Guild Wars 2

I’ve played the minion build since release and a huge problem about having minions is not only their kitten AI and their ability to somehow steal aggro from myself (we’ll dismiss those for now and assume it gets fixed sometime in the near future), but also the fact that you have to literally keep both of your eyes on that cooldown number to finally reach zero to finally resummon them again (to watch them die).

I can understand the design choice they made with the minions, they’re not really supposed to last very long, but, hear me out on this one, it’s the biggest pain in the kitten to resummon them if they die. All I ask for is one of the two:

I) Make them not die, make them work in the same way ranger pets do in the way that if their health bar reaches zero, they do not die, they simply just follow you until they regain their health (or in this case until the cooldown on the minion is finished.

II) Make the cast times little to none on either the minions’ abilities or the minion itself. The necro’s cast time is a lot longer than that of other characters in the game. The fact that I need to cast my bone fiend twice to get access to an immobilize that works quite literally 50% of the time or the fact that I need to cast the Shadow Fiend twice to get a blind that lasts one hit and is on a 30-some second cooldown is quite annoying.

It’s not a tall order. As it stands, the MM build isn’t exactly 100% viable, but this’ll definitely help out quite a bit.

Thats really not a bad idea. If they refuse to give our minions any kind of aoe resistance or survivability to not be insta killed by bosses and aoe’s, at least lower the cooldowns dramatically and make them pop back up automatically. Or make the CD start when they are summoned not when they die. Something, ANYTHING.

i would LOVE to see them make the CD timer start when summoned instead of on death

These are actually good suggestions. I’d actually go back to MM if these come into play.

Relair.1843:

Thats really not a bad idea. If they refuse to give our minions any kind of aoe resistance or survivability to not be insta killed by bosses and aoe’s, at least lower the cooldowns dramatically and make them pop back up automatically. Or make the CD start when they are summoned not when they die. Something, ANYTHING.

This helps too. Having a cooldown when the minion is summoned could work. I think that it’d be hard to impliment. I can’t exactly explain where I’m getting at LOL but it might be hard for them to impliment that. The way I pictured your idea, it’d have like a hidden cooldown so if I were to cast (I.E. I cast bone minion, 8 seconds later Putrid Explosion skill twice, how would the game know that I had the minion out for 8 seconds and how would it take the cooldown off?).

Regardless, as it stands the MM build is pretty kitten. A lot of things weren’t designed well, hell, I’d say signets were more better thought out than the minion skills.
We deserve better than this. There’s no other class in the game with so many ideas that were just dropped half-way through. We have too many skills that don’t work well together and are forced to mess around with them.

Relair.1843:

Thats really not a bad idea. If they refuse to give our minions any kind of aoe resistance or survivability to not be insta killed by bosses and aoe’s, at least lower the cooldowns dramatically and make them pop back up automatically. Or make the CD start when they are summoned not when they die. Something, ANYTHING.

Also, I take advantage of the fact that they’re weak with that Death Nova (?) skill that leaves a poison cloud when they die. It’s really kitten useful, especially considering how weak it is and how much damage the poison can actually do. Combined with the decent amount of damage that the bone minion explosion can do, along with the uselessness that is the Jagged Minion (the trait one), it is an extremely useful talent.

I would also maybe make it like gw1 where we could have way more minions at the same time.

I always thought that the minion master playstyle should be a mini-zerg in itself. The short recharge is nice. More minions is nicer. I don’t care if they die in 2-3 hits, they should be able to eventually overwhelm an opponent if the necro isn’t dealt with quickly. The necro was intended to be the most attrition based class and minion swarms should reflect this

They purposely made minions different in this game. In gw1 it was all about being a mini-zerg on your own. You tag around with your team until you get 5 or so minions, then you start to snowball into an unkillable force rampaging around smashing anything you find.

They wanted to remove the niche-ness of minions, where you relied 100% on snowballing, and make them better as single-unit skills, and make the minions have more of a singular impact, instead of being all about numbers. All they need to do is slowly and slightly give minor buffs to either the playstyle overall (traits), or minor buffs to each minion (especially the healing one).

They shouldnt be killed….

