(edited by Torvarren.6295)
New Minion Skill Suggestions, Version 3
We don’t animate corpses.
That is why this is a skill suggestion and not just typing something that already exists. I am pretty sure that is what skill suggestion means.
No, from a lore perspective Necromancers do not animate corpses for fighting. We have that ability, to a degree, but we don’t use it as a rule.
There, I fixed it to bypass the lore. Doesn’t need a dead target anymore.
There, I fixed it to bypass the lore. Doesn’t need a dead target anymore.
Could technically work as a Mesmer skill now.
To be a necro minion it would need to have an activatable ability.
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Now don’t let me or anyone else in this thread dissuade you from having and sharing creative input, creativity is an important part of the fun of GW in it’s own right. But I’m going to harp about necromancer lore to you for a bit.
lore wise it is supposed to receive it’s animation from Grenth, who owns all necro minions and only lets us borrow his pets.
Which means you have to drain some kind of spectre energy from a target to create a dead minion, mail that minion to Grenth, wait for however long it takes to post something to the Underworld. Grenth animates the dead minion and then you can summon it in the normal way, once. If it dies, you’ll need to mail him a fresh one.
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To emphasise my point that GW related creativity is fun. I’m gonna come up with a lore friendly version of a skill with the proposed effects just because I find that sort of thing fun to do.
For the lore to work, we would need a load of the minion in question sitting around in the Underworld, ready to be summoned. So we need to use a generic type of minion which there could conceivably be a large supply of.
So, lets name the minion Formless Spectre. (model looks like a ghostly Ooze)
In it’s basic form the Formless Spectre has a ranged attack (less range and damage than the Bone Fiend, but slightly higher attack speed)
The active skill for the Formless Spectre minion, would be called Ghastly Doppelganger it requires a hostile target and causes the Formless Spectre to transform into a ghost version of the target creature/player (or a small version of the target, if the target is larger than a flesh golem)
Once transformed it will use the auto attack chain of the target to attack enemies and its toughness will be based on if the target was wearing light, medium or heavy armor (for mobs this is calculated by comparing their toughness stat to that of other mobs of the same level & rank) it’s health stays the same regardless of it’s form.
The damage once transformed is based off the power scaling of the skill copied applied to the power stat of the Necromancer that owns the minion, but instead of scaling based on weapon damage it uses the base damage of the minion in it’s Ooze form. (which is somewhere between 30% and 50% of the damage player weapons show in their stats)
Even after that reduced damage many possible auto attack chains to copy are significantly more effective than the auto attacks of most of our minions due to their additional effects or applied conditions(guardian hammer chain for example), but I recon the cripple on hit of the Flesh Golem is about the right ballpark. So the Formless Spectre skill would be an elite minion for balance reasons. That means we can up the power of the active effect a bit too and still claim that it is balanced.
When using the Ghastly Doppelganger active skill, the target that the Formless Spectre transforms into is feared for 2 seconds. The Ghastly Doppelganger skill has a recharge of 30 or 40 seconds and can be used to chose a new target even when the Formless Spectre is already transformed, you could even hit the same target again just to get the fear.
Formless Spectre 1½ A 60 R
Elite Minion. Summon a formless spectre to attack foes from a distance by spitting globules of harmful ectoplasm.
Damage: 512
Range: 600
Ghastly Doppelganger 1 A 40 R
Command your formless spectre to take on the appearance of target foe, causing fear and giving your minion a different attack based on the weapon your foe is wielding and giving your minion armor based on the armor type of that foe.
Fear(2 sec): Flee
Range: 600
Letting any class have a way to use attacks that belong other classes is going to cause balance gripes and issues regardless of how you implement it though. But the ability is cool from a possibilities perspective. I mean if you Ghastly Doppelganger a scepter mesmer, your minion will start to make clones, or the ranger sword chain, would a pet giving might to it’s pet mean it gives might to it’s master instead? hilarity would ensue.
(edited by Zwets.3785)
No, from a lore perspective Necromancers do not animate corpses for fighting. We have that ability, to a degree, but we don’t use it as a rule.
I call bullkitten on that. Ever played GW1 ?
Let me quote some spells :
Animate Bone Fiend
Spell. Creates a level 1…14…17 bone fiend that can attack at range. Exploits a fresh corpse.
Animate Bone Horror
Spell. Creates a level 1…14…17 bone horror. Exploits a fresh corpse.
Animate Bone Minions
Spell. Creates two level 0…10…12 bone minions. Exploits a fresh corpse.
Animate Flesh Golem
Elite Spell. Creates a level 3…21…25 flesh golem which leaves a fresh corpse when it dies. Exploits a fresh corpse. You can have only one flesh golem at a time.
And so on and so forth, so please, just because they changed it for GW2 due to “balance issues” it doesn’t mean it isn’t reanimating/manipulating corpses. In GW1 you needed a corpse and then would reform its flesh and bone structure into a minion suitable for the given task.
