Guild Wars 2

Some nice ideas. I don’t necessarily agree with the reduction of passive damage the minions do, but that’s just my biased opinion. Sure, maybe some reduction, but not what’s suggested.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Some nice ideas. I don’t necessarily agree with the reduction of passive damage the minions do, but that’s just my biased opinion. Sure, maybe some reduction, but not what’s suggested.

It’s only via the single trait. For most players fleshy would remain the same, and it’d only go down with the trait. But I’m assuming you’re taking that into account, I just simply feel it’d be fair to reduce the ease of damage in return for more on demand damage that requires focus and situational awareness to land. (Such as, are pets CCed, within LOS, near the enemy in the case of flesh golem and bone minons, that sort of thing). Of course, no one is going to agree 100% on these types of things, a bit less passive for more on demand to increase the skill gap for minionmancers feels like the right thing to do.

Though, it’s probably a lost cause, considering even if I achieved the goal of increasing skill factor, the AI bias is so deeply rooted into the player base already I’m not sure it’d matter…

Also, this reduction in damage is 20% reduction (125%→100%) and doesn’t affect vampirism, so it’s probably closer to a 15% passive damage reduction with increased “risk” damage. Its not as potent as it reads in either direction.

ronpierce.2760:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Some nice ideas. I don’t necessarily agree with the reduction of passive damage the minions do, but that’s just my biased opinion. Sure, maybe some reduction, but not what’s suggested.

It’s only via the single trait. For most players fleshy would remain the same, and it’d only go down with the trait. But I’m assuming you’re taking that into account, I just simply feel it’d be fair to reduce the ease of damage in return for more on demand damage that requires focus and situational awareness to land. (Such as, are pets CCed, within LOS, near the enemy in the case of flesh golem and bone minons, that sort of thing). Of course, no one is going to agree 100% on these types of things, a bit less passive for more on demand to increase the skill gap for minionmancers feels like the right thing to do.

Though, it’s probably a lost cause, considering even if I achieved the goal of increasing skill factor, the AI bias is so deeply rooted into the player base already I’m not sure it’d matter…

Also, this reduction in damage is 20% reduction (125%->100%) and doesn’t affect vampirism, so it’s probably closer to a 15% passive damage reduction with increased “risk” damage. Its not as potent as it reads in either direction.

Oh okay. I probably just misunderstood the suggestion then. Reading comprehension ftw, right?!

The suggestion is simply to remove the 25% bonus damage to minions and replace it with a trait that boosts each pet’s active skill to deal more damage to sort of make up for that loss, and add some more “skillful” usage to them. In net, though its a reasonable loss, and while the gain in DPS doesn’t QUITE cut it, the QOL fixes and added effects to the abilities, I’d be fine with a bit of a dps loss. Especially if it helps increase the skill factor for MM in net.

There’s a reason I still play turret Engineer, and there’s a reason my Necro has become a power well spec over my preferred minion master spec.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Mobility is always a benefit. There are bugs with minion AI and other pathing issues that hold back minionmancers, and those things should be fixed. I do not disagree with that.

Them moving is not always a benefit. Moving minions means my minions can be kited up and down ramps, they can be kited around with movement disabling effects, there are plenty of issues with them being mobile compared to turrets. The fact that turrets can be placed safely and still contribute to the fight is a big strength.

Rising Dusk.2408:

You’re right, turrets are valuable in the right scenario and minions aren’t in the best of places right now. Neither of these things being true negates that mobility is always a benefit. Spirit Rangers trait specifically so that their spirits follow them because it is very valuable that they do. That good turret Engineers can help out across a map with their turrets is them taking advantage as best they can of their situation. I think the passive sustain on turrets is too high currently and should be dialed back. I do not think we should be pushing to get every other AI npc up to the level of passive sustain of a turret.

We’re not asking for turret sustain, we’re asking for the passive defense they have that allows that sustain to matter. Spirit rangers want spirits to follow them because the spirits don’t suffer the issues that minions do with their mobility. Spirits don’t get kited, they can’t have their damage lowered by running away, it is helpful for them to move because unlike turrets they can’t be picked up to change points, and by having them mobile you know their passive will always be in range. They have none of the mobility drawbacks that minions have.

Rising Dusk.2408:

There are more intelligent ways to do a dodge mechanic for minions if that route is the way to go. It shouldn’t dodge roll at the first sign of an AOE attack, it should understand what kind of AOE it is in and determine how threatening it is. Maybe it should tank the weaker AOE, but as soon as a meteor shower goes down it will attempt to dodge out of it if possible. AI doesn’t have to be one-dimensional. ANet brought on an AI guy who’s working on HoT, and maybe some of that will be imparted on minions across all builds.

Again, all you’re doing is delaying the inevitable. AoE builds that counter MM don’t have a single AoE, they spam it out with nearly every attack. Hambow (or GS/LB) warriors have AoE on nearly every attack. Minions can’t simply dodge out of the LB F1, it leaves a field behind that will kill them regardless. Even if they are “smart” enough to get out of it, now they’re stuck sitting outside the AoE and for the duration of the field the warrior has now removed more than 50% of your minion damage. And what happens when its over? Warrior still has a ton of AoE, all of which will destroy your minions extremely quickly. Same thing with eles, they can dodge a single meteor shower, but then what are they going to do against the other 6+ (not including AAs) AoE skills? They can also dodge all the engi grenades or bombs they want, there are more waiting. Also, every time they dodge you’re losing out on damage and utility. This doesn’t fix the issue, and it doesn’t add counterplay to the builds that we have trouble with, it simply makes it so that you have X less AoE skills that will hit the minions (X being their dodges).

Rising Dusk.2408:

Bone Minions are terrible no matter what in their current incarnation. Balancing the passive defense of every minion in order to get Bone Minions to survive AOEs and reach their targets reliably will undoubtedly push them over the top. Imagine if Bone Minions instead had some sort of Mist Form that they would use when you activated their skill, along with a movement speed bonus to reach their target. Then, when that mist form ended they would blow up regardless of how far they’d gotten. That would invoke play/counterplay because a player could kite the minions, but the minions themselves become invulnerable during that phase to help them reach their target.

Bone minions are the only reason this build can exist. Remove Bone Minions and there is no MM, they are the single most important minion, with the exception of Flesh Golem, which you could debate is equally as important. Without Bone Minions you don’t have weakness uptime, you don’t have reliable poison uptime, you don’t have burst damage, you have no ways to deal with a downed enemy if they have backup, the build falls apart. Their current incarnation (minus late blast finishers), assuming they reach the target is fine, they simply need a way to not die to someone who is passively spamming AoE.

Rising Dusk.2408:

That’s just one example; there are multiple other solutions to the problems other than what you’re proposing.

The problem is all minions dying to AoE. The only way to fix this is to increase their effective HP. This can be done in multiple ways, but this is the one that has proven itself to work in game right now.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Yeah, turrets are much more durable, but that’s the point. Engineers can’t move their turrets, while we can move our minions. If you out-rotate a team with a turret engineer then you will always win the two-cap and win the game anyway.

You can move turrets by picking them up. Know what happens when an MM moves from one point to another? Their AI bugs because of pathing issues and you have to wait for them to die, their CD to come back, and then be resummoned to have your build back. The only benefit minions have is an easier time fighting off point, but that is completely irrelevant (except on Khylo if you have to kill a treb) because neither build ever wants to fight off point.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I recognize what you’re trying to address, but I strongly believe that addressing it as you have solves one problem to introduce another, all while not addressing the base issue in the first place. Some passive traits are okay, like the bonus HP or bonus damage traits, but nothing as massive as immunity to condi/crits, especially not as a master trait.

Turrets have it baseline, we’re forced to invest a master trait to get it.

@Rising Dusk: Him asking what your experience is isn’t him marking you as inept. You didn’t really provide much detail/support to your arguments, you just laid a lot of claims about what is/isn’t necessary, so in order to put your claims in perspective, more information was required. You don’t have to take offense to it, it’s a legitimate question, as in other skill levels it’s very plausible that the players just don’t know how to apply appropriate pressure to the minions to totally cramp the build’s style.

I think it’s valid to consider the repercussions of looking at what is working for another class and saying “We need that too”, when in fact that mechanic might be exclusionary to other builds. Condition immunity is ultra touchy for me, as I hate things that make it so builds like Condi Mancer can’t do any damage whatsoever. Sure, there are cripple/chill options in an AoE for a build like that, but can they afford to spend that much effort trying to soft CC the minions while the Necro him/herself can have free reign?

Then again, the prevalence of AoE conditions and the strength of conditions makes me wonder if there really is a better option. I doubt they’ll completely change how AoE works/scale it to actually making sense in output against multiple targets instead of being good damage against a single target/etc., so this might be the best option.

