhere and if there was a hostile enemy anywhere near me – i.e. not close enough to aggro me but maybe close enough to aggro Fleshie – he would attack it.
Which sort of makes sense. The enemy has aggro on our minion and he instantly recognizes that and attacks it.
But after playing a Ranger it really made me wonder. While idling or walking the Ranger’s pet seems to sort of stay under your feet. I’ve never noticed the pet drawing aggro from any enemy I wasn’t in combat with.
So why can the Ranger’s pet seemingly avoid drawing aggro from hostile enemies that aren’t in combat, when the Necro’s Fleshie draws aggro just like a player?
It also seems that the Flesh Golem has a larger radius at which it can draw aggro from enemies than a player does, has anyone else noticed this?

Drakent.9605:

you know is sad that the community is able to find the problem and solution better then the ppl who are actually getting pay to do this and what makes it worst is that they try to fix game issue by doing the exact opposite of what the community tells them.

Yes and no. It depends on how the bug arises. If it’s as simple as minions never attack flying creatures, that’s straightforward to track down. If it depends on what other players are nearby, which traits you have, the terrain, the type of mob (or if it’s another player), the load on the server, and network lag, it’d be very hard for the devs to duplicate this.

It could well be that the devs have a handle on the issue, but it’s deeply-ingrained in their code and fixing minions breaks NPCs, unless they essentially do “heart surgery”. Development like this spans multiple teams and areas of specialization, and so it can take a while to plan, fix, and test it.

Not saying that’s the case. If it is, and if AN has decided to keep their mouths shut instead of saying, “Hey, we’ve identified minion AI problems and it’s a hard, hard fix and unfortunately they’ll remain broken for a couple more patches” that’d be WAY better and would earn them goodwill. (Yes, some ignorant folks would scorn them for that, but people who understand large-scale programming projects and reasonable folks would be glad to know that they see it as an issue, they’ve done work and continue to do work to fix it, and it will be fixed."

Again, all speculation on my part.

I doubt the devs are even aware of the issue judging from the response on the Jagged Horrors thread;

“JonPeters
Game Designer
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 "

My observations from the admittedly limited time I had this weekend; with a “planned” attack ie I pull the mob then there was little problem even at range with aoe or auto-attack, both minions would lumber into battle after perhaps half a second to realise, which is fine. The problems started to occur with adds, whether respawns or just stuff that got caught up in the combat as I was kiting stuff around. Once the initial mob died the minions would sometimes ignore the adds, until I used haunt or charge to “activate” them or they were damaged.

This “ignore” state was not permanent; they would both attack fine in the next fight assuming they survived.

This was all in Sparkfly Fen by and large…

Thanks for more input! Having experimented with the Flesh Golem, I really do think that there are several issues, some of which affect all minions — though melee most severely — and some that are particular to each minion.

For example, the Flesh Golem charges and quite often acts “confused” after that. It will act like it doesn’t see the target it just knocked down, even seeming to try to square up and face the same way as the Necro, as if it were out of combat and next to the Necro. Perhaps this is a bug with charging pets/minions: mobs that knock down definitely pause and don’t attack while you’re down, so perhaps the Flesh Golem is supposed to act similarly. Problem is that mobs that knock down will none-the-less face you and stand next to you until you get up, while the Flesh Golem may actually face away from you and stand where it ended its charge.

It’s getting a little discouraging.

From another thread:

KirinDave.6451:

I sometimes wonder if the reason Necro pets go running off is that at one point in a fight we were spamming attacks and tab targetting and accidentally had one out-of-range attack on the remote mob.
I could reliably get my flesh golem to go running off by doing this on purpose, and I know in the heat of battle sometimes I mistarget… and if they remember that enemy was targeted they may run off to it after the more immediate threat is dead.

Sometimes minions don’t want to stop attacking either players in SPvP or mobs but in this situation my character keeps attacking even without selected target (staff auto-attack). Maybe problem is with targetting but by player not minions?

