Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure if you realize it or not, but lower HP but crit/condi immunity does more for everyone involved. Pets could still be killed by more builds (Power builds entirely) and most condition builds still do some form of power damage. The difference being pets wouldn’t be getting AOEd down. They’d still die in team fights, just slower, and they wouldn’t be instantly gibbed in 1v1 but still able to die.

Your alternative for “Just give them more health” means if you buff them enough to be good in team fights (just based on HP) no one would be able to realistically kill them in 1v1 situations ever. More builds could handle pets with our method over yours, and it actually fixes the AOE issues rather than just adjusting the amount of AOE needed to basically do the same thing, wipe them all out.

With out method, power and zerkers would kill them at a similar rate, but with lower HP that rate would be sufficient enough that critting wouldn’t be necessary, and in fact would be overkill. Conditions, well I provided a separate alternative to that, but you seem so strangely against defenses against conditions, even if its partial (As if hp and toughness isn’t partial defenses against power?).

Lily.1935:

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.

Have you seen Witch Doctor pet builds? They shred through everything and only rarely lose a pet to damage. Heck, the Witch Doctor is squishier than his pets.

Are they disposable? Yes, but I can’t recall the last time I lost one to damage and not timed lifespan.

Of course, if you don’t have the OP Starmetal Kukri, I can see how you come to this opinion. Tell you what, if you want to, I can stream how it works sometime.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

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.

Have you seen Witch Doctor pet builds? They shred through everything and only rarely lose a pet to damage. Heck, the Witch Doctor is squishier than his pets.

Are they disposable? Yes, but I can’t recall the last time I lost one to damage and not timed lifespan.

Of course, if you don’t have the OP Starmetal Kukri, I can see how you come to this opinion. Tell you what, if you want to, I can stream how it works sometime.

yeah, I never got that weapon. So using pets wasn’t so great most the time when I was playing. You might know more then I do in that regard.

ronpierce.2760:

I’m not sure if you realize it or not, but lower HP but crit/condi immunity does more for everyone involved. Pets could still be killed by more builds (Power builds entirely) and most condition builds still do some form of power damage. The difference being pets wouldn’t be getting AOEd down. They’d still die in team fights, just slower, and they wouldn’t be instantly gibbed in 1v1 but still able to die.

Your alternative for “Just give them more health” means if you buff them enough to be good in team fights (just based on HP) no one would be able to realistically kill them in 1v1 situations ever. More builds could handle pets with our method over yours, and it actually fixes the AOE issues rather than just adjusting the amount of AOE needed to basically do the same thing, wipe them all out.

With out method, power and zerkers would kill them at a similar rate, but with lower HP that rate would be sufficient enough that critting wouldn’t be necessary, and in fact would be overkill. Conditions, well I provided a separate alternative to that, but you seem so strangely against defenses against conditions, even if its partial (As if hp and toughness isn’t partial defenses against power?).

I never EVER said “Just give them more health” that is actually a straw man of my argument and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t misrepresent my position. Health is a passive base line to the suggestion. Not the bulk of their defense. The bulk of defense would come from the necromancer’s Active play, not passive. you’ve been saying reduce condi duration, crit immunity or the damage condi immunity. Which is very passive in terms of play. I’m talking about more active. A strict health and armor upgrade doesn’t make them unkillable to aoe. Or hard to kill to aoe. The defense of your minions should be on you. it should be primarily active, not passive.

Without significant changes, no amount of “active” play is going to save minions from being AOEd down in the current state of the game, not just on the necromancers end, but how other classes are built as well. We’d need some unusually potent active play to keep pets from being killed in single burning fields, a few Crits of a hammer warrior, a standard rotation of Ele, etc. there’s nothing fundamentaly wrong with passive defenses for pets, especially if an entire build is based around their survival. More than anything, lack of Aoe protection feels like a lack of planning on the devs part from the beginning. Like I said, in many games pets have substantial AOE protection (way more than I’m asking for here) to make up for AI incompetencies.

Allowing pets to survive purely on the will of the necromancer is a long shot away as it stands, in game game where practically everything cleaves or is AoE. Pets absolutely have to be able to survive though when a build is literally 50+% their pets. Like I said, every trait goes into minions, we have horrible defenses, and without traits are damage and deathshroud is rather insignificant, so let’s dying in a single attack is far beyond a counter at this point.

I’m willing to hear you out though on “active play” that’s going to keep pets alive against a single Aoe class though, that will also keep them alive in a midfight where they basically go in and get vaporized.

Haha, I was going to post about WD pet builds, because I remembered them being absolutely insane in RoS.

Anywho, @Lily: how do you suggest they give you “micromanage” abilities with pets in a game like GW2 with its controls/interface? All you really have to work with right now is the active. The best they could do, in my opinion, is give F2 – F4 abilities for Necros, and when you raise a minion via utility (not healing or elite), it changes your F2 – F4 to be pet defensives. That leaves out the Healing and Elite abilities though, which doesn’t seem “fair”.

I’m not sure how else they can let you micromanage pet with the current control scheme without introducing entirely new controls just for a subset of utilities (which I guarantee they don’t want to do).

ronpierce.2760:

Without significant changes, no amount of “active” play is going to save minions from being AOEd down in the current state of the game, not just on the necromancers end, but how other classes are built as well. We’d need some unusually potent active play to keep pets from being killed in single burning fields, a few Crits of a hammer warrior, a standard rotation of Ele, etc. there’s nothing fundamentaly wrong with passive defenses for pets, especially if an entire build is based around their survival. More than anything, lack of Aoe protection feels like a lack of planning on the devs part from the beginning. Like I said, in many games pets have substantial AOE protection (way more than I’m asking for here) to make up for AI incompetencies.

Allowing pets to survive purely on the will of the necromancer is a long shot away as it stands, in game game where practically everything cleaves or is AoE. Pets absolutely have to be able to survive though when a build is literally 50+% their pets. Like I said, every trait goes into minions, we have horrible defenses, and without traits are damage and deathshroud is rather insignificant, so let’s dying in a single attack is far beyond a counter at this point.

