Guild Wars 2

It is 100% pathing loops. The reason the loops exist is because band aid code is preventing minions and pets from doing things like: climbing vertical surfaces, teleporting through walls, teleporting up ledges, teleporting underworld… etc… so on. It also quite literally “dumbs them down” to enable pets and minions to be easily avoided in fast paced combat. That is why you can run in a circle and no melee minion can ever hit you. (class doesn’t matter they all work this way)

This band aid code combined with poorly optimized collision detection is causing all the issues we see with minions. Flesh Golem specifically has even more issues because of the Charge skill an entirely new set of collision rules apply.

My guess would be the collision issues will be an ongoing post-production priority and that as those fixes are made, minions will become more and more responsive. So tending to any subset of them immediately without the collision issues would be counter productive. Work arounds for all the collision issues would need to get work arounds later… Basically doubling the work for the same issue.

For now, and into the foreseeable future, Necro minions are useful only as a tab target buffer. Their skills take too long to activate, they die too quickly, and they have long cooldowns that don’t advance until the pet dies forcing any Necro silly enough to run Minions to sit with a skill bar full of Utility cooldowns that had little to no impact.

To add some further observations to the thread it is most definitely not a numbers problem. I was running through the Cursed Shore last night, on the road around where the Risen Gorillas are with only the Shadow Fiend out and for a number of fights around there he just refused to attack. No Jagged Horror was up at the time.

This was just after participating in one of those “defend the camp” events where waves of Risen charge in so I wonder if that bugged him out, there were so many targets I wonder if that caused the problem.

To back up XiL’s point above I would say it did seem worse in Orr in general with its rough terrain, but I don’t have any quantitative data to back that up.

@ Palmski, I’ve seen them bug just as much with a single enemy around as with multiples, so I don’t think them unable to acquire a target is the issue. You are right though they do bug a lot in Orr, but there’s other similar places it’s just as bad like Hirathi Hinterlands in the centaur camps, ect. I think the reason it seems they bug more with multiples around is that you’re just engaging in more fights so it’s bound to happen more often. More an effect than a cause i guess I’m trying to say.

Great thread, and good that Anet has visibility on it. Good theories too. The only thing I can think in this case, is that all minions are using a similar AI. Since the ranged minions are working fine, the melee minions may be trying to use the same, or similar AI. That AI probably tells the minion to stay in place and attack (instead of move into position and then attack). So they will stand there, trying to attack an enemy with an attack with short range, and then reset and follow you again.

A quick and dirty fix would be to make all minions ranged minions. Not my favorite solution, but would fix the problem. Another one that other players mentioned, could be to add commands (F2 attack, F3 retreat), that would force the minion to attack, regardless of anything else. Would still be a bit bothersome, but would also fix the issue… It would also make the necro a lot like a hunter… The best one would be to fix the AI. If they are using a single AI routine for all minions, I would make 2 routines (Melee and range). If there are already 2 routines, then just fix the melee one. I like the permanent minion idea, so I would not like to see minions with short duration, or giving buffs like spirits.

Can’t think of anything else, but please fix this. It looks pretty bad, and this issue has been there since the very beginning.

One consistent area I’ve noticed is in Battle of Khylo. With Flesh Golem out, if I take the inner part of the ramp leading up to treb the golem will bug out almost everytime and never attack anything. The treb or a player.

If I hug the outside wall on the way up, and then attack whoever is up there the golem will usually engage fairly quickly without bugging out completely.

To me the issue of minion AI would appear to be tied to pathing more than anything. If they have a direct clear path to something they will usually attack. Round a corner, lose line of sight etc and that’s where things go bad.

I’m necroing (no pun intended :P) this thread because it’s important.

I just did some testing at the minotaurs in Diessa Plateau and it was very clear that the Flesh Golem (and only the Flesh Golem) has an aggro radius of his own. This property will initiate combat for him (and again, only for him) based on proximity to a mob, irrespective of any actions done by either the player or the mob.

