Guild Wars 2

the minions would work and not stand still while i fight. The Flesh Golem is the worst of all. He looks nice but 75% of all fights he does nothing.

I have a Death Magic build that could work pretty well if all minions would attack my target and heal me instead of doing nothing.

i found out how to get 99% agro and tank for my pets using Dagger/Focus. the heals i get per minion hit is not much but if all minions would work it could be a good build for solo pve. Also the small life siphon works ok with a fast dagger.

Also +50% HP for Minions works wonders, they often survive a Veteran with almost full HP if i manage it to taunt the MOB´s on me. The Area DS Heal also helps every 35sec.

Death Magic could be awesome if the Minions AI wouldnt be broken…..

Now add Minion HP regen and fix their crappy AI, pathing and Necro would be on the same Level as Warriors, Guardians, Rangers in PvE. The resummon cooldowns are to long even with 20% reduction. i dont want to wait longer than 8 seconds to recast a pet. currently 16 sec is the fastest…

Well builds could be nice too but their long cooldown and only 900 Range isnt good enough for me in WvW.

I also wonder why my characters stats dont influent all my Minions.
Some of my Toughness, Precicion, Power and Vitality should transfer to my Minions to make them more individual. If i want more Tanky Minions i stack Toughness , if i want more criticals i just Stack precicion. the pets could get 10-20% of my stats. That would help alot.

All togheter in WvW that all wouldnt change much because the pets die in 5 sec with or without extra Stats anyways….

Yeah, Necro minions even after whatever fixes come for AI are going to suffer in extreme ways to scaling later on. Hopefully they have more than a band-aid worked out for that. It has only been a major issue with every Necro in every MMO that has had Necro… And even a bunch of single player RPGs… Minions no scale. No one cares. People mad. Rant on forums. Six months later plan to make up for minion scaling is announced. Farm for 15,000 hours to get a weapon that summons you another pet that doesn’t scale, BUT IS AWSOME FOR THE TIME BEING.

Sorry having flashbacks.

Tuccos.8592:

Now add Minion HP regen and fix their crappy AI, pathing and Necro would be on the same Level as Warriors, Guardians, Rangers in PvE. The resummon cooldowns are to long even with 20% reduction. i dont want to wait longer than 8 seconds to recast a pet. currently 16 sec is the fastest…

I also wonder why my characters stats dont influent all my Minions.
Some of my Toughness, Precicion, Power and Vitality should transfer to my Minions to make them more individual. If i want more Tanky Minions i stack Toughness , if i want more criticals i just Stack precicion. the pets could get 10-20% of my stats. That would help alot.

All togheter in WvW that all wouldnt change much because the pets die in 5 sec with or without extra Stats anyways….

An 8 second cooldown on ANY minion summon would be OP. At most the minions (as far as cooldown goes) could maybe use the minion master trait to reduce the cooldown on minion active abilities (rigor mortis, ect).

Minions don’t scale with stats for two reasons:
1. That’s the ranger pet shtick
2. When Anet tried it they found that minions were simply too strong on non-minion focused builds.

WvWvW doesn’t matter for class balancing.

striker.3704:

2. When Anet tried it they found that minions were simply too strong on non-minion focused builds.

This is blatant kittenery. Preventing minions from being too powerful would be as simple as making two traits in MM focus 20 and 30 required for scaling. Tardswaggle. Don’t make stuff up and offer it as advice. That’s not fair to people who don’t know any better.

I don’t play a Necro but I played one a lot during guildwars one. I loved the Necro in guildwars one, because of being a minion master. Don’t get me wrong I am a huge fan of Epidemic necros, but minion master will always hold a place in my heart.

Pet’s in general right now do need a good looking at, the main issue I have is that AOE damage in this game from a pve dungeon perspective, is just too high for minions to cope with in general. Not to mention the poor AI for necros where a good fair few minions will just sit by while the fight is going on, and with no clear way to push them in to becoming active just adds to the frustration.

Minion masters should have meat shields, that,s what the pets are there for after all, not to be huge damage, not to be utility tools, but more of a control system, reducing enemy hits by taking the hits for the group.

