Guild Wars 2

While playing the game I wondered whether minions helped at all? wouldn’t it be better just to use non-minion abilities?

The answer is Yes, It is better to use non-minion abilitys.

People who want to use minions are hopeing that the patch on the 16th will make being a minion master “viable”.

What qualifies as “viable” has been a topic of debate.

Yeah , I’m a pure MM after all and I really hope that our undead army AL will be fixed in the next update.

The main problem with minions right now is that sometimes they won’t attack. Either they just stand there and literally do nothing for a few seconds until kicking in (by that time your target is half dead from auto-attacks) or they’ll move very slowly to your target (seems to happen like this: they take a couple steps, stop, couple steps, stop and then they move in for the attack, but there’s a massive delay).

I think Rangers have similar problems with their pet and rumor has it that pets will be getting fixed.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Yeah , I’m a pure MM after all and I really hope that our undead army AL will be fixed in the next update.

I’ve shelved my LVL 80 MM until I see what happens tomorrow. I WANT to play a MM not a conditionmancer or DD Power wells – mancer (both viable and pretty fun, just not what I want). I’m not asking a lot, just have them attack what I attack WHEN I attack it… not that rack of weapons over there.

themaster.9802:

The main problem with minions right now is that everytime you want them to attack something they just sit there in a circle around a campfire laughing and singing hippie songs and getting stoned.. and don’t respond at all when you tell them to go to work

i fixed that for you sir.

barti.7685:

themaster.9802:

The main problem with minions right now is that everytime you want them to attack something they just sit there in a circle around a campfire laughing and singing hippie songs and getting stoned.. and don’t respond at all when you tell them to go to work

i fixed that for you sir.

Who are you to say that minions AL has been fixed ??? A developer ?

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

undead army AL

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

minions AL

Artificial Intelligence

Just to throw it in there, I never had a proper with the Minions on pathing or not acting fast enough. Not sure if its a bug for you guys but my Necro is a Charr Male.

My Issues so far is trying to chain summon minions. When my minions die and Cooldowns are up, if you dont summon the Shadow Fiend first, it will cancel and cause a cooldown interruption reset, if you try to summon a different minion at any time.

Another Issue is they die to fast. I am almost level 40 to be able to increase their health by 50% but in the mean time, I seem to have issues on dealing enough damage to a target(s) 1-3 or 1-7 in time before I die.

I use Dagger/Dagger and Axe/Focus since they are easy for me to make a chain dance with them. My spec is 0/0/10/0/10 with 1 and 2 trait.

@Shadowlancer, the minions become infinitely better once you get the trait for 50% health for PVE. Before then, they are horrendously weak/squishy.

themaster.9802:

The main problem with minions right now is that sometimes they won’t attack. Either they just stand there and literally do nothing for a few seconds until kicking in (by that time your target is half dead from auto-attacks) or they’ll move very slowly to your target (seems to happen like this: they take a couple steps, stop, couple steps, stop and then they move in for the attack, but there’s a massive delay).

I think Rangers have similar problems with their pet and rumor has it that pets will be getting fixed.

That^
As well as sometimes wandering off in the middle of battle and attacking another group you weren’t engaged with.

The Flesh Golem is notorious for that. -_- All my other minions are well behaved apart from my Bone Minions occasionally not wanting to run into combat. (In which case, I run into melee myself so they’re forced to come into range and THEN I detonate them. XD)

I’ve had a great deal of success as a minion master, even with the occasional AI hiccup. Part of the gameplay becomes anticipating these. For the most part, I’ve found the minions to be most useful in higher level PvE (when they’re scaled down in the starter areas, they seem to die more easily/frequently even with the proper traits maxed), particularly in story instances where having other targets is very helpful, but also in general world exploration.

They can be a minor help in WvW, mostly in distracting unfocused enemies, but they also make small scale fights with players who know what they’re doing a lot harder to emerge from victorious.

But really, in general, I love the minions.

Shadowlancer.7102:

Just to throw it in there, I never had a proper with the Minions on pathing or not acting fast enough. Not sure if its a bug for you guys but my Necro is a Charr Male.

My Issues so far is trying to chain summon minions. When my minions die and Cooldowns are up, if you dont summon the Shadow Fiend first, it will cancel and cause a cooldown interruption reset, if you try to summon a different minion at any time.

Another Issue is they die to fast. I am almost level 40 to be able to increase their health by 50% but in the mean time, I seem to have issues on dealing enough damage to a target(s) 1-3 or 1-7 in time before I die.

I use Dagger/Dagger and Axe/Focus since they are easy for me to make a chain dance with them. My spec is 0/0/10/0/10 with 1 and 2 trait.

You got D/D and A/F !!!!!
Pure minion master should use Staff as main weapon to heal his minions via Mark of Blood skill.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Shadowlancer.7102:

Just to throw it in there, I never had a proper with the Minions on pathing or not acting fast enough. Not sure if its a bug for you guys but my Necro is a Charr Male.

My Issues so far is trying to chain summon minions. When my minions die and Cooldowns are up, if you dont summon the Shadow Fiend first, it will cancel and cause a cooldown interruption reset, if you try to summon a different minion at any time.

Another Issue is they die to fast. I am almost level 40 to be able to increase their health by 50% but in the mean time, I seem to have issues on dealing enough damage to a target(s) 1-3 or 1-7 in time before I die.

I use Dagger/Dagger and Axe/Focus since they are easy for me to make a chain dance with them. My spec is 0/0/10/0/10 with 1 and 2 trait.

You got D/D and A/F !!!!!
Pure minion master should use Staff as main weapon to heal his minions via Mark of Blood skill.

Nop,

I too use D/W and A/F.

