Guild Wars 2

So am i the only one who cant feel the diff. about minions aggro. They are still aggroing like crazy and all zerg mobs still go straight for bone fiend..

I noticed some people kept saying that Bone Fiend was always attacked cause it did the most DPS, I disagree, It just happens to be the only pet that’s actually attacking the target

It just means they won’t be attacked by anything unless you attack or are attacked. Rangers are noticing some hilarious effects- they can command a pet to go attack a mob and it’s friends will just stand there and watch the bear/bird/whatever chew their friend to death.

LOL what a great show.. Now off to find a ranger and see it in action lol

Xsorus.2507:

I noticed some people kept saying that Bone Fiend was always attacked cause it did the most DPS, I disagree, It just happens to be the only pet that’s actually attacking the target

This is incorrect, and easily tested and proven to be false. It hits the hardest out of the standard minions it also has the highest toughness and lowest health from what has been seen.

Your experiences in wvwvw, which is notorious for just about every single pathing ability in the game. If you don’t believe it look for videos of ele’s RTLing in single spots in WvWvW. Watch some of the pathing skills miss completely even though there is nothing visible between you and the target.

Giving examples of worst case scenarios is easy. If I wanted to paint the Minions as perfect I would use only single target attacks and play in the mists. I didn’t i took them into an open world environment and ran them through a gamut of tests.

WvWvW is notorious for pathing issues, bugged events, and in general having abilities operate completely differently than they do in every other facet of the game. I know you value your opinion with your less than 100 hours of active Minonmaster gameplay, but for those of us who have put in close to 1000 hours playing 80 percent of the time of a MM please stop posting your opinions in a biased arrogrant like attitude.

You only serve to further push the Necromancer away from being listened to as a class. Your ridiculous videos are nothing more than a detriment to a community that has come a long way in a short time. Videos and opinions phrased in the way are the reason that the devs avoided the Necromancer forums until recently. Please don’t try to bring back the past method of doing things when Rennoko, Kravick, Myself, Bhawb, Nay, Nemesis, and many others (Maybe even dredlord) have tried so hard to keep presenting things in a rational and positive manner.

Bas.7406:

Xsorus.2507:

I noticed some people kept saying that Bone Fiend was always attacked cause it did the most DPS, I disagree, It just happens to be the only pet that’s actually attacking the target

This is incorrect, and easily tested and proven to be false. It hits the hardest out of the standard minions it also has the highest toughness and lowest health from what has been seen.

Your experiences in wvwvw, which is notorious for just about every single pathing ability in the game. If you don’t believe it look for videos of ele’s RTLing in single spots in WvWvW. Watch some of the pathing skills miss completely even though there is nothing visible between you and the target.

Giving examples of worst case scenarios is easy. If I wanted to paint the Minions as perfect I would use only single target attacks and play in the mists. I didn’t i took them into an open world environment and ran them through a gamut of tests.

WvWvW is notorious for pathing issues, bugged events, and in general having abilities operate completely differently than they do in every other facet of the game. I know you value your opinion with your less than 100 hours of active Minonmaster gameplay, but for those of us who have put in close to 1000 hours playing 80 percent of the time of a MM please stop posting your opinions in a biased arrogrant like attitude.

You only serve to further push the Necromancer away from being listened to as a class. Your ridiculous videos are nothing more than a detriment to a community that has come a long way in a short time. Videos and opinions phrased in the way are the reason that the devs avoided the Necromancer forums until recently. Please don’t try to bring back the past method of doing things when Rennoko, Kravick, Myself, Bhawb, Nay, Nemesis, and many others (Maybe even dredlord) have tried so hard to keep presenting things in a rational and positive manner.

You’ve seem to taken that little comment a little more harshly than I intended.
But if you don’t want me to make any more movies on the Necro I won’t, Lord knows i don’t want to offend the developers that have been posting so much on the Necromancer forums and working with you to fix your bugs with the class you’ve played so much.

Xsorus.2507:

You’ve seem to taken that little comment a little more harshly than I intended.
But if you don’t want me to make any more movies on the Necro I won’t, Lord knows i don’t want to offend the developers that have been posting so much on the Necromancer forums and working with you to fix your bugs with the class you’ve played so much.

