Guild Wars 2

hello,

just typical complaints but first, as MMi find the buff/nerf to DS more like buff than nerf. It certainly last longer for me as MM these days.

But i just want express my complaints regarding aoe survivability of minions and survivability in general.

Please at least grant us vigor to MM traitlines/skills/playstyle. Its true that u can absorb tons of damage by DS, but in the end we always die (especialy in WvW, with no teleport or leap skill or swiftness when not using warhorn). Yesterday i saw warrior with hammer and gsword just using his leap “jump” skills to pass through our zerq and no one could stop him. He just jumped away, not using dodges at all.

So add some aoe protection to minions and at least vigor, i would be really gratefull, thank you

I don’t know why your crying. MM is amazing for what it is and not being able to have AI’s beat the game for you seems legit.

D/D MM is great fun when you’re pugging on khylo days. 2-3 dagger chains and a golem charge = dead treb. Takes like 5 seconds. Then you can run mid with 25% increased speed and have your minions pull all the conditions off your guard. Not good against strong competition, but great fun for solo queuing in lower brackets.

MM isn’t fine… And it doesn’t deserve being accused of “crying” about. MM minions absolutely need help with AoE, even small fights like 2v2 or even 1v1 vs anything with AoE conditions can be a real problem because they can’t shake off conditions at all, don’t dodge big hits and even stand in aoe’s and cones. Not that we need a total AI rework because to fix all of those issues it’d take a lot of work, but they do need better odds of surviving in AoE. And for the record, don’t bring up Khylo as a strong point, 1 treb can wipe out your entire set of minions. lol… Even if the master dodges it, he’s screwed.

Why AoE is a problem:
- As MM, having no pets is basically playing traitless when 90% of your traits as MM are used to make minions viable, meaning if they all die around the same time (which AoE does) you lose out of small siphon heals, condi removal, damage, body shot absorbs, and you’re a Necro with no utilities, no traits that make you inherently stronger, so having minions alive is a big deal.
All they need to do is make it so they have some condi removal (even if its baked into another trait) and take 50% less damage from AoE, but lower their hp by about 15% or so to make them even easier for single target to take them down, so killing minions is still an option.

They could also use a shadow-shrouded effect where if the master dodges they are “shrowded” and evade at the same time.

Additionally, I’d like to point out, that MM being called “pve” and “afk wins” is complete BS. Minion damage isn’t very great per minion, and require SO much to make them even viable. They’re no different than a glorified DoT that can be killed, kited and bugged by path movement. Conditions are far worse. So think about those things when you’re complaining about MM being faceroll nubs. If you lose to ANYONE using MM the way a Mesmer uses phants, summon and kite circles, the issue isn’t mm, its you… Minions are hitting 140-700(700 being the elite flesh golem) every 2-4 seconds and are much more kitable, than say Phants which can bust off 2-5k damage hits every 3.5-4 seconds. And our minions don’t look like us, and we can’t stealth, and we have no escapes.

The biggest L2P involving MM is “So many things to target!” Turn off “Show all Enemies/NPCs” turn on “Show all Players”. Then you don’t see name plates on AI, but you do for the enemy. Then learn to click on the enemy rather than rely on tabbing through stuff. Tab is a noob way to target anyways considering it’s only properly effective vs 1 person, if you have to “cycle” to the right enemy, you’re wasting valuable time anyways.

I’m a MM since gw1.
My main character is a MM , I find out the MM build is the best necro build ever !
http://tinyurl.com/mw4pqgj with soldier gear > I’m the last man standing in dungeons !
But I will be glad with AOE resistance

MM “works” in PvE but you’ll likely find (as I did) A, you lose a lot of dps compared to other builds (Epidemic builds, power builds are okay, but definitely not my thing). They can end up pulling a lot that people wanted to skip, they die in AoE a lot so you end up losing DPS. While being “the last one standing” in pve is fun, it’s been proven full zerk, best dps and timing dodges is far superior in dungeons, and relying on AI to not get you kill or pull more because of pathing can be a real issue. That said, I wouldn’t say it’s the “best”. MMPvE has a lot more factors than just how much dps you can do or how long you can live. Rarely does anyone do a full clear run.

I tried it in PvP too , too rare to get myself killed
Thanks to Anet there is no minions AL issue anymore ( they attack all the time )

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

I tried it in PvP too , too rare to get myself killed
Thanks to Anet there is no minions AL issue anymore ( they attack all the time )

This is true, I run 20/0/20/30/0 in tPvP made it to top 500 yoloquing (slowed down and eventually stopped because I got bored) however, while they’re OKAY, in high end there are some very glaring issues:

AoE makes bunker mms not work, because without minions you’re absolutely defenseless, and you’re not of muich use to a group.
MM has almost no mobility, but at least decent CC (Little to no stability though, so we get pushed off base easy).
All of our damage is single target unless you run condi MM in which case you’re better off going a full terror build.
Moa instantly 1 shots all of your minions.
All in all, without minions the build is useless. Now I’m talking on HIGHER tier.

I will agree that in LOW end:
Minions do a little to much damage.
We are rather survival because of minion body-blocking.

However on high end:
Minions get AOEd down WAY too fast.
Good players exploit grounds to make minions spend most of the time chasing them.
CC chain the MM.
Moa the MM.
AOE condies just absolutely wreck an MM (the meta atm).
We have basically no cleave.
DS eats all of our traited heals and Blood fiend attacks.
Our heal (if you run blood fiend) can be cleaved down.
All of our traited survival is easily aoed down, so without them we are basically traitless with 90% of our traits being into making minions viable.