Because they are already dead?

I hate how they die when I use my plague or lich elite, I’ve entirely removed them from my bar because of this

Kilger.5490:

I hate how they die when I use my plague or lich elite, I’ve entirely removed them from my bar because of this

If you are using minions as a minion-heavy build (3+ minions with minion traits), why would you not take the undeniably best one, Flesh Golem? Especially when you shouldn’t have the stats to take advantage of Plague/Lich when building as an MM

The minion AI needs to be fixed and they should really be invulnerable to certain AoE as should all summons and pets be in my opinion.

I stopped playing my necro because minions are not functioning properly. Pretty much that simple. A complete overhaul is needed.

What’s happening with them is that there’s no way to control them and they can aggro anything which puts you into combat and can be very annoying. Then if you’re not commited to attack what they aggro then they may likely die if you can’t move away fast enough. Are you supposed to be their minion? Anyways, then you need to summon again in another 30 seconds after they die.

Then on the other hand, when you do want to attack something they stand there and do literally nothing. Well at least until the enemy mob is around 50 percent from auto attacks, then they kick into action. Plus there’s the fact that any AoE will completely decimate all of your DPS and the downtime after having them all wiped out is far too long.

4 problems with minions

1) Broken AI
You cannot be in battle, and then like 10 seconds later the minions starts attacking. This is not acceptable.

2) Movement speed.
Minions needs a walking/running speed boost more than anything else. As it is right now, we have 3 minions (Flesh Minion, Bone Horror, Shadown Fiend) that will never hit any player that has half a brain to kite. The enemy just run around you in circles and the minions would rarely hit the enemy in 1v1.

In GW1 the enemies at least had to stop running when casting, so your minions can hit them. Now they rarely do.

3) Damage
Minions’ 500-600 damage a hit (after trait) is very laughable, when you got classes that can throw out 4,000 to 8,000 damage in one hit. Sure that ignores your power, but come on they can do better.

4) Dies in seconds in WvW zergs
Even with that 50% hp boost, minions dies in seconds in WvW. And back to that 24 second cool down it goes.

So minions are weak for both 1v1 and WvW.

CHIPS.6018:

4 problems with minions

1) Broken AI
2) Movement speed.
3) Damage
4) Dies in seconds in WvW zergs

1) They have fixed the over-aggressive AI, which was annoying. By now, they tend to do well, they work much better in tPvP where you will be 1v1 a lot, and I haven’t noticed them sitting around as much. It is still a problem on occasion though, and those occasions suck.

2) Flesh Golem has built in cripple every auto attack, both ranged can’t be kited, bone fiend has built in cripple and immobilize (immobilize needs fixing though), and shadow fiend has gap-closer. Plus dagger 3 is an immobilize, focus 5 is a chill, axe 3 is a cripple, staff 3 is a chill, and warhorn 4 is a daze plus warhorn 5 is a cripple. That is cc in every intelligent minion build (you should never use scepter), on at least 2 weapons.

3) Minions are best fit into a bunker build, you get 27k hp, 3k armor, and some (not a lot) of health coming in from siphoning. They don’t do a lot of damage because it would unbalance them.

4) They are terrible in nearly every large-scale WvW application, so you shouldn’t be using them anyway.

wow guys…comparing the minion build with that of other classes? Necromancer already has 3 builds its able to use, all of which is able to survive better than other classes; the minion build, powermancer and conditionmancer. If you are using pure minions then be prepared to heal them. What ever build you use, you have to know your limit. you can’t do things like take a minion build to WvW and hope to do anything sensible. You cant go into a mass of mobs with a minion build and not use a staff and ground target wells.

Lets think about these suggestions
No minion deaths
No cast time
Short minion skill CD

are you serious or do you not realize necros already have the most hp in the game PLUS life force with the ability to cast fear, blind, chill, bleed and poison very easily, heal very well not to mention the ability to transform to gain even more health . Ability to inflict vulnerability very very easily , ability to turn invisible (norns), ability to gain life force so easily that if you really wanted to you wont lose hp below 70%. Necros can pretty much do everything all the other classes can do with varying effectiveness, but yet you simply want more? :{ . Did you already forget that the game is supposed to rely on the player’s skill not the toon?

