Guild Wars 2

Greetings everyone, it’s High Warlord Sikari, again. This is my second big Minion Master write up. Here I’ll be highlighting key changes/updates the Minion Master needs to see, some basic pet mechanics, and thoughts about the minion master in general. For anyone who cares about the Minion Master build, hopefully you’ll be able to relate here, and as always I appreciate support, feedback and discussion!

Introduction:
Minion Master is still one of my favorite builds. However, it is heavily haunted by the “AI” stamp that’s often incorrectly thrown around. Minion master is one of those builds, admittedly, is easy to pick up and be effective with. That shine, however, fades away the higher tier of play you go, and this is when it is the most fun! I like think think of the minion master as a commander of sorts, we demand a huge army that, without the master is flimsy and powerless (if someone says they died to minions and the master just ran in circles, they did something incredibly wrong). The beauty of being a Minion Master is the art of control, and being the ultimate hybrid. We, ourselves are not flimsy, however we lack many defensive cooldowns, we have a decent amount of control over the flow of battle, which is used to ensure our army of flesh can meet its prey, and furthermore our damage is good, while not matching other high damage specs. Hence; the ultimate hybrid, which makes us the “King” of all “Jack of all trades”. Here are some pros and cons of the Minion Master.

Pros:
- Able to apply streaming pressure, causing enemies to move frequently.
- Middle-high survivability via death shroud and siphoning in 1 on 1 situation.
- Several methods of slowing and controlling the enemy.
- Good amount of body-block defenses.
- Strong when AoE buffed.
- “AI” out-sourced damage.

Cons:
- Very weak to AoE.
- Power greatly diminishes versus more targets.
- Very little AoE damage.
- Only 1 CC break at the cost of a strong minion.
- Limited direct control over units.
- “AI” has pathing issues, and sometimes can be unresponsive.
- Incredibly weak when minions are dead.

Minion Masters Need Changes:

Minions:
- Minions Damage: Minions do a bit too much damage 1 on 1, and we have almost no group use.
– Reduce Training of the master’s damage boost from 30% to 20%.
– Flesh Golem and Shadow Fiend now deals 25% less damage per swing (remember this gets double nerfed with training nerf), but now cleaves other nearby enemies.
– Bone minions: Explosion now deals 25% more damage (sub set of trait nerf, plus gain a little more damage), but is no longer unblockable. Bone minions (only) now run 25% faster so they can be positioned quicker. This way the explosion is still very useful, but has a bit more risk to it.
- Blood Fiend: Currently, blood fiend is just an all-around worse healing signet. It’s killable, avoidable, heals for less and has a large cast time once on cooldown. Changes are definitely needed to bring them in line with other heals in the game, and to make it a choice to use versus Consume Conditions.
– Blood fiend should now attack once every 2 seconds (from 3), but deal 25% less damage and heal for 25% less. This would take it from 308 healing per second to about 347 healing per second. (Still less than healing signet.) In addition, every 3rd attack would remove a condition from the master.
– This way the healing is a little more in line, still not as good as signet is, still has all the draw backs as before, but also helps with conditions as CC does.

Cast Times: Summon cast times are a bit too long, as they also suffer an animation-time and a lock-on time. All summons should have a 1 second cast time instead of 1.5. (They are .5 second casts underwater already!) Flesh Wurm should have a 1/4 (so it isn’t “instant”) cast so that it may be used as a long-cooldown mobility tool without having to be casted for half the walking distance.

Call Back: Simply put, a necromancer is a pet class, even if not all builds USE them. They are so heavily invested that they can run around with somewhere in the ball park of 6-7 pets. They NEED an f2 that calls them back. A “call back” is not a “cool” ranger feature, it just makes them work right with pets. Having minions and not being able to call them back feels super clunky and just lowers the quality of the game. F2 call back can be hidden unless a minion is summoned, that would work just fine.

Pet Dodging: This actually goes for ALL pet users. Simply put, to avoid HP inflation of pets (which absolutely isn’t needed) all pets on all classes should dodge with the master and gain an “invulnerable” 3/4 frame buff to avoid damage while the master is dodge rolling. This is for many reasons; it adds some active protection of the master, which is good for the play of any “commander” builds, but also with all of the PvE 1 shots, and the Treb in Khilo, having your entire build wiped out because they simply stand there, even if the master plays flawlessly is no fun. It prevents the entire build from being useful in specific cases.