I’m willing to hear you out though on “active play” that’s going to keep pets alive against a single Aoe class though, that will also keep them alive in a midfight where they basically go in and get vaporized.

You should really read my posts because I mentioned how death shroud isn’t being used with minions. I said that we could have traits the allow death shroud to help minions as well as something that could help them out through weapons. You seem to think its not possible, but using the very system we have know its the best way of going about it. The advantage of GW2 over GW1 is that we do have a ground targeting system. We don’t need to have a special UI like in GW1. I’ve experimented with using a few wells with minions with minimal success. It did show a few things that it had some potential to work, though the wells were not enough. The best way to get active play is to allow it through weapons and death shroud. You can have half the bar for minions and a few other skills to support said minions.

I was actually going to make a large comprehensive suggestion involving all summons(excluding clones) in the game, not just minions. Including familiars, turrets, spirit weapons, spirits and other miscellaneous summoned creatures. But it was going to be an updated ritualist suggestion. With the announcement of the Revenant and the specialization system I’ve been waiting and re-adapting my skill ideas to further fit the necromancer’s theme. But I don’t want to make the suggestion until after we get more information because they might include the active play that I’m suggesting with the expansion.

See that’s sort of the thing. I’m trying to shoot within the boundaries of realistic. There ‘are’ other ways to handle it, but realistically, none of which they’re likely to take. Its a single build and not worth the resources. The whole game could use various large changes, but I’m shooting for something with precedence, its proven to be effective, it’s even a weaker version of that, and hopefully just enough to get us to be able to team fight properly.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Haha, I was going to post about WD pet builds, because I remembered them being absolutely insane in RoS.

Anywho, @Lily: how do you suggest they give you “micromanage” abilities with pets in a game like GW2 with its controls/interface? All you really have to work with right now is the active. The best they could do, in my opinion, is give F2 – F4 abilities for Necros, and when you raise a minion via utility (not healing or elite), it changes your F2 – F4 to be pet defensives. That leaves out the Healing and Elite abilities though, which doesn’t seem “fair”.

I’m not sure how else they can let you micromanage pet with the current control scheme without introducing entirely new controls just for a subset of utilities (which I guarantee they don’t want to do).

weapon skills and death shroud. Honestly, with GW2’s combat system it makes the solution easier then in GW1.

Lily.1935:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Haha, I was going to post about WD pet builds, because I remembered them being absolutely insane in RoS.

Anywho, @Lily: how do you suggest they give you “micromanage” abilities with pets in a game like GW2 with its controls/interface? All you really have to work with right now is the active. The best they could do, in my opinion, is give F2 – F4 abilities for Necros, and when you raise a minion via utility (not healing or elite), it changes your F2 – F4 to be pet defensives. That leaves out the Healing and Elite abilities though, which doesn’t seem “fair”.

I’m not sure how else they can let you micromanage pet with the current control scheme without introducing entirely new controls just for a subset of utilities (which I guarantee they don’t want to do).

weapon skills and death shroud. Honestly, with GW2’s combat system it makes it easier then in GW1.

Are you suggesting adding new abilities? Because nothing we have currently comes close to helping them with a burning field or mass entanglement or anything else of the like that annihilates minions. As for traits, we’re already bloated enough…

ronpierce.2760:

Are you suggesting adding new abilities? Because nothing we have currently comes close to helping them with a burning field or mass entanglement or anything else of the like that annihilates minions. As for traits, we’re already bloated enough…

Read my posts. Seriously, I’ve suggested potential traits that adjust weapon skills and improve death shroud to help. I don’t want to keep repeating myself.

In another note, I have been saying for years that necromancer needs greater support options anyway and a support weapon, but people fight me on that too.

Sorry, lots of walls of text here, easy to miss or forget points. Part of discussion. You think I havebt had to repeat myself here? Either way, point stands, it would require SUBSTANTIAL redesign in order to even make it enough to make up for how extreme their weakness is to Aoe, especially condies.

ronpierce.2760:

Sorry, lots of walls of text here, easy to miss or forget points. Part of discussion. You think I havebt had to repeat myself here? Either way, point stands, it would require SUBSTANTIAL redesign in order to even make it enough to make up for how extreme their weakness is to Aoe, especially condies.

never said it wouldn’t. Your suggestions would as well. But here is the thing. I’d rather it be done the hard way and be done right then have dozens of nerfs later. Did we all forget what happened with dhuumfire already? Everybody was calling out for burning and I was one of the few people who was like “Nope, not a good idea we should improve condi in other ways” and no one listened to me then. I’m getting a strong sense of deja vu here.

Dhuumfire was different. People wanted burning, not nearly permanent burning and 4 different damaging conditions all on an auto attack. Current Dhuumfire isn’t an issue at all, and it is still burning, because burning wasn’t the issue, the implementation was.

We’re not giving generic solutions though. We are giving very specific ones that Anet can’t screw up the implementation of unless they change what we have said to do. And our specific changes are shown in game right at this very moment to work. Passive HP/armor have already shown themselves not to work, and active defenses simply do the same thing that HP/armor boosts do, but require timing to pull off.

Bhawb.7408:

Dhuumfire was different. People wanted burning, not nearly permanent burning and 4 different damaging conditions all on an auto attack. Current Dhuumfire isn’t an issue at all, and it is still burning, because burning wasn’t the issue, the implementation was.

We’re not giving generic solutions though. We are giving very specific ones that Anet can’t screw up the implementation of unless they change what we have said to do. And our specific changes are shown in game right at this very moment to work. Passive HP/armor have already shown themselves not to work, and active defenses simply do the same thing that HP/armor boosts do, but require timing to pull off.

And I’ve seen how passive immunities in other games dramatically hinder gameplay. Even in GW1 and GW2. And requiring timing to offset an intentional weakness is a GOOD THING! And condi still needs quite a bit of work. Its not at all at where it needs to be. Most of your guys’s solutions are great. I agree with them. Your defensive solutions are not. These will lead to bad design. Not might, not could, will.