As a main Guardian, I can tell you that the moment our Spirit Weapons gained the ability to be killed by normal damage was the moment they became useless.

Ragion.2831:

Did you already forget that the game is supposed to rely on the player’s skill not the toon?

But the classes are far from balanced. Compare any Warrior to any Ranger on pure output and you’ll see that. Sure a skilled Ranger can beat a stock Warrior, but in the same way a skilled Warrior can beat a skilled Ranger as the former simply has more advantage due to the Warrior having superior damage values and utility skills.

Not to mention how annoying the cool down is when you warp from one place to another, after paying for the warp. Especially on the Flesh Golem. Please, I concur, reduce necro minion cool down times, this is important to necros even ones that don’t have a pure minion based build.

I would say that minions are certainly a bit weak right now, but I do not like most of these suggestions. I think they would make the minion master far too powerful. I do not think the core mechanics here are an issue. I would say the only real issue I see with minions is how easily they die to AoE

Every build should have weaknesses, but minions fare worst in the situations where being effective actually matters. Many dungeon bosses will one-shot all or most of a necromancer’s minions, and most do this every 15-30 seconds (Subject alpha in CoE far more so) against some of these bosses I don’t even summon minions anymore. This is not one or two battles where a build takes a back seat, this is almost every path in every dungeon. Similarly, in big WvW battles minions are generally ignored and mopped up by rogue AoEs. If minions fail whenever the game gets challenging then they are really not useful at all. I sincerly hope that when AoE is looked at our minions will get AoE resists of some kind. This would go a long way to making them usable.

I think minions should die pretty often though, just not all at once. minions are expendable, that is why they have fairly low cooldowns and several abilities sacrifice them. Necromancers will even comment on how expendable they are when they die. The problem comes when they die so quickly they have no effect before dying.

I would also like to see the abilities you can activate when they are up made a bit more powerful and skill based. As it stands they seem clunky, I try to immobilize a foe with my bone fiend and instead he just sits there for a second until my enemy is out of range, then immobilizes himself. Not cool. I rarely bother with the shade’s blind except when he decides he doesn’t want to attack anyone until I do. The blast finish on bone minions is great and useful, as is the flesh golem’s charge. Bone wurm is a pretty niche minion, and not worth leaving on my bar for the possibility of stun break. I would like to see the healing minion get a stun-break when sacrificed.

Minions also need some help underwater. One of the most frustrating things about playing my necromancer is staying away from water, because even a quick walk through a stream could instantly kill my flesh golem. This is beyond annoying. Its pretty aggravating in general that my only elite skill underwater, the only one in existence, kills all my minions on use. On top of that, I lose access to well of blood, mark of blood, and life transfer, my three best minion heals. All I am left with is rapidly entering/exiting death shroud.

Ragion.2831:

Lets think about these suggestions
No minion deaths
No cast time
Short minion skill CD

are you serious or do you not realize necros already have the most hp in the game PLUS life force with the ability to cast fear, blind, chill, bleed and poison very easily, heal very well not to mention the ability to transform to gain even more health . Ability to inflict vulnerability very very easily , ability to turn invisible (norns), ability to gain life force so easily that if you really wanted to you wont lose hp below 70%. Necros can pretty much do everything all the other classes can do with varying effectiveness, but yet you simply want more? :{ . Did you already forget that the game is supposed to rely on the player’s skill not the toon?

To expand on what you said, those few things are a big part of the play/counterplay of minions. Traited minion deaths = big poison field of death, a good thing for any necro, and helps minimize the loss. Cast times and minion CDs are the only counterplay to MMs, besides perma-stunlocks. Cast times give you a window to interrupt the skill and keep the minion away for a bit longer, and CDs give you a window to really hurt the necro. If I go a fight without losing a minion (except the ones I explode), I win 9 times out of 10, even in 2v1s (and sometimes worse).

Necros have pretty strong balance right now, we could use a tiny bit of trait reworking, maybe a minor buff to minions, but more than anything just bug fixes. Once bugs are fixed we are one of the better thought out, executed, and balanced classes.

