Guild Wars 2

Peach Pinky.6501:

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.

For me they work perfectly fine at large event bosses, they have always been very obedient when it comes to attacking a dragon (and subsequently getting 1-hit by AoE). They seem to attack objects as well as or better than mobs too, without needing any special manoeuvres. I dare say that Flesh Golem charge must be necro’s most effective method of dealing with objects, since it gets stuck and keeps hitting repeatedly

@Uskon For conditionmancer dealing with objects golem is like the only choice you have but the charge stuck instant object kill is more likely a glitch and probely on their nr1 todo list for necro changes.

But even though it once in a while might be usefull its in no way good enough if you have to deal with the ofen frustrating times of it just doing nothing. And that is very very ofen.

Even if they do manage to fix the ai of minions this next patch we still got the problems of no minion regen except golem , cooldown on minions only start when they die, no stat scaling for minions.

It’s not like the charge works in a surefire way either. It’s not all that rare for the golem to get stuck on something on the ground, resulting in a stationary charge, or go in the wrong direction altogether :P

Sethorus.9231:

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

As to the part where the minions die to easily it seems everything that is non player (pets , minions NPCs that have to be defended for an event) die way to easily and end up driving people insane , annoying people, etc. And as far as ive seen with flesh golem (melee minion) ive noticed if i jump off a ledge with it summoned and i dont die (so could be an incredibly short ledge with no ramp/staircase down) the golem teleports to me and wont attack things unless i command it to charge for awhile. So i think that further points to possible pathing issues. (sorry if someone else pointed this out as well , just woke up and havent gone through all the posts XD )

Uskon.2519:

It’s not like the charge works in a surefire way either. It’s not all that rare for the golem to get stuck on something on the ground, resulting in a stationary charge, or go in the wrong direction altogether :P

Yep, it’s clearly a z-axis issue. Mobs and ranger pets have it too, that’s why mobs just stand there confused when you attack them from above or below even if there’s a clear path for them to come to you. I suspect they reused the AI from GW1, which didn’t have a z-axis, and didn’t teach mobs and minions to jump.

I’m hoping they’ve still got a couple of their brightest AI programmers working on this issue and in a few months’ time we’ll see a massive overhaul of all AI in the game (same as mobs suddenly got a lot smarter back when Factions was introduced, when they suddenly learned to flee from AoE and focus on healers, though I daresay teaching them to navigate a 3-dimensional environment is a good deal more complex).

Wish they fixed this class breaking bug before they sprinkled presents and snow all over the map.

Priority list.

1. earning $ from gem store
2. Toy pets
3..
..
..
98772. New PvP game types
98773. Dueling feature
98774. Fix culling
98775. Make minion printed toilet paper for anet bathrooms
98776. Fix minion ai

Login.5102:

98775. Make minion printed toilet paper for anet bathrooms

To be fair, I would buy that. Would be perfect for TPing houses at halloween.

Druitt.7629:

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.

I consistantly run a minion master necro who averages 6-7 summons at once on the field. I have pretty regular issues with pets not attacking, or attacking things I’m not targeting and just moved my sight over. This may be an auto-attack issue but doesnt seem to be since it happens most often when things arent even in range of me.

Also, the Flesh Golem chases down and attacks everything within about a 2000 range, regardless of what I’m doing. This is a serious slow down when traversing places like Orr where Mobs are everywhere. Especially since my movement is slowed when only my pets are in combat, it makes running from a fight nearly impossible. The golem needs tweaking IMO

Great thread. Very interesting.

“Once you find the way, you no longer need a guide.”
How I wish that was true for minions.