I dislike the fact that sometimes my minions can be easily crushed(even with the +50% hp trait) by some random AoE Spell making summoning them a waste(Kholer from AC and Lupicus from Arah are good examples), any chance to reduce AoE/Cleaving effects received by minions or making them more resilient to them?

I would also like to point that some minions skills have a really long cooldown and they could be somehow shorter or at least affected by the % cooldown on minion spells trait, I mean for the cd/dmg/use it has the bone fiend utility use(root and a little more dmg) is laughable

I don’t think it has anything to do with targetting. I always target since I use dagger immobilization when I attack, and my minions won’t attack 50% of the time.

I worked a lot with minion, and gave up after 2-3 weeks of frustration.

I have one thing to add to this thread :

I did some experimentation with the bones minions. I really had trouble with them, as about 90% of the time(yeah that much) They wouldn’t run to my targeted ennemy. They also seems to try to stay far from each other, making them using different pathing. It’s pretty hard to explod them since when they finally answer and reach the ennemy, only one of them will reach.

So you ether have to wait for both to be at the ennemy, or activate the skill and hope the one that explod will be the one on the ennemy.

To counter that, I found a trick :

If you cast your summon during combat, they will have a better AI. I only used it on bones minions, but they nearly always worked when I casted them during combat. It’s really annoying becuase they have a long casting time and a long animation to get out of the ground.

But as soon as you cast them in combat, they will act like homing missile and goes directly to ennemies.

I have to test it again, but when I did that, I think I was even able to make them switch target. By targeting somoene else, they would switch target.

More test to come…

TD;DR : If you summon bones minions during combat, they will work 90% of the time, maybe 100% of the time, I have to retest.

It’s great that this thread has gotten ANet attention, but it’s still a thread about Minion AI bugs — specifically those that keep minions out of combat or cause them to attack the wrong target — not every minion problem we can imagine. Please don’t derail it.

Sethorus.9231:

I dislike the fact that sometimes my minions can be easily crushed(even with the +50% hp trait) …

Does the minion AI use any sort of learning algorithm?

I remember that right after the November patch my minions were working flawlessly in Orr.

They only attacked the targets I was currently attacking with staff, stopping when I ran away and switching targets as I switch.
Now, they have gone back to buggy behavior, so if there is some kind of learning going on that gets reset with big patches that might be a source of trouble.

One thing that I noticed is that underwater all minions behave as they should, no buggy AI there.

Edit:
No, today bone minions weren’t doing much when I’ve attacked with trident.

I wanted to thank the Necro player community for actively working to fixing what I think is the best profession in the game. Keep up the awesome work, it looks like Anet is taking note.

I have been using the bone fiend , minion , shadow with renanimator up until last night,
Sometimes the shadow would just sit there , it seemed to me he was doing something at times and maybe just didnt animate correctly. When he did actualy get damaged then he would join in the fight.

last night i got the flesh golem , first time i summoned him in a fairly open area he just stood there, i did have the centaur targeted , though if i make him charge he will charge right through the target everytime. and come back and attack it , so this looks like his normal behaviour to me.

Flesh golem seems to have a mind of his own at times and attacks things on a whim.Usually after fighting something else. Even things i could not attack. like centaur weapon racks.

The bone (lakittenail one) dies almost every fight because i suspect he does attack right away and gets the aggro.

I havent tried the worm yet but will tonight .

Katmix.5721:

I havent tried the worm yet but will tonight .

It is the only minion I have never had an issue with the AI on. Other parts of it, teleport, poison, etc, might be wonky but the AI actually works for a change.

Ok necro has been my main forever and although I generally tend to avoid minions, I have been using them more lately and here’s my observations:
I have watched them closely when they bug, and despite our theories about 3 or more being out causing the issues, I can say with certainty that’s not a prime factor because I usually use the flesh golem alone and he bugs with or without other minions summoned. When I notice him bugging, if I watch very closely I can see him twitching as if his attack commands are trying to cycle but keep resetting, if that makes any sense. Like he keeps wanting to jump into combat, but gets reset instantly. Sometimes the charge will undo this, sometimes not.