Mobility may always be a benefit when implemented correctly without AI issues, but a lack of mobility also isn’t always a detriment. I think that’s the point they were making.

And based on your final paragraph, you came into this thread with the sole intent of disagreeing, without yourself being open to the fact that their suggestions might be the best way forward considering all of the variables. I’m not saying you can’t disagree, but you also can’t come in with the sole intent of disagreeing, then blame them for being the empty part of the debate. Based on the information you’ve provided around how “fixing” the AI would help, they appear to disagree that it would make a good difference. Based on what I’ve read so far about it all, I’d be inclined to agree. If you want to end your contribution to the discussion, that’s fine, but don’t try to label everyone else as the source of the problem on your way out.

Your post, Cogbyrn, really should’ve been a PM, but I’ll address it here instead of through PM so it doesn’t appear I’m ignoring you.

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Rising Dusk: Him asking what your experience is isn’t him marking you as inept. You didn’t really provide much detail/support to your arguments, you just laid a lot of claims about what is/isn’t necessary, so in order to put your claims in perspective, more information was required. You don’t have to take offense to it, it’s a legitimate question, as in other skill levels it’s very plausible that the players just don’t know how to apply appropriate pressure to the minions to totally cramp the build’s style.

I wasn’t offended. That said, calling someone’s discussion with you ‘empty’ pending some information about their skill level is indeed pretty low.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Mobility may always be a benefit when implemented correctly without AI issues, but a lack of mobility also isn’t always a detriment. I think that’s the point they were making.

I agree. See my above posts and they agree with you too. Anet should focus on fixing the pathing and AI bugs associated with minions, and once that happens I feel we’ll be in a much better place and my arguments against some of the OP’s suggestions will make a lot more sense. Like I said, address the actual problems, not the symptoms; I think through active means we can make minions more viable without handing them immunities.

Cogbyrn.7283:

And based on your final paragraph, you came into this thread with the sole intent of disagreeing, without yourself being open to the fact that their suggestions might be the best way forward considering all of the variables.

Please don’t speak for me. I make it a personal goal to always be open to being convinced out of my current beliefs. I’m still unconvinced of what they have to say, however, and I don’t think it’s productive at this point to back-and-forth ad nauseum. I wasn’t trying to mark anyone as a “problem”, and if that was assumed then please accept my sincerest apologies. They’ve heard what I have to say, and I’ve heard what they have to say. Beyond that, I have no intention of belittling anyone or wasting anyone’s time, so I really think that’s that.

I somehow missed the reply where he took offense, just read it. I wasn’t saying you were inept. I asked and said we were having an “empty discussion” because there were too many unknowns. It was a relevant question because in low tiers, MM are godly where people don’t take advantage of any counters and dodge infrequently. High level is where the issues lie, and that’s why I needed to know that before continuing the discussion, I wasn’t suggesting you were bad.

Secondly, you said mobility is never bad, that’s entirely wrong. I explained to you exactly why and when immobility is better than mobility. You have been notably dismissive, which isn’t healthy for discussion either. How can you say “no, mobility is always better” when I have given you specific scenarios of when I have personally found turret immobility more beneficial. Turrets as abilities are designed around their immobility, spirits are designed around expecting spirit Rangers taking the trait.

ronpierce.2760:

Secondly, you said mobility is never bad, that’s entirely wrong. I explained to you exactly why and when immobility is better than mobility. You have been notably dismissive, which isn’t healthy for discussion either. How can you say “no, mobility is always better” when I have given you specific scenarios of when I have personally found turret immobility more beneficial. Turrets as abilities are designed around their immobility, spirits are designed around expecting spirit Rangers taking the trait.

I’m not trying to be dismissive, honestly, but I do try to be direct in wording to cut out paragraphs of fluff. That can certainly come off as dismissive, so I apologize for that.

Mobility in principle isn’t ever bad. Like Cogbyrn said and I’ve said before, I think if they fixed all of the issues with pathing and AI it would go a long way to addressing the problems the MM currently faces. Once that is addressed, I genuinely feel that we can take a more active approach and still achieve the goal of improving the ability for minions to connect with an opponent. I don’t think it’s fair to claim that mobility itself is bad when it’s the bugs that are making minions bad, not the notion of mobility itself.

Bhawb said above that the problem is minions not even reaching their targets, and I still think that adding active ways to do that is better than passive ways. Being able to kill a minion with AOE damage is important, and that shouldn’t be removed. Bone Minions, for instance, could get an invul when their skills is activated that they use to rush their target. I still think that’s better than just passively making the minions super buff. Shadow Fiends could pulse blind periodically around themselves, and maybe their pulse could even be a smoke field, giving the minionmancer access to stealth through blasts from Bone Minions, and stealthing minions would help a lot. Things like that I consider far superior to immunities, and that’s the sort of thing I’d like to see more of. That’s all I’m saying.

And that’s fine to feel. I just tend to disagree. Aoe and not only Aoe but lingering AoE has always and will likely always be rather prevelent in GW2. A pet can never have the situational awareness as a player who not only have evade frames and human judgement of positioning, but a healing skill. Even if a pet pathed more directly things like the pure power of combustion shot(etc) would still take them out just as fast, maybe faster considering they’d get into that mess faster. For your example, I feel providing proper protection to minions actually allows for more skill than simply lunging our minions at the enemy because a huge part of playing a Minion Master is situation awareness, where are my pets, are they near the enemy for an explosion, which is closer to me, how much health do they currently have, should I blow them up now or wait? Those sort of things. If bone minions just evade to the enemy, I would actually feel cheated of some of those aspects.

Furthermore, pathing is only one of many issues. You must also consider the fact that as it stands, conquest forces us to have presence in a specific area. No amount of better pathing will necessarily fix the on-point and the BIG issue, team fight potential.

I suggest what I suggest for a few reasons, it fixes not only personal issues, but some enemy issues too, and these changes have to be considered as a package, not individual points:

- I want to move more potential to active play and reduce passive damage. That includes Death Nova bombs when all pets die at once, which is honestly one of the most dangerous moments of fighting an MM.
- Tying in with that, reduce MM sheer block from AOE. No where in the rule book does it say pets have to be able to be AoE bombed. In fact, it’s the whole issue. Unlike many builds, pet specific builds require almost 100% trait investment to make them worth taking. When you remove them in such a quick fashion they end up basically a frame of a class and nothing else. It FEELS like pets need to be able to be aoed down because that’s just what everyone does. But if a single player can easily enough Aoe down pets there will absolutely NEVER be team fighting viability. They just can’t happen at the same time. Not to mention, we’ve seen that it can work with Turrets and it’s not toxic. Power still damages them, they still die in too much cleave, but they can survive most hits.

Currently, Aoe to a minion build is like saying “My death shroud 1 ability instantly (or within 5 seconds) puts all signets on cooldown”. It just doesn’t make sense…

Aoe isnt required to kill the MM either. In fact, better play would BE that the answer isnt “Oh, an MM, Aoe bomb him, hope to survive death nova, take an easy kill” and with these changes it’d be more like evade important attacks, kite the pets and attack the master, eventually through combat some pets are likely to die anyways, but not instantly".

Another side point, if pets die slower, it means less Life Force generation in addition to less spike damage. All of these little aspects together work toward the primary goals:

1. Let minion masters work in teams and against massive Aoe users.
2. Reduce passive damage/play and increase skill and situational awareness.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I think it’s valid to consider the repercussions of looking at what is working for another class and saying “We need that too”, when in fact that mechanic might be exclusionary to other builds. Condition immunity is ultra touchy for me, as I hate things that make it so builds like Condi Mancer can’t do any damage whatsoever. Sure, there are cripple/chill options in an AoE for a build like that, but can they afford to spend that much effort trying to soft CC the minions while the Necro him/herself can have free reign?

The thing is that you don’t have to choose either or, that is why AoE is so strong against MM. You never make the choice between “do I hit the necro” OR “do I hit the minions”, you always focus the necromaner and by merit of you having AoE you hit the minions as well.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Mobility may always be a benefit when implemented correctly without AI issues, but a lack of mobility also isn’t always a detriment. I think that’s the point they were making.

The more clear point is: what accompanies mobility/immobility with minions, not players. You are both thinking of mobility as players, not as minions/turrets within a build.

What does mobility give minions that is so helpful? The answer is very little. They are slightly more adaptable to changing situations, but are also far less reliable (this is the case regardless of AI issues). They can fight off point but are also much more likely to be kited.

