Guild Wars 2

I went ahead and rolled a necromancer as an alt. I have seen some of what people are talking about with the minion A.I. and the lack of minion survivability. I can think of one instance where my minions didn’t behave as intended and it was a situation where the little ones (bone minions?) just stood around looking stupid while the rest of my minions actually attacked the target. I was in the middle of my personal story and a friendly mob became hostile after a stint of dialogue.

I’ve also done a little experimenting with the minion targeting system/aggro system. I’ll begin by attacking one target then quickly switch to another target and I’ve noticed that they always seem to go for whatever it is that I am attacking, so that does seem to work properly. In fact, the only time I have seen them draw aggro from an unintended target is when they just happened to drift too close to something that would normally be hostile to either me or any other player controlled character.

I suppose my point here is my theory behind the minion A.I. glitching and I am attempting to sort through the myths and rumors to get to the facts. In a situation where an event of some sort is triggered the minion A.I. might not properly react to a change in status from “friendly” to “hostile”. Regarding minion’s “attacking” an unintended mob however might actually be a result of them defending themselves after being engaged in combat.

I’m no programmer, but in my humble opinion, I believe that adding a couple of commands to the key bindings for minions such as an “attack” and “heel” key to the key bindings interface may help to alleviate some of these problems. The “attack” key I think would be the most useful because we could use it as a universal prod for all of our minions simultaneously when they occasionally forget what their job is. To reduce incidents of minions, more or less, initiating combat I think that simply reducing their wander radius around the player character will help.

I certainly don’t believe that minions are broken to the extent that they are unusable but they simply aren’t 100% at this stage. I enjoy using them and I have experienced a lot of success while leveling with them in PvE, but I’ve also experienced some kitten derp moments . I would like to see a perfect track record from their performance, but please don’t take this as a complaint about the game quality. I simply wanted to take this opportunity to throw out an idea or two that may or may not have been addressed.

In regards to minion health regeneration- Please, I’ll take it in a heartbeat. Starting a fight fresh is always nice. Although Mark of Blood helps their survivability during combat, it really does nothing to bring them back to full strength between fights. Once again, this is not a deal breaker for me as I can always re-summon them after a fairly short cool down, but I’d much rather jump from encounter to encounter while remaining at full strength with minimal upkeep.

Either way, I am absolutely loving the Necromancer class so far, just like I still have a soft spot in my heart for my now Lvl 80 Guardian. I’m looking forward to seeing how GW2 evolves in the near future!

Minion attack being bound to 1 or something similar to ranger pet commands would solve the entire issue, yes.
After hundreds of hours on the necro, I’ve seen minions can bug out and refuse to attack in absolutely any situation. I’ve had multiple minute long 1v1 fights in WvW where minions did not attack once, this despite using their respective skills. There is something in their code that bugs them out, it’s just so inconsistent that it’s really hard to nail down a particular scenario which will trigger the bug 100% and even when they haven’t attacked for some time, they may randomly return to ‘normal’ and fight again.
It’s all well and good to be looking for a way to fix their AI but in the mean time, with such a simply and obvious fix, it’s pretty annoying we’re still left to deal with this.

After going minions in the Lost Shores event (only way to do some kind of damage while in the middle of that mess) i found myself wondering if the issue if related to having minions out before a fight vs summoning them in the fight.

That is, summon minions outside of a fight. Then initiate a fight (longer range may be more likely to trigger the issue) and observe if they engage or not.

Then redo by swapping skills around to get rid of any survivors, pick a fight with a mob and then summon and see if there is any difference in behavior.

Bichpwner.4012:

Minion attack being bound to 1 or something similar to ranger pet commands would solve the entire issue, yes.
After hundreds of hours on the necro, I’ve seen minions can bug out and refuse to attack in absolutely any situation. I’ve had multiple minute long 1v1 fights in WvW where minions did not attack once, this despite using their respective skills. There is something in their code that bugs them out, it’s just so inconsistent that it’s really hard to nail down a particular scenario which will trigger the bug 100% and even when they haven’t attacked for some time, they may randomly return to ‘normal’ and fight again.
It’s all well and good to be looking for a way to fix their AI but in the mean time, with such a simply and obvious fix, it’s pretty annoying we’re still left to deal with this.

Having the minion attack be bound to the necro’s primary attack sounds like an even better idea than what I had in mind. It would certainly cut down on the number of keys that we have to worry about while we’re wading through the chaos. My idea was based on having that be the primary way to sic our pets on the target, but having the secondary key was more intended as a quick “debug”. Think of it as a backup just in case the number 1 key didn’t work.

having them tied to the primary attack is exactly how it should be. ive been wanting to use my minion build for a long time but as stated they are “broken” and the flesh golem is the worst of them he does whatever he wants when he feels like it especially in pve running out and attacking a random target. the only way ive been able to make them function (in pvp) is to stay on a flat surface (ex. guarding points and waiting for someone to come ) and being melee range with an enemy which is somewhat ok with duel daggers

At first, I fully understood why the Flesh Golem would start attacking enemies when I wasn’t in combat (Fleshie is the only pet I have issues with attacking enemies I’m not in combat with). I could just be standing still somewhere and if there was a hostile enemy anywhere near me – i.e. not close enough to aggro me but maybe close enough to aggro Fleshie – he would attack it.

Which sort of makes sense. The enemy has aggro on our minion and he instantly recognizes that and attacks it.

But after playing a Ranger it really made me wonder. While idling or walking the Ranger’s pet seems to sort of stay under your feet. I’ve never noticed the pet drawing aggro from any enemy I wasn’t in combat with.

So why can the Ranger’s pet seemingly avoid drawing aggro from hostile enemies that aren’t in combat, when the Necro’s Fleshie draws aggro just like a player?

It also seems that the Flesh Golem has a larger radius at which it can draw aggro from enemies than a player does, has anyone else noticed this?

Bichpwner.4012:

Minion attack being bound to 1 or something similar to ranger pet commands would solve the entire issue, yes.

If you mean that every time you pressed 1 for your own primary attack, the minion would be sic’d on the target, that’d help. A separate Attack button, though, wouldn’t help much.

Exhibit A is the Flesh Golem. You can force him to attack with his Charge, and 2 seconds after he’s knocked the target down, he’s acting like he thinks he’s: a) out of combat, b) next to his master, shuffling and turning to align with his master in an “I’m your minion” slot. You can’t have him immediately charge again because of the cool down, but even if you could hit an attack button you might have to do it a LOT.