Another issue is encounters spawning on minions, why do you want lupis grubs being throw on minions, why do you want Alpha throwing down more circles because of minions? why do you want the Maw wasting time on minions? Sure now and again it can be useful, but overall its frustration and in many’s opinion a design flaw. This could be fixed by making enemy NPCS target such attacks with a priority system, so if no players are in range then sure maybe it will throw it on a minion or player pet, but in the vast majority of cases it should always target a player if you cannot force enemy NPCS to ignore minions without breaking your code, you know how to at least implement priority’s you’ve already shown that, and it is a nice alternative.

Id like to see the following for Necros and pets in general:

• Pets take reduced AOE damage 65% to 80%.
• Pet AI improvements across the board, primarily on awareness.
• Pet attack range increased from 120 to 150, for melee pets.
• Priority system that puts pets at the back end of mechanic attacks, such as grubs.
• Pet movement to be drastically improved.
• Pet stats brought up by % to compensate for ascended gear implementation.

If this was done, the minion builds would make for a viable control method for Necros, it would also improve mesmers and rangers alike, while their issues are different some of these fixes would also help their “pet” mechanics as well. I do believe that Minions will have a place in GW2 out side of Solo leveling, I just think they are being careful with minion builds because of what happened in GW1 with minion masters earlier on, especially now when Minions do not lose life quickly over a short time.

I think the cooldowns are fine as long as they make regular minions able to regenerate outside of combat. That one problem alone is preventing me from wanting to create a necromancer, because being a minion master is my main draw for the profession but I don’t want to have to pay upkeep with them. The non-elite minions are fragile enough that out-of-combat regen would not break them. Furthermore, the stupid thing is that I can literally just swap the summon utility out for another one, then swap it back in and resummon the minion at full health, so why don’t they have out of combat regen anyway?

XiL.4318:

striker.3704:

2. When Anet tried it they found that minions were simply too strong on non-minion focused builds.

This is blatant kittenery. Preventing minions from being too powerful would be as simple as making two traits in MM focus 20 and 30 required for scaling. Tardswaggle. Don’t make stuff up and offer it as advice. That’s not fair to people who don’t know any better.

Those traits you’re talking about for scaling are flesh of the master and training of the master.What am I making up and offering as advice? How is letting the person know what Anet did advice?

In my experience, minions respond better to combat if you don’t have a bunch out. I only have issues with minions standing around if I have 4+ out.

While this doesn’t help full minion masters much, they really aren’t useless if you are running other skills. Bone Minions and Flesh Golem are my favorites to have as my only minion skills because they are dead useful when they do something in combat (and if they’re your only ones, they probably always will fight)

Minions appear to be deathly afraid of heights. They are also afraid of stairs. In fact, if there’s a hill they might be afraid that they’ll lose balance and roll down. Hell, a slight gradient in elevation on the ground will require your minions to wait until you walk up it to determine it is safe. There ain’t no way, ain’t no how that they’re going to change elevation to attack an enemy. On flat surfaces though, my foes better tremble in fear!

This is why I typically only use the few ranged minions we have at our disposal, they are fearless warriors that aren’t going to let any boulder, pebble, or tuft of grass get in the way of their attacks!

Okay, I’ll be sympathetic of the Flesh Golem’s fear of water, at least.

That’s why I don’t use the golem. Having the summon go on cd because it stepped in some water makes it completely broken.

Aside from that, bone minions should chase their target and then explode like mesmer clones do.

And summoning cd’s should reset after death in sPvP.

I play exclusively minionmacer, I believe they need only 3 things.
1.Improved AI with FOCUS TARGET button.
The lack in their AI code causes a severe loss of dps in this build. Also, sometimes you want your minions to attack one target while you are doing something else or dps-ing other target.
2.Out of battle REGENERATION.
You want them to be fresh and ready for next battle, you don’t want to forget to resummon them and see them dying from first hit.
3.Scale with PLAYER STATS.
This is needed to promote build diversity, for example you have 2 minionmacers one builds vitality and toughness or healling power and wants his minion to be tanky and live long while other goes for power/crit build wants them to be glass cannons that can crit, counting on traits like death nova when they die. They would both be minionmacers but with very different play stiles.

I think before any other changes are made, fix the AI and see how we do for a month.