The reality is that minions don’t benefit from mobility like a player would. An immobile player can end up with your team fighting uneven matches, but minions vs turrets don’t have this issue. Immobile players aren’t as able to keep up with their target or get away from damage, but minions don’t avoid damage and they have worse target uptime on an enemy because of ranged vs melee (melee also means they are going to suffer far more AoE than turrets). Mobility also means they can get clumped together and instakilled. It isn’t the same as players, for summons mobility is not always good, it depends on the type of summon, and for minions vs turrets turrets make up for their immobility with reliability; minions “pay” too much for that mobility just like Necromancers “pay” too much defense for the access to DS (though that is a different topic).

Rising Dusk.2408:

Mobility in principle isn’t ever bad. Like Cogbyrn said and I’ve said before, I think if they fixed all of the issues with pathing and AI it would go a long way to addressing the problems the MM currently faces. Once that is addressed, I genuinely feel that we can take a more active approach and still achieve the goal of improving the ability for minions to connect with an opponent. I don’t think it’s fair to claim that mobility itself is bad when it’s the bugs that are making minions bad, not the notion of mobility itself.

You’re thinking of mobility alone, but that is irrelevant to a discussion of turrets vs minions. Turrets aren’t just immobile minions, and it is the other differences that lend themselves to turrets being much better “despite” them being unable to move. The bugs are not the only thing

Rising Dusk.2408:

Bhawb said above that the problem is minions not even reaching their targets, and I still think that adding active ways to do that is better than passive ways. Being able to kill a minion with AOE damage is important, and that shouldn’t be removed. Bone Minions, for instance, could get an invul when their skills is activated that they use to rush their target. I still think that’s better than just passively making the minions super buff. Shadow Fiends could pulse blind periodically around themselves, and maybe their pulse could even be a smoke field, giving the minionmancer access to stealth through blasts from Bone Minions, and stealthing minions would help a lot. Things like that I consider far superior to immunities, and that’s the sort of thing I’d like to see more of. That’s all I’m saying.

It isn’t important though, because you don’t think about it. No one ever thinks “hey I could hit the necromancer, OR I could use this damage to kill their bone minions, I wonder which is a better idea for this situation”, they just smash their face on the keyboard, crap out tons of AoE, and the minions happen to die as a consequence of the exact same actions they would take in every fight. Bone Minions only have 5.2k HP without traiting. We’re proposing that they have roughly 6.2k HP when traited, which is an extremely low amount of HP to deal with. They are still extremely susceptible to AoE, just not passive AoE fire fields or a single dragon tooth crit, and are now more susceptible to single target hits.

Minions aren’t going to be passively super buff, they will be weaker by on average 3k HP to everything except crits and condi damage.

@Rising Dusk: When I read some of your post earlier, I wasn’t being as charitable as I should have, so I apologize for that. However, I do think that Bhawb/ron have been pretty exhaustive in their explanations as to why they feel these changes in particular would help, and I think the discussion would benefit from you being the same.

For example, I like the idea of an on-use for pets creating counter-play while also assisting the pet in actually delivering its payload/doing its job. A “mist form” style charge from a Bone Minion is an interesting idea. Being able to use Bone Minions to stealth off of Shadow Fiends is another interesting idea.

However, I don’t personally feel like the on-use is going to solve the issues based on how I’ve heard them. If you run into a teamfight with Bone Minions out, are you supposed to just blow them up right away so they have some effect before running around with you in AoE dying? If so, that isn’t very tactical play, that’s just “gotta use these before they die uselessly”. If not, how do you keep them alive? Even if they don’t charge off after a target and potentially through AoE, standing around the Necromancer is probably not much safer. In order to actually make tactical use of an on-use ability, the minion has to be able to survive a modicum of time, or you lose the on-use.

This brings it back to the original question: how do you keep minions alive in the apocalypse of AoE that is almost constantly going down? AI that isn’t detrimentally idiotic helps, but AI that is intelligent might also hurt if your pets are making decisions you don’t like that you have no input in. Minion AI, in my opinion, should be such that they don’t break on terrain for any reason and are able to keep up with you through vertical position changes without issue, as well as attack the target you’re attack while responding to your commands immediately. The control scheme isn’t really designed for any degree of micromanagement when your minions are utilities, and any more logic that tries to dictate whether or not they enter an AoE or when they should dodge will be complex, to the point where I feel it is guaranteed to fail.

Also, my perspective on mobility is generally broken because I’ve spent most of my 1000+ hours in WvW where I laugh at turrets. Immobility is not detrimental when you can, for example, defend a tiny piece of real estate. It just so happens that’s what GW2 tPvP is designed around, so they found their niche.

Mobility on minions should provide pressure that follows you, a problem you have to deal with that you can’t necessarily outrange. I can’t help but think that they are less reliable specifically because of AI, not regardless of it. And if they can be that easily kited when you have a Necro that can very likely cripple/chill as well, then that also sounds, to me, like an AI problem or a slight design problem (in case minions are any slower than players).

There’s something about being invulnerable to condi damage that just really rubs me the wrong way, though, in every way that it’s applied in this game. I’d rather see a blanket 75% damage reduction from AoE-type damage than any damage-type immunity.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Mobility on minions should provide pressure that follows you, a problem you have to deal with that you can’t necessarily outrange. I can’t help but think that they are less reliable specifically because of AI, not regardless of it. And if they can be that easily kited when you have a Necro that can very likely cripple/chill as well, then that also sounds, to me, like an AI problem or a slight design problem (in case minions are any slower than players).

You can infinitely kite minions by running in a circle. They have the same run speed as a player when in combat, and while the Necro does have a fair amount of soft CC, it is still extremely easy to kite when you can jump up onto a ramp, run around a bit, then jump down and the minions take 5 seconds to get back. That isn’t a failure of the AI, but simply that it is the only way for them to accomplish things. Turrets would simply sit back with you on point, waiting for the person to come back, since the stall tactic is irrelevant if it doesn’t mess with moving minions.

Now, I’m not saying that them being able to be kited should be fixed, I think that is a valid weakness of the build. I just don’t think that you can use minions being mobile as an excuse for why they have to be so squishy. There is some power in them being able to chase like that, but there is give and take in the mobility that balances itself out, their being mobile shouldn’t be used as an argument to deny them other strength.

Cogbyrn.7283:

There’s something about being invulnerable to condi damage that just really rubs me the wrong way, though, in every way that it’s applied in this game. I’d rather see a blanket 75% damage reduction from AoE-type damage than any damage-type immunity.

Well, unfortunately AoE abilities don’t have a separate coding in this game, unlike say League. In League abilities have a “quality” that can be set to either single target or AoE, which then affects their interactions. But in GW2 there is no innate distinction that other things can call on to say “this ability is AoE, therefore minions take X% less damage from them”. The AoE is coded into the skill only in the form that it is allowed to hit multiple targets, but to my knowledge they have no quality to be called in a different section of code.

And really, what change would there be? You wouldn’t target individual minions with conditions, you’d want to focus the MM themselves. With the rest of the changes we’re talking about, minions would have a maximum DPS of 1.4k with VM, you just wouldn’t be focusing them.

I’m not saying that the immunity to condis is the wrong approach, I just don’t like it. I don’t see why they couldn’t add an attribute to skills that labels an area as “imminent AoE” or “current AoE” to assist with AI. I’m no AI expert, but adding some flags would be the easy part. But really, you’re probably right, not a whole lot would necessarily change in the fight. Watch the minions for their tells, focus the Necro him/herself, only this time the minions might not fall over due to collateral. I’ve just seen “immune to condis” in various places that struck me as odd, because changing it to “immune to direct damage” in those places would cause a literal nuclear explosion on these forums.

And I fully think that minions needing to path up small ledges is a failure of the AI. Why not have the AI jump up the ledge after them? Especially if they have to run around to a ramp on the side, then the player jumps back down and they have to run back around. That’s AI/pathing issues, and I don’t see why that wouldn’t be incorporated in some of the fixes. I’m not against kiting, but that style of gaming the kiting system shouldn’t be such an easy thing to do.

And with respect to just running around in a circle, perhaps the minions should be 10% faster than players, or benefit from boons (such as Swiftness) that are on the Necro? Then you’d have to actually use snares/slows to kite, which is how I personally think kiting should be anyway. Simply being able to run and attack without being caught also just doesn’t seem right, but perhaps they’re compensating for the Necro helping their pets out with his/her own control.

I also don’t think the Minions should be so squishy, I just think it’s truly the AI that is selling mobility short.

basically make minions walking turrets… im in if turrets can be this hard to kill then so should minions fair is fair

I vote for an elite skill that drops a blob of minions on an enemy and instantly rek them while they’re stunned/imob.

As for names for this new minion elite, I suggest “Iwinbutton”.