I was simply responding to the last few threads you ahve made that have done nothing but ridicule and mock minions along with very dismissive of other players attempts to help you.

We have talked before, and you know I respect your opinion on a lot of things. I wholeheartedly agree that as of right now, minions are horrible for wvwvw. They are decent in tournament play, and strong in dungeons.

I respect your opinion, just not the way you go about expressing it. There is no way a dev would take a video like yours seriously. There was no education behind it, no desire to help improve, nothing but mocking and ridicule. I have never found in any form of work for that to ever make someone notice issues. It only makes it worse.

If your videos were instructional with notes to the devs on ways to fix the pathing issues instead of cries of LOOK AT HOW BAD YOU A JOB YOU DID YOU NITWITS. There is a huge difference between exposing an issue with a desire to fix it, and exposing an issue with a desire to humiliate and ridicule anyone who disagrees with you.

C’mon Bas…people are allowed to express themselves and I certainly don’t think any other poster should be trying to censor that expression….whether it ruffles the feathers or not.

The devs have to know how their player base is really feeling…not some filtered “we mustn’t upset their sensibilities” version. It is just this sort of cow-towing to devs that gives them the “approval” to keep treating player’s views as an “irritation”.

AND we should not be “punished” by the devs by keeping us out in the cold just for expressing disappointments in their implementation of the game.

I do agree that the necro forum has calmed down of late and that those you mentioned have significantly contributed to that BUT I don’t see any change in THEIR (devs) forum behaviour of late (how many posts compared to the other professions) nor any indication that player views are even significantly registering with them.

Personal opinion…I have always been a strong advocate for expressing genuine views.

Bas.7406:

Xsorus.2507:

You’ve seem to taken that little comment a little more harshly than I intended.
But if you don’t want me to make any more movies on the Necro I won’t, Lord knows i don’t want to offend the developers that have been posting so much on the Necromancer forums and working with you to fix your bugs with the class you’ve played so much.

I was simply responding to the last few threads you ahve made that have done nothing but ridicule and mock minions along with very dismissive of other players attempts to help you.

We have talked before, and you know I respect your opinion on a lot of things. I wholeheartedly agree that as of right now, minions are horrible for wvwvw. They are decent in tournament play, and strong in dungeons.

I respect your opinion, just not the way you go about expressing it. There is no way a dev would take a video like yours seriously. There was no education behind it, no desire to help improve, nothing but mocking and ridicule. I have never found in any form of work for that to ever make someone notice issues. It only makes it worse.

If your videos were instructional with notes to the devs on ways to fix the pathing issues instead of cries of LOOK AT HOW BAD YOU A JOB YOU DID YOU NITWITS. There is a huge difference between exposing an issue with a desire to fix it, and exposing an issue with a desire to humiliate and ridicule anyone who disagrees with you.

Oh, so you want me to offer them instructions on how to fix their pathing issues in the game they made in any future movies I may or may not do.

I’ll try and remember that next time I make a video (Which i probably won’t, as I don’t want to go against your wishes of making videos showing myself playing a Necromancer Minion Master in World vs World)

Anyway enjoy the Necromancer Minions.

Oldbugga.7029:

C’mon Bas…people are allowed to express themselves and I certainly don’t think any other poster should be trying to censor that expression….whether it ruffles the feathers or not.

The devs have to know how their player base is really feeling…not some filtered “we mustn’t upset their sensibilities” version. It is just this sort of cow-towing to devs that gives them the “approval” to keep treating player’s views as an “irritation”.

AND we should not be “punished” by the devs by keeping us out in the cold just for expressing disappointments in their implementation of the game.

I do agree that the necro forum has calmed down of late and that those you mentioned have significantly contributed to that BUT I don’t see any change in THEIR (devs) forum behaviour of late (how many posts compared to the other professions) nor any indication that player views are even significantly registering with them.

Personal opinion…I have always been a strong advocate for expressing genuine views.

He’s not censoring me, If I didn’t respect him I’d simply ignore his comments, But since he’s played the class longer then me its only respectful that I honor his wishes of not hurting the Developers feelings with Movies that I make in regards to the Necromancer (However I reserve the right to bash the living hell out of the Developers concerning Rangers).

