Guild Wars 2

Okay so we have all figured out by now how terribad a MM necro is in WvW.
And im not talking about 1v1 or fewvfew, im talking about zergs.

And lets face it, the majority of the WvW players will eventually tag up on the tail of one of these.

So heres my suggestions on how the devs can make this build a viable one in WvW (considering my huge guild always runs with like 20ish people it pales in comparison to a well build for instance):

1)Give minions cleave

In part Bone Minions can be considered as having cleave but the other minions are so pathetic on the regard of usefullness.
While i dont propagate that every minion get cleave (Blood Fiend cleaving? ololololo)
i would wish to see the Flesh Wurms bile attack function like an exploding attack.
To clarify, the target that is struck with the projectile gets dmged and up to 5 or so people around the target do to. We can see this with Engies Rocket turret which does the same. This would greatly increase the use of this minion since the basic attack dmg is nothing to scoff at.

On to the Bone Fiend. This fella should be able to do a fan attack if you will. Instead of firing at 1 person, the bone fiend would fire 3-4 projectiles in an arc. To compensate for the decrease in DPS (instead of 2 projectiles hitting our target, now only 1 could ever actually hit the same person) perhaps the cripple proc should be increased. The immobilize should stay as a skill and affect everyone hit in this arc (every missile will imobilise the individual stuck).

On to the Shadow Fiend/Flesh Golem. Both should get a cleave attack, period. As it is now, even if you port/charge these minions in the lines of the enemy they wont pay it much heed since it will only pester a single person. Now if the Fleshy, which hits quite stongly mind you, were to start cleaving in a blobed up group that would be noticed and would require an action from the ones pestered by one. As for the Shadow Fiend, his blind attack should be an AoE one, so that when you port him into the middle of an enemies group he wont only cleave them but also do an AoE blind which would be far more potent than a single target one.

2)Make minions actually able to withstand big engagements

This idea would help bring purpose to the Deathshroud aside from its OH SHI nature that is has now (and only nature it has sadly). So here is how i would go about this:
Give us an F2 button (sacrilege i know, how dare i ask for a fix, we should get more bugs) or if you can think of something better which i cant now.

This button would be called Fatal Bonds (or whatever really) and whilst activated it would bind your Deathshroud with your minions. To clarify, while this is active (it should be a toggle on/ofkittenda skill) your minions dont take dmg, but instead a precentage of your DS pool is shared throught your army (im not good with math, but each minion would suck a certain precentage).

So not a piece of HP would be drained from the minion (bar perhaps the Bone Minions since they suicide, but still perhaps it would help them actually live to see the close embrace of an enemy blob) until your have any lifeforce left.
This in turn would make you choose, save your OH SHI button or make your little puppets actually survive on the field long enough to be usefull.
It would also open a build akin to 20/0/20/0/30, getting all the attribute traits for your minios and expanding your DS pool by 30%.

This is what i came up, numbers would need to be crunched and allot of balance would have to be made.
But i firmly believe that this is the right path towards making the MM even a pale shadow of his GW1 glory and majesty (no the current one cant even hold a candle to the old one in any department bar sPvP, in which i rule with him).

EDIT: Would also popularize skills like Spectral Armor and Signet of Undeath more since it would help with lifepool maintenence.

Also i would request a sticky or whatnot (im not too familiar with forum stuff) so more people see it.

Well, MM is realy underpowered in WvW zergs.
But look from this direction. AOEs hit up to five targets. This means, your minions, when dead, at least protected other players…
But to be honest, you are a Necromancer, and minions are just a part of your skills. You are supposed in GW to adapt to the situation and change skills accordingly. The trait system kinda of destroys this idea because of traits that are static for minions, but its still possible.

But you are right, that the Minions implementation was not well handled here. I guess they will have to think of another solution to minions than just a bit more hp or so. A Master trade that gives AOE mitigation would solve the Problem for WvW and PvE Dungeons, but would be ridicoulesly OP in PVP.

90% AE mitigation…Just because WoW has it does not mean its taboo!

sternenstaub.8763:

But look from this direction. AOEs hit up to five targets. This means, your minions, when dead, at least protected other players…

For around 50,000 damage if you’re running 5 minion skills, 75,000 with flesh of the master. Pretty significant. You should have gotten a couple of sequence attacks too, roots and blinds etc, and if traited, laid down plenty of aoe poison.