As much as I think passive immunities in an active game like GW2 are a bane, unless they perform some sort of AI/control/system overhaul, I don’t see how else to solve the problem of pets dying as easily as they seem to based on the descriptions above. I’d still love to see videos of the pets in action against coordinated teams just so I can say I’ve seen it.

My hope would be that, IF passive immunity was granted to pets, the active changes would be substantial enough to make it so pet usage is integral and counterable. I really think the amount of passive damage summoned things do should be negligible, and the active should be repeatable on some cooldown, with a tell to match. Nothing should automatically CC, or automatically shoot a net, or anything utility-wise. If they can simply remove passive action components of all types of minions, I think you can much more easily justify things like passive condi-damage immunity.

Passive defenses for players are bad, I’d readily admit that. But all that active defenses for minions do is force me to pro-actively defend my minions from my opponent’s passive actions. A 2.5k shield when I go into DS doesn’t protect my minions from meaningful opponent action, since my opponents aren’t aiming at them anyway.

Not that active defenses have no place, but they can’t substitute for minions simply dying to random, accidental damage. This is the only thing that currently works in the game, it works right now, and unless they recode other parts of the game nothing else can come close.

Cogbyrn.7283:

As much as I think passive immunities in an active game like GW2 are a bane, unless they perform some sort of AI/control/system overhaul, I don’t see how else to solve the problem of pets dying as easily as they seem to based on the descriptions above. I’d still love to see videos of the pets in action against coordinated teams just so I can say I’ve seen it.

My hope would be that, IF passive immunity was granted to pets, the active changes would be substantial enough to make it so pet usage is integral and counterable. I really think the amount of passive damage summoned things do should be negligible, and the active should be repeatable on some cooldown, with a tell to match. Nothing should automatically CC, or automatically shoot a net, or anything utility-wise. If they can simply remove passive action components of all types of minions, I think you can much more easily justify things like passive condi-damage immunity.

Well my (later) more preferred idea would be Burning/Crit immunity and 50% duration reduction on other conditions. That’s far more forgiving, and should really net in a slower but more stable death rate among all enemies and still allow players to kill them directly without much struggle, if that’s what they choose to do, most times killing pets isn’t even necessary, it just sort of happens. So in a way, this is just fixing an issue that plagues them keeping them from even being competitive. (Also remember this comes with a net reduced HP total)

Beyond that, I did touch on reducing basic damage. It definitely doesn’t need to be shruggable. The amount that MMs invest in pets is enormous. In fact, thats part of the joy of MM is that the necromancer itself plays almost as a controller while you allow your pets to function properly. However, I do agree in shifting more of that damage to the pets active instead, but not all of it and their damage certainly doesn’t need to be gutted. That’d do more harm than good for the build.

As for tells, yeah, not for the shadow fiend though and explosive rat. A simple blind or even blind field if traited should have no issues being instant, there are so many instant blinds in this game its insane, one allowing a necromancer to stomp once in a while wouldn’t be a game ender. Rigor mortis is negotiable. It does need a tell, but the charge currently is a bit too long, it doesn’t need to be more than a 1 second charge and has the “purple chain body” tell. The missile for the immob could possibly be a bit more noticeable. Charge needs less of an actual cast since it took many many nerfs recently, it hardly holds a flame to what it used to be capable of. The cast time isn’t needed and inconsistent with other pet abilities, but even if it was kept, maybe reduced to a .5 second. Regardless of cast time (which people rarely can tell the difference of between it and other necromancer attacks) he still gets dodged very frequently. Part of which, is his own stupidity, he gets stuck on pebbles a LOT, but either way, 1.5 sec for a not so easy to aim knockdown is just too much.

Also worth mentioning, we already have active defense for minions with Transfusion. Even with that, I’ve had minions die while being healed by a cleric build.

Bhawb.7408:

Also worth mentioning, we already have active defense for minions with Transfusion. Even with that, I’ve had minions die while being healed by a cleric build.

healing is garbage in this game and consider the fact that giving minions a way to take little or not damage, even if it would be the same amount as transfusion it would be far far better. Proactive vs reactive. Proactive will always win out. Which is what I was suggesting.

I actually run a MM build with axe/horn on my necro. Sure its not the “best” (aka the meta) but kitten if it is hard for me to die. I got to watch the whole field of players die at a WB while i remained at 90% hp thanks to minions pulling hp from mobs and removing my condis.

Anirri.4156:

I actually run a MM build with axe/horn on my necro. Sure its not the “best” (aka the meta) but kitten if it is hard for me to die. I got to watch the whole field of players die at a WB while i remained at 90% hp thanks to minions pulling hp from mobs and removing my condis.

Oh, this is mostly aimed for PvP and WvW as far as the issues go, and maybe a little bit dungeons. PvE MMs (generally speaking) probably wouldn’t change too much, except maybe some slight changes here and there.

Over the years, Bawb. We’ve talked back and forth quite a bit. You’ve offered to have me on your podcast. Out of all that time we haven’t agreed on much. I think SoV being one of the only things we have. So I’m just going to agree to disagree with you. I still very much respect your opinion and I hope you feel the same way.

I hope we actually get to talk more on the subject of the necromancer. Perhaps in game so its not so impersonal. Over all, I do really like your guys’s post and despite my minor disagreement on part of it, its over all a great read. You guys did put a lot of thought into this and I respect that.

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing. It has sparked far more discussion about this topic than ever would happen if everyone just agreed, and it gives ANet far more feedback to work with. The offer to come on the podcast always stands, we should be starting back up once the expansion’s release date and Necromancer changes are a bit more formalized, and of course I always enjoy talking in game, where things end up being a bit more friendly and less argumentative.

At the end of the day, a few pages of disagreement helps out everyone far more than if it didn’t exist in the first place.

Thanks, Lily. I don’t mind disagreement, its the only way to see new perspectives. In fact, my own has changed just here with the “lighter” defense alternative that I was discussing earlier, and among other things. I think it really just comes down to perspectives and preferences, which is totally fine, they’ll never align 100%.