Dhemize.8649:

I vote for an elite skill that drops a blob of minions on an enemy and instantly rek them while they’re stunned/imob.

As for names for this new minion elite, I suggest “Iwinbutton”.

Ah yes, zombie crate that spawns a blood fiend, 2 bone minions thst explode on contact, a bone fiend that uses his immob instantly and a flesh golem. I am all for a zombie crate! :P

Don’t need to call it zombie crate, what you’re asking for was in GW1

Cogbyrn.7283:

I’m not saying that the immunity to condis is the wrong approach, I just don’t like it. I don’t see why they couldn’t add an attribute to skills that labels an area as “imminent AoE” or “current AoE” to assist with AI. I’m no AI expert, but adding some flags would be the easy part. But really, you’re probably right, not a whole lot would necessarily change in the fight. Watch the minions for their tells, focus the Necro him/herself, only this time the minions might not fall over due to collateral. I’ve just seen “immune to condis” in various places that struck me as odd, because changing it to “immune to direct damage” in those places would cause a literal nuclear explosion on these forums.

Adding flags wouldn’t be “hard”, it would simply require someone to manually add that to every single (relevant) skill in the game. It is a ton of boring work, and has the potential to introduce a massive number of bugs. You are correct though, it wouldn’t actually be difficult, it is just a bit more code for each skill, and it would fit into something like an expansion (where you traditionally go through and re-code at least part of the game), and would then allow changes like this.

Also a big difference between “immune to condis” and “immune to direct damage” is that everyone deals direct damage, even condi builds deal some direct damage. But not everyone applies damaging condis. Especially in the case of carrion, there isn’t a massive difference in the amount of power between a condi/power build, the big difference is crit/ferocity multipliers.

Cogbyrn.7283:

And I fully think that minions needing to path up small ledges is a failure of the AI. Why not have the AI jump up the ledge after them? Especially if they have to run around to a ramp on the side, then the player jumps back down and they have to run back around. That’s AI/pathing issues, and I don’t see why that wouldn’t be incorporated in some of the fixes. I’m not against kiting, but that style of gaming the kiting system shouldn’t be such an easy thing to do.

Fair enough, but that is a level of changes above what I’m looking to address. That requires a full rework of how AI works. Its still a good idea, just beyond the scope of what we could reasonably suggest.

Cogbyrn.7283:

And with respect to just running around in a circle, perhaps the minions should be 10% faster than players, or benefit from boons (such as Swiftness) that are on the Necro? Then you’d have to actually use snares/slows to kite, which is how I personally think kiting should be anyway. Simply being able to run and attack without being caught also just doesn’t seem right, but perhaps they’re compensating for the Necro helping their pets out with his/her own control.

I also don’t think the Minions should be so squishy, I just think it’s truly the AI that is selling mobility short.

I think the biggest problem is that minions have to stop to attack, but players don’t. In normal PvP, equal speed still allows a melee target to chase and hit their enemy all the time. But for minions, once they reach the target they stop, do their attack animation, then start running again, and the distance created during that one attack is enough that without a speed difference they will never be able to hit again. So one way to fix it would be to simply allow them to attack and move at the same time like we do. Another would be a small speed buff, yes, or simply a way to give them swiftness outside Pack Runes.

The AI is definitely hurting mobility, yes. Ideally they would be pretty equal. Also worth noting that most mobile minions are melee, which makes the AI issues worse/more prevalent.

Bhawb.7408:

Don’t need to call it zombie crate, what you’re asking for was in GW1

Also, Lich Form has a mark that summons 5 Jagged Horrors. Sure, it’s a 1.5 second cast time, and I think Jagged Horrors are literally made of paper (I could be wrong?), but the spirit of the ability is already in the game.

EDIT – Also, I see what you mean with reasonable requests when it comes to fixing the build. It’s definitely a lot to ask to revamp the AI entirely, but if they’re going to make an AI revamp at any point, I feel an expansion would be the time. It’s frustrating to me to have to try to work around a flawed system, which I believe is what Rising Dusk was talking about when he mentioned addressing the symptom and not the cause. However, sometimes all you can do is deal with the symptoms because the cause is unreasonable to treat.

I actually didn’t know melee minions had to stop to attack. That’s pretty hugely annoying to me, and I don’t even use minions.

I do also get the difference between “immune to power” and “immune to condis”, it’s just very black-and-white. Like when a Warrior pops Zerker Stance and I’m running around on my Condi Mancer, I just sigh and run around for a while trying not to die. It’s uninteresting in an extreme direction, but that’s just to me personally. At the end of the day, I get why things are much more often immune to condis than direct damage.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Bhawb.7408:

Don’t need to call it zombie crate, what you’re asking for was in GW1

Also, Lich Form has a mark that summons 5 Jagged Horrors. Sure, it’s a 1.5 second cast time, and I think Jagged Horrors are literally made of paper (I could be wrong?), but the spirit of the ability is already in the game.

Oh, I was just kidding. I don’t think the sPvP crowd would be too happy of that and would just make them hate MM more. x.X

ronpierce.2760:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Bhawb.7408:

Don’t need to call it zombie crate, what you’re asking for was in GW1

Also, Lich Form has a mark that summons 5 Jagged Horrors. Sure, it’s a 1.5 second cast time, and I think Jagged Horrors are literally made of paper (I could be wrong?), but the spirit of the ability is already in the game.

Oh, I was just kidding. I don’t think the sPvP crowd would be too happy of that and would just make them hate MM more. x.X

Though you have to wonder (at least I’m wondering), if they did make minions immune to condis (traited), and they did fix the AI to make minions attack on the move, how strong would Mark of Horror on Lich Form get for MMs? I understand you’re sacrificing Flesh Golem if you go Lich, which I’m going to assume would be a huge deal, but would those little dudes turn into an AI wrecking crew, or do they not actually do much damage? I’ve never seen them survive longer than a few seconds, so I have no concept of how strong they are.

Cogbyrn.7283:

ronpierce.2760:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Bhawb.7408:

Don’t need to call it zombie crate, what you’re asking for was in GW1

Also, Lich Form has a mark that summons 5 Jagged Horrors. Sure, it’s a 1.5 second cast time, and I think Jagged Horrors are literally made of paper (I could be wrong?), but the spirit of the ability is already in the game.

Oh, I was just kidding. I don’t think the sPvP crowd would be too happy of that and would just make them hate MM more. x.X

Though you have to wonder (at least I’m wondering), if they did make minions immune to condis (traited), and they did fix the AI to make minions attack on the move, how strong would Mark of Horror on Lich Form get for MMs? I understand you’re sacrificing Flesh Golem if you go Lich, which I’m going to assume would be a huge deal, but would those little dudes turn into an AI wrecking crew, or do they not actually do much damage? I’ve never seen them survive longer than a few seconds, so I have no concept of how strong they are.

You’d lose all your current minions going into Lich still. Might me an interesting thing to toy with, but I don’t think it’d see as much play (realistically) without fleshy around.

ronpierce.2760:

Cogbyrn.7283:

ronpierce.2760:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Bhawb.7408:

Don’t need to call it zombie crate, what you’re asking for was in GW1

Also, Lich Form has a mark that summons 5 Jagged Horrors. Sure, it’s a 1.5 second cast time, and I think Jagged Horrors are literally made of paper (I could be wrong?), but the spirit of the ability is already in the game.

Oh, I was just kidding. I don’t think the sPvP crowd would be too happy of that and would just make them hate MM more. x.X

Though you have to wonder (at least I’m wondering), if they did make minions immune to condis (traited), and they did fix the AI to make minions attack on the move, how strong would Mark of Horror on Lich Form get for MMs? I understand you’re sacrificing Flesh Golem if you go Lich, which I’m going to assume would be a huge deal, but would those little dudes turn into an AI wrecking crew, or do they not actually do much damage? I’ve never seen them survive longer than a few seconds, so I have no concept of how strong they are.

You’d lose all your current minions going into Lich still. Might me an interesting thing to toy with, but I don’t think it’d see as much play (realistically) without fleshy around.

Oof. Forgot about that little chestnut of a detail. Carry on.

They are basically bone minions that bleed on AA afaik. So it wouldn’t be all that meaningful for an MM, about 150DPS each, plus 1.5k (ish) Death Nova damage + poison on death. Also remember that going into Lich instantly kills all your minions and puts them on CD.

So you’d get a fairly decent amount of DPS while they were alive, I’m guessing right around 1k, plus the Death Nova. But lose on about 600 DPS from Flesh Golem.

I agree with this post. Great thread btw. Maybe some of these ideas could be applied to spirit rangers spirits as well? i see them also getting killed by aoe a lot and it would be nice to have my spirits survive so i can make use of using 3 spirit utilities.