If they reduce the cooldown on the Reanimator trait (a lot) then we might figure out some good MM options.

It’s not just minions. Rangers, mesmers, and guardian spirits are absolutely useless in zergs as well.

Most minions don’t cleave, and the aoe from the zerg immediately kills them.

On a mesmer phantasm spec (1v1 king everybody hates), even with 20% extra hp to phantasms and the extra 50% from the signet, the phantasm dies instantly upon being summoned in a zerg, before it can even do a single attack.

My ranger’s pet die easily in 5 seconds.

What makes it especially aggravating for the necro, though, is that when your minions die they enter rather long cd’s (similar to ranger pet when both pets get gibbed by the zerg), you can’t recall them to you, and most importantly — MINIONS OCCUPY VALUABLE UTILITY SLOTS. Outside guardian and mesmer phantasm utilities, necros are really crippled.

Pets just need 70-90% aoe damage avoidance.

MM problem isn’t their pets dying in Zerg Warfare (which sucks), MM problem in WvW is the awful “pathing” they have..

where the pets don’t actually attack

I remember a duel with a sword thief, the flesh golem stood idle for like 20 seconds while the thief was wearing me down. AI in this game is rather bad.

@sternenstaub I dont want to adapt, why should i? Other classes have tons of viable builds that they can use, and still be useful without adapting (read being forced).

@Mammoth If they actually did something and werent ignored by everyone then that could perhaps hold some logic. I dont know where you got those ridiculously stupid numbers from but they all die to a breeze in a bigger WvW fight, so i call bullkitten.

@Kale The little jaggies? How would having more of these help? They die to a fart.
If perhaps we were actually given a skill akin to the Liches 5x jaggie summon that could perhaps help, but i doubt it.

@Zenith I agree completely, all summons of all classes should justify their presence on the skillbar, but thats the battle the other classes must fight for themselves in their forum.

@Xsorus While the pathing is a horrid broken thing indeed it would be far from enough for WvW. They would still die too fast, and their single target nature would still make them be the last thing you should use on your skillbar.

This game has had rather terrible implementation with pet-type abilities across the board.

Ranger pets, Necro minions, even Engineer turrets are all lackluster.

The Mesmer clones and phants are very slightly in better place, because they’re what I think all AI-reliant abilities should be – short cool down, short duration, easily killed & replaced effects.

I’d like to see Minions work more like signets, except when you activate your signet, you get a minion that does something for a couple of seconds before it dies or dissipates.

The overall game design just doesn’t seem to work well with constant pets.

I was going to say l2p but…

Actually necromancer minions are pretty horrible.

1) You cannot give them commands so there’s a good chance they don’t do anything useful at all. Like for example just stand there while thief stabs you to death.
2) Jagged horror olol. Summon AFTER battle. Very useful. I could not live without. At least it doesn’t give rally anymore.
3) Rather long CD compared to how fast they die to random aoe.

You cannot really compare ranger or mesmer here.

Ranger pet is very survivable, my pets rarely die even in like 50vs50 in wvw. And even if they die they keep wandering around just to annoy ppl.

Mesmer keeps constantly summoning new ones with very little cooldown and then explodes them to kill your pathetic necromantic abominations.

Only one which comes to even close being as pathetic as MM is guardian with spirit weapons.

Flesh golem is ok in small fights because it regenerates but even then usually dies to random clone shatter. or whatsoever. And then you’re without that extra cc and dps pretty fast. And die horribly.

That said I am not sure if MM should be viable in zergs, but it isn’t so much viable for anything else either except maybe spvp and pve.

I wish I could even F1 attack and F2 return to me my flesh golem when playing necro.

Djemo.7153:

@Mammoth If they actually did something and werent ignored by everyone then that could perhaps hold some logic. I dont know where you got those ridiculously stupid numbers from but they all die to a breeze in a bigger WvW fight, so i call bullkitten.

Those are the actual health totals of 5 minions, so you may want to think twice about calling bullkitten. The real problem is that a lot of the time they’ll get aoed down when normally the aoe wouldnt be hitting max targets anyway, effectively dying pointlessly. With the near-zero influence you have over their movement, there’s not a lot you can do about it.