Pet Scaling: While I can sympathize with ANets thoughts on making pets not scale with stats because it takes away from niches, they should undoubtedly scale with armor LEVEL. As a player gains Agony Resistance, pets should gain that resistance, and when a player starts to upgrade to higher tiers of armor in PvE/WvW pets should scale their own power in a ‘relative’ manner (Hp/damage/toughness etc increased slightly as a player upgrades so they don’t lose effectiveness over armor tiers).

Death Shroud: Death shroud is our only defense, and unlike other classes with their blocks, protection and so forth that we don’t have access too, their regens and other heals still affect them. This makes them better in groups because splash healing continues to affect them when they are defending themselves, while necromancers can often miss big heal, and even their own healing mechanics, and it can often lead to an unfair death.
– When in Death Shroud, siphons, Blood fiend, regen and outside sourced heals now heal you for 50% effectiveness. While this does put a damper on outside healing, it doesn’t make the class feel like it’s fighting itself by killing off benefits from its own heal, and traits.
– Death Shroud 2: Dark Path should have a fast cast time, like 1/4 and the animation move much quicker. Alternatively, Dark Path could retain a longer cast time but instantly teleport to the enemy.

Weapons:
- Staff: Staff lost a lot, and it was heart breaking to see how it was all handled… That said, staff is a support weapon, not a selfish one, keep that in mind when moving forward, ANet.
– Staff 2: Mark of Blood now grants Regen to nearby allies within a 450 radius (900 total range), and doesn’t require the allies to be standing in the mark when it is triggered.
– Staff 4: Putrid Mark should now transfer 3 conditions from all nearby allies to enemies when triggered. This no longer rips more from the caster per enemy hit.
– Staff 5: Reaper’s Mark now has a 1 second cast time, but has a 35 second cool down, now, and the mark visual is more red-like now, while the others are still green.
– Staff abilities should no longer start a full cooldown when interrupted.
– All staff marks now gain 2% Life force when triggered. Trait now doubles this to 4%. (Up from 3%.)
– Staff 1: Necrotic Grasp is now a shadow scythe projectile much like focus 4, and has a wider hit-zone. The visual has changed to the necromancer swinging the staff as they would a scythe. Reduced life force gain to 3%.

- Dagger: Dagger 1 is nice, but it leaves the rest of the dagger feeling a bit empty.
– Dagger 1: Now gains life force as 0%/2%/3%, which reduces the total LF gain from the dagger a little bit to allow more from dagger 2.
– Dagger 2: Life Siphon now deals the same damage but in 2.5 seconds, instead of 3.5, in addition, each pulse gains 1% LF. The healing is reduced by 10%. This way Dagger 2 can act as a slight damage boost, and has more use beyond spamming dagger 1.
– Dagger 3: Range increased to 900 range so that it may act as a gap closer, and keeps enemies from running a little better, as is the necromancer’s niche.
– Dagger 5: Reduce cast to 1/2 to compensate for the long animation.

- Focus:
– Focus 5: When traited, reduce the cast time from 1 1/4, to 3/4. The boon rip now prioritizes stability first, always.

- Axe: Needs to cleave.
– Axe 1: Rending Claws now “cleaves” by striking enemies near the target hit. The claws will now strike directly in front of the caster (130 melee range) when no target is selected. Additionally, it deals 20% less damage, but hits every 1/2 second instead of 3/4.
– Axe 2: Ghastly Claws now also hits enemies in melee range when no target is selected.

Sikari’s PvP Minion Master build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAodWjEal69aua07JAJFRT90DuBPcIF5KNA-ToAA1EIpQyhkBJJSWkGhsCZWA
(Blood fiend is exchangeable for CC, but I prefer Blood fiend for heal through stuns. Also if you’re roaming a lot I’d suggest shadow fiend over the flesh wurm.)

First thread: Sikari’s Push to Revive the MM Necro
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Sikari-s-Push-to-Revive-the-MM-Necro/first

Just as a note before I post feedback, if I don’t mention something, then I already agree with it; since I agree with most of what you have to say.