Unfortunately, I take a slightly “easier” or cop-out way of handling the situation (which I personally still would be a completely fair and honest change) instead of a huge rehaul alternative, simply because I realize that resources are limited as is and MM is only a single build, but secondly, it’s not a very popular class to play and it’s not a very favored enemy in battle (due to it having AI), and really no way you handle this will that likely change. But either way, it was great to have you in the discussion!

ronpierce.2760:

Thanks, Lily. I don’t mind disagreement, its the only way to see new perspectives. In fact, my own has changed just here with the “lighter” defense alternative that I was discussing earlier, and among other things. I think it really just comes down to perspectives and preferences, which is totally fine, they’ll never align 100%.

Unfortunately, I take a slightly “easier” or cop-out way of handling the situation (which I personally still would be a completely fair and honest change) instead of a huge rehaul alternative, simply because I realize that resources are limited as is and MM is only a single build, but secondly, it’s not a very popular class to play and it’s not a very favored enemy in battle (due to it having AI), and really no way you handle this will that likely change. But either way, it was great to have you in the discussion!

Bhawb.7408:

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing. It has sparked far more discussion about this topic than ever would happen if everyone just agreed, and it gives ANet far more feedback to work with. The offer to come on the podcast always stands, we should be starting back up once the expansion’s release date and Necromancer changes are a bit more formalized, and of course I always enjoy talking in game, where things end up being a bit more friendly and less argumentative.

At the end of the day, a few pages of disagreement helps out everyone far more than if it didn’t exist in the first place.

Yep yep. I’ll be sure to work on getting over my speaking phobia. its something I struggle with and I’m too intimidated to even talk with my guild at the moment so that’s got to be first.

Also, we are going to be getting a lot of major changes with the expansion as well. Plus I’ve heard about Anet hiring someone to help with their AI to improve PvE encounters mostly, but Minions fall in the AI problems. And Minions aren’t the only ones who suffer this problem. Who knows, fixing the AI might go much further then any of us think. I’m anticipating changes for the basic necromancer as well as the necromancer specialization for the expansion. Until the expansion comes out, discussion on balancing old skills internally will be limited thanks to the addition of close to 10 new professions.

I look forward to talking with you guys in the future. I have some really cool ideas floating around in my head. One of which involves summoning as a whole. Not just for Necromancer as it isn’t really a viable strategy in PvE and I’d like to see it shine there for not just necromancer, but Guardians, engineers and other professions as well.

I have to say, this thread is a great example of why I love the Necromancer forums: we might be a cynical bunch, but we are very civil to each other, even when we disagree.

Will make my job easier once profession forum specialists start, that’s for sure.

Thanks you guys for starting this thread, I’ve read it with interest and I really think the solutions proposed here would help make MM more viable in high-level pvp, as well as raising the skill floor a bit so it’s not as overpowering at lower skill levels.

ronpierce.2760:

Unfortunately, I take a slightly “easier” or cop-out way of handling the situation (which I personally still would be a completely fair and honest change) instead of a huge rehaul alternative, simply because I realize that resources are limited as is and MM is only a single build, but secondly, it’s not a very popular class to play and it’s not a very favored enemy in battle (due to it having AI), and really no way you handle this will that likely change. But either way, it was great to have you in the discussion!

I get it, and I think the solutions you guys proposed would work well in the short term, but I personally would like to see a more fundamental overhaul in the medium term. (Whatever “medium term” is for GW2, where balance patches come 6 months apart.) I’ve got my own ideas for such an overhaul, which I’m not gonna post in here cause this thread is already massive, but I would like to point out that pet classes are in general very popular in MMOs, and MMs were particularly popular in PvE in GW1. So it’s probably the case that the reason it’s not popular is specifically because its mechanics are so awkward and it’s in such desperate need for an overhaul! ANet shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s not worth wasting resources on, as it’s a playstyle with potential and people would respond if they put in the effort to improve it. If you summon them, they will come!

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I have to say, this thread is a great example of why I love the Necromancer forums: we might be a cynical bunch, but we are very civil to each other, even when we disagree.

Very true. I hope devs read this forum, people like the OP are basically doing half their job for them!

I don’t have any specifics yet. But flesh of the master might be able to include some sort of Resistance boon for active minions with some sort of trigger. I’d have to consider it further, but resistance as a boon really opens options for dealing with conditions on pets.

I’m not sure about resistance, simply because as far as I know it fully turns off the effects of all conditions during its duration. Meaning it would also remove movement slowing effects, making minions harder to kite.

It could be a good example of what Lily was talking about with active defense though.

hmm if it IS a form of active defense however we could go further than we could with passive defense. Its also something that can be stripped off. It has direct counterplay. So with this we could make it stronger than otherwise. Im still worried that unless we had hte ability to apply it specifically to minions fairly frequently it wouldn’t do anything besides be another (delay the inevitable by 4 seconds) as far as condis go.

Shadelang.3012:

hmm if it IS a form of active defense however we could go further than we could with passive defense. Its also something that can be stripped off. It has direct counterplay. So with this we could make it stronger than otherwise. Im still worried that unless we had hte ability to apply it specifically to minions fairly frequently it wouldn’t do anything besides be another (delay the inevitable by 4 seconds) as far as condis go.

Yeah, it was just an idea of an active measure. But I agree, the situation is so dire though, that it’d have to be… PRETTY potent to make any amount of real difference.

And like Bhawb said. Its weird because it does stop a lot of the CC countering that is expected as a minion master. I still feel very confident in my revised decision, I think it would make for the best overall change.

Immunity to crits/burning, and 50% reduced condi duration, but with lower health from the removal of the HP boost on the trait. Basic power builds would still kill them at a normal rate. Zerker would kill them slightly slower (intentional) but still at a decent rate. And conditions would be able to aoe/whither them down and not be hit with full immunities, and CCs would all still work. I feel its honestly the best fit overall. But regardless, I wanted to bring it up as another option because SOMETHING really has to be done. They’re far too weak to AOE as it stands that it keeps them from being realistically playable.