An interesting thing I have noticed too, (and this may just be my personal perception, but it has been reliably reproduced on my part) is when the minions bug if I stop using any of my own attacks (leaving auto-attack going doesn’t make a difference) but rotate the camera to see the minions, sometimes by targeting them with the mouse too, it kind of “wakes them up” and they jump into combat. Doesn’t always work but maybe some other necros can try this out too. Make sure you rotate the camera to see them. I noticed that if I spam a skill button it tends to lend more to the glitching (again just my personal assumption, might not be true for everyone).

After using their special skills I have noticed about 50% of the time they bug. Might just be their time to do it and it’s coincidence, maybe not.

As some mentioned, the wurm never bugs. The teleport sometimes gets wonky, but thats usually a distance or line of sight thing and nothing to do with the minion or the skill itself imo and nothing warranting a fix. (although I’m still unsure as to where the poison is supposed to take place because I rarely see it, teleport entry or exit?)

Since I never use the little bone minions (the main summon of the two, not the auto-summon one) I can only speculate on the few times I’ve dealt with them, but their explosions seem to completely miss sometimes even though they’re nearly touching the enemy.

The bone fiend (the ranged one) runs all the way to melee range to attack a lot of the time, making itself a squishy target for no reason. It’s already squishy enough as it is.

Casting summon during combat does in fact seem to lend less chance of them bugging out, for that fight at least. Them taking damage and breaking out of the bug, however, is not 100% accurate. I have seen them get nearly killed and just stand there before they ever did anything.

The flesh golem and shadow fiend (my 2 favorites ^.^) seem to bug more than the rest. Someone mentioned the melee ones bugging more and I agree.

I’ll spend tonight working on recording more behaviors and if I find anything new I’ll put it up.

All of the above and forgive me if it has already been mentioed but my Flesh Golem’s charge sometimes seems rediculous in the distance he overshoots the target. He generally then takes an age (with all the terrain/pathingf issues mentioned) to return to the fight…well that’s if he isn’t set upon by some other mob he has agro’d in that overshoot.

JonPeters.5630:

This is a great thread. Keep it up and we will use it t help figure out all of the issues.

Thanks,

Jon

If you give us access to code, I’m sure we can even fix all our bugs by ourselves

JonPeters.5630:

This is a great thread. Keep it up and we will use it t help figure out all of the issues.

Thanks,

Jon

Thnx.

Well this response is nice but ruins all the hope i had for Minion AI fixes for the dec. 14th. Its comming 4-6 weeks to late…. Minion Necros have a hard time, no one at Anet cares about them since month.

Its clear that Anet knows about the crappy Minion AI in GW2 since Beta but they ignored it and did something else. Well Warrior got their finishers, that sadly was more importand than fixing Minion AI for Necro, Mesmer, Thief and Rangers..

If a new player joins GW2 and starts a Minion Necromancer because he loves pets, the 1st impression about GW2 after a few hours wont be good. I dont know why no ANet responsible agrees with this. AI would be one of the 1st priority issues on my Agenda..

As to the tread, minions do seem to work better when summon in combat to fight a target, they will still stand around if an add shows up or a re-spawn of the mob you just killed but will atleast try to attack the current mob you are fighting you summon them in combat.

I have not programmed anything since collage for database and basic html, but if they gave us the code to try to fix minions I would gladly start learning how to understand the games code to try to fix them.

I want my minion master from gw1 back. I know they will never let me have 3 flesh worms or 6 bone minions running around because the code does not allow us to have the same utility slot have the same skill but i miss my real undead army. Sometimes you needed all ranged minions in 1 and even in this game. Heck I miss all the combinations i had access to with my minions from 1. Besides a AI fix I still strongly believe for them to be effective in gw2 they all need much lower recast times. That way it doesn’t matter they die from everything, we would not be wasting a utility slot on them now when they all die from 1 aoe, we just keep them coming back.