Bhawb.7408:

CHIPS.6018:

4 problems with minions

1) Broken AI
2) Movement speed.
3) Damage
4) Dies in seconds in WvW zergs

1) They have fixed the over-aggressive AI, which was annoying. By now, they tend to do well, they work much better in tPvP where you will be 1v1 a lot, and I haven’t noticed them sitting around as much. It is still a problem on occasion though, and those occasions suck.

2) Flesh Golem has built in cripple every auto attack, both ranged can’t be kited, bone fiend has built in cripple and immobilize (immobilize needs fixing though), and shadow fiend has gap-closer.

actually, the flesh golem cripples every third attack. This attack also has a more exaggerated movement and hits for 1k versus the average 700~

striker.3704:

actually, the flesh golem cripples every third attack. This attack also has a more exaggerated movement and hits for 1k versus the average 700~

Thanks for that, I had wondered but didn’t bother to check outside of combat, and in combat there are usually enough conditions being applied/removed its hard to tell.

Bhawb.7408:

striker.3704:

actually, the flesh golem cripples every third attack. This attack also has a more exaggerated movement and hits for 1k versus the average 700~

Thanks for that, I had wondered but didn’t bother to check outside of combat, and in combat there are usually enough conditions being applied/removed its hard to tell.

yeah, I figured it out when I was checking the numbers on training of the master. It doesn’t update the tooltips (which bothers me a lot) but it does increase the damage.

Bhawb.7408:

CHIPS.6018:

4 problems with minions

1) Broken AI
2) Movement speed.
3) Damage
4) Dies in seconds in WvW zergs

1) They have fixed the over-aggressive AI, which was annoying. By now, they tend to do well, they work much better in tPvP where you will be 1v1 a lot, and I haven’t noticed them sitting around as much. It is still a problem on occasion though, and those occasions suck.

2) Flesh Golem has built in cripple every auto attack, both ranged can’t be kited, bone fiend has built in cripple and immobilize (immobilize needs fixing though), and shadow fiend has gap-closer. Plus dagger 3 is an immobilize, focus 5 is a chill, axe 3 is a cripple, staff 3 is a chill, and warhorn 4 is a daze plus warhorn 5 is a cripple. That is cc in every intelligent minion build (you should never use scepter), on at least 2 weapons.

3) Minions are best fit into a bunker build, you get 27k hp, 3k armor, and some (not a lot) of health coming in from siphoning. They don’t do a lot of damage because it would unbalance them.

4) They are terrible in nearly every large-scale WvW application, so you shouldn’t be using them anyway.

1) No the AI is still broken.

2) Snares would help but it is very unbalanced. To get away from a d/d ele you better snare her. To get away from a warrior you better snare him. To get away from a thief you must snare him. To get away from a minion necro? LOL just run around in circles (no need for snares) as you kill the necro. Those 1 second snares from the minion doesn’t do anything EVEN if they do hit.

3) You cannot judge skills base on best case scenarios. This is assuming the necro spec for life siphoning minions. That’s the same as assuming that thieves won’t abuse culling, and say that stealth is very balanced. Minions do not deal enough damage to be effective, period. In wvw you see d/d eles, warriors and thieves killing people all the time. When was the last time you see minions killing people?

Necro’s high hp got nothing to do with this. Most other classes have better defence than necro. Ride the Lightning, heavy armor and stealth just to name a few.

4) Sorry but minions are terrible in dungeons too. Any boss with aoe would kill them in seconds. So minions are useless in both dungeons and wvw, the two HARDCORE modes of GW2. That means minions are useless once the battle/game becomes hardcore. So minions are mediocre skills, at best. And that my friend is the problem.

striker.3704:

Bhawb.7408:

CHIPS.6018:

4 problems with minions

1) Broken AI
2) Movement speed.
3) Damage
4) Dies in seconds in WvW zergs

1) They have fixed the over-aggressive AI, which was annoying. By now, they tend to do well, they work much better in tPvP where you will be 1v1 a lot, and I haven’t noticed them sitting around as much. It is still a problem on occasion though, and those occasions suck.

