Guild Wars 2

Alright, so, I recently made a necromancer character because it, for me, was something that worked best with the Arcane Outfit. The thing that I’d rather like to know is how viable running minions is – in City of Heroes back when it was still live, I ran a Mastermind demon summoner. Even in this game, I wrote up (a couple years ago now) a rather long rundown of all the different pet types that rangers can get their hands on and how to utilize them.

As such, I’m curious how my preferred playstyle’s going to operate on my new character. And please avoid just telling me whether it’s good or bad. I want to know why

Minions are currently only good for fighting certain NPCs as a meat wall, other than that they’re bad.

As for why they’re bad:
-Most of the time they glitch and idle in place.
-Most of the minions do not regenerate after a battle.
-Enemy players will focus you and easily bypass minions.
-When hit they sometimes engage in battles when you just wanted to run by.
-They keep you “in battle” until they die or you run extra far until they appear beside you.
-Their DPS lacks.
-Some minions die the moment you go into water.
-Using certain abilities kills all minions instantly.

They do not glitch and idle in place MOST of the time as in over 50% of the time – it is probably something like 20% of the time

Minions are not meant to last long – regenerating after combat is unnecessary they all have very low cool downs

Smart enemy will focus you obviously but that is why you bring control weapons like Dagger immobilize to force your minions on your target

They aren’t perfect or super strong but they are not useless

Dhemize.8649:

Minions are currently only good for fighting certain NPCs as a meat wall, other than that they’re bad.

As for why they’re bad:
-Most of the time they glitch and idle in place.
-Most of the minions do not regenerate after a battle.
-Enemy players will focus you and easily bypass minions.
-When hit they sometimes engage in battles when you just wanted to run by.
-They keep you “in battle” until they die or you run extra far until they appear beside you.
-Their DPS lacks.
-Some minions die the moment you go into water.
-Using certain abilities kills all minions instantly.

Wow, there’s some really bad misinformation in here.

Minions work in situations where
-there aren’t a lot of terrain hindrances
-you get a little bit lucky with the ai
-you only need moderate sustained damage
-you don’t need to apply a lot of aoe damage
-you aren’t taking aoe damage

Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of situations in the game that meet those criteria.

PvE:
They aren’t bad at all, they’re just subpar. Essentially speaking minions in PvE exist as meat shields. All utility minion skills summon approximately 10k HP (split in two for bone minions), blood fiend/flesh golem are 13k, and this is increased by 71% in PvE. Add Flesh of the Master on top, and you have really tanky minions that can be summoned pretty quickly.

While that tanking is really nice for newer players who can’t necessarily do dungeons well, it ends up not being anything important for better dungeon runners. So in groups with good players your only benefit to being taken is irrelevant.

WvW:
Its fun for all MM zergs but otherwise completely useless in zergs because they die too quickly to incidental AoE. They are “okay” in roaming, except that the thing that causes minion AI to bug out is pathing issues. So by moving a lot you’re basically guaranteeing that you’ll run into AI issues eventually, compared to PvP where standing on one point you’ll rarely have issues. So at best you’re looking at a mediocre setup.

PvP:
MM is okay as long as you know how to build and play it. You don’t teamfight, you camp the areas of the map where enemies aren’t fighting much, and aim to spread things out and fight 1v1/2v2 sized fights. Most 1v1s are in your favor, although the ones that aren’t tend to be near impossible to win, and your 2v2s can be really strong as well. The main purpose though is for you to force small fights and sit on point while they take a few minutes to kill you. Even if you die I’ve had a lot of 2v1s that last for minutes, which creates imbalanced fights elsewhere. However, teams that are coordinated will outrotate you and the build’s weakness in teamfights will hurt you.

Overall MM is okay. Generally speaking it works really well in uncoordinated or lower level play, but falls off at the higher tiers because people can exploit the weaknesses it has. Also AI is an issue that can be somewhat worked around but not super easily.

MM high tier doesn’t work. I coast the leaderboards 50% w/l and been in top 100k for a good while (not farming leaderboard point might I add) now and can tell you your better off running another build if you want to get better results in the high levels of the game. In PvE (not dungeon or fractals) you can solo EVERYTHING. I’ve done all PvE with my MM build with not trouble at all. But again in PvE fractal or dungeon runs your better off going full DPS and changing class lol!