As per

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 reckon this is the first point that should be addressed, as it clearly contradicts what Jon said, and possibly interferes with his normal target selection (and thus might explain why he seems to have more issues than other minions, as stated above by some people).

If possible, I’ll try to make a small video later this week, to illustrate my point

You guys know this is utter horsekitten, right? Any company with even 2 QA staff will know exactly how, when and where this bug is happening. You’re kidding yourselves if you think this is anything but ANet buying time to fix their own code; taking part in this charade is really quite pointless.

They know what’s wrong, and if they could fix it they would; there’s a limitation in their engine/AI/server code which is preventing it from being sorted.

Don’t waste your time.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

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

I agree with this, also allow us to put our pets away for sneaking through tight areas. Make it a storage type ability to put your current summoned minions away and then with a single button respawn them all at once.

Another thing I want to point out here, underwater I seem to summon my pets almost instantly whereas on land it takes 2 seconds or so. Not topic related but something I was curious about.

the constructive part
Minnions while after a patch they started turning and reacting ,they still do not focus YOUR target.
Also might be an issue with the weapon,since i see some better reactions with the staff than the dagger.
Switched to dagger earlier today just for variety,and minions were standing around hitting random targets even while i was still hitting and using skills on my target.

Offtopic
The way necromancer is now makes me feel betrayed and laughed at.
Do something,its just that simple.

There are more problems with minions then just simply AI… there are working ways to get around not attacking minions and them getting stuck.
You can shadow fiend to force feed targeting to the rest of minions. If they are still not moving around use kitten pathing that anet provided to actually work around it. Jump on a rock any coordinates that don’t have any connection pathing to the enemy. If you are working against ranged enemy this may or may not help(ranged npcs can put minions in combat after you moved them to a different spot and then they will again get stuck) but if enemy is melee as soon as you break any possible pathing you force invul/end combat scripts to kick in(probably so ranged classes can’t sit on rock and clear everything around them with impunity, beats me why anyone would think it should be this way… but what ever) as soon as enemy gets invulnerabity to your attacks its a matter of jumping back down and forcing minions to teleport again and try to force them into combat. In general abilities/skill that require LOS are best to acquire target and path for minions. But los in this game is horrendos so its a double edged sword which in most cases just adds more game mechanics that work against player and common sense.
Unfortunately fact remains that minion damage is subpar in the best case scenario. For what ever obscure reason, masters stats don’t effect minion in any way. So no you can’t play defensively. No matter what your vitality and toughness is, it won’t effect minions. Nor will you ever be able to increase their damage or healing produced by them because frankly most healing necro does doesn’t scare at all(everything related to vampiric traits and some more) or you need so much healing that it looses its point, being able to only fairly consistently drop regen and everything else being on cooldown far longer then 99.9% fights last in this game… but for that regen to heal for something good you need to forgo all damage or survivability. Other classes get around it by providing extra effects on healing or buffs. We do not. Joke for protection from wells is simply useless unless other party has massive boon duration increases.
You can “heal” or at least try to… minions on land with mark of blood, traiting for life transfer healing, reapers mark(which is horrible) and well of blood… again horrible but for different reason. Good luck trying to get your minions to stay in the well. You may get 1 or 2… but ranged and melee minions don’t really stick together. And back to minion AI they have tendency to do their own thing so they spread out anyway.
Underwater you have no way… in any way shape or form to heal them. And you loose the only minion that can actually do something. So you are left with 2 rats, 1 ranged and 1 somewhat decent melee pets that get 2-3 shoted after which you are sitting there looking at cooldowns.
All transformations simply remove out minions… So yes 2 out of 3, elite skills that we have are actually screwing us over. God forbid code would be differen’t from moa/tonics etc… I mean spending extra time on necro?! Blasphemy.
Minions don’t really do anything unique 1 ability in most cases too unreliable to bother isn’t as fascinating as it sounds. While shadow fiend is great for getting melee minions into action the actual skills is utterly worthless. The way way our ranged minions immobilize works… which we can’t target in any way plus minion can’t move so if theres LOS issue then you just wasted skill and they won’t be able to shoot anyone with it(assuming they would have used it on relevant target), bone minions explosion sounds good and all that… but unfortunately if they are moving and going for target on their own they will in 9 out of 10 times be too far to actually hit anything with their aoe even if they are attacking something. Stupid collision boxes are yet another part of why pathing doesn’t work. Why is blood fiend and flesh golem the only once that do something relevant consistently? Put a tiny poison 1-2seconds for 100 dmg on little rats… confusion on lich/reanimator spawns, a small bleed on bone fiend, vulnerability for shadow fiend (let the stacks go up to lets say 5 or so before durations wear off and stacks fall off), give flesh wyrm weakness… Just example.
This entire system of moving objects having collisions in most cases serves only to screw things over rather then produce anything else. Minions can’t move through tight spaces what so ever because it too narrow to fit 2 at the same time.
And the list just goes on and on and never ends it seems.

