Guild Wars 2

Once I enter combat, my minions usually plant their feet and do nothing. Occasionally they will keep moving and attack as they should, but this only happens about 10% of the time for each individual minion (this is not hyperbole). For example, if I have out 3 minions, only one of them will attack when I engage a mob. If the mob gets in range of their attacks, if they take any damage, or if I use one of their skills, then that specific minion will wake up.

I think this might be an issue with pathing, since they still seem to attack once something is in range. EDIT: Nevermind, they still don’t attack things in range.

Yes, it’s quite a problem with Necromancers right now.
I never thought it could be related to pathing, though.

I don’t think it’s specifically pathing. Almost certainly minions and enemies use the same pathing code. And they don’t have any trouble pathing once they decide to fight (for instance if you trigger their skills). I think they just have trouble switching from a passive mode where they just follow you, to one where they act independently.

I’ve noticed : PvE/WvW they act normal, attack when you start attacking or with delay of max 3sec
PvP: you have got +- 70 % chance they’ll attack as you wish, but 30 % of the time they might slack at the sideway.
NOTE: only talking about the melee minions, the ranged ones almost attack immediatly

The melee minions definitely have a big problem with this. I’ve actually stopped using my minion master in PvP for the time being simply because of how game breaking it can be for 3 of my utilities to not work.

Its melee minions only, and its only a problem when you have pre-summoned them before the fight, and even then they tend to get involved at some point.

My suggestion: don’t pre-summon minions when you can help it. It is actually sometimes better to do this anyway if you’re planning to melee the target, but I believe its an issue of their aggro/pathing gets so messed up it just takes a long time for them to get with the program and start attacking. This is also why I only have 2 melee minions in my build, and one of them I can blow up whenever I want to reset their AI.

I have to take back what I said previously. Today in Temple of the Silent Storm, I ran down to the middle point and started attacking someone…even told my flesh golem to charge him.

First time I witnessed him just chilling on the hill and looking off into the sunset while I got beat on. >.>

I’ve had them stand still 1200 range away as I was fighting and getting killed…. All of my minions that is. Have since stopped using them in pvp.

I’ve had flesh golem and bone minions stop when I roam from home to mid and jump over things that they have to walk around. There are ways to work around it, but yes its a bit annoying. I’d probably notice it more if I ran more than 1 minion with decent uptime.

So I can see why people are complaining, it just took me forever to notice it because of my playstyle.

It’s 2014 an we dont have pet commands.

I guess making the new hit cash shop armor is more important than fixing bugs, It honestly feels like Anet is made up of 3 people, a full time janitor, and 2 Brazilian programmers they plucked out of some middle school in Rio. Whiteside and crew have actually been forced to work as slave laborers in NC Softs North Korea compound to create gem store items for GW2 and Wildstar since 2009.

It isn’t a bug, its an intentional design choice. GW1 we couldn’t even tell them what to attack.

Has there ever been any official word on whether this is intentional? I did some searches and came up empty. It certainly feels like a bug. GW1 minions felt far more reliable; GW2 minions seem to spend 80% of their time on coffee break….

DryHumour.1307:

Has there ever been any official word on whether this is intentional? I did some searches and came up empty. It certainly feels like a bug. GW1 minions felt far more reliable; GW2 minions seem to spend 80% of their time on coffee break….

Its a bug, AI has gone through a ton of changes since launch. This is about the third most reliable its been, although originally it was only “reliable” because they tried to murder anything and everything in sight. However with the current AI system they used to be a bit more reliable.

According to people I’ve talked to, one of the issues is how GW2 is coded. It has a lot of things that inherit their functions from other things, and this leads to a lot of issues where changing one thing changes everything else.

Anet has already stated that it is ‘mostly’ a pathing issue and they are fully aware of the issue. When we’ll see an update is anyone’s guess though. Necro is not high on the todo list.

It is not intentional.. It used to be fixed, but another patch coding just messed it up again
After some new testing I found out:
PvP: Holding/Defending a point, enemy incomming : you start attacking → minions are next to you and start attacking to !
• When you rush to an enemy who’s capping another point and you start attacking : minions are still behind you following you from wherever you came, and start slacking and standing at a distance for a while…
• When you rush to take out enemy trebuchet, you run up the hill attacking the treb, minions start slacking at the beginning of it, so perhaps if you run slowly… So your minions can keep up with you they will start attacking on these occasions aswell

This is pretty ridiculous. They went from terrible to “somewhat functional” to “even worse”

Back then they were dumb but they’d at least stroll over to your target. Nowadays they will sometimes do nothing for a while.

They are way better than they used to be. Their current AI is certainly bugged and annoying but workable as long as you are doing it carefully.

I’ve noticed that if I attack enemies from max range while my minions are still running to catch up to me, it increases the chance that they’ll stand there and do nothing. Anybody found a way to break them out of this lethargy if this happens?

Zaxares.5419:

I’ve noticed that if I attack enemies from max range while my minions are still running to catch up to me, it increases the chance that they’ll stand there and do nothing. Anybody found a way to break them out of this lethargy if this happens?

At an enemy : channel attacks often makes them rush into combat, dagger/axe 2 works sometimes, but the thing that does the trick most of the time: Death Shroud 4

I’ve noticed this got worse with the last patch. Hadn’t been a problem for me for a long time, but after last patch my Golem stands there watching on the sidelines often enough to notice again. Build and play style haven’t changed (Powermance in PvE)

Zaxares.5419:

I’ve noticed that if I attack enemies from max range while my minions are still running to catch up to me, it increases the chance that they’ll stand there and do nothing. Anybody found a way to break them out of this lethargy if this happens?

Limit how much you roam with minions alive. Melee minions tend to be the issue, and I only take 1 (flesh golem) that can’t be killed at will. Limits their ability to mess up.

My flesh golem wont always attack when roaming in WvW. I pick a target, start attacking and most of the times he just stands there

Yea, happens to me a lot too, running a minion master build. It’s so intermittent it’s hard to say what’s causing it. In fact, it’s SO intermittent that I have this theory now.

There is no minion AI.

What happens is when a minion gets summoned, there’s a cell somewhere with a locked up “employee” who basically controls the minion as the “AI”.

I think they’re forgetting to feed the “AIs”.

Once again i pick the wrong class as my main (a class that Anet doesn’t care about). Remember Paragons and how broken they were and how you could only use one build? They would fix and patch every class except that one. They said they would fix it in the future and i waited up until GW2 came out and it still isn’t fixed to my knowledge.

They are going to keep our minions broken and acting like mini pets just following us around and will never fix how conditions work in PVE to make us an actually wanted class in dungeons.

No dev has replyed to thread to even say they are working on it, but let something break with elementalist after a patch and watch them throw out a hotfix patch A.S.A.P..