Sikari's Push to Revive the MM Necro!

Sikari's Push to Revive the MM Necro!

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Posted by: ronpierce.2760

ronpierce.2760

Intro (Expect a long read. I love this set up, but it needs love and attention. There’s no TL;DR, this is for the people who care about the future of MM, and for the Devs. Thanks for your time, feel free to be a part of it!)

Hello everyone, it’s High Warlord Sikari, many PvPers have come to know me as a stand-out Minion Master Necromancer. I’m trying my hardest to increase viability to this wonderful potential build, but we need the eyes and ears of ANet. For too long the build has been over shadowed by Power Wells and Conditions as for viability, mostly due to intent of minions not matching viability options. Since June 25th that has been increased in the gap. I’ll lay out the thicket of the minion master, here, and let’s try to get it the attention it deserves! The following will have everything I can detail for the Minion master, including recent changes, effective builds, suggestions/concerns, and anything you personally feel is important.

(About me: Most of my credibility comes from 1v1/SoloQue as well as Live Casted 1v1 Tournament Events. Currently 605 on Leaderboard.)

-Additional note, I keep in contact with JonathanSharp providing him with community feedback as well as other information in regards to the Minion Master as a whole.


Overall Design
The intent of the Guild Wars 2 Necromancer is to use summoned minions to deal harm to enemies, provide additional utilities, but overall be disposable. This means the developers consciously decided that pets should not have 100% up time, and that the class was built around them being a utility, not a major source of their raw DPS in a sustained fight, and that them going under is all part of the plan. Now, that’s all well and good, but there’s a core problem with that logic. The traits don’t support that.

The fact is, a real “Minion Master” build, which is something that by design of the game should be very viable, doesn’t work, and only Hybrids that use things like Flesh Golem as an elite, or Bone minions just for the explosion, which is a pitiful excuse for minions. Needless to say this design is flawed. Our minion traits are so bloated, if we want to run with minions, at the least, about 4-5 major traits need to be sunk into them. Again, this would be fine except when they are down (3 of which are sacrificed when used) we are running around almost traitless.

Further more, our traits weren’t really designed for them to be killed (minus one). With needing to invest so many traits to make them viable, we find that with them dead or if we try to hybrid and use fewer pets, those traits begin to dwindle, especially seen in the blood region. HP siphon from pets, pets taking conditions, Pets ripping boons (death) etc are all useless with few pets or when they’re dead. And if you plan on running Blood the slightest amount of AOE kills our sources of healing, which is what we use to offset the lack of stun breaks, vigor, protection, you name it. So, they want them to be disposable, but that really puts us in a rough spot when asking “why”? Unlike and other build’s pets, they don’t have a duration, and a mass majority of their use requires almost full up time. As for damage, we lose a lot of damage speccing into them as the Necromancer. The damage from minions is less reliable, and lower than Phantasms, and our damage is lowered to off set the traits we had to spend to make them even close to useful.

All that needs to be done is change the mind set a little bit. 3 of our minions are disposable by nature. Why not get into the mind set that some of the Minion Master’s minions are meant to be sacrificed, while others are not, then we’re not so forced into a hole where many of our pets are being blown to bits as soon as they look at an enemy or zerg. I’ll explain what steps need to be taken below, and hopefully my vision of a better tomorrow for Minion masters will start to make sense, and we can bring the one man army build to some sort of viability.


High Warlord Sikari (80 Reaper) / Lord Siekron (80 DH)
Warlord Sikari (80 Scrapper)

(edited by ronpierce.2760)

Sikari's Push to Revive the MM Necro!

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Posted by: ronpierce.2760

ronpierce.2760

Things We Need:

Minions
- Disposable minions need a much shorter cast time in combat. The 1.5 second cast time is brutal with the amount of CC, and interrupt. It feels to me that the reason they have such a long cast time is because they’re minions without a duration. But that conflicts with what they want for disposable minions. If Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend and Flesh Golem became tankier in combat and noted as the “Combat Minions” that are not disposable, it would make sense to leave their cast time alone, or even raise it to 1 3/4.

- Make the three non-disposable minions have more toughness and slightly more HP so that they can stand in a fight for longer than a few seconds before being demolished.
-Perhaps bring down Flesh Golem’s damage slightly to make it more fitting as a long lasting pet.

- Fix Shadow Fiend’s HP flat out, and make their activation ability more fluent.

- Provide some Anti-Conditions and Some healing to minions so that they don’t die so often in standard AOE. Currently anything in a fight over 1 person, or a single player with a strong enough AOE build, you’ll be minionless (and in turn, traitless) a good majority of the fight, struggling with long cast times and a lack of defense and lowered personal offence, all in a bunch.