I’ve played minion master for over 2 years in all parts of the game with great success. It takes a lot of finesse. Unlike GW1, you can’t put your minions on a target and take a nap while they handle it: you have to keep fighting and managing.

It’s true that minions will stand around useless sometimes, especially the flesh golem. It’s also true that good players may ignore them and focus on you. Both of these facts exist for all “pets” in the game. Ranger pets, mesmer clones, engineer turrets, guardian spirit weapons, elementalist elementals all suffer from the same AI lameness and player exploitation. The difference is that you have more minions; so, the problem is more visible.

While playing MM necro, I’ve joined many a dungeon party that complained about my minions all the way up to that part in the dungeon where they failed and I had to rez them all. WvW experiences are similar. sPvP is the only outlier because I don’t play meta and I don’t meet other’s expectations of being a bunker (although I can solo all NPCs and take down most players).

The key is: explore your options, then do what is the most fun for you. Ignore what other’s tell you is “the best.”

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Dhemize.8649:

Minions are currently only good for fighting certain NPCs as a meat wall, other than that they’re bad.

As for why they’re bad:
-Most of the time they glitch and idle in place.
-Most of the minions do not regenerate after a battle.
-Enemy players will focus you and easily bypass minions.
-When hit they sometimes engage in battles when you just wanted to run by.
-They keep you “in battle” until they die or you run extra far until they appear beside you.
-Their DPS lacks.
-Some minions die the moment you go into water.
-Using certain abilities kills all minions instantly.

Wow, there’s some really bad misinformation in here.

Like where?

OP, if you really want to see for yourself why not go into WvW or sPvP? You’ll quickly see what I mean. Anyone looking to progress beyond PvE carebear will find running minion master is weak in all of aspects of the game compared to a variety of other superior abilities.

-They don’t idle in place. Even when bugged they will still move around and follow you. In addition it isn’t at all “most” of the time, it is when you bug out their pathing which is entirely something you can work around. Aggravating sure, but somewhat controllable.
-The ones that don’t regen are the ones that can be killed with an active skill. This is exactly half of them.
-Enemy players bypassing minions and focusing you not only isn’t particularly easy in an MM build (perma cripple, knockdown, immobilize, plus all the CC the necro has), plus it doesn’t really matter. IF they never kill the minions you won’t lose a 1v1, you lose a 1v1 when they can kill the minions while still pressuring you.
-Not true anymore
-This is, again, only true if you got into combat yourself, aggroing them. It still isn’t particularly hard to get away since their leash range is 1950.
-Did you expect them to have zerker levels of DPS? Its about the utility, not just dealing damage so you can afk.
-Only ones that aren’t on your UW bar
-Only the Flesh of the Master’s bug and Lich/Plague (which should never be used in MM builds) do that

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Dhemize.8649:

Minions are currently only good for fighting certain NPCs as a meat wall, other than that they’re bad.

As for why they’re bad:
-Most of the time they glitch and idle in place.
-Most of the minions do not regenerate after a battle.
-Enemy players will focus you and easily bypass minions.
-When hit they sometimes engage in battles when you just wanted to run by.
-They keep you “in battle” until they die or you run extra far until they appear beside you.
-Their DPS lacks.
-Some minions die the moment you go into water.
-Using certain abilities kills all minions instantly.

Wow, there’s some really bad misinformation in here.

… no theres not…

Yeah, I’m not really sure whats wrong with that list except MAYBE an arguable point on “dps lacking” but overall, its really not that false of a list… Even ones that do regen it takes a really long time (well after you regen), minions are very weak to aoe, especially map specials like Khylo and Skyhammer. Moa kittens MM and no one else. etcetc

So, I tested MM out some in pvp, and it wrecks face. The only people who were able to actually beat me 2v1 were spamming AoEs. It also let me solo Svanir, the chieftain, and the lord that are set up for practice in the heart of the mists. And somehow this is a weak build? I get it’s not the zerker meta so many people love so much, but it deals respectable damage and my actual character becomes ludicrously hard to actually kill due to constant lifesteal granted by my minions healing me. I think Brown Fang Thump has posted the most accurate information thus far – they require a considerable amount of micromanaging, but if you can deal with that it’s a powerhouse of a build.