Hmm. MMancers survive largely through debilitation. Weakness,Chill,Cripple,and Immob. And possibly in the future slow. (If MMancer build can cross over into the specialization..) with a boon appearing that negates that (even for a few moments) Im really worried about our PERSONAL survivability even after the minions get fixed. But that may be a worry for another time.

MM can also bring a good bit of boon removal as well, via Axe/Focus. However that is also very likely to be dropped in favor of GS if we like the specialization, and we can’t afford to take the traited sources of boon removal either.

Aye. necromantic corruption looks good to inexperienced necros. But further examination and practice with the build shows how unreliable it is. And other boon removal options are too far out of the way and cause us to give up core traits we NEED in order to actually maintain the playstyle itself.

Like the difference between a Minion Mancer and a “necro with minion utilities”

Unless. With the incoming changes to boons. Such as the stability change and the switch to resistance.

Do you think making it so that necromantic corruption cuased each pet attack to remove .5 seconds from the boon duration on all active boons?

So. Necromantic Corruption : Attacks from the necromancers minions reduce the duration of all active boons on a target by 0.5 seconds per attack. It has direct counterplay and won’t act as an unavoidable hard counter

In combination with the other changes I BELIEVE that would make them a viable method of countering boons. Which gives us a choice between going for healing negation with death nova or making sure our soft ccs work with necromantic corruption. Enabling us to strip defenses over time OR work against there recovery ability.

I agree with suggestion, thought I would like minion to actually teleport to the enemy prior to dying and applying the poison field instead of dying on the spot and leaving an unused field where you have to kite the enemy to that particular spot. I also would agree to take that 25% decrease in auto attack dps in favor of more control over the minions. I just restarted running MM after running a few builds including the meta powermancer build and MM seems like my personal favorite.

Shadelang.3012:

Do you think making it so that necromantic corruption cuased each pet attack to remove .5 seconds from the boon duration on all active boons?

My problem with this is that it is counter to the “more play” thing we’re going for. It also directly conflicts with Death Nova, which is such a major trait.

CodeHavoc.7926:

I agree with suggestion, thought I would like minion to actually teleport to the enemy prior to dying and applying the poison field instead of dying on the spot and leaving an unused field where you have to kite the enemy to that particular spot.

This isn’t good. There is supposed to be counterplay against Death Nova, which is over 100% poison uptime and pretty big direct damage.

I see what you mean. Possibly tying them into the active abilities would be more applicable to the theme of your rework. But forget that for now. Boons have always been a peeve of mine as a MM necro so I hate seeing that trait go to waste.

Other than that there isn’t much left I have to say on this matter. Other than thank you for putting this much work into it. And I hope the Reds see this.

ronpierce.2760:

I don’t have any specifics yet. But flesh of the master might be able to include some sort of Resistance boon for active minions with some sort of trigger. I’d have to consider it further, but resistance as a boon really opens options for dealing with conditions on pets.

How about this:
“Flesh of the Master: when one of your minions is killed by anything other than a sacrifice skill, you and your minions gain 5” Retaliation and 5" Resistance"
I honestly feel that Retaliation on minions is better than making them harder to kill. The delta in direct damage-dealing capabilities between zerker builds and bunker builds in this game means that if you make minions too durable some classes will just get hard-countered by minionmancers. But giving them retaliation instead of just making them tough as nails basically gives your opponent a choice: Sure, you can still 1-shot 4 minions with a Dragon’s Tooth, but they’ll take half your health with them. The fact that minions have varying degrees of health (and that some of them are ranged so they’re not all clustered together) should prevent against htem all dying simultaneously and thereby wasting the trait proc, and Resistance should prevent them from being burned to death and also wasting the trait proc (since condition damage doesn’t proc retaliation).

Of course, the REAL solution would be to reduce recharge times. That way, even if they all die, you just need to survive 10" and summon them again. Except on Bone Minions obviously – if you reduce their recharge time you’ll have infinite Death Novas on tap! The point is to acknowledge that minions die easily to aoe, and to make it so that their death is a setback for the master, but not an automatic GG, rather than to force the master to invest in a bunch of traits to prevent them from dying. Lower recharge times to resummon them would accomplish that automatically. Once you’ve got that, then you can introduce traits by which the necromancer can (optionally) benefit from their deaths, such as Death Nova or the Flesh of the Master rework I suggested above. The keyword is optionally: the minions should still be usable without a trait tax! If I want to take Greater Marks or Reaper’s Protection in that master trait slot instead, I should be able to. My minions won’t hurt people as much, but I’ll have other advantages.

Necro minions and Guardian spirit weapons are the only utility skills that demand so much trait investment before you can take them anywhere. I understand that this is in part because having a pet running around giving you a completely passive damage boost is kind of a big deal, but a utility skill has to be at the very least VIABLE (not top-tier, just viable!) without any trait investment, otherwise we’re back in Guild Wars 1 where some skills just weren’t worth slotting in at all until you had at least X points in its attribute. I think lowering recharge times with a bit of a nerf to autoattack dps like you suggested would make minions viable without compulsory taxing traits without making them OP.

Oh, and if you want more ideas of COMPLETELY OPTIONAL traits benefiting from minion death, how about:
Training of the Master (Spite, master major): When one of your minions dies, you and 5 allies within 600 gain 5 stacks Might, 10"
Necromantic Corruption (Death, grandmaster major): when one of your minions dies, create a Well of Corruption at its location. (5" duration, 10" ICD, which might seem short but remember, it’ll be pretty useless for ranged minions, and unless this manages to corrupt something really good in the one pulse your enemy will be standing in it it will do far less damage than a Death Nova)
Unquiet Dead (death, grandmaster major): when one of your minions is killed, create two Jagged Horrors at your location. (Might not seem anywhere near as good as Death nova at first glance, but in a team fight with lots of aoe this can create a snowball effect, and even if the jaggies never make it to the enemy either, they could be overloading the enemy’s 5-target limit so you and your teammates don’t get hit instead. “Is killed” rather than “dies” so you can’t start the snowball yourself by blowing something up, and so jaggies naturally degenerating don’t endlessly recycle themselves)
Deathly Vigor (blood, grandmaster major): when one of your minions is killed, you and surrounding allies are healed for 10% of its original health pool (again, “is killed” to prevent endless healing cycles from degenerating jaggies; this trait would, of course, also heal other minions if no other player allies are close enough).