- Flesh Golem should also cleave on attack. This would provide a little more AOE to the build and take minions a little further out of the “single target ONLY” range, especially if the damage is lowered, it would be incredibly useful to the build as a whole.

Traits
-The overall healing of Vampiric Master is fine, assuming a full set of pets. Half the syphoning done by the 3 disposable pets, and make the longer lasting pets siphon for 50% more so that we don’t end up feeling trait less AS frequent.

- Greater marks also puts a damper on Minion Masters. One of the only ways to play a viable MM with a staff, but Greater Marks is far too mandatory to play without. Not a single Necromancer in the world would be less than pleased if it became either baseline or an early adept, as well as liven up other death minors. I propose:
Death Traits
-“5 point changed to “Spreading Corruption: Increases the area effect of weapon abilities.” (So greater marks goes away, unblockable goes to 20% staff cd reduction. Dagger 5 and Scepter ground target aoes get a little bonus to radius, but not as much as staff marks).
-15 pt. “Deadly Strength” keep it the same, but lower it since it’d be more useful to most builds.
-25 pt. “Reanimator: Increases Toughness by 25 per active minion. When a minion dies, summon a Jagged Horror in its place.” Doesn’t summon Jagged Horrors for dead Jagged Horrors (This works here since both Grand Masters are minion based, it at least makes a little more sense)."

-Change Flesh of the Master from “Increases Minion HP by 50%.” to “Increases Minion HP by 50%, and 50% of the direct healing done to the Master heals all active minions.” (This is siphons, Heal abilities, and regen.) This helps against AOE, makes traits synergize, and provides some clever thinking on Heal uses to protect useful minions.

- I also feel like minion DPS is a little too high, especially with better up time, so Training of the Master would be a good place to fit this next part. Changing it from +30% increased pet damage to “Increases Minion damage by 20%, and minions remove 1 condition from themselves every 5 seconds.” would take some of the damage away from the minion masters, but help them survive in the thicket longer so that they CAN do the damage, lower the 1v1 threat, but increase team play viability.

Weapons (Stuff that indirectly effects us.)
- Currently, I feel like focus 5 (Spinal Shivers) is far too long. Necromancer does best when in an enemie’s face with a majority of our weapons that allow an off-hand. This means we have too many chances for it to simply fail due to fighting in melee, such as them walking through us as we begin to cast it, or if they do so as it ends, or it gets interrupted, which is easy for a long cast. Plus the major focus of it is to remove boons. Casting for 1.25 seconds to remove 3 boons is too much. It just needs to be faster.

- Dagger 5 I don’t use but I feel like it’s collective cast time+animation time is a bit too steep.

- Warhorn 4 as an interrupt triggers a bit too slowly, especially for the cool down. .5 second cast makes it a not very skillful ability when trying to interrupt an enemy heal, it ends up being down to luck.

Death Shroud
- Death Shroud NEEDS to accept heals when in use. Our “Defense Mechanism” blocks 3 of our traits (Vampiric, Vampiric Master and thus, Bloodthirst.) It ruins regen building, it eats Leeching effects, and most of all, it sucks up Blood Fiend’s healing. Talk about terrible class synergy.
-Simply put, we should also be able to stomp and Rez in Death Shroud without and questions asked. No need for exploitive tricks.

High Warlord Sikari (80 Reaper) / Lord Siekron (80 DH)
Warlord Sikari (80 Scrapper)

(edited by ronpierce.2760)

Sikari's Push to Revive the MM Necro!

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Posted by: ronpierce.2760

ronpierce.2760

Current Bugs: (Critical bugs will be Highlighted)
- Moa Morph is still killing all minion’s and putting them on a full cooldown, in which time we are defenseless even beyond the Moa.
- Stakitten seems to be currently going on full cooldown if interrupted (by fear, not 100% on others. I’m not sure if this is intended.)
- Rigor Mortis (Bone Fiend Active) missing very frequently, and I can’t figure out why.
- Death Shroud exit locks utilities for 1-2 seconds.