Mister Mustard.7203:

This game has had rather terrible implementation with pet-type abilities across the board.

Ranger pets, Necro minions, even Engineer turrets are all lackluster.

The Mesmer clones and phants are very slightly in better place, because they’re what I think all AI-reliant abilities should be – short cool down, short duration, easily killed & replaced effects.

I’d like to see Minions work more like signets, except when you activate your signet, you get a minion that does something for a couple of seconds before it dies or dissipates.

The overall game design just doesn’t seem to work well with constant pets.

God please no. I main an MM sPVP mm, if they lost no duration minions And it became a shoddy skill that just happened slowly (after a summon animation then the minion locking on) I’d be LIVID, enough to quit.

Mm needs help not a redesign. The best thing about ANets Necromancers is that they command a horde of dead things not summon 5 second minions that waste 50% of its time trying to come to life and run to the enemy.

jalmari.3906:

I was going to say l2p but…

Actually necromancer minions are pretty horrible.

1) You cannot give them commands so there’s a good chance they don’t do anything useful at all. Like for example just stand there while thief stabs you to death.
2) Jagged horror olol. Summon AFTER battle. Very useful. I could not live without. At least it doesn’t give rally anymore.
3) Rather long CD compared to how fast they die to random aoe.

You cannot really compare ranger or mesmer here.

Ranger pet is very survivable, my pets rarely die even in like 50vs50 in wvw. And even if they die they keep wandering around just to annoy ppl.

Mesmer keeps constantly summoning new ones with very little cooldown and then explodes them to kill your pathetic necromantic abominations.

Only one which comes to even close being as pathetic as MM is guardian with spirit weapons.

Flesh golem is ok in small fights because it regenerates but even then usually dies to random clone shatter. or whatsoever. And then you’re without that extra cc and dps pretty fast. And die horribly.

That said I am not sure if MM should be viable in zergs, but it isn’t so much viable for anything else either except maybe spvp and pve.

I wish I could even F1 attack and F2 return to me my flesh golem when playing necro.

Ranger pets will die very easily in zerg fights, and they don’t wander around when dead either, they limp back to you..

While necro minions dying sucks, they’re actually just utilities really…They’re not actually nerfing your damage for having them like they do the ranger.

Our damage was specifically nerfed in beta because we had access to the Ranger pet.

ronpierce.2760:

Mister Mustard.7203:

This game has had rather terrible implementation with pet-type abilities across the board.

Ranger pets, Necro minions, even Engineer turrets are all lackluster.

The Mesmer clones and phants are very slightly in better place, because they’re what I think all AI-reliant abilities should be – short cool down, short duration, easily killed & replaced effects.

I’d like to see Minions work more like signets, except when you activate your signet, you get a minion that does something for a couple of seconds before it dies or dissipates.

The overall game design just doesn’t seem to work well with constant pets.

God please no. I main an MM sPVP mm, if they lost no duration minions And it became a shoddy skill that just happened slowly (after a summon animation then the minion locking on) I’d be LIVID, enough to quit.

Mm needs help not a redesign. The bed thing about ANets Necromancers is that they command a horde of dead things not summon 5 second minions that waste 50% of its time trying to come to life and run to the enemy.

But that’s exactly what they do now! They just stand there!

I didn’t spell out every nuance of what I’d like to see because 1.) it ain’t ever going to happen and 2.) I don’t have the time. But that’s actually one of the main points; I think it would be easier to get small, specific events and effects correct and bug free, rather than constant pets that follow you around all day.

Pets are nice and all, but if you can’t fix them after 9 months, I’ll just take what’s easy and works well.

In sPvP minions are also: meat shields absorbing blows by being in the way, siphon hp, provide pressure, and constant utilities sich as Bone fiend/Fleshy snare, and the minions healing. Mm would be ruined without these.

ronpierce.2760:

In sPvP minions are also: meat shields absorbing blows by being in the way, siphon hp, provide pressure, and constant utilities sich as Bone fiend/Fleshy snare, and the minions healing. Mm would be ruined without these.

You’re absolutely right about all of that, and I certainly wouldn’t want to see any of those benefits removed.

I just think it would be fine if you had to actively make them happen, and thus they happened reliably and under your control.