Minion Damage
The cleave change I like. It keeps them from being totally single target to getting a little cleave, and makes shadow at least more useful. I like the change, my only “worry” is: does the cleaved part proc vampiric master? Because as the trait works now, it would.

Call Back
I still feel a bit conflicted about this. But I think the more I play PvE (I had minions out during the Norn fractal, and it was a pain that they kept some mobs away from the fires to fight) the more I think this might be a spot where “feel” of the class needs to give way to making gameplay better

Pet Scaling
Love the idea. I think its a good way to keep “power creep” from happening as they add more ascended stuff.

Death Shroud
I think this should be a new grandmaster trait, with Vampiric Rituals being dropped to master. I actually think we aren’t too bad on the sustain front (although not perfect yet), and this would be a massive base buff. As a trait though, I think it would be appropriate, and maybe slightly buffed from what you listed (siphons go unreduced).

Staff
Btw, staff CDs are confirmed, and should be getting fixed on the 26th, or soon after. But it is a bug and being fixed soon.

Dagger
-I actually think dagger 1 is fine as is. I like that the LF gain is “gated” behind a chain, it gives more play

Bhawb, you’re right I had a clash of ideas and forgot to update Dagger 1, the idea to add LF to dagger 2 was a late-addition. So, for that, I reduced the dagger 1 LF gain from 0/2/4 to 0/2/3, then adding LF generation from Dagger 2 to make it a more worthy ability. Plus adding life force in addition to some healing makes sense when draining someone’s life (force). This may still put dagger at a slightly high LF gain curve, but may stay pretty even with the staff changes, and considering it’s our only melee weapon that requires being close quarters, I feel the slight lead on the LF curve is warranted. This is especially true considering we have so few melee splash defenses and are easy targets of cleave. Axe may need some LF from perhaps Axe 3, but I’m not sure. I believe they wanted to keep LF off of Axe 1 iirc. I don’t currently have a good suggestion for Axe LF generation.

As to minion siphons, I’d say, it probably wouldn’t hurt too much if it siphoned per enemy hit. In PvP chances are it would still mostly hit 1 target, on occasion 2 or 3 but I’d say not very frequently that it would become an issue. Plus this would be a good alternative to the loss in single target damage. Additionally; evades scale VERY well when fighting more than 1 target (fully evading as many hits come at them in that frame) I don’t think it’d be broken considering MM quickly goes down hill versus more targets. In PVE it would be a slight buff, but MM isn’t so powerful that it would break anything. So all in-all I think it’d be fine. Obviously it’d have to be tested but I think the difference would feel very minimal in the long run. WvW flesh golem would still die in a matter of seconds…

Also; I agree Death Shroud healing would make for a good Grand Master; but if it was, I’d say 100% healing through Death Shroud (since we still wouldn’t have access to our #6 heal) but a Grand Master trait for Blood would be sufficient. And this way it would buff all siphon builds and fit very well in the blood line. Blood might actually see some use while bunkering if this happened. And without access to #6 I can’t imaging letting us regen and siphon in DS would be game breaking….

Well dont forget about leash range,about 800 more leash range would do fine for mm/pet builds.

Leash range is currently 1920, if I recall the testing I did not that long ago (I forgot to update it in my minion-related notebook, of course).

@ronpierce:
Okay, that makes more sense for dagger. I do think LF gain on dagger should be pretty high, considering its the highest risk weapon we have, so we’ll get the hurt the most anyway.

Death Shroud – actually my only worry is that we do have access to one of our 6 skills: WoB would still heal while in DS. It couldn’t be “activated” there, but you could pop it, jump into DS, and come back out with (assuming you had some regens, and maybe a little siphoning) around 10k more HP than you went in with. That was really my only worry, is that a Blood Magic wells build with high healing power would drop a lot of still-on siphoning and hop into DS and come back out full :P otherwise I think for a GM 100% would be fine.

Also, I want to steal one of Rennoko’s ideas and quote it here for the axe discussion:

I honestly think Axe 1 should be a 3 part chain.

1 and 2 would be quick attacks that deal the crap damage it deals now, but provide vuln still, and the 3 would be a mini version of Axe 2 as it is right now. Then you could rework axe 2 into something else, possible an AOE/frontal cleave manuever. Call it blistering slash and have it apply like a 2 second burn or something in a 90 degree frontal cone (or 180) at 600 range and deal good damage.