I don’t need to heal my minion, mes bone minion will die because I explod them, and nobody attack my Shadow fiend and my Flesh Golem.

Not having staff on a MM is, personnlly, better for me in WvW fights, as D/W is a must for roaming, bursting and healing, while Axe stack vuln that help your minions.

I hope minions get fixed soon so I can start playing again. Before launch I saw there was a necro class with minions and immediately knew that was the class for me. Then I actually played the class and threw up on my keyboard. I actually went back to D3 because Blizzard finally fixed witch doctor pets making them not suck anymore. I just love pet classes but didnt like Ranger. Played a Necro, Mage, and Beastlord in EQ, Bonedancer in DAoC, and my Mage in Rift switched around b/t Necro and Elementalist builds.

I just dont understand why they have refused to fix minions almost 3 months after release. I know there has been bigger stuff to fix first but making an entire playstyle for a class suck because they were too lazy to make minions work before launch is unaccaptable. I mean did no one play necros at all during any Betas? Why didnt anyone go “Hey A-Net these minions are terrible please look at them”?

I don’t think they’ve refused. I think it’s just difficult, time consuming work.

Goshalaten.2415:

While playing the game I wondered whether minions helped at all? wouldn’t it be better just to use non-minion abilities?

depends, you talking sPvP, PvE, or WvW?

in sPvP it is “sorta” viable. going straight up minionmancer isnt what i mean either, but atm im running the power dagger build, with the golem, wurm, and rats as minions, and they serve as a GREAT form of dps, not too mention the wurm serves as a stun breaker. but most my damage comes from my daggers and the well of suffering ive got as a utility as well. its probably not THE best spec for sPvP, but its definitely a lot of fun lol

as for PvE and WvW, no, minion builds are quite useless. bosses kill all your minions within the first 5 seconds of combat, and in WvW theres so much AoE your minions are downed even faster still.

Vicarious.3047:

Goshalaten.2415:

While playing the game I wondered whether minions helped at all? wouldn’t it be better just to use non-minion abilities?

depends, you talking sPvP, PvE, or WvW?

in sPvP it is “sorta” viable. going straight up minionmancer isnt what i mean either, but atm im running the power dagger build, with the golem, wurm, and rats as minions, and they serve as a GREAT form of dps, not too mention the wurm serves as a stun breaker. but most my damage comes from my daggers and the well of suffering ive got as a utility as well. its probably not THE best spec for sPvP, but its definitely a lot of fun lol

as for PvE and WvW, no, minion builds are quite useless. bosses kill all your minions within the first 5 seconds of combat, and in WvW theres so much AoE your minions are downed even faster still.

If you find your minions dying to AoE, switch things up a bit. Go Well of Blood and Staff, and take Mark of Evasion. Blast finishers in your well cause AoE Retaliation. So with Staff 4, your dodge, and 2 explosions of the rat-type minions guys you have 16s of retaliation on you and all your minions – anyone casting AoE on them will take retaliation damage from each minion.

I run full MM in pve… And I laugh at people who live in fairytale thinking 1 patch will magically fix everything… Yeah right. I heard same line enough times followed be a nerf to an already crippled turtle.
There is so much wrong with MM build i wont even bother listing. Most of main issues have been talked over so much it would be…. nearly impossible to not see it if you ever walked into necro forums.
Hell… you can’t… in no way,shape or form heal minions under water… and you loose the only one that can regen. Yeah… brilliant thinking there Anet. Must have took a year of collaborative brain storming the concept of amazing underwater combat and necromancers.
Anyway… dead and beaten horse is still dead and beaten. And lost shore comes out… you will be lucky to see some pointless bugs that nobody cared for get fixed. 3 times more bugs introduced.
Since last patch that mentioned necros made us heal enemies…. I somewhat expect that next time we are mentioned our fear will now land on source instead of target.

That actually sounds logical, considering the necromancer evolution curve since beta.

Vicarious.3047:

Goshalaten.2415:

While playing the game I wondered whether minions helped at all? wouldn’t it be better just to use non-minion abilities?

depends, you talking sPvP, PvE, or WvW?

in sPvP it is “sorta” viable. going straight up minionmancer isnt what i mean either, but atm im running the power dagger build, with the golem, wurm, and rats as minions, and they serve as a GREAT form of dps, not too mention the wurm serves as a stun breaker. but most my damage comes from my daggers and the well of suffering ive got as a utility as well. its probably not THE best spec for sPvP, but its definitely a lot of fun lol

as for PvE and WvW, no, minion builds are quite useless. bosses kill all your minions within the first 5 seconds of combat, and in WvW theres so much AoE your minions are downed even faster still.

Minions are far from useless in WvW.

The thing is, I don’t run with the zerg. Maybe with the zerg they die a lot, but I have been doing WvW all day for 2.5 week and didn’t have this issue yet.

I see no issue in WvW that I don’t have in the other game mode. Minion are really useful during siege because they had a lot of dps on the doors. Especially Flesh Golem act.

even flesh golem is annoying in pve to the point i almost dont summon it with exceptino of maybe a veteran mob. it runs off and attacks stuff all the time, or stands there doing nothing or despawns when you go in the water, it’s more annoying to manage than it should be.

A lot of Replies!

I just wanna see mm get the defend and attack command. Minions are well as their title says minions. At the.moment they are.just.uncontrollable beast…

Thanks for your help!

alamore.1974:

I just wanna see mm get the defend and attack command. Minions are well as their title says minions. At the.moment they are.just.uncontrollable beast…

I was looking for those commands when I started my necro up, other games have those so that you have SOME means to control your beasts.

Realllllly surprised those aren’t in the game. At some point in time I hope SOME game gets pets down right, I know it’s hard, but game after game, the pet classes seem to come up short.