Oldbugga.7029:

C’mon Bas…people are allowed to express themselves and I certainly don’t think any other poster should be trying to censor that expression….whether it ruffles the feathers or not.

The devs have to know how their player base is really feeling…not some filtered “we mustn’t upset their sensibilities” version. It is just this sort of cow-towing to devs that gives them the “approval” to keep treating player’s views as an “irritation”.

AND we should not be “punished” by the devs by keeping us out in the cold just for expressing disappointments in their implementation of the game.

I do agree that the necro forum has calmed down of late and that those you mentioned have significantly contributed to that BUT I don’t see any change in THEIR forum behaviour of late (how many posts compared to the other professions) nor any indication that player views are even significantly registering with them.

Personal opinion…I have always been a strong advocate for expressing genuine views.

Genuine views are fine. Ridiculing someone or something with the claim that you are trying to help is not genuine. Rennoko and CHIPs regularly post their outrage on a topic with well-thought out intelligent rants designed to expose and issue that also shows a way to fix it.

Dredlord regularly dropkicks me about minions with his usual humor. I have debated with countless players over the past few months about minions, and I am fine with an honest and open debate about it. If you watched his videos, than you would see no desire for a debate simple a snarky ridicule of the mechanics with no attempt to benefit.

Now if he had done a humorous look at minions, I would be fine, there are many funny videos that people posted that greatly point out the brutal responses of Flesh Golem, Shadow Fiend, and Bone Minions and I have always been fine even when I disagreed. This wasn’t even an attempt at humor and that was what upset me.

I like Xsorus. I highly respect his ranger play, but his past few forum threads and posts have been nothing but angry vitrol designed at ridiculing and mocking on a class he has a more limited experience with.

The Bone Fiend gets hit by NPC’s because its mix of stats is very high on the threat calculations: high damage, high toughness, low health. However, because its health is low, it tends to melt very quickly.

They either need to do some rework on it to lower its “threat level” or give it a shorter cooldown, since it dies so quickly.

Just as an onlooker it looked like you were really trying to shut him up. Sorry if I got the wrong end of the stick. By the way I have really appreciated the change in the forum demeanour. It is a much more pleasant place to be…as long as we can all express ourselves openly because there are many differing opinions on many things…all equally valid.

Bas.7406:

Oldbugga.7029:

C’mon Bas…people are allowed to express themselves and I certainly don’t think any other poster should be trying to censor that expression….whether it ruffles the feathers or not.

The devs have to know how their player base is really feeling…not some filtered “we mustn’t upset their sensibilities” version. It is just this sort of cow-towing to devs that gives them the “approval” to keep treating player’s views as an “irritation”.

AND we should not be “punished” by the devs by keeping us out in the cold just for expressing disappointments in their implementation of the game.

I do agree that the necro forum has calmed down of late and that those you mentioned have significantly contributed to that BUT I don’t see any change in THEIR forum behaviour of late (how many posts compared to the other professions) nor any indication that player views are even significantly registering with them.

Personal opinion…I have always been a strong advocate for expressing genuine views.

Genuine views are fine. Ridiculing someone or something with the claim that you are trying to help is not genuine. Rennoko and CHIPs regularly post their outrage on a topic with well-thought out intelligent rants designed to expose and issue that also shows a way to fix it.

Dredlord regularly dropkicks me about minions with his usual humor. I have debated with countless players over the past few months about minions, and I am fine with an honest and open debate about it. If you watched his videos, than you would see no desire for a debate simple a snarky ridicule of the mechanics with no attempt to benefit.

Now if he had done a humorous look at minions, I would be fine, there are many funny videos that people posted that greatly point out the brutal responses of Flesh Golem, Shadow Fiend, and Bone Minions and I have always been fine even when I disagreed. This wasn’t even an attempt at humor and that was what upset me.

I like Xsorus. I highly respect his ranger play, but his past few forum threads and posts have been nothing but angry vitrol designed at ridiculing and mocking on a class he has a more limited experience with.

Ehh, the only forum threads I’ve made are my 2 videos and one asking about Cleric Armor for minion master.

I didn’t notice anything really insulting of other posters in those threads.

I do agree with the angry vitrol mocking developers though, cause thats what i intended with the movies, to Mock the developers.