Just some ideas of how you can reap a little benefit from minions getting killed, but, like I said, for these traits to be good, the minion skill itself has to be viable (not good, but viable) even if it’s untraited, and the only way to do that is to lower passive dps and reduce recharge times on resummoning them.

Just a note, Well of Suffering is just damage and vulnerability. Well of Corruption is the boon stripper.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Just a note, Well of Suffering is just damage and vulnerability. Well of Corruption is the boon stripper.

You’re right, I did mean Corruption! I’ll edit my post.

manveruppd.7601:

Snip for length.

The problem with your suggested (original) Flesh of the Master is that you’d be exchanging 50% HP for a means to avoid conditions, but zerker builds would even more-so tear through them at that point. They’d need a passive health boost (which frankly, wouldnt be a bad idea because at this point in sPVP they’re paper without flesh of the master, if they already aren’t WITH it). I think it could be time to lessen the pvp versus pve HP gap. That said, I like the thought of it, though I’d go for sacrifices too, and reduce it to 4 seconds. I think having a little bit of “on demand” would do us good, otherwise it’ll only come when they’re too low to recover from anyways. Plus having more “boons to pets, but not anyone else” would be an interesting way to utilize the boon boost we get from death magic without making US a “boon class”. (Oh, I forgot, don’t have it apply to the master, just pets). I honestly wish they’d merge a lot of minion traits so that they could possibly reduce their passive damages a bit more, buff their on-uses and allow the master to take traits that make them not completely useless without pets.

The new boon and mechanics could be used in fixing the issues MM has, but frankly, a lot needs to be done overall and I’m just not really convinced they’re interested at this point. I also think this came at a bad time. They’re obviously tied up with Rev and specializations, so perhaps this would be better discussed after the dust settles, but ANY type of quick-fix for our AI issues and AOE weakness would be great to tie us over. Those two things really need fixed the fastest.

@manveruppt:
Unquiet dead sounds so good you’d be sure that it’d come with a cd or low max minion count…basically nerfed into oblivion. If, by chance, it wasn’t nerfed, this would seem to be a good trait. Imagine if there were so many jagged horrors out that some survive long enough to actually hit a target in a team fight. This is assuming they allow 2 jagged horrors to spawn off of 1 that was killed. Shame about losing death nova though…imagine the carnage…Mwhahahahaaa….and that’s why it’ll never happen.

ronpierce.2760:

manveruppd.7601:

Snip for length.

The problem with your suggested (original) Flesh of the Master is that you’d be exchanging 50% HP for a means to avoid conditions, but zerker builds would even more-so tear through them at that point. They’d need a passive health boost (which frankly, wouldnt be a bad idea because at this point in sPVP they’re paper without flesh of the master, if they already aren’t WITH it).

Oh I totally agree: baseline health boost somewhere betweeen 25-50% in pvp is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to make minions viable. So basically making Flesh of the Master in its current form baseline. I loathe “goodenough traits”, ie. traits that you just have to take before the utility skill you want to slot in is even good enough to consider taking (like back when Rangers had to take a grandmaster to make the actives on signet skills apply to them rather than just their pets – blatant trait tax). They’re incredibly lazy design.
The same goes for Training of the Master (in its current form obviously, not the replacement I suggested), but since I agree with you about toning down the autoattack damage of minions, I think the trait should just be scrapped in its current form, and a baseline damage increase to the minion active skills become standard.

That said, I like the thought of it, though I’d go for sacrifices too, and reduce it to 4 seconds. I think having a little bit of “on demand” would do us good, otherwise it’ll only come when they’re too low to recover from anyways. Plus having more “boons to pets, but not anyone else” would be an interesting way to utilize the boon boost we get from death magic without making US a “boon class”. (Oh, I forgot, don’t have it apply to the master, just pets).

Yeah, making it proc on sacrifice could work if it didn’t boon up the master as well. I like the idea of being able to sacrifice a pet to buff the rest. Plus on second thoughts resistance on an already tanky necro on every pet death would be way OP! :p My original thinking on that was that a boon like that could open up zerker amulet for MMs, giving them a small window of condi immunity every time one of their pets got killed, plus better access to retaliation. But proccing on every minion death would give the necro perma-resistance. What if it had a 10" ICD? Or if it only gave retaliation to the necro? Would that work?

Plexxing.2978:

@manveruppt:
Unquiet dead sounds so good you’d be sure that it’d come with a cd or low max minion count…basically nerfed into oblivion. If, by chance, it wasn’t nerfed, this would seem to be a good trait. Imagine if there were so many jagged horrors out that some survive long enough to actually hit a target in a team fight. This is assuming they allow 2 jagged horrors to spawn off of 1 that was killed. Shame about losing death nova though…imagine the carnage…Mwhahahahaaa….and that’s why it’ll never happen.

Yeah it can totally see how it could steamroll out of control. I think an ICD would defeat the point (the point being all your minions dying simultaneously to a scepter ele’s aoe), but a limit on jaggies could work. Personally I was undecided between the version I posted and “utility skill minions” only proccing the trait, so the jaggies could NEVER recycle themselves, whether they kill or die naturally, but in the end I decided there would never be any reason to pick that over Death Nova.

manveruppd.7601:

How about this:
“Flesh of the Master: when one of your minions is killed by anything other than a sacrifice skill, you and your minions gain 5” Retaliation and 5" Resistance"
I honestly feel that Retaliation on minions is better than making them harder to kill. The delta in direct damage-dealing capabilities between zerker builds and bunker builds in this game means that if you make minions too durable some classes will just get hard-countered by minionmancers. But giving them retaliation instead of just making them tough as nails basically gives your opponent a choice: Sure, you can still 1-shot 4 minions with a Dragon’s Tooth, but they’ll take half your health with them. The fact that minions have varying degrees of health (and that some of them are ranged so they’re not all clustered together) should prevent against htem all dying simultaneously and thereby wasting the trait proc, and Resistance should prevent them from being burned to death and also wasting the trait proc (since condition damage doesn’t proc retaliation).