2) Flesh Golem has built in cripple every auto attack, both ranged can’t be kited, bone fiend has built in cripple and immobilize (immobilize needs fixing though), and shadow fiend has gap-closer.

actually, the flesh golem cripples every third attack. This attack also has a more exaggerated movement and hits for 1k versus the average 700~

In 1v1 the enemy will always move around. It take forever for that 3rd attack to happen. And even when it does it often misses. And even if it does hit, the cripple lasts only a few seconds.

And do you know that if your enemy kites away from your Flesh Golem long enough, that cripple combo chain was “forgotten” and never happens? This might be a bug but I had seen this many times.

Ranger is the pet class. The dev’s will never allow any other class’ pet equal or better usefulness. Minionmaster builds are supposed to be sub-optimal for most Necromancer play. For PvE farming, minions are there to make up for lower direct damage and burst capability. I have no problems using a pet or two on a conditionmancer variant to speed farming. I have tried minionmaster builds and run into the same limitations but firmly believe Necromancer will always be sub-optimal as a pet class. Look at the trait tree.

CHIPS.6018:

striker.3704:

Bhawb.7408:

CHIPS.6018:

4 problems with minions

1) Broken AI
2) Movement speed.
3) Damage
4) Dies in seconds in WvW zergs

1) They have fixed the over-aggressive AI, which was annoying. By now, they tend to do well, they work much better in tPvP where you will be 1v1 a lot, and I haven’t noticed them sitting around as much. It is still a problem on occasion though, and those occasions suck.

2) Flesh Golem has built in cripple every auto attack, both ranged can’t be kited, bone fiend has built in cripple and immobilize (immobilize needs fixing though), and shadow fiend has gap-closer.

actually, the flesh golem cripples every third attack. This attack also has a more exaggerated movement and hits for 1k versus the average 700~

In 1v1 the enemy will always move around. It take forever for that 3rd attack to happen. And even when it does it often misses. And even if it does hit, the cripple lasts only a few seconds.

And do you know that if your enemy kites away from your Flesh Golem long enough, that cripple combo chain was “forgotten” and never happens? This might be a bug but I had seen this many times.

I’m not saying it’s reliable, I’m just clarifying things.

Ranger is the pet class. The dev’s will never allow any other class’ pet equal or better usefulness. Minionmaster builds are supposed to be sub-optimal for most Necromancer play. For PvE farming, minions are there to make up for lower direct damage and burst capability. I have no problems using a pet or two on a conditionmancer variant to speed farming. I have tried minionmaster builds and run into the same limitations but firmly believe Necromancer will always be sub-optimal as a pet class. Look at the trait tree.

That is entirely wrong. Necromancers, rangers, eles, warriors, all the classes are designed to be able to play in different sub styles. One of the biggest points Anet tried to make was that you can play the way you want to. To say the devs intentionally designed minion masters to be bad would be insulting at the very least.

CHIPS.6018:

In 1v1 the enemy will always move around. It take forever for that 3rd attack to happen. And even when it does it often misses. And even if it does hit, the cripple lasts only a few seconds.

And do you know that if your enemy kites away from your Flesh Golem long enough, that cripple combo chain was “forgotten” and never happens? This might be a bug but I had seen this many times.

Its up to you as the MM to use your CC to get your minions on top of the enemy. That is the biggest focus of the counterplay when you are playing as/against an MM, can I stay mobile long enough to keep the minions off me and kill them, or will they lock me down before that. That battle of mobility is a main factor, and as a good MM you should be able to use the large amount of CC I listed to win that battle.

Its really not that hard to lock people down as an MM.

GoZero.9708:

As a main Guardian, I can tell you that the moment our Spirit Weapons gained the ability to be killed by normal damage was the moment they became useless.

Ragion.2831:

Did you already forget that the game is supposed to rely on the player’s skill not the toon?

But the classes are far from balanced. Compare any Warrior to any Ranger on pure output and you’ll see that. Sure a skilled Ranger can beat a stock Warrior, but in the same way a skilled Warrior can beat a skilled Ranger as the former simply has more advantage due to the Warrior having superior damage values and utility skills.