I’d agree with changing how axe works as far as adding a combo, but I’m not really sure if they do skill rehauls do they? I may be wrong, but I don’t remember any weapon skills thus far being hugely redone, has there been any? (Not talking about fixes/updates, but total reworks)

I was checking your build but it seems like you forgot the to fill in your utility spells?

Sorry I run Blood fiend (Replaceable with Consume Conditions), Bone minions, Wurm (replaceable with shadow fiend), bone fiend and Fleshy golem.

Blood fiend needs a buff, so I keep using it, plus I enjoy it for other reasons. CC is likely better but I prefer my favorite minion. Plus it heals when stun locked. Wurm is best 1v1, shadow fiend is more useful if you roam.

ronpierce.2760:

I’d agree with changing how axe works as far as adding a combo, but I’m not really sure if they do skill rehauls do they? I may be wrong, but I don’t remember any weapon skills thus far being hugely redone, has there been any? (Not talking about fixes/updates, but total reworks)

There haven’t been entire reworks of weapons, but shifting/changing of functionality. Look at Ranger LB, which has had its #2 changed to stack vuln on its own (instead of 10 stacks automatically on the #3), and changed the #3 to be stealth.

Thief sword has seen quite a few shifts as well, including the addition of a chain on the #3 (iirc).

But to my knowledge there hasn’t been quite as heavy of a rework as I think is required for Axe.

for roaming Wvw…having trouble deciding between the Shadow Fiend and Worm. SF gives decent LF from the start, and isn’t a pain to micromanage..but overall will do less damage and die quicker.

For roaming many do SF cause its easier to rush someone and requires no set up, which is what I run when I run zerker in PvP. It does fine. If you can spare the time, Wurm is obviously better ASSUMING someone doesn’t just kite you away from it which can cause even more issues. I’d say for roaming try to do SF, but that’s just me.,

Just for clarification, you’re calling for a decrease in minion damage, but asking for stat increases by scaling via armor tiers?

At first I was like don’t reduce minion damage, but scaling would help that, if thats the case.

Yes, MM have too much sustained DPS (mostly PvP talking here) but only by a little, but our cleave/aoe is nearly nonexistent. And in any MM with gear progression everything should scale, even if its just proportional scaling, it doesn’t have to reflect our personal stats, just gear levels.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Just for clarification, you’re calling for a decrease in minion damage, but asking for stat increases by scaling via armor tiers?

At first I was like don’t reduce minion damage, but scaling would help that, if thats the case.

This is only a 10% nerf to Training of the Master, so people who don’t take the trait are unchanged, and with Putrid Explosion getting buffed and Golem/Shadow getting cleave (which will be a buff to DPS any time they hit more than 1 target), the only minions this “really” effects are Bone Fiend and Flesh Wurm, both of which are really taken for their utility, not so much the damage (Flesh Wurm will still hit like a truck).

Bhawb.7408:

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Just for clarification, you’re calling for a decrease in minion damage, but asking for stat increases by scaling via armor tiers?

At first I was like don’t reduce minion damage, but scaling would help that, if thats the case.

This is only a 10% nerf to Training of the Master, so people who don’t take the trait are unchanged, and with Putrid Explosion getting buffed and Golem/Shadow getting cleave (which will be a buff to DPS any time they hit more than 1 target), the only minions this “really” effects are Bone Fiend and Flesh Wurm, both of which are really taken for their utility, not so much the damage (Flesh Wurm will still hit like a truck).

If a minion makes a hit, it’s 10% less damage so its a nerf to all minion that make a singular hit. I don’t see how it wouldn’t affect all of them.

This is just my own wishes, but I’d like to see the viability of keeping pets up and alive (vs Putrid Explosion from Bone Minion for example). I know I’m in the minority since you and several other MM players want to have their minion slots on CD but with powerful effects from their actives rather than keeping them up and running like pets. But still, I’d like to see it as a viable alternative. Perhaps this is something that could be explored in Traits.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

If a minion makes a hit, it’s 10% less damage so its a nerf to all minion that make a singular hit. I don’t see how it wouldn’t affect all of them.