Kushh.4895:

I agree with this post. Great thread btw. Maybe some of these ideas could be applied to spirit rangers spirits as well? i see them also getting killed by aoe a lot and it would be nice to have my spirits survive so i can make use of using 3 spirit utilities.

Frankly, a lot of it deserves to go for spirits (especially since they’ve been heavily nerfed) and spirit guardians as well. All of these have absolutely no practical uses anymore since they get obliterated at the first sign of AoE. Its certainly a problem beyond just MM. I just tend to only focus ON MM. :P

They could both use the defensive changes. Spirits need better designed actives, and SW need an elite and a traiting overhaul.

Bhawb.7408:

They could both use the defensive changes. Spirits need better designed actives, and SW need an elite and a traiting overhaul.

No kitten, on that last point… Oh my lord. The Spirit Weapon traiting is just as bloated or, magically, some how worse than minion master bloat. They also need to have much shorter cooldowns if they’re going to have maximum durations, but alas, that’s an entirely different discussion. I don’t have the same passion for guardians as MM, but they certainly need love.

I lost interest in being a minion master in GW2 when the game launched. Coming over from GW1, even with these changes I can’t see myself wanting to play with them much if at all. Yeah, I agree with most of these changes. The immune to damage conditions though? Strict no. I can’t agree with that under any circumstance. I’m sorry, but that isn’t a part of our flavor and it just sounds like it would be a really bad balance decision. You would pretty much make another hard counter to condition builds with that sort of change and its not something I can support.

Lily.1935:

I lost interest in being a minion master in GW2 when the game launched. Coming over from GW1, even with these changes I can’t see myself wanting to play with them much if at all. Yeah, I agree with most of these changes. The immune to damage conditions though? Strict no. I can’t agree with that under any circumstance. I’m sorry, but that isn’t a part of our flavor and it just sounds like it would be a really bad balance decision. You would pretty much make another hard counter to condition builds with that sort of change and its not something I can support.

Do you have a better idea that would increase their actual ability to survive in team fights? As it stands, the only thing that has ever proven to be effective is crit/condi immunity (in turrets). And by the same token, it reduces the burst risk from condies from death nova bombs. I’ve seen more people die to that than actually fighting me.

ronpierce.2760:

Lily.1935:

I lost interest in being a minion master in GW2 when the game launched. Coming over from GW1, even with these changes I can’t see myself wanting to play with them much if at all. Yeah, I agree with most of these changes. The immune to damage conditions though? Strict no. I can’t agree with that under any circumstance. I’m sorry, but that isn’t a part of our flavor and it just sounds like it would be a really bad balance decision. You would pretty much make another hard counter to condition builds with that sort of change and its not something I can support.

Do you have a better idea that would increase their actual ability to survive in team fights? As it stands, the only thing that has ever proven to be effective is crit/condi immunity (in turrets). And by the same token, it reduces the burst risk from condies from death nova bombs. I’ve seen more people die to that than actually fighting me.

If we take a look back at GW1 how the minions worked there we can see some interesting things. Although minions in the first game had immunity to disease, poison and bleeding we can’t actually rely on that sort of idea considering GW2 treats conditions very differently. Minions were not immune to hexes for example.

But also looking at minions from GW1, they functioned very differently in several ways. Such as having an extremely large health pool as well as very high armor. They still died to AoE pretty easily, and that is a weakness they share with GW2. But they could survive a meteor shower with the help of the master. So perhaps we can give them a way to survive with something a bit more active.

Simply giving them a passive buff to that trait like 100% health increase or an extra 300 toughness might work but the question is would it work?

As for active ideas. I have a few. Perhaps we could give a Minion master incentive to use death shroud a bit more. Like perhaps Transfusion cleanses conditions from minions as well as heals normally. Shrouded Removal could also remove 1-2 conditions from all minions. The last idea I had is a bit unorthodox but I’ll mention it anyway. This might be strange, but give the necromancer a way to give each of their minions aegis with a long cooldown of course.

The problem is only a little bit power. Conditions go right through them. Its funny you say that though, I did have a similar alternative I had suggested:

Immunity to Crits and Burning, and 50% reduced condition duration. (Burning being the absolute unrealistic bane). That way conditions could still damage them, but it’d be less effective, and you wouldnt see cases of a single burning field killing half your minions within a few seconds.

ronpierce.2760:

The problem is only a little bit power. Conditions go right through them. Its funny you say that though, I did have a similar alternative I had suggested:

Immunity to Crits and Burning, and 50% reduced condition duration. (Burning being the absolute unrealistic bane). That way conditions could still damage them, but it’d be less effective, and you wouldnt see cases of a single burning field killing half your minions within a few seconds.

See. I just want to do what I did in GW1. Overwhelm my foe with my own personal, disposable trash mob. Its kinda the reason I could never get into MM for GW2. They aren’t as disposable as they were in GW1. I still think immunity to conditions is a bad idea. Even partial immunity. For a short duration through an active ability I feel would be more interesting for game dynamics as well as for spectators.

Lily.1935:

ronpierce.2760:

The problem is only a little bit power. Conditions go right through them. Its funny you say that though, I did have a similar alternative I had suggested:

Immunity to Crits and Burning, and 50% reduced condition duration. (Burning being the absolute unrealistic bane). That way conditions could still damage them, but it’d be less effective, and you wouldnt see cases of a single burning field killing half your minions within a few seconds.

See. I just want to do what I did in GW1. Overwhelm my foe with my own personal, disposable trash mob. Its kinda the reason I could never get into MM for GW2. They aren’t as disposable as they were in GW1. I still think immunity to conditions is a bad idea. Even partial immunity. For a short duration through an active ability I feel would be more interesting for game dynamics as well as for spectators.

They’re too disposable as it is. In any fight with aoe, they die in seconds. they barely get to see any play, end end up more of an instant use/death nova fodder. I’m not sure you realize just how bad it can be in tpvp trying to get pets to be even remotely useful. They absolutely require AOE protection because they don’t last. They’re not even just disposable, they just die.

I mean you said it yourself, they had these types of defenses in full before. (For bleeding and so on) Sometimes it just a necessary evil for AI to even function, especially against a team. This game is also VERY aoe heavy in all cases, where even melee weapons cleave and so forth.

ronpierce.2760:

Lily.1935:

ronpierce.2760:

The problem is only a little bit power. Conditions go right through them. Its funny you say that though, I did have a similar alternative I had suggested:

Immunity to Crits and Burning, and 50% reduced condition duration. (Burning being the absolute unrealistic bane). That way conditions could still damage them, but it’d be less effective, and you wouldnt see cases of a single burning field killing half your minions within a few seconds.

See. I just want to do what I did in GW1. Overwhelm my foe with my own personal, disposable trash mob. Its kinda the reason I could never get into MM for GW2. They aren’t as disposable as they were in GW1. I still think immunity to conditions is a bad idea. Even partial immunity. For a short duration through an active ability I feel would be more interesting for game dynamics as well as for spectators.

They’re too disposable as it is. In any fight with aoe, they die in seconds. they barely get to see any play, end end up more of an instant use/death nova fodder. I’m not sure you realize just how bad it can be in tpvp trying to get pets to be even remotely useful. They absolutely require AOE protection because they don’t last. They’re not even just disposable, they just die.

I mean you said it yourself, they had these types of defenses in full before. (For bleeding and so on) Sometimes it just a necessary evil for AI to even function, especially against a team. This game is also VERY aoe heavy in all cases, where even melee weapons cleave and so forth.

You and I are using disposable in two different ways. I’m using it to mean that if they die its of little consequence to you. You’re meaning it to just mean they easily die. Using the meaning I’m using it would say that the minions are not disposable. Because its of major consequence to you if a few or most of them die within a few hits. This isn’t disposable in the way that I’m using the word.

Now I’m not saying that the way you’re using it is wrong, I’m just clarifying what I mean when I say disposable as to prevent confusion.

As for the immunity to poison, bleeding and disease. I also mentioned that minions were not immune to hexes from the first game. Conditions in GW2 function more like hexes then they do conditions when compared to GW1. So we should take that into consideration.

The issue is due to the investment required to make an MM build worth using in this game they absolutely HAVE to survive to be useful.

Lily it seems you want a return to the days of minion swarms. Where yes it didn’t matter if one or two died as long as you had access to an exploitable corpse nearby.

That will NEVER happen in this game though. Its simply not going to.

Also. I feel you underestimate heavily how hard the build is shut down right now. It simply isn’t viable. In nearly any situation. In nearly any comp. Because nearly every composition in the game completely rolls over it like its not even there.

