Guild Wars 2

A ravaging army of minions rising from corpses overflowing your enemies empowered by your own blood under Your command. Isn’t that what all necromancers want?
Lets look at Guildwars 1 , where this was possible. You could erect as much minions as you want out of corpses, you could heal your minions, empower them(by sacraficing personal health) and feel like a true necromancer.
This is what i really miss in Guildwars 2.
I hope somehow that a developer reads this and decides to put more necroïsm into necromancer.
I would love to get a Arenanet reply
- Killzruby

There are multiple issues with this:
1) The original counterplay to an MM was simply not allowing them to not build up their army, which depended on corpses. Corpses overall were a pretty kitten mechanic too, since it inherently limited the spec to only being viable in PvE/large PvP. In this game, it’d quite literally be awful in everything except mid-scale WvW (5-10 people).

2) The other piece of counterplay was that the MM had to build their entire build around minions, with at best 2-3 skills that weren’t minions. You needed the minion heal, you probably needed another heal or two at least just to not suicide, you needed an elite minion skill, and then at least 2-3 minion skills, and you needed death nova unless you were a baddie. At best this left you with 1 skill to use for other things, usually more support or a tiny bit of damage to help you build up the minions.

3) This game simply doesn’t like the kind of combat that MMs promoted. You essentially ignored your opponents, and instead everything was self focused micro. You had to keep 10 minions alive through healing/raising them, you had to make sure to micro death nova if you wanted any reasonable damage, you had to be full MM, otherwise minions and their skills were absolutely useless, basically it is everything this game doesn’t want to be.

If you want army-type minion combat then it needs to be active, it needs counterplay from the opponent, and it needs to be reasonably accessible in all game modes.

I disagree with bhawb. They did this marvelous thing in GW1 where they toned down skills for pvp. What they could do is entirely ignore the corpse factor and just make your minnions stronger and more of them for PVE play. Because in PVE minnion master builds are useless and in PVP they are a little hard to deal with.

The main reason for this, is in PVE you really need to focus fire and well you cant command your minnions they do w/e they want. While in PVP there is usually only 1 or 2 targets for the minnions to go after so it isnt neccesary to command them. They get the job done.

I would really like to see PVP downgrades to minnions and PVE upgrades rather than bringing back the old system where you had to use corpses.

Just a thought.

I always disagree with bawb about minions in GW2. GW1 minions were just 1000x better. Sure you can use them in the only game type in PvP there is for GW2 and Minions were much harder to pull off in GW1. But They were a blast to play and use. But now they don’t even work correctly 90% of the time.

I’d suggest having the best of both worlds. Having dedicated minion skills that spawn from nothing and dedicated minion skills that spawn from corpses and have a short recharge with health degen that are spammable.

I wanted to make a minion build. I really did. But when they are actually less useful then the blood thirsty minions of GW1 that ran into a mob when you were trying to sneak past them and avoid combat.

On a side note and this is very Important. Minion AI needs to be FIXED before we get any major changes. As much as I would adore spammable corpse minions.

Aside from the passionate arguments over animated corpses in GW 1 and 2, please eliminate the, “Huh, wut?” In minion behavior, Arenanet.

Anchoku.8142:

Aside from the passionate arguments over animated corpses in GW 1 and 2, please eliminate the, “Huh, wut?” In minion behavior, Arenanet.

I agree 150%. Before any changes could be made to how minions function this should be priority number one when it comes to minions.

I don’t think they should change how minions work with small exceptions (I don’t think they should do anything without you “forcing” them to through attacking an enemy), BUT if they want to try to recreate the GW1 playstyle, I think they should do it through adding new skills/weapons/traits/etc. to support it. As long as it is a healthy addition to the game, I’m all for expanding minion playstyles, and if they go the route of additions and not replacements or reworks, there is no reason they can’t add playstyles that are a bit more niche.

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t think they should change how minions work with small exceptions (I don’t think they should do anything without you “forcing” them to through attacking an enemy), BUT if they want to try to recreate the GW1 playstyle, I think they should do it through adding new skills/weapons/traits/etc. to support it. As long as it is a healthy addition to the game, I’m all for expanding minion playstyles, and if they go the route of additions and not replacements or reworks, there is no reason they can’t add playstyles that are a bit more niche.

How would they do that though? I mean, corpses are not a node that can be used. Are they? I mean, they might have some unused code. Hmm. I partially agree with you, but thats really more because an old post I made basically suggested the same thing you are saying.

I’m not sure that corpses themselves have to return, although that is possible as well. You could have a skill that inflicts a target (or targets) with an irremovable debuff that spawns something on death, jagged horror technically does this too, you could have skills that spawn minions when they hit an enemy, skills that summon a minion with no secondary active, it just summons more minions (to a max), there are a lot of ways you can bring back the idea of the “army” that we used to have.

The key point for this game is that the minions need counterplay either in their damage/utility (via focusing on actives) or on their summoning (if you can somehow prevent it). Also the MM needs to do more than just summon minions. In GW1 the whole point wasn’t just spamming minions, but also making sure you micro’d death nova and/or various other things on them. There needs to be at least some kind of play with the minions, further than summon and forget.

Also all of that could arguably dip heavily into Mesmer/clone territory, unfortunately.

Well, if we are going to dream, then dream big!

“Minions, assemble!”

“Footie slipper minions, go!”
“Wobbly wurm wight weg minion, go!”
“Creepy buggy left leg minion, go!”
“Neckless chicken with pokey arms, go!”
“Bobble-balloon-head, go!”

“Undead Toei-beast, go! Form greatly desired great-sword!”

Bhawb.7408:

I’m not sure that corpses themselves have to return, although that is possible as well. You could have a skill that inflicts a target (or targets) with an irremovable debuff that spawns something on death, jagged horror technically does this too, you could have skills that spawn minions when they hit an enemy, skills that summon a minion with no secondary active, it just summons more minions (to a max), there are a lot of ways you can bring back the idea of the “army” that we used to have.

The key point for this game is that the minions need counterplay either in their damage/utility (via focusing on actives) or on their summoning (if you can somehow prevent it). Also the MM needs to do more than just summon minions. In GW1 the whole point wasn’t just spamming minions, but also making sure you micro’d death nova and/or various other things on them. There needs to be at least some kind of play with the minions, further than summon and forget.

Also all of that could arguably dip heavily into Mesmer/clone territory, unfortunately.

I know this is all just speculation and theory crafting, but I actually really like these kinds of conversations. Even if they don’t actually get implemented.

I think using on death traits could be a viable option as well. Like lets say that each time a foe dies you get a buff that causes you to summon an extra jagged horror with the next minion skills cast. Not necessarily that trait specifically but I think you get the idea.

Any minion skill that has a quick recharge as well and could potentially be spammed should take a note from GW1 and be very finite. Much like the jagged horrors are now. Also a debuff that spawns a minion on foe death has been done before in GW1. And it is a possibility

Maybe even a skill that summons more minions based on how much life force you currently have? There are countless directions that arena net could go with minions while still making it flavorful.