Guild Wars 2

Now I know why GW2 world is filled with critters, so I have a way to heal my ‘mindless’ minions between pulls using Mark of Blood.

While this may not be new to many players I still find myself at a complete loss why ‘mindless’ minions -all of them- do not have some kind of health regeneration!

…and Focus (#4) casts regeneration on allies but not ‘mindless’ minions?

PS my asura keeps calling out ‘rise my mindless.’

I just recently started a new necro, aiming for some minion master build and i found these “ambient creatures” quite useful myself for the reason mentioned above. But i’m also a bit disappointed that they don’t have a regeneration while out of battle like ranger pets. (because they do, right? i hope i remember correctly) I just don’t really see a reason why out-of-battle hp regeneration hasn’t been added to minions too. Has anyone got any idea…?

I think they don’t have regen because ANet figured that they didn’t need it, since Necros can just call up a new one for free when they die (not considering CD, ofc). Also, in GW1 minions had constant health DEGEN. Like the minor-trait Jagged Horror, for that matter. So it was a chore keeping your minions alive, if you were that kind of Necro (I would NOT recommend it… I used to play that way, until I accidentally one-shotted myself with Blood of the Master :P)

Honestly, I think that ANet should’ve left well enough alone, and kept the minion mechanics like they were in GW1. Get rid of DS maybe, and make the new Necro mechanic “Corpses.” We could’ve used them to heal (Putrid Feast or whatever it was called), to deal damage (Putrid Explosion), or to create minions. The one-of-each-type limit would’ve been removed (except for Flesh Golems), and the Death Magic line could’ve been rehashed so that people would focus on one type of minion like they did in GW1. We could’ve seen Necros running around with armies of minions again, instead of a paltry six (you used to be able to chillax with FIFTEEN MINIONS in GW1. Maybe sixteen if you had the Superior Rune, I’m not sure. Although it seems ANet nerfed that recently. I think they just don’t like minions)

But then again, I’m also irrationally upset that GW2 doesn’t have Elite Luxon Armor for necroes, so maybe I should stop whining and play GW1 for a bit to get it out of my system :P

The GW1 minion mechanics were not going to transition to this game properly. It worked okay then (was still a bad mechanic, but we had so many other options it was okay), but with only 40 skills, you couldn’t have a large number of them being, at their core, utterly unusable in large portions of the game. The current minion system, while definitely not perfect in execution, has the potential to be balanced because at its core it can be used everyhwere; GW1 was limited at the very core of its mechanics by corpses.

Also, minions have been limited to 10, maybe 11 or 12 if you were using the Lich summoning that upped your death magic, but 10 under most conditions, for a long time in GW1. I was never playing before that limit was in place, and I was playing 5-6 years ago. To even get 10 you needed to completely max out your death magic, thats why the Hero Discord-way with bone minions only got up to 8 usually.

Hmm. I’m pretty sure that I tended to walk around with at least 12 minions at all times, as long as I had enough corpses (i.e. six).

But I do see your point, and in retrospect I should’ve thought my argument out a bit more. GW1’s mechanic worked because the game was based around groups of players/NPCs working together. So it didn’t matter if a Minion Master didn’t have any corpses at the beginning of an area, because as soon as his party killed one or two enemies, the MM could start building up to critical mass. But with GW2 being a lot more solo-friendly, corpse-based MM would be a LOT harder to use.

I think my main issue is that I can no longer have an army of identical minions following me. And also that bone minions look stupid. That aside, they really should’ve given us a utility skill to heal our minions somehow, if they weren’t gonna give them health regen.

I would also like to point out that Flesh Golems do indeed have health regen when you’re out of combat, it’s just that they don’t recognize “out of combat” as fast as our HP pools do. So it might just be a case of being patient.

If you could manage to get at least 19-20 Death Magic you could walk around with at max 12 (2006 patch, yes I looked it up :P), although I only managed 10 except in rare occasions (maybe you had a different setup than me and I just didn’t know how to get those last 2).

Also with the corpse thing, while in PvE this wasn’t much of an issue, parties could easily kill some stuff to let you get a few minions going, PvP was a totally different ball game. GvG and anything smaller just didn’t allow for minions, there was no way you could get an army going reliably. Larger than 8v8, and MMs had 3 stages; few minions, which made you totally reliant on team mates to carry you, mid range, where you had enough minions to finally get somewhere on your own, and then near max minions, where you were pretty much unkillable except by a group focusing you (and they needed specific build types). It just didn’t promote really fun, interesting gameplay for both sides in PvP.

I do agree they need out of combat regen, and if they introduced a dedicated minion heal that would be an amazing way to make a new style of MM available.

Bhawb.7408:

I do agree they need out of combat regen, and if they introduced a dedicated minion heal that would be an amazing way to make a new style of MM available.

Blood minion siphon now heals all other minions at 50% effectiveness of the heal given to the player.

Reactions?

I have actually thought that might be a very good thing to do (obviously actual numbers might need adjusting), but it would make the guy more widely viable.

I noticed a few days ago that Flesh Golem actually DOES regenerate hp while out of combat. I still don’t see why the other minions don’t, then. It doesn’t really make sense.