you can debug all you want here, its pointless…. no one at Anet cares.

but my compliments to you guys, you collected some good info and data which serious developers would be thankful for and try to work with this community instead of just igoring it.

i ask myself where this leads to in 1-2 years………

Just give us the ranger pet AI – how hard does this have to be?

This issue has been in game since Beta/Launch and still nothing has been done.

grave of hearts.7830:

… they still do not focus YOUR target.
Also might be an issue with the weapon,since i see some better reactions with the staff than the dagger.
Switched to dagger earlier today just for variety,and minions were standing around hitting random targets even while i was still hitting and using skills on my target.

Sorry, but I have to disagree here: attack your target is something the minions actually do fairly well in my opinion (apart from fleshy maybe). Are you sure you were hitting your target?

What I mean is: they will attack the target you have selected (the one that has it’s info at the top of your screen) the moment you start using targeted spells, and literally that. You don’t have to hit that target to make it work, but what you hit is also not necessarily what you have targeted (if your target is out of reach, the game will make your abilities hit something else if anything is in reach, but that doesn’t necessarily change your target). Especially with dagger, this situation can happen fairly frequently. You could actually use that behaviour to have your minions attack a different target than what you are hitting.

Also I’m truly sorry that adding, what I thought was useful information, to this constructive thread seems to have derailed it to ‘another one of those necro threads’.

I’ve had mobs targeted, I’ve engaged them and the pets do nothing – not all the time mind you, but this does happen frequently.

Every pet in the game seems to work except the Necro pets… even the summoned pets off Runes/Sigils work better than Necro pets… you have to wonder why?

Was the Necro a rushed job at the last minute?

I had a situation that golem attacked something invisible in Tixx’s Infinirarium. Maybe it was a waypoint for Toxx or spawn point for griffins (it happened where we need to defend place from griffins). He was hitting it for about 1.5k dozen of times and suddenly stopped.

I’ve posted this before but seen as ANet are reading this particular bug thread heres a quick video i took alittle awhile ago showing pretty much the exact flaws in minion AI:

My first hit on boss is at 0:00, Bone Fiend doesn’t engage till 0:14 and Shadow Fiend doesn’t engage at all.

But don’t worry guys, Mesmer illusions engage 0.25 seconds now!

Ascii.9726:

But don’t worry guys, Mesmer illusions engage 0.25 seconds now!

Exactly!!!

I also have a level 80 Mesmer, but you can see how A-net prioritises every other class ahead of the Necro because of the number of players playing that class.

The Phantasm issue was sorted in what? 1 week? Necro pet issue has been around since Beta – really think about how woeful this is.

I’m sure Thieves will get buffed again next patch as well.

The whole reason i rolled the Mesmer was because the Necro issues…. the classes are like night and day when it comes to WvW.

