Guild Wars 2

This rant is going to be long and English is not my main language so i apologize in advance for any eye bleeding i may cause but i think it worth the reading.

First i want to be clear that i love the idea of necromancer class, i have one at level 80 and although play it is like pain (so much that i stopped playing the game for months) i have hope in any moment the developers will give this class the attention desperately needs. But because the Necro hasn’t got as many hit points as the warrior or the same DPS it depends strongly in minions or became a moron that cast bleeding at the end of the group (o die continuously).

Minions AI. The worst bug in history of the mmorpgs.
Yeap. There are a lot of threads saying this, also is common knowledge that minions AI gets worst and worst with every update. Right now they are like vegetables that its only use is for bringing all the foes to you (thing that you don’t want to happen with the necro).
I think the problem the developers are facing (i want to think this instead that they simply don’t care) are that you are walking around with a small army of minions that have the magnet ability to attract foes. So they are facing two problems: If they go to hit anything that moves around you they could get you into battles you didn’t want. If they get into passive mode (that what is happening now) they won’t fight when you need them to.

I think a good way to resolve this on the simplest way is to do two routines for foes detection. First: area around the necromancer. Necromancer and not the minions to save processing power and also no avoid the minions to go travelling to see the world. Any foe inside that area should be attacked if the minions are not busy. That should solve the flat electroencephalogram looking problem. Second: When a foe is actively selected attack that foe. I don’t know how GW2 handle events, but it seems right now it get fired when is a commanded attack (from the keyboard/mouse). It should work also with AUTO attacks. Any time the necro is attacking the minions should have the same target. So with this the “We’re looking to the beautiful sky” while you are dying shouldn’t happen any more.

About the Necro: A summoner with a fancy name?

I like the classes that have minions, it’s fun to play (unfortunately not in this game) and also give you some pace if you are playing alone. Unfortunately i think for the shake of simplicity the Necro looks like more like a summoner and less how a necromancer should be. I mean, the minions have all the name and looks but the way it’s done could be applied perfectly to any summoner/mage. You click a button and from nowhere you get a Flesh Golem in the middle of the dessert. That could be to applied to summon an elemental or whatever you like. I think that is a little bit a lazy design from Anet.
Actually i think (and this is my taste) the Necro could be more unique at the time of summoning minons, what also could be a way to avoid a overpowered class.

• In this case, Bone Minions skill i would replace it with something similar of Reanimator trait. But without the time health loosing, and keeping the actual limit (i think) of 5 jagged horror. When that limit is reached no new jagged horror is summoned. The skill could be like a Signet with the ability to active it to make them explode (would need to adjust the damage though because they are now like 5 of them). Because the only way to get more of those is killing new foes, that should limit the real effect on bosses while exploding.

• Bone Fiend: i can’t get a good idea what this is for not i can relate this minion to anything. Gets to die really quick and the Immobilize thing doesn’t properly work most of the time. I guess the dev wanted to put in a ranged minion, but this one i don’t see that works. A ranged one is a good idea, but instead of immobilizing targets should put conditions, something related to plague or sickness(vulnerability, poison, slowness or any combination it suits). The same but with Aoe for active ability. So even if it keeps dying quickly at least could have some usefulness. Also i would change the aspect for another type that actually is recognizable as death/necro . This could be summoned like now (magically appearing)

• Shadow Fiend: This one i plain annoying for me. It should be silent and i would change the appearance (a floating globe?). Could look like a shadow of a our PJ same as Memer does with the illusions but in gray. Also i would change the useless blind ability and replace with terror. Could be summoned same as now (magically appearing).

• Flesh Wurm : i don’t play with that, if i wanted to use turrets i would have chosen the engineer. I don’t know if it has some real use, none of the Minion Master builds i’ve seen make use of that skill.

• Flesh Golem: this should works the same way as Bone minions. Could be a signet that you use to mark an enemy and when it dies you get your golem. The Charge ability is cool but the knock down effect is too short to be useful. The enemies should stay down a little bit longer like a second o 2 seconds more. Right now the Golem overthrows them and instantly they are up and attacking you again (because the Golem went to get some pizzas to another map).

• Lich, Plage, Geth Forms : I don’t like the idea of a Necromancer transmuting into this. We have already the Death Shroud skill that give us that. I could set those up like summoning with the time limit that is already there. Players then would be able to choose between a something more stable like the Golem or something more powerful but short-lived.

Also i could “fix” the Death Shroud skill, there are some incongruences in the skill set for that skill.
For example, there is no point of having Dark Path skill when the attacks are ranged. For that i would add a new skill for melee attacks the same as there is Life Blast. They could be auto-swapped when you are attacking in melee to keep it simple. Less damage but faster or more damage/faster but use more life force with each blow.

I would do some changes in the rest of the skill set but those were the most annoying and discouraging aspects of the necromancer that i could see.

I know this is a long text and most probably is going nowhere because as is understood Anet doesn’t show to care to much about this class, but i have to get this out of my chest. I’ve been playing the lion arch events and i could see all the faults and bugs that this class have that you can’t live so intense on the open world because it has more pace between battles. Not being able to get into dungeons/any event with Necro is desperately discouraging and that can make anybody to stop playing this game.

There is so much fail here I cannot tell if this is unbelievably dumb or an epic troll.

Necromancers don’t depend on minions at all. Most of the strong builds in wvw/pve don’t really use minions at all. Though there is a certain point in talking about mediocrity of minions although since the health buff I don’t really see them as that bad. Sadly, they are strong in pvp, and the balance team is why we can’t have good things.