This is just my own wishes, but I’d like to see the viability of keeping pets up and alive (vs Putrid Explosion from Bone Minion for example). I know I’m in the minority since you and several other MM players want to have their minion slots on CD but with powerful effects from their actives rather than keeping them up and running like pets. But still, I’d like to see it as a viable alternative. Perhaps this is something that could be explored in Traits.

If you look at the overall picture, you’ll see that a very minor (10% damage) tradeoff of power from one trait nets us a massive amount of power, far more than we lost, across the board.

And a “keep minions alive” playstyle currently doesn’t have the means to truly support it. They would need to introduce new minion skills and probably some new traits to fully support it. I would love to see it happen, I am all for more playstyles, but it requires quite a bit of change.

Good post/ideas. Feel very much the same!
As they have totally changed the necro, to what they said they would be on release… The website now only talks about us being ‘DS, Marks, Minions’
I defiantly think it would be awesome to make minions not only work in higher/harder parts of the game, but also be fun.
(Also update the website to say our special skills are condi overload)

Would also like to point out, minions shouldn’t upscale events/champs/etc as tho they are other players.

Bhawb.7408:

Call Back
I still feel a bit conflicted about this. But I think the more I play PvE (I had minions out during the Norn fractal, and it was a pain that they kept some mobs away from the fires to fight) the more I think this might be a spot where “feel” of the class needs to give way to making gameplay better

Kinda funny, you converted me over to the idear of that not being the way GW should do it!

Here’s my ideas how:

Have minions take a max % life per second. Like our Spectral skills only make % life force per second, but in reverse.

Have a thing like GW1, where minions dieing return energy/lower CDs so minions can be summoned faster. In a way that, if your minions been up for 1 or 2 min, it’s full CD, but if it die’s within 10sec of summon, it should be able to be cast again faster.

Bweaty.9187:

Kinda funny, you converted me over to the idear of that not being the way GW should do it!

Here’s my ideas how:

Have minions take a max % life per second. Like our Spectral skills only make % life force per second, but in reverse.

Have a thing like GW1, where minions dieing return energy/lower CDs so minions can be summoned faster. In a way that, if your minions been up for 1 or 2 min, it’s full CD, but if it die’s within 10sec of summon, it should be able to be cast again faster.

Its honestly a hard thing for me. On one hand, I don’t want it because I feel it diminishes the “proper” way that minions should be: mindless undead servants. However, this game is very different from GW1, and maybe this feature simply needs to come in. I certainly would never agree to an “attack” or “guard” or anything of that nature, but a way to call them back to you might be able to fit with the theme and help out our gameplay.

I have been pushing the idea that many of our on-death things should be reworked to include ally and minion death, although possibly at a reduced effect.

Yeh, it would def have it’s advantages.
Being a ‘master’ that can actually tell minions what to do. Simple come back would allow for heaps less frustration.
Covers ‘stop standing in fire’, ‘get out that lava’, ‘come in range of my Transfusion heal’, ‘stop following that player exploiting invis walls’ etc.

- Minions Damage: Minions do a bit too much damage 1 on 1, and we have almost no group use.
– Reduce Training of the master’s damage boost from 30% to 20%.
– Flesh Golem and Shadow Fiend now deals 25% less damage per swing (remember this gets double nerfed with training nerf), but now cleaves other nearby enemies.
– Bone minions: Explosion now deals 25% more damage (sub set of trait nerf, plus gain a little more damage), but is no longer unblockable. Bone minions (only) now run 25% faster so they can be positioned quicker. This way the explosion is still very useful, but has a bit more risk to it.

I agree that minions are in need of a single target dps drop, and I would happily accept a lower overall damage cleave in compensation for this. The change to bone minions becoming blockable is also something I would gladly accept, especially if they move faster and your recall ability becomes a reality. This promotes skillful play in micromanagement, and can provide counter play through good use of blocks and watching for that recall.

- Blood Fiend: Currently, blood fiend is just an all-around worse healing signet. It’s killable, avoidable, heals for less and has a large cast time once on cooldown. Changes are definitely needed to bring them in line with other heals in the game, and to make it a choice to use versus Consume Conditions.
– Blood fiend should now attack once every 2 seconds (from 3), but deal 25% less damage and heal for 25% less. This would take it from 308 healing per second to about 347 healing per second. (Still less than healing signet.) In addition, every 3rd attack would remove a condition from the master.
– This way the healing is a little more in line, still not as good as signet is, still has all the draw backs as before, but also helps with conditions as CC does.