Necros really really really need a Attack my target command for all minions, that does not have a cooldown.

minions are weak – have long time to reuse , dieing very fast, usualy stand behind me and do nothing, ususaly atack no my target and atack all what i left behind me when i runing around ;].

Minions need many AI improvements. In Dungeon minions are useles, died faseter than they do anything good ;] and necro cant summon another one.. like i say long CD.

Look like it works few year ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8dWmuwR8Zg

I would have minions what can kill players, what players will not ignore … same like Engi Turrets… when they have more fire power, more HP when players will stop ignore them and when any 1st aoe will kill them all..

Sorry for my english.

Dreed.3714:

minions are weak – have long time to reuse , dieing very fast, usualy stand behind me and do nothing, ususaly atack no my target and atack all what i left behind me when i runing around ;].

Minions need many AI improvements. In Dungeon minions are useles, died faseter than they do anything good ;] and necro cant summon another one.. like i say long CD.

Look like it works few year ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8dWmuwR8Zg

I would have minions what can kill players, what players will not ignore … same like Engi Turrets… when they have more fire power, more HP when players will stop ignore them and when any 1st aoe will kill them all..

Sorry for my english.

I never played GW1 – that video was awesome. Imagine that, being able to build up an army as you go along.

Think it would be too OP for WvW though, but for PvE it would be awesome.

If only ANET could take any class using any type of pet whether it be phantoms, ranger pets, spirit weapons, play around with these classes with a log recording and see where it goes wrong instead of a bunch of people guessing.

Why would Jon say, “Keep it up…” As if these bugs haven’t been mentioned since beta? Seriously, I haven’t played in a month and popped it to see if anything has changed, but it seems like Jon is just saying the same things he said a month ago to a new group of people=) There should be NO SURPRISES at this point regarding the AI and its bugs. This stuff isn’t new at all. Nothing has changed.

I confess I have not read everything here above, so sorry if what I’m writing has been mentioned.

The debate is on minions not attacking while in combat, in lots of occasions the flesh golem is too agrresive. I mean sometimes I just walk, pass by ennemies (in red), me and all the other pets follow, except the golem who decided to attack the monster.

In other words, often the golem just decides to atack when you do not target, select and when everything else just pass by.
As a result when I pull a monster, the flesh comes in the fight with additional “friends”.

And as debated above, regularly, when you are in combat, the golem just does not attack.
I have read (not sure if here or in another post) a suggestion to adapt F2-F4 keys to pet commands.
I have played many other MMO and in every other ones we add the possibility to set the stance of minions (passive, auto, aggressive). Or even give actual attack commands.
I think it is a great idea and could be very helpful to bypass those issues.

Imarion

As a ranger it seems noticeably obvious that canines (esp Krytan Drakehound) has a much more responsive F2. Maybe Anet could look into that? I also sometimes use just a Flesh Golem and it definitely has pathing issues even though I have just it and maybe a jagged horror out. Obviously I think having them auto attack things is part of their playstyle (just like GW1) but they were more expendable in GW1 so maybe adding some sort of retreat/attack general commands might help.

I think minions also need a way to get out of AoE because as a taking up a utility skill slot and then dying whenever there is AoE (especially the golem) it hurts the necro quite a bit. This is also an issue with ranger pets. I think actually programming this might be too difficult and a 50% damage reduction to pets might make a better difference and would be easier.

From what I understand about this game, minions seems to have a mostly unmodifed form of the standard enemy mob AI. When a mob doesn’t attack properly, few players notice and even fewer care. Minions are a large part of how a Necromancer functions, so any deficit to their abilities makes a large impact on player experience. I see most of the AI problems of the minions are due to two issues, overly aggressive aggro and pathing problems.