Xsorus.2507:

He’s not censoring me, If I didn’t respect him I’d simply ignore his comments, But since he’s played the class longer then me its only respectful that I honor his wishes of not hurting the Developers feelings with Movies that I make in regards to the Necromancer (However I reserve the right to bash the living hell out of the Developers concerning Rangers).

I even tried to get you to be the Ranger podcaster :P. When it comes to Rangers, I feel so badly for you guys. No one can see more pathing issues and ridiculous utilities than the Ranger. It is the main reason mine is still lvl 22 :P.

When you have an entire profession that relies on clean pathing, and ai response timing and pets that cannot avoid damage and have no ability to reduce the amount of aoe damage they take, you have a class that has a chance to be either op or up.

Pathing issue we’re better off then Necromancers

utility wise Necromancers are better off then rangers

Though this patch has gone a long way to helping some some of the issues pets do have, Guard for example is almost perma Protection on the Pet.

Xsorus.2507:

Ehh, the only forum threads I’ve made are my 2 videos and one asking about Cleric Armor for minion master.

I didn’t notice anything really insulting of other posters in those threads.

I do agree with the angry vitrol mocking developers though, cause thats what i intended with the movies, to Mock the developers.

You weren’t insulting towards other poster’s. You were dismissive :P, which ticked me off because it meant you weren’t looking for advice or help you just wanted to mock.

Now I am fine with mocking videos. In fact, I had a player contact me about doing a series of humorous looks at the Necro. I came back to him with the idea of doing a sarcastic mocking satire of all the Necro tutorials except featuring all the bad traits and play style choices that we get or are given.

It’s when it becomes an angry mocking tone and then posted as representative and educational, when it’s setup perfectly to fail with no desire to change it. That’s what I was upset about.

If you had made the post as a “Humorous take on Minions in WvWvW” Everyone would have laughed and went yep, those are the minions, but yours was definitely not produced in that manner.

Xsorus.2507:

Pathing issue we’re better off then Necromancers

utility wise Necromancers are better off then rangers

Though this patch has gone a long way to helping some some of the issues pets do have, Guard for example is almost perma Protection on the Pet.

I don’t think it’s better, I think the F1 button makes up for it. I can’t tell you how many times I hit F3 and the pet gets stuck trying to return and he goes down for the count.

I just want spirit pets to be more usable. I hope this makes them that way.

don’t really have issues with my Pet not being able to get to and away from a target (unless he gets rooted) he certainly doesn’t moon walk in place like the Flesh Golem does.

Spirits are awful though, but that’s less to do with Pathing Issues (they don’t have any Issues) and more to them being just awful.

and My videos weren’t meant to be a Humorous take on Minions in WvW (though Scarecrow Army kind of is)…

I don’t find how minions are in World vs World humorous at all.

Xsorus.2507:

don’t really have issues with my Pet not being able to get to and away from a target (unless he gets rooted) he certainly doesn’t moon walk in place like the Flesh Golem does.

Spirits are awful though, but that’s less to do with Pathing Issues (they don’t have any Issues) and more to them being just awful.

and My videos weren’t meant to be a Humorous take on Minions in WvW (though Scarecrow Army kind of is)…

I don’t find how minions are in World vs World humorous at all.

I agree, but it’s not a minion issue as it is a pathing issue. Which has a lot to do with the way things are coded in wvwvw. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen abilities or Dark Grasp completely screw up due to unseen pathing issues.

@Bas

“I know you value your opinion with your less than 100 hours of active Minonmaster gameplay, but for those of us who have put in close to 1000 hours playing 80 percent of the time of a MM please stop posting your opinions in a biased arrogrant like attitude.
You only serve to further push the Necromancer away from being listened to as a class. Your ridiculous videos are nothing more than a detriment to a community that has come a long way in a short time. Videos and opinions phrased in the way are the reason that the devs avoided the Necromancer forums until recently. Please don’t try to bring back the past method of doing things when Rennoko, Kravick, Myself, Bhawb, Nay, Nemesis, and many others (Maybe even dredlord) have tried so hard to keep presenting things in a rational and positive manner.”

I don’t have the same respect as Xsorus has for you.

And I hate that kind of post.

