Guild Wars 2

I was not a GW1 player, but I’ve heard people mention how minions used to be something a necro spawned during a battle, not summoned as permanent pets.

Given that our current minions do not regen health, it’s clear anet wanted to distinguish them from Ranger pets to be a more temporary sidekick. Of course we all know the frustration of having a minion at 1% health that will die instantly in the next fight, thus resetting the cooldown.

Rather than having minions respawn their health, or start the cooldown immediately upon spawning, I personally would like them to be more like a jagged horror. Ok, not like a jagged horror that dies on its own in 3s, but is something that your use during a fight and can therefore be made more potent and if you could keep them alive, perhaps spawning more of them. This would play into the supposed survivability of a necro’s extra health pool by allowing him to eventually have a tiny army if he can manage his minions health.

Anyway, I just think this would be a doable shift and make necros infinitely more interesting to play.

I am a little confused. So do you want pets to degenerate health or no? I personally wish our pets were more like ranger pets, or at least had ranger pet AI. =(

One example of how this could be balanced so that necros don’t spawn an army outside of combat would be something like you have to either sacrifice your own health to keep them up, or lifesteal to heal them (meaning you need to be attacking something).

I’m saying they degenerate health. I know that would be a pretty unpopular choice, but of course it means they would have to be made much more useful (like improving AI, but they do more damage too). That way during a fight, if they allowed you to keep spawning more and healing them with lifesteal, a long fight might allow the necro to manage a sizeable army (with some reasonable limits… say < 10 minions or so).

I don’t mean to suggest they degenerate in 3s either. Say, 20s or so without any healing.

It sounds like what you’re suggesting is a version of the mesmer’s illusions, that fade when the enemy dies

Yeah, closer to a mesmer illusion. Except rather than focusing on the finishing move on an illusion, it’s more about managing their health and spawning more and of different varieties to match the fight (aoe, slows/stuns, etc).