Current Effective Builds: (Feel free to submit via reply or forum message.)
Vampiric Minion Master
http://tinyurl.com/qexqz9j

Quick Summon Vampire
http://tinyurl.com/nq2hlcb

Condition Minion Master
http://tinyurl.com/pakdng5


Patch Notes/Changes for Minion masters June 25, 2013:
• Necrotic Bite: Increased the life force gain from 4 to 6.
• Corrupt Boon: Reduced the maximum amount of boons converted to 5.
• Wail of Doom: Added an unblockable skill fact.
• Unholy Feast: This ability now removes 1 boon from each target hit.
• Rigor Mortis: This ability is now instant.
• Consume Conditions: This skill now consumes torment.
• Chillblains: This ability now has the appropriate cast time when traited with greater marks.
• Putrid Mark: This ability will now transfer blind to enemies it strikes, instead of missing.
• Deathly Swarm: Increased the projectile velocity by 30%.
• Bone Fiend and Shadow Fiend now regenerate outside of combat.
• Death Shroud:
o New ability #5 – Tainted Shackles: This skill tethers all enemies within a 600 range, constantly dealing torment to them over time. At the end of the cast, Dark Binding immobilizes all affected enemies still within the radius.
o Life Blast: This skill now scales based on range instead of amount of life force. At more than 600 units, this skill’s low value has been increased by 43%; at less than 600 units, this skill uses the old high value. Range has been increased to 1200.
o Doom: This skill now scales based on range. If more than 600 units, it will apply 1 second of fear; If less than 600 units, it will apply 1.5 seconds of fear. This ability now lists the damage it deals to enemy targets.
o Life Blast (Underwater): Decreased the cast time and reduced the aftercast.
• Ghastly Claws: Increased the life force gain from 8 to 10.
• Feast of Corruption: Increased the life force gain from 2/condition to 3/condition.
• Necrotic Grasp: Increased the life force gain from 3 to 4.
• Shadow Fiend Haunt: Increased the blind duration to 5 seconds.
• Dark Path: Fixed an issue where the chill duration did not match the tooltip.
• Reaper’s Touch: Fixed an issue so that it now applies the vulnerability before the damage. Updated the tooltip to state the correct amount of vulnerability.
_Blood Magic _
• Vampiric: This trait now scales up 6 additional points with power for its damage and healing for its healing per attack.
Death Magic
• Death Nova: Minions now deal damage when Death Nova is triggered.
• New Grandmaster trait—Deathly Perception: Players have a 50% greater critical chance while in Death Shroud.

(Much of this equates to a side-step and very little focuses on the issues we’re having most to be viable.)


Additional Information:
Anything that you feel should be added to the main post, just let me know, including severity if it sever in effect. I appreciate any feedback, support and additions in helping bring back the Minion Master.


High Warlord Sikari – Minion Master Enthusiast.

High Warlord Sikari (80 Reaper) / Lord Siekron (80 DH)
Warlord Sikari (80 Scrapper)

(edited by ronpierce.2760)

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Posted by: Fistful Of Bacon.3046

Fistful Of Bacon.3046

I totally agree with this, and hope that devs will take a look into the mm necro. Currently, whether it be in PvE/WvW/sPvP, the only time I ever come across someone playing a minion build on necro is in 1v1, and when I did some experimenting with a few minion master specs, often times people would refuse to duel me because they said i was too over powered(op). This is true- in part -in 1v1 a minion master is VERY strong, and can beat most people with ease(assuming they dont have high powered aoe).

However, as was mentioned, whenever i see a minion master encounter more than one person(in any game type), the build gets entirely shut down.

Necromancy – nec-ro-man-cy [nek-ruh-man-see] a method of divination through alleged communication with the dead; black art.
Now, I dont believe that Guild Wars 2 was designed to be a 1v1, pvp only game, so why the build that everyone thinks of when they hear “Necromancer” has been designed in a way that makes it useless in anything BUT 1v1 is beyond me.

I would like to point out that, with the recent update, mesmer phantasms and clones got an increased or decreased amount of health dependent on which game type mesmers are playing in(WvW/PvE/sPvP), and that one way to help bring back the minion master would be to give minions more health in certain game types than other, so that they won’t be too overpowered in one game type, while being extremely weak in another. Similarly, seeing as minions focus on a single target, it might be helpful to give them an attack chain that includes an aoe attack on every third attack, or something of the sort.

Thanks for posting this thread, I think that this is something that has needed to be touched on for quite some time.

Who stole my honey?

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Posted by: erk.6712

erk.6712

i just want to start by saying this is a very well thought out post by OP. I am not a big advocate of the MM necro but i think that mainly stems from the lack of utility one brings to a team. Not to mention a lot of broken mechanics that go with MM! All of my GW2 experience is in SPVP so my opinions/suggestions revolve around that part of the game.