“Don’t use that tone because I have more necromancer hour then you.”

A 100 hours players can still see thing that a 1000 hours player don’t.

I have been a necromancer since beta, took some vacation then came back. Still I won’t belittle opinion from new comers.

I appreciate the feedback of Xsorus, as the Pet AI somewhat got forgotten.

Bas, you and Bhawb even replied to a thread saying they were working fine, they only need some axe auto attack to work.

Yet in WvW, and I think you agree now, they don’t work 50% of the time.

If we had listened to you, people would have thought they were working as intented, because your test in Orr and in the myst were not showing any big issue.

I’m happy some good contributor from other class can input an outsider opinion.

And I won’t let minions AI fade away once again, I did the mistake once. If only they worked like they do in sPvP, They would be awesome for roaming in WvW.

We talk specifically about AI, you are talking about pathing. WvW is an issue because of pathing, and possibly server lag, not their own AI.

@kardiamond,

I was not ridiculing his opinion. Xsorus is a good gaming friend of mine. I was having a pointed discussion with him in regards to the method he delivered that opinion. Delivery not the opinion is the issue. I completely respect his ranger opinions, and have spent a few hours talking with him about pet ai, utility skills, and necromancers. He was one of my top choices for Ranger podcaster.

1000 hours of gameplay = a better grasp of some concepts than a 100 hours. It gives you a larger grouping of gameplay to look at and go hmmm, this and this is the best way to improve it. I will grant you that I know a few 1000 hour Necros that still don’t understand Death Shroud :P so it doesn’t always factor in, but in terms of saying this always happens time played absolutely factors in.

Finally, I am fine with people pointing out issues with minions, but let us restate it. Minion AI is okay, not perfect but okay. The issues xsorus is pointing out are pathing issues, and have nothing to do with the actual AI of the game.

I think the issue behing an AI issue or a pathing issue isn’t really important there. We are talking about the same thing, If we had acces to the code, maybe we could say what is AI and what is pathing. Yet AI could be having an issue with some weird pathing, so would it be an AI issue or a pathing issue? It could come from both. Yesterday I was dueling in Kruuk duel server with my MM necro, on plain terrain, no obstacle.

Yet my Flesh Golem stopped attacking, and it wouldn’t attack even if I spammed my Axe auto attack. But it still only happened once in around 10 duel with that build (MM kick kitten in sPvP duel, I gotta give you that).

But this is pointless, the point is there is a major bug about it in WvW. We call it minion AI because thats how most player can understand it.

I only wish for MM necro to be as strong in WvW as they are in tPvP. Debugging the AI/pathing would be a huge step.

Bas.7406:

I agree, but it’s not a minion issue as it is a pathing issue. Which has a lot to do with the way things are coded in wvwvw. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen abilities or Dark Grasp completely screw up due to unseen pathing issues.

Well my Flesh Golem has the worlds slowest reaction time to enemies I’m fighting, sometimes it’s perfect and focuses my target right when I need it to, sometimes it likes to watch as I fight on my own. I wish they would make a skill pop up next to death shroud (basically profession skill 2) if you have minions summoned that lets you control them similar to range, such as attack the target I’m targeting.

@Kardia, I understand the point of generalizing it for ease, my problem is it causes misconceptions. People think that AI (the logic used to determine aggro) is bad, when it is far more likely to be pathing (their attempts to carry out AI determined responses). It is a very significant difference when it comes to wanting change, one isn’t likely to happen until a major game rework (AI), the other is something that is not only a bigger issue (it effects many, many abilities) but also more fixable.

If it sucks, it sucks. I like the game, I think the coders are brilliant and took a lot of risks in this genre.

I like a lot of aspects of necro but I still think minions suck for a lot of reasons just one of which is the AI. They are in no way aggressive enough, they lose targeting for no reason, the opportunity cost as measured in cast times, rendering time, ai activation time, travel time, and real estate on the necro’s bar to use their utilities are way, way too high for the value returned (hello mesmer) and I only play spvp and not w3 so the pathing comes into it a lot less.

I don’t need 1000 hours in the class to see that something sucks. Pretending things are fine and putting a positive face on things is great and all, but it won’t stop players that are unhappy from silently shelving their necro and not saying anything.