“Revenant is actual proof that devs read the necromancer forum” – Pelopidas.2140
You required a corpse for the raw materials to build your golem. You did not reanimate the body of whatever was dead, you simply used its body as the building pieces of a golem made of dead material. The change from GW1 to GW2 was ANet saying that there is probably enough dead stuff just around that you don’t specifically need to kill something new, you can just use the dead crap that is already there.
If you notice those spells they all say Animate X, as in no matter what corpse you use, you were animating a single type of minion (based on spell), NOT re-animating whatever died. This is because the corpse itself was irrelevant, it just needed to be something that had the basic bone and flesh building material to build whatever you were doing.
I’m not saying that OP’s idea is bad, it is something that Path of Exile did which was really cool in its own way. But it won’t happen from both a lore and gameplay perspective. The best we could hope for is racial summons (each race would have a slightly different set of minion skins based on what they would have at “home” to make them from).
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
You required a corpse for the raw materials to build your golem. You did not reanimate the body of whatever was dead, you simply used its body as the building pieces of a golem made of dead material. The change from GW1 to GW2 was ANet saying that there is probably enough dead stuff just around that you don’t specifically need to kill something new, you can just use the dead crap that is already there.
If you notice those spells they all say Animate X, as in no matter what corpse you use, you were animating a single type of minion (based on spell), NOT re-animating whatever died. This is because the corpse itself was irrelevant, it just needed to be something that had the basic bone and flesh building material to build whatever you were doing.
I’m not saying that OP’s idea is bad, it is something that Path of Exile did which was really cool in its own way. But it won’t happen from both a lore and gameplay perspective. The best we could hope for is racial summons (each race would have a slightly different set of minion skins based on what they would have at “home” to make them from).
You imbue dead matter with life. That you modify it beforehand to be better suited for battle doesn’t change that you animate corpses. And “animate” and reanimate are pretty much the same, but if you want to splkit hairs, to “animate a corpse” is to use Life Force or some other type of energy to make the body walk, while to “reanimate” something either means a) bringing something truly back to life, or summoning the soul that originally belonged into said body, force it back into the corpse, and use that to make the body move. So yeah Necromancers still raise corpses. They are just molded to be better specialized for combat.
“Revenant is actual proof that devs read the necromancer forum” – Pelopidas.2140
New Revisions are up.
I wouldn’t want to copy a person skill for skill.
Maybe if you copy a guardian your minion grants aegis to you periodically and has a basic guardian autoattack.
snip
The entire point I’m making is that the corpse doesn’t matter. There is no functional difference to us between killing a giant monster or just having a bunch of chicken legs, because we do not raise the corpse or give it life. We take the bones and flesh, reshape them into one of the forms we use, and give it motion; it is entirely comparable to making a golem out of any other matter, only we use dead crap.
Come on guys. Contribute to the topic.
The topic is, ‘Would you actually use the mechanics I have listed here and how would they affect the game?’
Come on guys. Contribute to the topic.
The topic is, ‘Would you actually use the mechanics I have listed here and how would they affect the game?’
You keep changing it :P
The idea of paying some LF to summon a minion is interesting, especially a scaling one. I could see it maybe as an elite (or as a trait that enhances Flesh Golem?) that summons a Shadow creature, like our Shadow Fiend, that scales up in power/looks. I think that is a cool idea, and it has the potential for enough risk (being left with 0 LF is a really dangerous thing as a Necro) to make up for the reward (a strong minion with special effects), and I could even see it being useful on non-MMs depending on its utility.
But I don’t see anything being added that would change depending on what you created it from. It isn’t the healthiest mechanic in PvP (we’ve seen Reanimator just be absolute garbage) because it basically adds to the snowballing mechanic that LF already has (weak until its built up, but really strong if you have a full bar before a fight), plus on-death is really weak. In PvE it would be interesting, I could see it in a number of forms, but the game doesn’t only have PvE so I’m not in favor of it just because it would either hurt PvP or just not be great in PvE.
I haven’t changed my topic.
I changed the mechanics I am suggesting, but not the question at hand that you quoted.
Wanna make minion active skills super awesome and overpowered? Do that :
Rejoice, after a specialization centered around GS and spectrals skills that will end up disapointing. Anet will anounced a new specialization centered around hammer and minion.
Horror
While wielding it’s hammer the Horror’s minion become it’s bone and flesh. The Horror can’t summon minions but gain a direct acces to their active skills when equiped.
Blood fiend : You gain a passive regeneration when the active shill ain’t on cool down.
Bone minions : Grant you a double reliable blast centered at your feets every 20 seconds
Shadow fiend : personal teleport to your foe, blinding it and gaining life force.
Flesh wurm : a targeted teleport that blast on impact.
Bone fiend : a ranged attack that root your foe.
Flesh golem : You launch a powerfull charge with so many bonus it’s awesome.
Party synergy, teleport skill, passive regen and even 15 s stability on a 40 s coold down. Awesome, our minion have all we always wanted. (well except the stuff that revnant have.)
This won’t happen but look at how much potential actual minions skill have if the necromancer was using them himself. Other than that, I don’t think changing minions skills frome their actual state would do any good.
No core profession should be balanced around an optional elite specialization.
(edited by Dadnir.5038)