The only complaint I have with MM Necro at all is the pet AI is dumber then the guildwars 1 undead minions. As an MM Tankromancer in full power/toughness/vitality gear and running nothing but minions w/ staff and dagger/warhorn, I frankly feel a smidge over powered. I’m Running 20spite/30deathmagic/20bloodmagic. And am sitting on 33k with a food buff 32k without. I dropped tanking with a guardian because MM tanking is so much more fun. So, if your having problems playing an MM build, perhaps your just doing it wrong. Minions are supposed to be like tissue paper. Soft (squish), strong (ouch), and disposable (boom). If you’re wanting an unkillable army that holds champions at bay while you hammer them to death with magic missiles you’re going to be disappointed. I have a guildy that swapped from a condition build over to an MM bomber build and he’s loving it with out complaint, so I know I’m not the only one happy with the current setup. Yeah it would be nice to be brokenly op and have an 8 second cooldown and pets that don’t die ever, but what fun would that be? There seems to be a learning curve with Minion master some folks just can’t seem to get around. The majority of the time, it’s usually the way you build and utilize a profession over “why is my profession so underpowered.” I suggest, looking at your talent lines, finding the talents that do what you want, take them up. and then put on some gear that has stats for what your wanting to do, and approach the issue from a new angle. You may find out a way to fix the problem yourself.

Argistrin

Do you really think you the first person to ever play 20/0/30/20/0?

Do you really think you’ve ‘figured out’ the necro and everyone else is a imbecile?

I’m going to go on a limb here and guess. You aren’t even paying attention to your minions. You’re not noticing when they’re just standing there because of all the flashy lights and sounds going on. You are tanky enough that every fight seems to go ‘your way’ when in reality it has nothing to do with you and your minions and far more to do with your team mates.

I play the same exact build, and yes it does ok. I HAVE seen my minions stand around and do nothing. It’s primarily the melee minions that get befuddled in battle. In fact one time I pressed my golems skill button only to see him with his face stuck in a wall, and watch him then charge against the wall never once turning around to face my selected enemy.

That said, you are right in a sense. There are ways to make minions work. Bone minions should be summoned and detonated immediately. If you are standing on top of your enemy and summon them then you KNOW when you detonate them it will hit. The rest of my minions are ranged. The flesh worm is a favorite. Since it is stationary you tend to kill it and recast it as the battle moves. This keeps resetting it’s AI, keeping it fresh so it targets nicely. The Bone Fiend also has a easier time targeting enemies and it’s active skill will force it to attack your target if its not. That leaves the ole Flesh Golem. He isn’t my ‘elite’ minion, he is my ‘special’ minion. I only like him because he is on a 48sec cooldown, which with monk gear, gets me lots of Aegis buffs.

I only play this build in sPvP because in the other facets of the game(Pve, WvW), the amount of AOE being flung around will just face melt them in seconds.

Lorelei,
I never once made any statement saying that the minion AI didn’t need a slight tweeking. Apparently my comment about how the AI is dumber then the AI for guildwars 1 was over looked by you. Yes, there are times the minions stand idol by while your being slaughtered, but do you know what fixes that until Arena Net gets around to the problem? Popping the minion’s special abilities. Haunt, Rigor Mortis, Charge, ect. I also find it presumptuous of you to assume “You are tanky enough that every fight seems to go ‘your way’ when in reality it has nothing to do with you and your minions and far more to do with your team mates.” That statement leads to the assumption that I am unappreciative or unobservant of the contributions of others around me, which isn’t the case. I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume you’re just trolling. Minions die, it happens, it’s not like they are supposed to have a tremendous up time, they are up, they do a little bit of damage / absorb some damage/ syphen some life and they go boom. And the "amount of AOE being flung around will just face melt them in seconds.* for most pulls in dungeons and the open world is negligible unless your talking about bone minions. Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend, Flesh Worm,Flesh Golem, and Blood Fiend to a lesser extent, all can live through two to three waves of aoe damage before dying minimum. If your expecting them to live through something like say… Kholer’s Dagger Storm, then I’d be glad to point out most players don’t live through that aether. (of course in that situation your minions usually get pulled in instead of players if you forget to fear/charge/wail of doom him, so who cares if they die, they did their job.)