Minions attack too many unintended targets. It appears that minions have their own aggro radius and that their radius can be larger than some enemy mobs. This is hard to measure, however, because even if the player is entering the enemy’s aggro range, the enemy will still go after a minion because the aggro rules for mobs put closer targets at higher priority until damage is factored in. Still, having minions that are busy trying to just catch up with the Necromancer attack enemy mobs along the way is not a good situation. To solve minion aggro problems, I would get rid of any minion aggro radius and have mobs and minions treat each other as neutral until the Necromancer is put on a mob’s aggro list. At that point, all minions are added to the mob’s aggro list and that mob is added to all minion aggro lists. In addition, when the Necromancer is no longer on a mob’s aggro list, the minions should be removed from the mob’s aggro list and the minions should remove the mob from theirs. I might also change mob behavior so that minions are lower on the aggro list until they damage the mob, but the basic aggro change might be enough to “feel right” for the Necromancer. PvP would have to be treated differently, but a similar solution could probably be designed that would link minion aggro to Necromancer combat.

Most of the problems with minion AI seem to be linked to minion pathing, with minions getting stuck on any irregularity of terrain. Creating a more advanced pathing algorithm may not be a good solution at this point in the game’s development due to more sophisticated algorithms needing server side processing power that might not be available. As a workaround I would propose micro-teleportation to get the minion closer to its target where the current pathing algorithm might not be blocked. When the minion AI has been searching for a sufficiently good path to its current target for a fair amount of time – say one to two seconds – without success, the minion would teleport a distance equal to the distance that it can walk (modified by any movement impairing factors) in the time it has been searching. The algorithm for calculating the exact point the minion teleports to would have to be a little sophisticated, taking into account the nearest location the minion could fit in without clipping and prioritizing surfaces near the same height as the target so that future normal pathing would be more likely, but because it would only occasionally need to be used, its would not cause too large of a processing burden.

If you want to know whats wrong… look at GW1 necro…and this abomination we got stuck with in GW2. If that doesn’t answer some questions. Well… you just don’t want to see whats wrong.
Necro was pretty epic class in GW1… here its a sad joke.

Avigrus.2871:

Dreed.3714:

minions are weak – have long time to reuse , dieing very fast, usualy stand behind me and do nothing, ususaly atack no my target and atack all what i left behind me when i runing around ;].

Minions need many AI improvements. In Dungeon minions are useles, died faseter than they do anything good ;] and necro cant summon another one.. like i say long CD.

Look like it works few year ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8dWmuwR8Zg

I would have minions what can kill players, what players will not ignore … same like Engi Turrets… when they have more fire power, more HP when players will stop ignore them and when any 1st aoe will kill them all..

Sorry for my english.

I never played GW1 – that video was awesome. Imagine that, being able to build up an army as you go along.

Think it would be too OP for WvW though, but for PvE it would be awesome.

At the beginning necro have no limits for his minnions .. im running around with 30+ minions :P then they change it and set maximum number of pets – if i remeber max was 10 minions. I loved my necro in GW1 – check attachments ;]
But i think in GW1 minions has better AI and bigger firepower.. on PvP when necro set minions all players need to take care of them.. they hits hard but died fast..

Maybe here is a solution.. necro need body to make minions, minions will lose hp every sec but can be healed. Max number of minion will be “x” … but we get more firepower on them and better better AI.. much better. I rly miss many of thinks about necro what i have in GW1 ;]

Minion cap was 1+1/2 Death Magic (I would sometimes run around with 12-13 minions after that cap was put in place, but usually 11).

Even so, MM had no place in PvP outside of Alliance Battle, Fort Aspenwood and maybe Jade Quarry (so what people usually think of when they hear "PvP). Not enough death to fuel his corpse habit. He also got screwed over in certian areas and missions due to lack of exploitable corpses.

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

yes do that……. 3 weeks ago he said that……. nothing else came from devs but this since then …… cool really ! Now we know you care about us necros …….

did he ever pass by here again after this ?

/ironic off

Tuccos.8592:

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

yes do that……. 3 weeks ago he said that……. nothing else came from devs but this since then …… cool really ! Now we know you care about us necros …….

did he ever pass by here again after this ?