You keep referring to there non immunity to hexes in guild wars one like thats supposed to mean something in the current situation. It doesn’t. How they USED to work has no bearing on the current situation just as how conditions used to work also has no bearing. The only thing that matters is that right now one burn field can kill your entire squad. One dragon’s tooth can kill your entire squad.

We aren’t even getting killed by BUILDS. Were being wiped out by individual skills. Thats how weak we are now. Thats whats being addressed here. Methods of dealing with mechanics that are complete…absoulte…100% hard counters to us. That nearly every class in the game can take advantage of regardless of build.

Yeah, in the sense of disposable and being “okay” to lose and keep them rolling, that won’t really happen because utilities in general are built completely differently. Not to mention, like Shade said, our investment in Minions to even use them is literally (in most cases) every major trait except 1 (the first in the Spite) and thats just because there isn’t one there. Practically everything there is bad unless you run focus.

Without minions in GW2 though, we essentially have nothing. Our baseline life blast and other damage is really not substantial and we have practically no defenses. They can’t ever be as “disposable” as they once were, even if you preferred that style, because things just arent really built to work that way. But just because we can’t be reverted to what we used to be (and i wouldn’t even want that, personally), doesn’t mean we can’t fix the very real issues facing us in our current implementation.

As much as I enjoyed the old GW1 MM, the GW2 Necro minions don’t fit it at all. There is really nothing we could or should translate as far as mechanics, because it is an entirely different playstyle. Now, that isn’t to say that ANet couldn’t try to support it in the future, but it would require entirely new minion skills to do so, along with new minion traits, and in the end we’d basically end up with mobile turrets. But you’re looking at GW1 too much. GW2 needs to be balanced for its own style of play, which is very distinctly different than GW1, and shouldn’t be held back by GW1’s mechanics. Conditions/boons are vastly different than GW1, minions and necros are both very different than GW1, and PvP is very different than GW1. That’s not to say that we can’t learn anything from GW1, but minion defense is definitely not one of those things.

Condi builds wouldn’t be countered by our idea for MM at all, they just wouldn’t be able to AoE spam the minions down with AoE condis (and would never use single target on a minion anyway). You shouldn’t have to kill the minions to counter the build, and with the other changes we are making you wouldn’t have to. You would kite the minions, because if you can simply kite Flesh Golem alone the minion DPS is around 600 which is less than burning, and you would focus all of your condi pressure on the MM because MMs can’t afford to take that much condi clear. All that you would have to do is watch the minions for their actives, other than that you wouldn’t need to actually worry about them.

Shadelang.3012:

The issue is due to the investment required to make an MM build worth using in this game they absolutely HAVE to survive to be useful.

Lily it seems you want a return to the days of minion swarms. Where yes it didn’t matter if one or two died as long as you had access to an exploitable corpse nearby.

That will NEVER happen in this game though. Its simply not going to.

Also. I feel you underestimate heavily how hard the build is shut down right now. It simply isn’t viable. In nearly any situation. In nearly any comp. Because nearly every composition in the game completely rolls over it like its not even there.

You keep referring to there non immunity to hexes in guild wars one like thats supposed to mean something in the current situation. It doesn’t. How they USED to work has no bearing on the current situation just as how conditions used to work also has no bearing. The only thing that matters is that right now one burn field can kill your entire squad. One dragon’s tooth can kill your entire squad.

We aren’t even getting killed by BUILDS. Were being wiped out by individual skills. Thats how weak we are now. Thats whats being addressed here. Methods of dealing with mechanics that are complete…absoulte…100% hard counters to us. That nearly every class in the game can take advantage of regardless of build.

I actually do understand whats going on. And just because the two games are different doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from the first game. This is a common mistake people who are not familiar with game design make. We absolutely can learn from GW1 because the minions had similar weaknesses. So the question is how can we use this knowledge and apply it to GW2? I’m looking at the problem from multiple different angles, not just one. MM’s minions got wreaked by AOE in GW1. But the necromancer had a tone of ways to offset the weakness through proactive game play. Blood of the master was one method and death nova was another. A necromancer could either weaken themselves majorly to stop their death or convert the minions into high damage sources. And I mean HIGH! Like each one dealing 1/5th of a person’s health high.

Minions don’t work exactly the same as they do in GW1. I know that, and that’s why I don’t like them. And I am distinguishing between opinion and suggestions. My suggestions are for the current necromancer. My opinion on their end result doesn’t do anything to make me want to actually play them competitively or for fun. I’m just looking at this from an objective point of view.

My issue the idea of blood of the master would be that it involves one more investment. In the current game in order for us to have active control over it it couldn’t be a trait. It would have to be a utility skill. Meaning we have to LOSE a minion in order to take it.

Thats perhaps the biggest issue with many of the "active’ solutions to the MM problem ive seen thrown about.

They always lead me to the same conclusion. (Barring heavy changes we can’t expect arena net to make. How much of our build will we have to give up for the build to work.) currently there are many mechanics that can instantly one shot many of our minions. Which means we would need something we can actively trigger (which means tieing it to a key press) to absorb the damage they take. Due to the combat style of this game that key press ALSO can’t leave us vulnerable.

So something like hte original blood of the master but in a shield form won’t work. Because the attacks atm aren’t directed at our pets anyway. The pets are just getting caught in it accidentally. But lets look at similar options.

This one is a trait that wouldn’t take up a utility slot.

(Every time we enter death shroud all minions gain a 2500 damage shield for 5 seconds) <— any less than this would be completely worthless

Ive seen this discussed. My biggest worry is that it will become a death trap for the necro. The necro is FORCED by the enemy to pop ds in order to save his minions. And then doesn’t have it for the following spike aimed at him. This puts the necromancer in a reactionary role where our opponent has control over our primary defense. Something that is lethal for every necromancer build in the game.

Ive spent a long time trying to find active defensive options for the minions. And every single one I can think of that would actually help the minions shafts the necromancer itself to the point of using minions becoming a cyanide pill.

A passive defensive option targeting two specific hardcounters while leaving us vulnerable to every soft counter we already have is ideal. And it paves the way for further number tweaking and balancing. The mentioned changes even go so far as to reduce our passive damage to compensate. And giving us ACTIVE offense options to make up for that in part.

Note. Theres even things mentioned that I don’t agree with. But hte overall work is a better comprehensive fix than anything anyone else has managed to put on this forum I have seen so far.

Not only that, but I think we’d eventually end up over-complicating things. Minions as they function is… decently okay. The general counters, such as kiting, juking, CC, and bursting the master (who already has limited defenses) would all remain viable options. And in fact, with lower HP, pets would still die quite frequently. However what wouldn’t happen is they wouldn’t die to silly long lasting hazards and damage that is tuned to be cleansed. That’s another major consideration about them. Every pet build in the game is considered not viable, as it stand, except for one, the only one with defenses against condition damage. Things like a single bleed can do power damage and a thousand, sometimes thousands of damage over time because it’s intended to be cleansed semi-frequently, and dodged semi-frequently. This leads to all pet builds having no grip in these situations because pets have no defenses against them. As seen with turrets, they do need this type of defense (and we’re excusing the turrets ability to heal 5% per 3 seconds) to ever sustain in any fight against someone with even a bit of AOE, let alone a team fight that is often littered with massive cleave.

In response to that, and expecting them to live longer, I suggest reducing the passive “easy” damage that pets can do and put more active play into pets. And like I’ve said before, this is really killing two birds with one stone in the sense that while we’re allowing ourselves to fight in team fights, enemies would be less prone to the equally toxic Death Nova bombs, where 5 pets can die at once and essentially deal 75% of a non-tanky person’s health.

Ideally the way to beat a minion master wouldn’t be to AOE down his utilities then have an easy fight, but fight in a battle of attrition, which is what minion builds are supposed to be about anyways (similarly to any leeching build) with moderate sustain and healing. We have this decently well against enemies like Rangers and thieves who don’t rely on AOE very much anyways, and usually those fights end up pretty good. Then you have cases where AOE is heavy (warrior/engineer/ele/guardian) and it literally becomes a fight of “Will they survive the death novas, can I finish them, or do I just dwindle away shortly after they kill off all of my pets at once”? That really isn’t interesting for anyone, and I feel it may have a lot to do with frustrations people have when facing minions, outside of simply feeling overwhelmed by numbers, which is just a fun perk for the build.

Right now, if they get the first strike a Necromancer can use staff 2→staff 5 (since minions start all clumped up) and basically clear a necro’s kitten nal. Combustive shot +/- an Arcing arrow and you’re at a loss. A few moments of an Elementalist in fire and the pets are mostly dead. A few grenades and they are mostly dead, and those that aren’t struggle reaching the engineer before they are dead. Guardians blink in and use GS4 and if they get off any of a whirling wrath, they’re basically all dead, too.