Honestly, I find minions should be summoned after entering battle (excluding wurm, make that your priority).
While it is true that minions are bugged alot, there are things that I usually do.
(A) Don’t summon minions for enemies I know I’ll destroy in less than 15 seconds.
(B) Summon minions after using 2→3→4→5 marks on staff. Then use 2 again and then switch to whatever combo you have (I find Dagger+Focus to be a balance between range, damage, and Crowd Control)
© After you have cleared out the enemy/enemies, kill all the minions (if you have 6. Blood Minion 7. Shadow Minion 8. Bone Minion 9. Wurm 0. Flesh Golem, hit 9 to kill wurm, hit 6 to destroy blood minion, switch 7 and 8 to destroy both, switch out 0 for another spell)

This also prevents minions from auto-aggroing another enemy or even pulling unwanted aggro onto the minions during a fight. It’s a hassle, but it tends to work most of the time.

Despite that I would still love (a) better minion AI, (b) some minion CD reduc trait, and © some minion that uses fire. I can find almost every condition but fire (and I think stun) from a necro, and it’d be interesting to make Minion Master build have an unique condition that can’t be found on the 1-5 weapon skills, which matches well.

Not wishing to be negative here (though it will inevitably come across that way) but having played GW2 since September 2011, the Necromancer minion AI has seen little or no improvements.

The best solution at this stage, based on the fact I don’t believe it’s a priority for ArenaNet and this will sound ridiculous, but instead to open up the code to the GW2 community in some way. I gaurentee they’d be able to fix it in a matter of days.

There are some clever people on the internet. You only have to look at the salvage job done on Dark Souls to realise this.

I would pray that ArenaNet be bold enough for such a gesture (in some contained sort of way) to really stamp this problem out.

If we really must keep it in house, please just throw money at it.

Is 16 months acceptable for still failing fix pet and minion A.I? I’m not so sure.

I can agree with Lewis all around really.

I’ve played since launch and have waited for changes to minions in some form of fashion but the changes have been small at best and hasn’t fixed well…any of the glaring issues.
The idea of outsourcing help to fix the problem in the form of the community is not a bad idea honestly. I recall games like Dead Island…which was…beyond bug ridden at launch and the community fixed it into a working game in no time…even made the Steam forum thread hit top search results on yahoo for people looking for solutions to the issues.

So I don’t think the idea is as far fetched as it sounds…not including games that become mod heavy such as Skyrim for a modern example. I do lament in frustration over the idea of this maybe never getting fixed….to have a quality game such as this and have a class where skills can hardly be used due to not being able to function properly.

I dont think thats a bad Idea Lewis , but then comes the issue where its an MMO vs the listed games were not mmos (i believe?). you have alot more to deal with then something thats not as constant / doesnt affect as many people. i dont doubt there are clever ppl out there , its an issue where actions can affect the community as a whole rather then an isolated game.

Sera.9750:

I can agree with Lewis all around really.

I’ve played since launch and have waited for changes to minions in some form of fashion but the changes have been small at best and hasn’t fixed well…any of the glaring issues.
The idea of outsourcing help to fix the problem in the form of the community is not a bad idea honestly. I recall games like Dead Island…which was…beyond bug ridden at launch and the community fixed it into a working game in no time…even made the Steam forum thread hit top search results on yahoo for people looking for solutions to the issues.

So I don’t think the idea is as far fetched as it sounds…not including games that become mod heavy such as Skyrim for a modern example. I do lament in frustration over the idea of this maybe never getting fixed….to have a quality game such as this and have a class where skills can hardly be used due to not being able to function properly.

Even if you don’t involve the community itself (revealing GW2 code could potentially be disasterous for the games security) you could outsource it to independant firms/personel who would strive to fix it. Yes this would come at a premium cost, but when you’ve two of eight professions absolutely rediculed because their minions or pets are nothing short of idiotic, it really undermines the games polish.

I only used minions up until about level 50, I never encountered issues such as those noted in the original posts. My problem with minions was they were a bit lackluster – my other utilities proved superior in every way.
However I would like to retry a minion build but there’s one niggling oversight I’d like seen to first; currently we have little to no control over our minions, this is very irritating in dungeons for example when trying to precisely pull mobs. Give us the abilities of the hunter pet commands (aggressive/passive option, call pet, attack target) for our F2-F4 keys that act as commands for every minion currently summoned.