This idea can fix AL once and for all.
Just give us the Ranger’s pets control panel >> F2 > attack , F3 > return to me.

My 2 cents on the issue, crossposted from Game Bugs forum.

Necro minions and summons in general (as I suspect their AI is shared) need to be refined considerably.

Common minion issues:

- minion movement is far too uncontrolled. Minions should take up a designated place around the summoner, depending on how many of them need to be accomodated in the space around him, then need to stick to that position as close as possible, not wander around the necro, sometimes leashing out in this or that direction, increasing and decreasing the necro’s effective agro radius. Like in GW1, minions should take up their post around the necro and not move AN INCH RELATIVE TO THE NECRO, unless the necro swings into combat. Just like in GW1, I want to see a tight circle of summons around me, not a loose bunch of minions, some of them here some of them there.

-minion agro control is VERY lenient and uncontrollable by the necro. Minions (especially the flesh golem, but to a lesser extent all minions, including jagged horrors from kills) sometimes take up targets after the current target is dead, even if the player hasn’t even targeted or looked at the mob which the minions rush after immediately after ending current combat. It may have to do with mobs in proximity, or mobs within the “agro” range of minions? In any case, a minion pulling unintentional monsters is unacceptable behaviour.

-minion targeting is almost satisfactory, but still missing functionality, as in a target rich environment sometimes minions will fail to switch over to your current target. This makes it hard for the necro to focus their minion damage on a desired target. If this is supposed to work as in GW1 (minions cannot be controlled), then why do some minions sometimes switch to your current target and sometimes do not? Unpredictability is worse than knowing if minion targeting is working as intended or is not. The lack of targeting is another issue, where minions will simply fail to aquire a target within an acceptable time or at all, and just sit idle in the midst of a fight, not attacking anything. This is just as unacceptable (3 months into the game no less) as if there was a spell for some other class that you could cast but simply wouldn’t do any damage. Summoned minions are expected 100% of the time to take active part in combat (preferrably on your current target).

Jon,

Can I ask a couple of very basic questions? There’s no offence meant, and I think it might calm a few players if we had some honest answers.

1) Do you know about the issues with necro pet AI, and how they randomly do nothing or aggro random mobs?

2) Is there a reason outside of “design” for not giving us ranger-esque attack/retreat functionality for our pets?

I think the absence of the ranger like function for pet control indicates you guys just didn’t code it to deal with multiple pets, because that’s the only reason I can think of that we’re not given that functionality until you work out what’s wrong with your pet scripts.

Ta,

gamefreak.5673:

I want my minion master from gw1 back. I know they will never let me have 3 flesh worms or 6 bone minions running around because the code does not allow us to have the same utility slot have the same skill but i miss my real undead army. Sometimes you needed all ranged minions in 1 and even in this game. Heck I miss all the combinations i had access to with my minions from 1. Besides a AI fix I still strongly believe for them to be effective in gw2 they all need much lower recast times. That way it doesn’t matter they die from everything, we would not be wasting a utility slot on them now when they all die from 1 aoe, we just keep them coming back.

It would be nice if we could have more. As in, make the summoning skills endlessly recastable and let us summon as many as we like (recharge allowing), like in GW1. But in GW1 that was balanced by the fact that they degenerated and by the limitations of requiring corpses to exploit and energy to summon them. Since GW2 doesn’t work the same way (group fights are smaller so there’s fewer coprses, no energy constraints, and fewer utility slots so we wouldn’t have the capacity to heal them if they degenerated), that approach wouldn’t work: we’ll never be able to stick a single minion skill on our bar and endlessly summon armies of them.

The only other option might be to make them disposable (ie they disappear between fights, like a Mesmer’s clones and illusions). But this would mean a radical redesign of the whole class, as not only the minions would need to be remade from the ground up, but we’d also need more minion-summoning skills (possibly some weapon skills would also summon a minion). But, frankly, the main point of a Mesmer’s illusions is that they also provide confusion and misdirection, mainly in pvp, and force an opponent to look carefully before spotting the real one. A necro wouldn’t get that additional functionality, and while I guess they could make necro minions more powerful than mesmer illusions to compensate for that, it would basically just make the class mesmers with a gothy skin, and I think it deserves more than that.