Zerker and bunker wouldn’t have any difference in damage in our setup. Even Carrion would be relatively close to Zerker, since they have fairly close power stats. That is actually the main point of the no-crit suggestion. Giving them a ton of retaliation makes it super punishing against professions that rely on AoE skills, remember the mesmer build that instantly kills a guardian if they use one ability?

manveruppd.7601:

Of course, the REAL solution would be to reduce recharge times. That way, even if they all die, you just need to survive 10" and summon them again. Except on Bone Minions obviously – if you reduce their recharge time you’ll have infinite Death Novas on tap! The point is to acknowledge that minions die easily to aoe, and to make it so that their death is a setback for the master, but not an automatic GG, rather than to force the master to invest in a bunch of traits to prevent them from dying. Lower recharge times to resummon them would accomplish that automatically. Once you’ve got that, then you can introduce traits by which the necromancer can (optionally) benefit from their deaths, such as Death Nova or the Flesh of the Master rework I suggested above. The keyword is optionally: the minions should still be usable without a trait tax! If I want to take Greater Marks or Reaper’s Protection in that master trait slot instead, I should be able to. My minions won’t hurt people as much, but I’ll have other advantages.

Lowered CDs lowers one major point of counterplay, and that is being able to kill them. Minions being dead is a big point of counterplay to the build.

manveruppd.7601:

a utility skill has to be at the very least VIABLE (not top-tier, just viable!) without any trait investment

Agreed. Although I would argue that everything but Blood Fiend is currently or could easily (with small changes to it or other skills) be made to be viable. Flesh Golem/Flesh Wurm are obvious. Shadow Fiend with an animation reduction would be an amazing way to secure stomps. Bone Minions are our best non-WoC burst, plus could be good sources of blast finisher if we got better fields going. And Bone Fiend with an AA reset would be great for CC and holding people inside stuff like wells.

manveruppd.7601:

traits snip

Interesting ideas, although I generally think having on-death minion traits isn’t great. The healing one is actually pretty cool though, for support.

Bhawb.7408:

manveruppd.7601:

How about this:
“Flesh of the Master: when one of your minions is killed by anything other than a sacrifice skill, you and your minions gain 5” Retaliation and 5" Resistance"

Zerker and bunker wouldn’t have any difference in damage in our setup. Even Carrion would be relatively close to Zerker, since they have fairly close power stats.

No Bhawb, you’re comparing unequal things. The math is lying to you! Yes, a non-critical hit with skill X from weapon Y from someone in carrion gear will do 75% the damage of someone in zerker gear, and from someone in rabid it will do 50% of the damage of zerker gear.
Get this though: power builds and condi builds don’t use the same weapons! When was the last time you saw a bunker guardian holding a scepter? Or a carrion necro with a mainhand dagger? They’ll be using different weapons, therefore different skills with different scalings! The power scaling of Dragon’s Tooth (ele scepter 2 in fire) is 2.25 – but of Grasping Dead (necro scepter 2) is 0.7! Guardian’s scepter 2 has a whopping 4.9 scaling!
So yeah, a rabid scepter ele will do 50% of the damage a zerker scepter ele will do with their scepter 2 skill, but a a rabid necro using THEIR scepter 2 will only do, like 15% or something?? (arithmetic may be approximate) That’s basically making minions completely immune to a build! COMPLETELY!
There’s some exceptions – both rabid and celestial engis use nades, so they’ll have the same scaling, and, although the celestial build stacks might better, skill-for-skill rabid does half the damage of celestial.
But tbh my main problem with your suggestion isn’t how tough you’re making the minions: it’s that, without the trait, they’re just as vulnerable as they are now! This would make your revised trait just as compulsory as Flesh of the Master is now.

That is actually the main point of the no-crit suggestion. Giving them a ton of retaliation makes it super punishing against professions that rely on AoE skills, remember the mesmer build that instantly kills a guardian if they use one ability?

That was a bug: halting strike would proc repeatedly off durational skills. Wasn’t just guardians, I did it on an ele too.

Lowered CDs lowers one major point of counterplay, and that is being able to kill them. Minions being dead is a big point of counterplay to the build.

Well, I’m not saying zero cooldown obviously, but lowered to something that doesn’t make the MM completely useless. And actually, you KNOW that the best tactic against a MM is to focus the master rather than the minions – I’ve seen you giving that advice to people on the pvp forum. And you’ve repeatedly said in this thread that the problem with minions dying isn’t so much that they get focussed down, it’s that they die incidentally from aoe while the enemy is targetting the necro. So you can’t really call it counterplay if it happens by accident!
I do agree to an extent though, but I believe the need for this counterplay would decrease if the autoattack damage of the minions was nerfed, as you and Sikari already suggested in the OP.

manveruppd.7601:

a utility skill has to be at the very least VIABLE (not top-tier, just viable!) without any trait investment

Agreed. Although I would argue that everything but Blood Fiend is currently or could easily (with small changes to it or other skills) be made to be viable. Flesh Golem/Flesh Wurm are obvious.

Golem and Wurm are pretty tough by default, yeah, though the Wurm owes its survivability to being placed way outside trouble in the first place :p But come on, would you take bone minions untraited? They can literally be one-shot by some skills, even non-critting, and you don’t even need to be a zerker to do it!

Shadow Fiend with an animation reduction would be an amazing way to secure stomps. Bone Minions are our best non-WoC burst, plus could be good sources of blast finisher if we got better fields going. And Bone Fiend with an AA reset would be great for CC and holding people inside stuff like wells.