When you say the classes arent balanced, i cant agree or disagree because the game is made in such a way you don’t just tap skills to win. When you say a skilled warrior can beat a skilled ranger, you have to know exactly how skilled they are. Did they use the right skills at the right time? Did they move properly? Is the ranger using sigils and a build that help him when facing a warrior? The way the game is, its too difficult and factors too many to measure player skill (which is a deciding part when it comes to balancing).

Planning ahead is a very important thing for necromancers, you are not just supposed to react to mobs. The traits you use in Cursed shore and Straits of devastation is different from the traits used in most of the other maps. Why? because the risen are very quick and keep trying to get behind players. Other maps with slower mobs, mobs with not as much range and/or maps with not as much mobs sticking together. You use something different or you change your play style. Also there should be a difference between what you use in explorables and what you use in other places.

Anchoku.8142:

Ranger is the pet class. The dev’s will never allow any other class’ pet equal or better usefulness. Minionmaster builds are supposed to be sub-optimal for most Necromancer play. For PvE farming, minions are there to make up for lower direct damage and burst capability. I have no problems using a pet or two on a conditionmancer variant to speed farming. I have tried minionmaster builds and run into the same limitations but firmly believe Necromancer will always be sub-optimal as a pet class. Look at the trait tree.

It doesn’t need to be as strong; a ranger has so many more options with a single pet, not only is the pet stronger, more useful, they can be swapped out at any point in time, controlled, can get you up, can be built like tanks whereas us necros have 7 pets, one of which a lot of people don’t use (bloodfiend), another of which is immobile (flesh wurm), and the rest doing not only little to no damage but also are extremely agressive and can take about 2 hits before dying. Oh, but wait! They steal life and give it to us! Well, they do but healing power does kitten for necros. I can link you to a reddit forum post showing exactly how bad healing power is for necros, but I assume people have seen it already.

I’m not saying that necros should be as strong as rangers but they should at least be a bit more viable with the MM build. Currently, I do not personally believe they have fixed the AI bug where they’re overly agressive, I was literally just in a fractal where my minions started ganging up on one mob when I was clearly several yards away from an enemy. If they don’t want to fix the AI bug or they cannot? That’s fine, at least do what I have suggested. It’s pointless for them to leave the class unfinished. There are many, many more problems with the MM build.

Bhawb.7408:

CHIPS.6018:

In 1v1 the enemy will always move around. It take forever for that 3rd attack to happen. And even when it does it often misses. And even if it does hit, the cripple lasts only a few seconds.

And do you know that if your enemy kites away from your Flesh Golem long enough, that cripple combo chain was “forgotten” and never happens? This might be a bug but I had seen this many times.

Its up to you as the MM to use your CC to get your minions on top of the enemy. That is the biggest focus of the counterplay when you are playing as/against an MM, can I stay mobile long enough to keep the minions off me and kill them, or will they lock me down before that. That battle of mobility is a main factor, and as a good MM you should be able to use the large amount of CC I listed to win that battle.

Its really not that hard to lock people down as an MM.

Easier said than done. This is provided that your squishy-as-hell minions are not destroyed in battle. Not only that, I’d in order for me (with my current build) to stop an opponent long enough for my minions to physically get on top of him, I’d need to wait for my golem’s charge or have my dagger equipped. Otherwise they can easily snare me or run. Let’s also not forget that considering how kitten the golem is, there’s a 25% chance he will actually hit the target and not miss. Seriously, is it just me or does my golem miss more than it should? He at times he’s attacking then charges the opposite of the enemy.

@repeller, Please listen closely to an Active tournament MM player. I run glass cannon Axe/Focus with Staff or D/W depending on area we are playing in.

1. I have no problems with people trying to kite me. Typically, I do the kiting. I initiate 75 percent of my fights. With minions, it’s the best way to begin.

2. Minions are neither Kitten in damage (I have no idea what this means) or squishy as hell. They last longer than most of the utility damage that we through out there. The only time they get trainwrecked is in massive aoe battles, and everything gets trainwrecked there. In fact, when you run the numbers, the minions when specced correctly are the hardest hitting utility skills we have.