So, while I would have liked things to work differently too (larger armies, shorter recharges, letting us play with exploding minions more), it’s not clear that any redesign would make it better, and it’s also not something we can hope for in the short term. First priority must be the minion AI fixes, as any redesign would be pointless if the stupid things just stood around anyway (or, even worse, 20 of them all went off on their separate ways and aggroed several different veteran mobs, as Jaggies and the Flesh Golem like to do!).

I would suggest that, in the short term, a mild buff in attack rate and movement speed for them would tide us over until the difficult AI problems could be solved, as it would mean that even if half of them were standing around the other half would be working overtime to compensate. I realize, however, that when they’re all working properly this might prove unbalancing. Therefore, I think an even better idea would be to decrease the recharge on the minions’ activated abilities (things like the Golem’s Charge) by 25%, until some progress with the AI is made. Since those things don’t work half the time anyway (the Golem might charge from out of range and never reach the target, or just try to charge through an immovable object and end up sprinting on the spot, but you still might use the skill because sometimes it’s the only way to get it to disengage an enemy it aggroed on its own when you’re fighting elsewhere), it’s only fair to allow us to be a bit more cavalier about using them rather than have to worry about sitting through a 40" recharge.

In general the pets seem to work, but melee pets seem to have more issues. Through observation, it seems that Bone Minions and Flesh Golem have the most problems. Their normal issue is that they just stand there while a fight is going on, but after a certain amount of time will close in to attack — usually when the enemy is nearly dead anyway. Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, and Shadow Fiend don’t seem to have any significant issues forgetting to attack. So it seems to be a melee concern primarily.

If you walk into range of the enemy and let the pet engage the fight, they won’t have any issues most of the time. It seems to be when the player or another pet initiates combat. After all, if left to his own devices the Flesh Golem will constantly run around attacking everything in sight. So he has the ability to attack, but something about not letting him start it it bugs him out.

I suppose it’s possible that melee pets go through a phase where they stand there trying to attack at range before they realize they don’t have any ranged attacks. But it’s probably more complicated than that.

manveruppd.7601:

The only other option might be to make them disposable (ie they disappear between fights, like a Mesmer’s clones and illusions). But this would mean a radical redesign of the whole class, as not only the minions would need to be remade from the ground up, but we’d also need more minion-summoning skills (possibly some weapon skills would also summon a minion). But, frankly, the main point of a Mesmer’s illusions is that they also provide confusion and misdirection, mainly in pvp, and force an opponent to look carefully before spotting the real one. A necro wouldn’t get that additional functionality, and while I guess they could make necro minions more powerful than mesmer illusions to compensate for that, it would basically just make the class mesmers with a gothy skin, and I think it deserves more than that.

To expand on my point for this as an advocate of a ‘fire & forget’ pet missile that goes and chews on whatever it is aimed at, we’ve got to remember that if you’re loading one up into a utility slot- that is a fairly important consideration when its replacing something else like a stun break, movement increase, utility ability or DPS adjustment.
It should be fairly powerful.

The majority of mesmer pets form as part of a weapon attack-chain and form part of that careers overall defence ability, a few like Decoy and Mirror Images are a utility skill that are optional and roughly where you’d be looking for in terms of equivalent impact. (I played one for a while and its mostly terrible to level them up conventionally, there is a very steep learning curve!)

A necromancer ‘disposable pet’ on a utility slot might form a similar function like a swarm of small annoying spirits that blind, nibble and cripple the foe until destroyed (or a timer runs out), maybe a pet that floats around and intercepts hits like ablative armour… all the way up to bitey things that just latch onto some poor unfortunate they’re aimed at, leaking a poisonous mist and doing comparatively high damage.

I’m not an advocate of pets forming part of weapon-attack lines though.