/ironic off

He’s either playing his mesmer, or trawling the mesmer boards. They get instant response to their whinging, after all.

Isn’t it ironic and significant that, despite all the posts about the bad minion AI, it’s still up to us to prove and supply the information about the bad AI? You’d think they’d be testing and debugging this themselves, but no, it’s up to the players to cough up the data. Shows just how much interest and investment they have in necromancers and necromancer issues.

i am playing champions online atm, i am back to GW2 once the Patch notes say >>

“Necromancer class improved”
All Minions regen HP out of combat
AI/Pathing of Minions has been optimized they now all attack
Dagger now has a chance to hit additional targets and has its damage increased
Axe now attacks 3 targets like Ranger Axe 1 , increased damage
DS skills have faster cooldowns
DS UI removed
Fear duration increased , necro should have the best fear
Traits reworked, more logical chains that make sense

Tuccos.8592:

i am playing champions online atm, i am back to GW2 once the Patch notes say >>

“Necromancer class improved”
All Minions regen HP out of combat
AI/Pathing of Minions has been optimized they now all attack
Dagger now has a chance to hit additional targets and has its damage increased
Axe now attacks 3 targets like Ranger Axe 1 , increased damage
DS skills have faster cooldowns
DS UI removed
Fear duration increased , necro should have the best fear
Traits reworked, more logical chains that make sense

I remember hearing that they were going to roll all that out on December 22, but only if the Mayan Apocalypse had pushed through the day before. Since the world failed to end, they decided they didn’t need to work on necromancers anymore.

Aoi Ikazuchi.8420:

Tuccos.8592:

i am playing champions online atm, i am back to GW2 once the Patch notes say >>

“Necromancer class improved”
All Minions regen HP out of combat
AI/Pathing of Minions has been optimized they now all attack
Dagger now has a chance to hit additional targets and has its damage increased
Axe now attacks 3 targets like Ranger Axe 1 , increased damage
DS skills have faster cooldowns
DS UI removed
Fear duration increased , necro should have the best fear
Traits reworked, more logical chains that make sense

I remember hearing that they were going to roll all that out on December 22, but only if the Mayan Apocalypse had pushed through the day before. Since the world failed to end, they decided they didn’t need to work on necromancers anymore.

I lost count of how many times they promised fixes and instead after few months of neglect we got nerfs.
I feel the love in the air here… or maybe its just getting dusty here?

Just imagine

DS UI removed , added cooldowns to show for all DS skills so you now can see all cooldowns while in DS and the cooldowns on DS skills while not in DS!!

HiSaZuL.2843:

I lost count of how many times they promised fixes and instead after few months of neglect we got nerfs.
I feel the love in the air here… or maybe its just getting dusty here?

It’s corpse dust, from all the failed, dead minions. Some of it is probably us, too, after the idiot flesh golem dragged us into yet another combat. :P

Sometimes I wonder if ANet spells fix “f-u-x.” It would explain all the “fixes” we get every time there’s an update. I can just imagine some dev somewhere grinning widely, wiping his hands and going, “Fuxed the necromancers, that should take care of all their whining. Now I can go back to my mesmer.”

(Oh, wow, two of my posts, one after the other. What happened here? Did someone’s post get deleted? Shame on you moderators and your ambiguous, arcane rules. Go ahead, keep stifling discourse. Soon enough you’ll run all of us off these forums because we’ve quit the game, and you won’t have to worry about us cluttering your stupid forums.)

You don’t understand, they haven’t figured out all of the issues yet. After all, it’s not like they can really pay attention to what’s happening with necromancers while playing their mesmers, warriors, and thieves. We need to be able to present the problem in a clear, concise, and complete manner so they can figure out how to change the tooltips involved and proudly proclaim, “problem solved!”

Remember when people complained about lich form and plague form unsummoning minions? They fixed the tooltip and voila! Problem solved! Working as intended!