I would still have a hard time replacing CC with it, simply because the meta still heavily leans towards conditions at the moment. When people start turning toward burst specs again, I can see this change being beneficial especially in synergy with minion siphoning traits.

Cast Times: Summon cast times are a bit too long, as they also suffer an animation-time and a lock-on time. All summons should have a 1 second cast time instead of 1.5. (They are .5 second casts underwater already!) Flesh Wurm should have a 1/4 (so it isn’t “instant”) cast so that it may be used as a long-cooldown mobility tool without having to be casted for half the walking distance.

Yes please! Minion specs are godly underwater because the smooth AI and fast cast times on summoning minions. Literally one shot people with a combo utilizing bone minion explosions. This may promote alternative uses for bone minions, such as getting a immobilize chain off followed by a bone minion burst.

Call Back: Simply put, a necromancer is a pet class, even if not all builds USE them. They are so heavily invested that they can run around with somewhere in the ball park of 6-7 pets. They NEED an f2 that calls them back. A “call back” is not a “cool” ranger feature, it just makes them work right with pets. Having minions and not being able to call them back feels super clunky and just lowers the quality of the game. F2 call back can be hidden unless a minion is summoned, that would work just fine.

This idea can work, especially in pve. Nothing more annoying than your minions putting you into combat as you try to get map completion. As Bhawb first stated, this would definitely need to be looked at separately in pvp.

Pet Dodging: This actually goes for ALL pet users. Simply put, to avoid HP inflation of pets (which absolutely isn’t needed) all pets on all classes should dodge with the master and gain an “invulnerable” 3/4 frame buff to avoid damage while the master is dodge rolling. This is for many reasons; it adds some active protection of the master, which is good for the play of any “commander” builds, but also with all of the PvE 1 shots, and the Treb in Khilo, having your entire build wiped out because they simply stand there, even if the master plays flawlessly is no fun. It prevents the entire build from being useful in specific cases.

Again, I can see the need for it in pve as you stated, but I don’t think we need it in pvp. Reason being because positioning of minions and yourself is what the build is all about. That said, AI does need a bit more work; such as the change to turrents for engineers (attacking whoever your attacking).

Pet Scaling: While I can sympathize with ANets thoughts on making pets not scale with stats because it takes away from niches, they should undoubtedly scale with armor LEVEL. As a player gains Agony Resistance, pets should gain that resistance, and when a player starts to upgrade to higher tiers of armor in PvE/WvW pets should scale their own power in a ‘relative’ manner (Hp/damage/toughness etc increased slightly as a player upgrades so they don’t lose effectiveness over armor tiers).

AR change should of been implemented months ago. As for the power creep through ascended gear, yes minions should scale up to match that power creep.

Death Shroud: Death shroud is our only defense, and unlike other classes with their blocks, protection and so forth that we don’t have access too, their regens and other heals still affect them. This makes them better in groups because splash healing continues to affect them when they are defending themselves, while necromancers can often miss big heal, and even their own healing mechanics, and it can often lead to an unfair death.
– When in Death Shroud, siphons, Blood fiend, regen and outside sourced heals now heal you for 50% effectiveness. While this does put a damper on outside healing, it doesn’t make the class feel like it’s fighting itself by killing off benefits from its own heal, and traits.
– Death Shroud 2: Dark Path should have a fast cast time, like 1/4 and the animation move much quicker. Alternatively, Dark Path could retain a longer cast time but instantly teleport to the enemy.

I presume you mean it heals your actual health in DS, but at a 50% decreased rate? Could work, but our siphons are pretty low that it doesn’t even matter at that point :P. As for dark pact, it could use a cast time reduction, but I find it to be a very strong skill when synergized with hydromancy sigils and other slowing effects.

Overall, I agree with most of what is said in your write up. Having exclusively swapped to a minion master build in pvp (Sigh, dhuumfire…), most of these changes would make this build a lot funner to use while discouraging bad play and turning off those ‘bad’ minionmancers that get us mixed up with spirit rangers. Cheers!

I detest all of your suggested changes, and I have been an MM for over 750 hours.