Bone minions are actually really strong. The cooldown is short, and can be used as 2 blast finishers. Along with flesh golem, they are a solid choice in non-minion builds.

I’m no fan of bone fiend, and single target immobolize isn’t that exciting; damage is meh and it dies fast. This could use a retooling.

Shadow fiend is good and is often one of the more durable minions. It’s blind is kinda there and I guess sort of boring, but not too bad.

Not really sure why Flesh Golem is put in here. Only problem is that it doesn’t work underwater. It does good damage and has an AOE knockdown and the cooldown is reasonable for an elite skill.

In any case, you’d get a lot of agreement in the poor design of the class, but just because minionmancers are niche doesn’t mean there aren’t many other builds that work.

NeXeD.3042:

There is so much fail here I cannot tell if this is unbelievably dumb or an epic troll.

To be fair, a lot of people including myself initially rolled the class to manage minions and were underwhelmed.

And Anet doesn’t really care about this class. OP just got it right for the wrong reasons.

Yeap, actually i chose this class because of the minions management. To use it as a burst damage class i think there are others classes that works much better and are more rewarding.
To use conditions you have to do sustain damage but the necro is too slow and too weak to stand/avoid direct burst attacks (i’m not talking about buff the player using sigils in armors/weapons) the necro is simply not suitable to do dungeons for example.

I’ve seen some power builds/condition builds that may work, but as i said the attractive of this class is for me (and i guess for most people) is the minions.
However my point is that this class looks broken (however the reasons) and i think it needs urgent fixing (in some way or another).

I played this class since it was a life siphon class and I always enjoy that game play (yeah its ok to laugh)

NeXeD.3042:

There is so much fail here I cannot tell if this is unbelievably dumb or an epic troll.

Seconded. I’m speechless

Well i will not talk about pve as i dont play pve much, but i can assure you that necros have strong pvp builds that can hold thier on against every other profession. Those builds also include minion masters.

I would agree that the necro is a buggy profession (but so are most other professions) but broken hell no.

Maybe i should also add: the necro is not a summoner, he doesnt depend on minions and is fine without them. So i would hate it if i was foced as necro to use minions. And i didnt chose to play a necro because of minions in fact i am glad that i can play my necro without them.

Edit: And you are telling bullkitten, necros have the same hitpoints as a warriors.

I stopped reading the second you talked about minion AI, because it was abundantly clear you don’t have a single clue what you are talking about. Not only is minion AI exceptionally easy (press any weapon skill), but it has consistently gotten better the longer the game has been out through patches.

It was better but whatever happened like a month ago or some patch made them dumb again.... I thought the same thong you did until a guildie told me about it so I tried minions again and they’re. Stupid once again.

I haven’t had any new issues with them, what exactly are they doing that’s new?

Bhawb.7408:

I haven’t had any new issues with them, what exactly are they doing that’s new?

I came back after a 3 month absence. They’re worse than before when I left. They literally stand around while im being attacked. And when I’m SPAMMING/MASHING the 1 button they won’t attack what I target and attack.

I made a necro for the minions. I’ve had to switch because they’re unusable now. And now with the target changes, they aren’t even useful for confusing enemies that had to tab through all the targets.

I’ve also had instances of after using charge. The golem just returns to me and doesn’t attack the target.

OP’s suggestions for only attack what I attack. Or attack enemies right around the necromancer are right on the mark.

I’ve been forced to play terrormancer cause its the only reasonable setup. Powermancer is so kitten.

sPvP, powermancer brings nothing to the table utility wise. They’re squishier than other zerk classes due to no reset options or untargetting. Minionmancer is a lackluster bunker and doesn’t bring utility to the table.

So the only option is condimancer. And the only strong condi mancer now is dhuumfire + terror since all the base conditions for staff/scepter/and offhand dagger have been nerfed. Enfeeble is also nerfed. These were all nerfed cause of dhuumfire + terror being the only option. And again this is the reasons we brought them up during the december 10 patch why they should not have nerfed mark of blood. They shouldnt have nerfed scepter 2 also. But that had no warning.

The one utility that necros had that was decent in tPvP was signet of undeath. But that was promptly nerfed into oblivion with a 3s cast time.

PVE: Condi is still trash. Power is subpar with no utility. Minions still die to AOE despite the buffs and draw unwanted aggro.

I’m with Berullos on Minion AI, at least in certain areas of the game. In PvE I have almost no problems with them. Hit 1 a couple times and they’ll get rid to murdering. However, I often find in sPvP that the first set of minions I summon (all three utilities and elite) will sit around and do absolutely nothing until they die and I have to summon them a second time. THEN they start acting normally.

I swear it’s like necromancer minion skills became the new ranger signets in sPvP: they don’t work properly when you first join a game/map. Use them once and then everything is fine. My only qualm with this (when I had signet problems with my ranger I just used them as I left the spawn gate) is that I now have to summon my minions and then wait for them to die. If an opponent realizes my minions are bugged, they’ll never get killed and I’ll be left without defenses that are technically standing all around me.

@OP: I agree with you about transformation skills; they need to let spectral/minion players use these things without wasting their utilities.

That said, I’d like for you to take another look at Life Blast. It deals increased damage the closer you are to a target. Dark Path is an amazing ability because it lets you close on your opponent AND prevent them from running away, provided they don’t have condition clears or a warrior’s greatsword.