That’s why it’s so hard to get any of our so-called bugs fixed. Minion AI? Working as intended! After all, can’t have nasty necromancer minions killing mesmers and warriors and thieves in PvP, right?

Everything else? Working as intended! It’s working, if badly, so that’s gotta be something, right? After all, we can’t really expect them to stop playing their mesmers, warriors, and thieves long enough to actually take a look at what might be wrong with necromancers.

Couple Flesh Golem things:

The delay between attacking a target and the time the pet decides to go and assist. Would rather the pet react/assist sooner. Even when it’s not already engaged, it seems to be a little delayed.

Would prefer the pet to change to my target if I change targets and begin to attack a new target instead of smacking anything it’s currently on. I guess this may be difficult with AoEs going off, perhaps link it to the 1 ability to force the change?

Ability to despawn the Flesh Golem would be nice. Sometimes in dungeons I find certain times it’s nice to have it out, other times it’s annoying (jumping puzzle type components) or causes trouble with mob placement. Upon despawning it, I wouldn’t mind having the recast timer recycle even for that capability.

Ranger type control of Golem may make more sense due to AI wonkiness?

Copy/paste some Ranger or Guardian code or something. My guardian has no issues with spirit weapons. They quickly and reliably assist whatever I’m targeting. Same with Ranger pets. I don’t even have to order them to attack. They instantly assist me entering combat and if I switch targets they do too within 1-2 seconds.

Flesh golem? More like kitten golem.

Undertow.2389:

Copy/paste some Ranger or Guardian code or something. My guardian has no issues with spirit weapons. They quickly and reliably assist whatever I’m targeting. Same with Ranger pets. I don’t even have to order them to attack. They instantly assist me entering combat and if I switch targets they do too within 1-2 seconds.

Flesh golem? More like kitten golem.

I think the problem is the NUMBER of minions. I think it has more to do with having over 3 pets at a time than it does with pathing. When I attack, some minions respond right away and some sit next to me and do nothing.

I can only say this about the Flesh Golum as that’s all I use. I tried some things the other day and I noticed when he’s not helping me attack someone I hit the button to make him charge. He charges and then starts attacking. Something clicks in his head and makes him attack after he charges.

HiSaZuL.2843:

there are working ways to get around not attacking minions and them getting stuck.

As someone who has until the last week played almost entirely Necromancer, nearly 400 hours close to exclusively as a minion master, I can 100% confirm and confirm a thousand times that there is no, absolutely no, guaranteed way to make your minions attack. Using their skills does not always force an attack, nor does running them literally right THROUGH your intended target (whilst you’re attacking said target).

Minions are fatally broken and in DIRE need of a rework or fix. Once again, there is, 100% confirmed, absolutely no surefire way of getting your minions to attack. Line in the sand fact.

Also, how many times has the hydrophobic Flesh Golem been mentioned in this thread? What the actual kitten is that? Why? …Beyond comprehension…

I love Necro and excluding minions it’s a solid class, but as someone who wants to control a horde of the undead on their, you know, NECROMANCER: French connection this refuse.

CrazyAce.3842:

I think the problem is the NUMBER of minions. I think it has more to do with having over 3 pets at a time than it does with pathing. When I attack, some minions respond right away and some sit next to me and do nothing.

Can’t be that, nope. I only use the flesh golem and he’s a complete idiot at least 75% of the time. I can have both melee spirit weapons out on my guardian and they work fine.

Undertow.2389:

CrazyAce.3842:

I think the problem is the NUMBER of minions. I think it has more to do with having over 3 pets at a time than it does with pathing. When I attack, some minions respond right away and some sit next to me and do nothing.

Can’t be that, nope. I only use the flesh golem and he’s a complete idiot at least 75% of the time. I can have both melee spirit weapons out on my guardian and they work fine.

Even with 7 minions deployed, I was almost struck speechless when they all initiated combat perfectly as soon as I attacked. On level terrain without obstacles that is :P

The fact that the minions seem dumber when you have more of them out may be a result of them obstructing each other, or it just seems like it since the odds of one or all of them not working increase in proportion to their numbers.