Also pet scaling isn’t going to happen, ever. Anet said something about it before (I can’t provide a source) saying that pet scaling led to minions being far too powerful in builds that weren’t centered around minions. This lead to them replacing the original trait ideas (summon 2 bone fiends instead of one, summon 3 bone minions instead of 2, ect) with traits that buffed minion flat stats.

striker.3704:

I detest all of your suggested changes, and I have been an MM for over 750 hours.

Also pet scaling isn’t going to happen, ever. Anet said something about it before (I can’t provide a source) saying that pet scaling led to minions being far too powerful in builds that weren’t centered around minions. This lead to them replacing the original trait ideas (summon 2 bone fiends instead of one, summon 3 bone minions instead of 2, ect) with traits that buffed minion flat stats.

Couple things. I’m fairly certain Bhawb and I both have had more than 750 hours each on MM as that’s basically all either of us play (or at least a major part of what he did? Can’t speak as of now). So this isn’t an hours spent race.

Secondly you have 0 reasoning behind why you “detest” everything I said.

Third; I’m not asking for stat scaling. I’m asking for their power to rise identical to average growth rate per ascended item worn. The reason being; without that you don’t have to worry about them becoming too powerful. They literally just lose power. Everyone gets stronger, they stay the absolute same, they become weak. If you want your build to stay in the shadows while everyone else rises in power as tiers of armor come out that boosts everyone elses’ power, you be my guest.

ronpierce.2760:

Couple things. I’m fairly certain Bhawb and I both have had more than 750 hours each on MM as that’s basically all either of us play (or at least a major part of what he did? Can’t speak as of now). So this isn’t an hours spent race.

I actually MM more now than I did before. I used to only MM in sPvP and loosely in open-world PvE. But since the HP changes I’m full on-MM. Even WvW, unless I’m zerging (which is rare on my server, and is just a simple trait/utility swap from my MM build).

Anyway, that’s a bit besides the point. Its fine if you dislike the changes, I’ve disagreed with other people about how to change minions plenty. But could you list your reasons for it? He put forward… well a ton of changes. Do you universally hate every single thing he said? If so why? If not, could you specify what it is you like/dislike.

Bhawb/Ron: Do either of your run MM without TotM ever?

striker.3704:

I detest all of your suggested changes, and I have been an MM for over 750 hours.

Also pet scaling isn’t going to happen, ever. Anet said something about it before (I can’t provide a source) saying that pet scaling led to minions being far too powerful in builds that weren’t centered around minions. This lead to them replacing the original trait ideas (summon 2 bone fiends instead of one, summon 3 bone minions instead of 2, ect) with traits that buffed minion flat stats.

There is scaling tho…
Vampiric Master got less heals, but now scales more damage with power. (With a wayyy bigger co-efficient than with healing power)
This damage also ignores armor like conditions, but is instant.

alanis.6094:

Bhawb/Ron: Do either of your run MM without TotM ever?

A lot of Condition MMs do. It’s kind of a waste to not have it if you ask me as a power MM, which is the only thing I really have faith in. My PERSONAL belief is if you want to do conditions you’re better off REALLY going conditions, but some people prefer it and that’s just fine. If you want to play power; I’d definitely say go with TotM, its just too good to not have, and its in a power line so it buffs your dagger a good bit and lets you take the Focus trait, which is a very powerful off-hand.

alanis.6094:

Bhawb/Ron: Do either of your run MM without TotM ever?

Yes, but its niche.

The only times you’d drop TotM is if you have Death Nova and Fetid Consumption at the same time, which is when you are going for a full bunker build, if you have a defensive condition build (0/20/20/20/0 for example), or if you’re doing something like Gibbly’s old MM build which was 0/0/20/20/30. But overall, TotM should be in 90% of your MM builds, you’d only drop it for specific needs.

ronpierce.2760:

Sikari’s PvP Minion Master build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAodGmAkUEN1TP4G8whUkr0A-ToAA1EIpQyhkBJJSWkGhsCZWA

Full minion utilities?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAodWjEal69aua07JAJFRT90DuBPcIF5KNA-ToAA1EIpQyhkBJJSWkGhsCZWA
(Blood fiend is exchangeable for CC, but I prefer Blood fiend for heal through stuns. Also if you’re roaming a lot I’d suggest shadow fiend over the flesh wurm.)

Edited it into the main post. Sorry about that.