If you get snared and people run, than you aren’t using your minions right. Bad positioning, using your minion skills at the wrong time are at issue here, not the minions ability. I have over 200 games as a MM (I also have a ranger, ele, warrior, and thief that I do tournaments with). I only do tournaments as a MM. It has slowly become the most requested toon for me to play on my team.

Why is it the most requested toon for me to play? Because it absolutely train wrecks bunker guardians, bunker ele’s, Power Rangers, and any ranged class that likes to kite.

Just to further debunk your issues here is my team’s most common makeup.

- bunker Guardian
- D/D Thief
-Portal Mesmer
- bunker Ele
-MM Cannon
- Condition Ranger

Here is our standard plan when approaching a group. If it’s a bunker guardian or ele, the team takes out the ranged or damage, while I work the guardian or ele over. If it’s a guardian we only need me. If it’s the ele the Thief will switch over at 50 percent health to drop him. If it’s a bunker ranger or engineer or Mesmer, I take out the ranged, while they drop the bunker.

If we are being attacked, I attack the ranged classes while they drop the warrior or thief. You want to know why we do it this way? Because MM excels at dropping targets 1v1 especially kiters, because if they hamper me, I swap to axes, and my minions are all over them. I seriously never run into an issue where someone with regular success both kills my minions and kites me.

With Axe 3 and Focus 5, you can keep someone locked down so my minions can kill them easily. If he focuses on killing my minions, I kill him. If he focuses on trying to kite me, my minions are free to wreck him. I won’t say it never happens, but it doesn’t happen all the time. A good mesmer is incredibly difficult to kill, an avoiding all conflict thief is a pain, A strong conditions shortbow ranger can give me a headache, but there is not a single class that routinely wrecks me or makes me at any time feel underpowered.

Tip number 1: If they snare you or run you won, swap to staff and lay marks, or weapon swap.

Tip number 2: STOP SAYING THE WORD KITTEN!!! It only makes you weaker.

Bhawb.7408:

Kilger.5490:

I hate how they die when I use my plague or lich elite, I’ve entirely removed them from my bar because of this

If you are using minions as a minion-heavy build (3+ minions with minion traits), why would you not take the undeniably best one, Flesh Golem? Especially when you shouldn’t have the stats to take advantage of Plague/Lich when building as an MM

That’s part of my point. I’m not running a minion heavy build, so its all or nothing when you get down to it. Already was to min/max things, but I got some utility out of flesh wurm that makes it worthwhile if it wasnt for it dying everytime I used plague form. My impression is the game encourages hybrids where this mechanic discourages it heavily.

Kilger.5490:

That’s part of my point. I’m not running a minion heavy build, so its all or nothing when you get down to it. Already was to min/max things, but I got some utility out of flesh wurm that makes it worthwhile if it wasnt for it dying everytime I used plague form. My impression is the game encourages hybrids where this mechanic discourages it heavily.

The bigger question is why are you using Plague Form. It’s hands down the worst elite we have. I think the only thing worse than Plague Form in our arsenal of awesomeness is Underwater Death Shroud abilities.

I see your point, but the main reason for losing all of them is that the form give you a large increase in stats, and having other utilities active at the same time may make it seem OP.

Just so you are aware, plague form is really only good if you are working with a large group or about to die and need 20 seconds more of life. :P>

Plague form does wonders if used with team coordination, or in PvE. Its main weakness when using it for damage (constant poison/2 bleeds) is that people walk out, so you need team help to keep them inside. OR you can use the traited blind, so they have perma poison/blind/chill on them, and then you have your team do their thing.

In PvE its just abusive. You can tank groups of elites by setting the blind to auto attack, and just aggroing all of them. Let your team throw down AoE on top of you, and you have ~20s of free damage on them, while taking very little yourself.

Plague just requires more teamwork than other abilities, it isn’t very good in 1v1 unless you can somehow force them to stay near you the entire time to use the bleed (such as point defense where they are forced to stay there). So like Bas said, you really NEED a team with you to make it work. At the very least, you want a super glass-cannon that benefits a lot from the large damage reduction it will cause.