Anyways, thanks for all the responses, guys. I really do appreciate it.

MM dies to all cheese celestial meta.

Since 2/3 of tPvP run celestial by now, it’s not viable.

Dies to random AoE and AoE condition flood. Turrets cannot be crit hit and are immune to condi, that’s why they are superior and played in solo joins.

Wanna play with minions? Play ranger then. His pets are far stronger than Necro minions and also he able to control them.

Harnel.6810:

So, I tested MM out some in pvp, and it wrecks face. The only people who were able to actually beat me 2v1 were spamming AoEs. It also let me solo Svanir, the chieftain, and the lord that are set up for practice in the heart of the mists. And somehow this is a weak build? I get it’s not the zerker meta so many people love so much, but it deals respectable damage and my actual character becomes ludicrously hard to actually kill due to constant lifesteal granted by my minions healing me. I think Brown Fang Thump has posted the most accurate information thus far – they require a considerable amount of micromanaging, but if you can deal with that it’s a powerhouse of a build.

Anyways, thanks for all the responses, guys. I really do appreciate it.

Are you sure you tested it in PvP? Practice mode does not count. While you are able to take 1v1s with minimal effort on the lower ratings of the ladder, it’s probably the most useless among the AI builds when it comes to teamfights. It’s a good build for beginners who want to pick up the class, but once you get used to DS and your weapon skills you should move on to another build.

Also: “zerker meta” – that’s PvE, I hope you know that :P

Yeah, MM is a noob killer. Don’t get too comfortable just because you wrecked some baddies with it. High end gameplay is a VERY VERY different story.

“tested it in pvp” means I ran through five matches in unranked mode, and last night I even beat an Anet employee (a well necro named Mordekaiser or something close to that) in 1 on 1 combat, as I’ve been running more matches with it since it’s so enjoyable.

At level 25 in PvE, so far it’s also everything I could hope for. I’ll reserve judgement on that side of things until I have my flesh golem and run a few dungeons.

It’s enjoyable at any play level and skill, but its effectiveness has a steep downward curve with skill levels compared to other classes and builds (within the meta game).

Dhemize.8649:

Like where?

tboneking.2531:

… no theres not…

ronpierce.2760:

Yeah, I’m not really sure whats wrong with that list except MAYBE an arguable point on “dps lacking” but overall, its really not that false of a list… Even ones that do regen it takes a really long time (well after you regen), minions are very weak to aoe, especially map specials like Khylo and Skyhammer. Moa kittens MM and no one else. etcetc

Bhawb answered these pretty well so no point in reinventing the wheel:

-They don’t idle in place. Even when bugged they will still move around and follow you. In addition it isn’t at all “most” of the time, it is when you bug out their pathing which is entirely something you can work around. Aggravating sure, but somewhat controllable.
-The ones that don’t regen are the ones that can be killed with an active skill. This is exactly half of them.
-Enemy players bypassing minions and focusing you not only isn’t particularly easy in an MM build (perma cripple, knockdown, immobilize, plus all the CC the necro has), plus it doesn’t really matter. IF they never kill the minions you won’t lose a 1v1, you lose a 1v1 when they can kill the minions while still pressuring you.
-Not true anymore
-This is, again, only true if you got into combat yourself, aggroing them. It still isn’t particularly hard to get away since their leash range is 1950.
-Did you expect them to have zerker levels of DPS? Its about the utility, not just dealing damage so you can afk.
-Only ones that aren’t on your UW bar
-Only the Flesh of the Master’s bug and Lich/Plague (which should never be used in MM builds) do that

^
I guess this explains why I see the minion master build everywhere. …oh.

But this was all for the OP and since he’s currently content with it in his sPvP rank then there’s no point in arguing with you.

Brown Fang Thump.9482:

I’ve played minion master for over 2 years in all parts of the game with great success. It takes a lot of finesse. Unlike GW1, you can’t put your minions on a target and take a nap while they handle it: you have to keep fighting and managing.

but if you ever do need to take a nap whilst in a hostile environment just spawn all of your minions and when you wake up be surprised at the amount of dead bodies at your feet

sadly keian its far more likely theyl chase a mobile mob like mordrem troll…glitch halfway there. and then sit there and watch as you die.