Yes, I completely agree, which is why what I want is for these utility skills to be become viable without having to take 2 master-level traits for them!

Basically, we need to stop thinking of them as completely passive damage boosts, and start thinking of them as utility skills which you can only use while your pets are alive! So, really, THE PET ACTIVE is your REAL utility skill, not the minion itself! This predicates a complete rebalance:
1. the passive bonuses your pets give you has to be negligible-to-mediocre, hence lower autoattack damage, and
2. if being able to use the active is gated by the pet being alive, the death of the pets must not be as crippling a setback as it is now, hence lowered resummon cooldowns.

I made a Necromancer to be a MM recently. Minions spend 9/10 fights doing nothing at all.

Just completely broken AI… This is in all circumstances, including straight up fights, where there have been no pathing issues or anything.

I’ve had my Flesh Golem in WvW just stand next to an enemy doing nothing while I fight them.

So I’ve given up on minions entirely:

Their damage is rubbish, they’re squishy and most of the time don’t work at all.

(This is in a PvE / WvW scenario.)

Give me back something like a GW1 MM please. However I don’t think Anet care that a major facet of a profession is broken.

Methuselah.6821:

I made a Necromancer to be a MM recently. Minions spend 9/10 fights doing nothing at all.

Just completely broken AI… This is in all circumstances, including straight up fights, where there have been no pathing issues or anything.

I’ve had my Flesh Golem in WvW just stand next to an enemy doing nothing while I fight them.

So I’ve given up on minions entirely:

Their damage is rubbish, they’re squishy and most of the time don’t work at all.

(This is in a PvE / WvW scenario.)

Give me back something like a GW1 MM please. However I don’t think Anet care that a major facet of a profession is broken.

This is essentially the primary point of this thread. They’re not just “unviable” at the moment. They’re broken, and have been for a while. It doesn’t look good on a finished game and build to have entire skill types not work a huge chunk of the time due to horrible pathing errors and so on. Their weakness to AOE just adds to the insult more than anything. On top of that they’re riddled with clunky and slow reaction active abilities. It’s a shame, really.

manveruppd.7601:

Get this though: power builds and condi builds don’t use the same weapons! When was the last time you saw a bunker guardian holding a scepter? Or a carrion necro with a mainhand dagger? They’ll be using different weapons, therefore different skills with different scalings! The power scaling of Dragon’s Tooth (ele scepter 2 in fire) is 2.25 – but of Grasping Dead (necro scepter 2) is 0.7! Guardian’s scepter 2 has a whopping 4.9 scaling!

This heavily depends on build. A bunker Warrior will do the same damage as a glass one, a bunker ele will be the same, and this is relatively true in many other cases as well, because they equip similar weapons. Obviously condition builds will deal less direct damage to the minions, and that’s fine because they are going to have better kiting potential. In general a condition build wouldn’t want to waste the time to kill one anyway, that is a lot of wasted condition pressure just to kill a single minion.

manveruppd.7601:

But tbh my main problem with your suggestion isn’t how tough you’re making the minions: it’s that, without the trait, they’re just as vulnerable as they are now! This would make your revised trait just as compulsory as Flesh of the Master is now.

Flesh of the Master isn’t compulsory to run a minion. Flesh Golem, Flesh Wurm, and Bone Minions in general can be used without HP traiting in a normal build without issue. If they die they die, its not such a big deal to a normal build, and they are used for their utility. Shadow Fiend and Bone Fiend with the proposed changes would also be worth using in normal builds. Also we are proposing a 20% HP boost without traiting.

manveruppd.7601:

That was a bug: halting strike would proc repeatedly off durational skills. Wasn’t just guardians, I did it on an ele too.

The exact bug doesn’t matter, hitting 5 targets with heavy amounts of retaliation will absolutely hammer you with damage, and many builds rely on AoE attacks, even to hit a single target. If it was tied to something the MM had to intelligently activate and time (like, watch the DPS guard come in, activate AoE retal, laugh while guard spams AoE like an idiot) I’d be fine with it. My issue is more them just getting a bunch of random buffs from dying. Death Nova already covers the punishing of killing well on its own, and it has a lot of play with the rest of the kit.

manveruppd.7601:

Well, I’m not saying zero cooldown obviously, but lowered to something that doesn’t make the MM completely useless. And actually, you KNOW that the best tactic against a MM is to focus the master rather than the minions – I’ve seen you giving that advice to people on the pvp forum. And you’ve repeatedly said in this thread that the problem with minions dying isn’t so much that they get focussed down, it’s that they die incidentally from aoe while the enemy is targetting the necro. So you can’t really call it counterplay if it happens by accident!
I do agree to an extent though, but I believe the need for this counterplay would decrease if the autoattack damage of the minions was nerfed, as you and Sikari already suggested in the OP.

I guess specific CDs could be argued in some cases, because this would only really affect Shadow Fiend/Bone Fiend/Flesh Golem, the other minions have actives that are tied to their death and couldn’t be lowered. But for those three, yeah I think you might have a point to lowering CDs.

manveruppd.7601:

Golem and Wurm are pretty tough by default, yeah, though the Wurm owes its survivability to being placed way outside trouble in the first place :p But come on, would you take bone minions untraited? They can literally be one-shot by some skills, even non-critting, and you don’t even need to be a zerker to do it!

Actually yes, I would, if we had any decent fields to combo them with. On non-MM builds it isn’t at all a big deal to leave them unsummoned when not needed and summon them specifically to combo with a field/deal burst damage.

manveruppd.7601:

Basically, we need to stop thinking of them as completely passive damage boosts, and start thinking of them as utility skills which you can only use while your pets are alive! So, really, THE PET ACTIVE is your REAL utility skill, not the minion itself! This predicates a complete rebalance:
1. the passive bonuses your pets give you has to be negligible-to-mediocre, hence lower autoattack damage, and
2. if being able to use the active is gated by the pet being alive, the death of the pets must not be as crippling a setback as it is now, hence lowered resummon cooldowns.

We basically agree here, so yeah.