The only thing that we have in these moments is death nova. We win because AOE retaliated enough, or we lose because it wasn’t enough and now we’re completely defenseless and have terrible damage.

In no way should that ever even be acceptable. We’re not talking about counter play, but hard countering from BASIC play, these players aren’t doing anything unusual but attacking the necromancer and the pets just die to basic rotations within moments.

Supercharging HP, as someone has mentioned, doesn’t fix the issue, if anything it makes it worse. They might last longer, but in 1v1 situations they become too hard to kill. The reason I suggested this change is because I’ve seen that any build with any amount of power (carrion included) can kill low HP targets even if immune to crit/condi damage. Where as high enough HP to survive team fights, you can forget it. No amount of attacking the pets 1v1 will ever be worth it.

Bhawb.7408:

As much as I enjoyed the old GW1 MM, the GW2 Necro minions don’t fit it at all. There is really nothing we could or should translate as far as mechanics, because it is an entirely different playstyle. Now, that isn’t to say that ANet couldn’t try to support it in the future, but it would require entirely new minion skills to do so, along with new minion traits, and in the end we’d basically end up with mobile turrets. But you’re looking at GW1 too much. GW2 needs to be balanced for its own style of play, which is very distinctly different than GW1, and shouldn’t be held back by GW1’s mechanics. Conditions/boons are vastly different than GW1, minions and necros are both very different than GW1, and PvP is very different than GW1. That’s not to say that we can’t learn anything from GW1, but minion defense is definitely not one of those things.

Condi builds wouldn’t be countered by our idea for MM at all, they just wouldn’t be able to AoE spam the minions down with AoE condis (and would never use single target on a minion anyway). You shouldn’t have to kill the minions to counter the build, and with the other changes we are making you wouldn’t have to. You would kite the minions, because if you can simply kite Flesh Golem alone the minion DPS is around 600 which is less than burning, and you would focus all of your condi pressure on the MM because MMs can’t afford to take that much condi clear. All that you would have to do is watch the minions for their actives, other than that you wouldn’t need to actually worry about them.

So must I remind you that Fetid Consumption is a trait. Which I just tested btw, and each minion has its own condition draw trigger. So yeah, you’ll become a hard counter. And the second part of that of being unable to be critically hit? No… Just no.. You would be basically making the minions each have 2 grandmaster traits from the elementalist as one trait. Add Fetid Consumption into that mix and good luck trying to kill them with conditions… Yeah, I don’t see how you guys don’t see that as a hard counter. Turning a master trait into 2 grandmaster traits combine into one isn’t balanced. Its busted.

As for the first part, you couldn’t be more wrong in this. GW1 has a lot to teach us about minions. Diablo II & III can teach us a lot as well. You see, the games aren’t as different as you may think. Although they feel and play quite differently, there is still a mega ton of similarities in these games. Looking at the similarities and also looking at the differences we can better understand what was done right and wrong in those games. We can try to understand why it did or didn’t work very well in those games and analyze what we can take from them. I’d also suggestion looking at similar concepts in other games such as starcraft or even going as deep as Magic: The gathering. All of these games for this type of play style have one thing that is shared between them. And its in the very DNA of what it means to be a minion master. Managing resources and your forces.

Now I know it sounds a bit strange to you guys, or even crazy. But I feel I should explain how I think. I look at problems in 3-4 dimensions. How I visualize things is that I don’t see pictures in my mind. I see 3 dimensional objects. I see what they look like from the front, back, bottom, top and sides. And If the object is a building I see the object from the outside in as well. This is how I think. I look at things in a very detailed way and I also visualize them progressing through time. How they might change or function later in the future.

The issue we have, Bawb as well as other people I’ve debated with on the forums before, is that when I mention GW1 or another game you seem to automatically assume that I want GW2 to be just like GW1. And that hasn’t what I’ve been trying to get across. I’ve been saying the equivalent of that if you’re an architect and you want to build a building that has never been built before its not a bad idea to see how other buildings have been historically built. Or going back into our own evolutionary history to learn more about humans in the present. GW1 just happens to be the closest relative to GW2.

Shadelang.3012:

snip

You misunderstand me. I never suggested adding a new skill to eat up a minion slot. Those slots are too valuable. Which is a major problem I have with minion masters in this game, but thats beside the over all point.

I wasn’t criticizing the entire post. I agree with most of it. I was criticizing the specific passive buff of giving the minions immunity the critical and conditions. This is an absurd buff, and I can’t stress that enough.

I do think some passive buffs are in order. The minions health and armor should just be increased with out a trait on it. How much though is up for debate. I would like to see a fight of a minion master in a 1v1 against a few different targets. if someone can show me this I might be able to calculate where their passive health and armor should be at.

The Minion master should be a profession that micromanages their minions a lot. A high skill build and very high reward for being able to do so. This is how similar styles of game play are done in other games. When they are done well you can feel it. GW1 did it very well. Diablo 2&3, not so much. As a minion master you are playing a different game then your opponent. And you should remember that. You will have to divide your attention in order to get the most out of the build. But we are just in the theory of it right now.

So there is two directions we can go with minions at their current design and I actually feel we should go with both of them and I’ll explain in a moment. The quality of life changes that was suggested is great. Some of the minor buffs in other areas are also interesting and I don’t disagree with them, they sound cool. However, I must note that its not the only way to go with this.

Both ideas that I have for the minions are something we can have with the bass profession we have now and I briefly touched on it before when I mentioned Death nova and blood of the master. Now I wasn’t suggesting that these two skills be adapted into GW2. nothing of the sort. What I was saying is they show us two options. Sustaining minions, which by the way is exactly the option that the OP wanted from the minions in the first place. But there is also the second option which is make the minions more bursty.

So the first one has quite a bit we can do to make it work. Including the suggestions made by the OP are great, minus the prefect immunity part. Active protection is also good. Making weapons more friendly toward minions is an option. Like perhaps give a bonus to the warhorn skills to actually provide something for the minions, death shroud skills being able to remove conditions or what have you. The suggestion you made with the next 2500 damage reduction isn’t a bad idea. Its proactive and something I can get behind. I don’t think it should be the only option we have, but I like the way you’re thinking.

The second option is to make them like a rocket. If you’ve ever played goblin tribal in MTG you’ll guess where this is going. Making the minions be able to come out of the gate trucking with power that slowly dies down as the fight progresses. While the first option might stick you in Death and blood the second option could stick you more in Death and Spite. Giving minions the ability to apply conditions or deal damage on not just death but summoning as well, combined with the cast time reduction suggested by the OP could be an interesting idea for build design. Allowing your warhorn skills to give your minions swiftness and a swarm of locus, or just the swiftness when you use it could cut the travel time between your targets giving you the increased likelihood that they’ll get to your target in time. Having a trait to trigger to give them all Quickness for a short duration with a long cool down trait could further push you down this path. And I’ll repeat myself, I think both a sustained option and burst option for minions should be available to us.

There is a lot more I could say about this subject. And to tell you the absolute truth in the matter. I don’t think the minion master will truly get what it needs until after we get a weapon that is at least partially dedicated to minions in some way.

I’ve mentioned before, actually. These changes would require Fetid Consumption to change. It just depends on how it’s changed that will finally determine how it needs to be changed. For instance, if pets got total condition immunity (damage ones) perhaps it could be made to only pull crippling conditions (immob, cripple, chill, fear)~ ones that still effect them, and it would actually fit the idea of a necromancer being high pressure and hard to escape force in place of actual mobility. That way, let’s would actually be easier to kite indirectly.

If my alternative “Immunity to Crits/burning and reduced condition durations by 50%” is used perhaps no change would be needed. It’s already not frequently used,‘if pets could take them and not die as fast as before it might be worth using at all, and of course, this trait would still cause them to die faster than without the trait, and at a decent rate considering they’d be losing the +50% hp with the trait change.

I think overall, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. There’s a reason most games have unrealistic pet defenses or super buffed Aoe defense (WoW let’s take like 90% reduced damage from Aoe…). It’s required for pet classes to function in high hazard fights, especially if their entire gameplay relies on them.

My first suggestion is nothing different than turrets, except that they have the trade off of mobility and the draw back travel times and more in the thicket of fights, so more susceptible to all base damage that would hit them.

The other option, and my personal favorite, Immunity to Crits and burning and 50% reduced condition timing, allows all power damage to kill them if they wish as well as condition builds. The difference is they wouldn’t be susceptible to non-directed burst and condition sweeping. Even this is generous though, because there’s still thst risk of Aoe bombardment causing them to die.