I’ve got to remember to test if ranged minions can switch targets effectively unlike the melees, though I recall them persistently shooting their initial targets after I’ve gone after something else.

Decided to delay going to sleep and performed some tests on the spot instead.

Tested with melee first to see if they could follow my lead.

On optimal level terrain without obstacles, my Shadow Fiend pretty much instantly changed its target to whatever I decided to attack. Very smooth.

As I chose to attack more distant targets, I noticed that after a certain distance, the Shadow Fiend occasionally didn’t respond. It was like the trigger to attack is only present on activation of certain skills or something, since if he got aggro’d by enemy damage my autoattacking wasn’t enough to command him otherwise.

Increasing the number of minions seemed to increase the delay in target swapping (might just have been those Bone Minions deceiving my tired eyes, since they are seemingly the slowest at switching. Their movement is somehow… turn-based, like only taking new orders every 6 seconds :P). However, they still feeled very responsive.

The dumbness only started to show itself as I began to move towards less-than-optimal terrain, and the time each minion took to switch targets began to increase. Even the ranged minions started to fall behind. With different types of minions changing (or not) targets at differing speeds, it’s quite obvious that the battle became a mess after a while.

I’ll have to go to Orr or somewhere for more testing, but it seemed like trees and stuff on the ground didn’t hinder minions as much as uneven ground. At one point I noticed some of my minions just standing in place after I pointed a target, the notable thing was a small hill between the active and inactive parties. The minions on the enemy’s side of the hill were working just fine, the ones on the other side were like the enemy didn’t exist. I hope minions aren’t depending on line of sight :P

The one issue that I find most bothersome with pet AI is the Flesh Golem’s aggressiveness. He is constantly initiating combat with mobs that I’m not close enough to aggro. I’m not sure why he feels the need to go out of his way to start fights, but it almost makes the pet more trouble than it’s worth.

Ascii.9726:

I’ve posted this before but seen as ANet are reading this particular bug thread heres a quick video i took alittle awhile ago showing pretty much the exact flaws in minion AI:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzuf1vcskmE

My first hit on boss is at 0:00, Bone Fiend doesn’t engage till 0:14 and Shadow Fiend doesn’t engage at all.

But don’t worry guys, Mesmer illusions engage 0.25 seconds now!

Bone fiend only engaged cuz he gothit with an aoe it looks like. other minions only fought cuz of aoe. sometimes they are glitched and are invulnerable and dont fight as well.

Avigrus.2871:

Ascii.9726:

But don’t worry guys, Mesmer illusions engage 0.25 seconds now!

Exactly!!!

I also have a level 80 Mesmer, but you can see how A-net prioritises every other class ahead of the Necro because of the number of players playing that class.

The Phantasm issue was sorted in what? 1 week? Necro pet issue has been around since Beta – really think about how woeful this is.

I’m sure Thieves will get buffed again next patch as well.

The whole reason i rolled the Mesmer was because the Necro issues…. the classes are like night and day when it comes to WvW.

I rolled mesmer as well! 700 + games on necromancer and close to 90% games played as necormancer, and i finally gave up, rolled a mesmer, and never looked back. mesmer is wayyy much more fun than a broken class.

Well well well….minion AI being worked on…

Red post near bottom of thread…about 8hrs old.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-pets-will-not-always-attack/page/2#post1146761

They have been saying that since Closed Beta Weekend 1

I don’t know if this has been said yet, but minions will not attack anything with a yellow name, this applies to objects, passive mobs, and large event bosses such as dragons or the shadow behemoth. A way around this, but only for a short period of time, is to force the minion to use an ability, but they will only continue to attack for a few seconds after commanded, then they stop, sometimes activating their abilities does not even trigger them to strike against yellow named enemies. This makes it very frustrating as a minion master to do any large scale even when the majority of our damage output sits around looking at the pretty scenery.