All in all (from experience) sure, they’re okay 1v1 vs noobs, and it can really give off the feeling of being a “great build!” but once you know the facts, and play higher skilled players, assuming they know how to deal with an MM which most do, you’ll find yourself having too many short comings for it to be worth having the “one man super army”. It works too well in low end pve/pvp, while being too easily countered in high end pvp, or ANYTHING with more than 2 people fighting due simply to cleave damage, and harder dungeons you’re just better off running something else because you can cause some accidental pulls, they die to AoE, and the damage isn’t good enough for speed groups.

Feel free to look me up ingame by my game id or High Warlord Sikari, I’d gladly prove to you my ability as an MM and my skill with one, just hit me up. (sPvP not pve/WvW)

Minions are great, now. They survive long enough as they are for what they do. This is just my opinion, though.

Even if minions do not dodge and are susceptible to AoE and spike damage, they help the Necromancer by making up for low combat mobility, taking aggro, and handling trash mobs that may be too spread out to use AoE on as effectively as possible. Minons and MM builds are for conservative or even bunkerish builds so the reward for risk should be lower. I like minions, now. I used to hate them. Still they are not meant to be used for every situation or the profession would be boring.

Minions are okay now. They aren’t perfect, they still need work, but they can be made to work just fine in PvP, except teams refuse the concept of building team comps, instead of super-pug FotM builds using the exact same template and just filling it with whatever is strongest for that role. Run minions in an AoE buff comp and they do amazing in team fights; they just can’t copypasta into builds like other builds can.

That said, while they work really well in certain situations, they still need some survivability, QoL changes (HP BARS NAO!!!), still need some AI tuning imo, and need some overall tuning to allow the separate playstyles that are available to be fully supported.

ok as far as pve / dungeon viewpoint , minions (ranger pets and engineer turrets as well when i say this and maybe mesmer illusions / phantasms) need an “aoe avoidance” system put in , as in they take SIGNIFICANTLY reduced dmg from aoe , most games started doing that when they realized ppl complained about “pet classes” being useless in any raid /dungeon where there was cleaving. and since our Minions have a real CD now compared to GW1 , they need that system BADLY.

I have to agree with OP. AoE DESTROYS pets so fast it isn’t even funny. One reason why I don’t use them in WvW…every class has so much AoE.

You can use them for farming champs that don’t have a hella-bomb-AoE attack…but good luck against one that does!

Their toughness needs to be upped for sure.

I am also a MM only Main char since the beta. Considering the actual situation of the MM build in my opinion only 2 of my issues still remains as a minion user.
1- AoE in WvW and Bosses makes them pretty much useless. I really feel they should have atleast a damage reduction from aoe attack to be viable at WvW at best.
2- Transforms and others minion wipe skills its pretty ridiculously annoying . You are useless for alot of time when this happens. I feel this is the main reason necro MM is often kicked from fractal party and dungeon party as well.I really think this would be less frustrating if the minion resummon skill would start to count the cooldown from moment you actually summon not the moment they die. This would give a 1 time imediate respawn of the skill to the Necro have a fighting chance without being able to simply resummon everytime a minion die.

I do think that they need to look at AoE reduction in PvE. However in WvW you simply need to come to terms with the fact that in large groups minions will forever remain useless, and I don’t see a way to fix it without making them grossly OP in small fights.

Ah yeah….I forgot about how transformation (Moa) makes you drop all your pets…

Just another reason to go hybrid, power or condition! :o\

I do not think Arenanet meant people to play only minions all the time. There are plenty of situations where minions are good but there are also situations where they are bad. I have always thought Arenanet expects us to chose skills,traits, and gear accordingly.

Anchoku , that goes against the very things that were promised , or said , at game launch , tackle a situation in anyway possible (any build that is , also this isnt word for word) , and that wouldnt make any sense at all either , so you spec entirely into one of the most popular builds from GW1 and it ends up being completely useless outside of open world pve? that makes no sense at all and is a poor design in of itself.

They never said that every build will be viable, they were merely talking to the fact that they want each class to have a number of roles available to it. That does not mean you can throw together some crap spec and go “BUT ANET WAI DIS SPEK NO WERK”, it means that each class has a number of viable builds and ways to play it.

Thx guys for comments so far. I find the idea to make minions “dodge” when u dodge presented in this topic very interesting. One more thing I forgot to mention. When minion gets hit u automatically enter combat mode which is very annoying too. I think it should be changed.

Bhawb.7408:

They never said that every build will be viable, they were merely talking to the fact that they want each class to have a number of roles available to it. That does not mean you can throw together some crap spec and go “BUT ANET WAI DIS SPEK NO WERK”, it means that each class has a number of viable builds and ways to play it.

No actually they did say something dangerously close to that. What they said to be specific was that you will be able to fill any role with any class. That was obvious load of b/s but they did make that claim.

They weren’t meaning what people took it to be. Every class, under perfect balance, can fill the basic roles; support, damage (condition or direct), be tanky, etc. Now, obviously some are vastly better right now, but there are things in place that, once fully balanced, will allow that to happen.

What they did not mean, was that any class could do the exact same thing. This is why Necros will never burst like thieves, who will never bunker like Guardians, etc.