You seem rather resistant to the idea that pets need “passive” Aoe protection, but most well developed games actually have this, and it’s much more potent. A build that absolutely required pets to function need high functioning Aoe protection for the pets. In the end, we may just have to agree to disagree. But having played MM FOR 2 years here, I know a lot about the ins and outs of my suggestions and the pros and cons. I think you underestimate how much the HP reduction with these changes actually just streamline their death rates. Yes, in net, them actually surviving will be “a buff”, but they absolutely need it. With my second change, Aoe would still be a consideration when fighting MM, but it would end up more of a counter than a “hard counter”, and that’s fine.

ronpierce.2760:

snip

Actually I did say that I think the minions need a health and armor buff anyway without the addition of a trait. Part of the reason I mentioned the health and armor of minions in GW1 was to compare them to GW2 minions in that just how frail they were. I’m not against the idea of passive buffs I’m against the idea of passive play. Which most of your suggestion doesn’t promote that, don’t get me wrong on that. That particular suggestion does, however.

Also, if we were to say, increase the minion’s health by 50% just as a passive buff without Flesh of the Master then have that 50% added to it that does something very similar for the minions that your -50% condition duration suggestion does. Its not exactly the same, your suggestion is meant to reduce the damage by 50% but it can reduce it much further then that with conditions that only last a second while my alternative reduces damage from conditions by 50% as well. Doubling the health pool doubles the damage required to kill them with conditions.

I also mentioned raising their overall armor rating without a trait. My guess would be 180 extra toughness but it might need to go as high as 300. With your suggestion you do force people to be using Flesh of the Master. Which would end up doing way too much as a master trait and would need to be bumped up to grandmaster.

The passive buffs I mentioned are simple and much easier to balance for. The real power of a minion master’s defense and offense from minions should come from their active play. You mentioned this yourself and that trait change you suggested puts the power far more in their passive play then active, even with all the other changes you suggested.

Lily.1935:

Actually I did say that I think the minions need a health and armor buff anyway without the addition of a trait. Part of the reason I mentioned the health and armor of minions in GW1 was to compare them to GW2 minions in that just how frail they were. I’m not against the idea of passive buffs I’m against the idea of passive play. Which most of your suggestion doesn’t promote that, don’t get me wrong on that. That particular suggestion does, however.

I don’t understand how you can say crit/condi immunity is passive, but HP and armor are not. More HP/armor does not in any way promote more active play, all it does is shift the “can I kill minions or not”, but does so in a way that scales very poorly from a single target→AoE scenario.

Lily.1935:

Also, if we were to say, increase the minion’s health by 50% just as a passive buff without Flesh of the Master then have that 50% added to it that does something very similar for the minions that your -50% condition duration suggestion does. Its not exactly the same, your suggestion is meant to reduce the damage by 50% but it can reduce it much further then that with conditions that only last a second while my alternative reduces damage from conditions by 50% as well. Doubling the health pool doubles the damage required to kill them with conditions.

The problem is you very quickly bring minions out of range of people without massive amounts of AoE to be able to ever kill. Essentially you simply go from condition players having trouble killing them to anyone with single target having trouble. There is no system that will be equal for everyone, where every player will be more or less equally able to kill minions, unless Anet decides to add in a way to reduce damage (both direct and condi) from AoE.

Lily.1935:

I also mentioned raising their overall armor rating without a trait. My guess would be 180 extra toughness but it might need to go as high as 300. With your suggestion you do force people to be using Flesh of the Master. Which would end up doing way too much as a master trait and would need to be bumped up to grandmaster.

Flesh of the Master is already required for minions, and our proposal is that Flesh of the Master gives you a defensive system that already exists baseline.

Lily.1935:

So must I remind you that Fetid Consumption is a trait. Which I just tested btw, and each minion has its own condition draw trigger. So yeah, you’ll become a hard counter. And the second part of that of being unable to be critically hit? No… Just no.. You would be basically making the minions each have 2 grandmaster traits from the elementalist as one trait. Add Fetid Consumption into that mix and good luck trying to kill them with conditions… Yeah, I don’t see how you guys don’t see that as a hard counter. Turning a master trait into 2 grandmaster traits combine into one isn’t balanced. Its busted.

I’m aware of how much they draw. We’ve said before that Fetid would have to change, which is fine because it is currently not worth taking. And we would be giving minions those traits. Flesh of the Master currently gives 50% HP to a minion, are you trying to say that it is also OP because 50% extra player health would be insane? Training of the Master gives 25% extra damage, also a trait that would be entirely OP as even a grandmaster trait for any profession. Our one Master tier trait is something turrets get for free.

As for the rest, I have no issue looking at how other games do things. But when you bring up GW1, Diablo, WoW, or other games like them, it needs mentioning that their version of “MM” is extremely different than ours. We don’t have mana to manage, corpses to gate power, large AoE buffs, we don’t weaken ourselves, minions can’t body block or taunt. There is also completely different single target vs AoE mechanics, GW2 has 5 target AoE limit and no AoE reduction, the opposite of most games. Also GW1 is one of the only other games I have played with anything close to what I’d call balanced PvP, and the differences in PvP between GW2 and the rest are massive.

Just about the only similarity is that we are both builds that have some reliance on summoning creatures to fight. Now, could we in the future have builds that more closely resemble those of GW1 or others? Sure, but that is beyond our scope, it would require new weapons, traits, and minion skills.

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t understand how you can say crit/condi immunity is passive, but HP and armor are not. More HP/armor does not in any way promote more active play, all it does is shift the “can I kill minions or not”, but does so in a way that scales very poorly from a single target->AoE scenario.

Armor and health can more easily be adjusted as time goes on for balance then a flat crit immunity and condi immunity can. Its foresight. Thats why I can say it.

Bhawb.7408:

The problem is you very quickly bring minions out of range of people without massive amounts of AoE to be able to ever kill. Essentially you simply go from condition players having trouble killing them to anyone with single target having trouble. There is no system that will be equal for everyone, where every player will be more or less equally able to kill minions, unless Anet decides to add in a way to reduce damage (both direct and condi) from AoE.

You are playing a different game then your opponent. You should very well know this as a minion master yourself. Your end game is extraordinarily different then your opponents and your weaknesses to be exploited should be far different then theirs would be. Putting more active play in protecting the minions puts their survival and yours far more in your hands then relying on the passive traits which make them extremely hard to kill. You should need to be able to micromanage your forces and poor management should be punished while great management should be rewarded. With such a game changing passive your remove a mega ton of the micromanagement required. There is too little micromanagement with minions as is and the micromanagement we do have isn’t rewarding enough.

Bhawb.7408:

Flesh of the Master is already required for minions, and our proposal is that Flesh of the Master gives you a defensive system that already exists baseline.

Still sounds like a problem to me.

Bhawb.7408:

I’m aware of how much they draw. We’ve said before that Fetid would have to change, which is fine because it is currently not worth taking. And we would be giving minions those traits. Flesh of the Master currently gives 50% HP to a minion, are you trying to say that it is also OP because 50% extra player health would be insane? Training of the Master gives 25% extra damage, also a trait that would be entirely OP as even a grandmaster trait for any profession. Our one Master tier trait is something turrets get for free.

Turrets are not minions. We should remember this. And we can’t use turrets as a base line to balance minions. This is actually a false comparison. I don’t know were you got 50% extra health being OP(over powered from. We are talking about immunity to critical and either immunity to conditions or partial immunity. Which is something that would be way too powerful at master tier. And I was using the term OP to mean Original poster. I hope that cleared it up for you.

Edit: I was using OP to mean original poster when replying to Shadelang.3012

Bhawb.7408:

As for the rest, I have no issue looking at how other games do things. But when you bring up GW1, Diablo, WoW, or other games like them, it needs mentioning that their version of “MM” is extremely different than ours. We don’t have mana to manage, corpses to gate power, large AoE buffs, we don’t weaken ourselves, minions can’t body block or taunt. There is also completely different single target vs AoE mechanics, GW2 has 5 target AoE limit and no AoE reduction, the opposite of most games. Also GW1 is one of the only other games I have played with anything close to what I’d call balanced PvP, and the differences in PvP between GW2 and the rest are massive.

Just about the only similarity is that we are both builds that have some reliance on summoning creatures to fight. Now, could we in the future have builds that more closely resemble those of GW1 or others? Sure, but that is beyond our scope, it would require new weapons, traits, and minion skills.

It really isn’t that different. Especially Diablo III. They way GW2 minions and D3 minions function is almost identical. The biggest difference is that D3 minions have a far higher disposability but are still terrible. And we do actually weaken ourselves to bring minions. its not as drastic as GW1 though. But we do do it.