With that said…

They are great in 1v1 matchups like bacon has mentioned which could give them some viability as a back point bunker but thats really it. Whenever I did roll MM build (similar to op’s builds) and was in team fights, my minions would drop due to AOE dmg or myself being moa morph’d by a mesmer. this left me cold and naked, and pretty much feeling violated >.<! the minions have entirely too long of a cd even when we are spec’d for it. so i am pretty exposed with no heal or util for a good 10-20secs given the opposing team enough time to nuke me down.

with all that said… some things i would like to see changed would def be the

GREATER MARKS trait, this is pretty much a MUST for any staff necros. Why should we trait 10 into DM just to use staff? Not to mention they are still avoidable by anyone who can dodge roll! lol

Reanimator – seems useless and I am not entirely sure what to change/put here but it needs to be retooled. its almost a burden to have and i feel guilty even traiting 5 into DM knowing that is one of my trait line skills.

Shadow Fiend — Instead of blind, how about a fear? The blind on this minion just like the bone fiend is really hard to land and seems to be pretty much useless. This also means it would have some use outside of MM!

thats it for now, a+ work sikari.

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Posted by: Flux.9784

Flux.9784

okay so I was jamming on a dueling server today and this guy highlord comes in, and I think im pretty tough kitten right, rocking axe war horn semi bunker build centered around dolyak runes and locust swarm and stun.

anyway, he comes in asks for duel and absolutely dominates me, hands down no question . So i proceed to ask him about his build, and its this MM stuff and I have been converted, for the past two hours we’ve been jaming in a dueling server against various opponents talking about this build.

I highly recommend trying this, although it will take some getting used to. But its absolutely killer for 1v1.

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Posted by: hatuey.7042

hatuey.7042

:):):):):):):):)

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Posted by: itiana.8417

itiana.8417

High Warlord Sikari is well known as great MM Necromancer. Go to any duel server, odds are you will see him. Ask about any good necro, odds are you will be given his name. I am somewhat new to MM Necros in PVP and TPVP, but I not new to SPVP and TPVP as a whole. I have two TPVP guilds and over 1000 hours on my thief which is ranked champion shadow, so I decided to take a break and try out the Necromancer. I have tried condition necromancer, tank with wells , hybrid power build and straight glass cannon necromancer in both regular PVP and TPVP. I enjoy dueling 1v1 and I also enjoy TPVP with my guilds. I cannot agree which Erk, MM does offer much beneficial support to my team, my minions in TPVP make my team look like a much larger army and provide CC skills that can stop a finisher, stop a resurrection, or just stop a player from using their skills which can mean life or death for me and my team mates. The people I play with are higher levels, 40 and up PVP rank, who know what they are doing and expect me to do the same. I have found Sikari’s MM build to not only be the most fun type of Necro build to play- solo 1v1 and team PVP- and the most useful in supporting your team while being able to survive long enough to put out good DPS with your minions. In a way Sikari has become a mentor to me and other “noobie” Necros looking for a good build.

That all being said, you can only go so far with a build as good as Sikari’s, when there are flaws as listed above in the original post. There is nothing I can really add to the list of things that need to be changed to the Necromancer MM build that hasn’t already been said. However I will go over some of the biggest complications I have encountered during TPVP and SPVP and 1v1 duels. One of the biggest problems I have, is how slow minions are to get out of combat and how slow they are to follow you around the map while trying to cap points and run away. It would be helpful to have some type of range that the minions won’t leave your side, which in my opinion should be a small range very close to you. To counter this, its usually a good idea to stay at one point with a MM build. However sometimes I find I need to run and or go to another point and I find my minions far behind me. AOE can be a big problem in TPVP, and I agree that minions need some type of AOE and condition defense, as well as some way to regenerate or heal back up over time. They really have nothing they can do against AOE, other than die too quickly. Another big problem as stated in OP, is the large amount of cast time for resurrecting minions. I literally have to run away so I am not either dazed, knocked backed, or stunned while trying to perform the long animation to cast a minion back to life. Also seeing as they can die fast, I am often recasting, and often wasting precious time. Rangers pets heal, and Mesmer’s have zero cast times to reproduce another clone, or phantasm. Necromancer minions need some type of buff, possibly as suggested to reduce the damage they do for added tankiness. Cast times, minion interface, and dying too fast without anyway or healing or invulnerability skills to prolong the life of a minion, are the biggest problems I have found while running this build. There are much smaller issues all stated above, but these are the biggest problems I run into every single fight. That being said, this build is still amazing and super fun to play. With a few fixes I see no reason why the MM Necromancer build can’t be completely viable in all situations.

Thank you Sikari for this needed post.

My two cents.

Ba Zin Gaa 80 Mesmer
Zing Zinga 80 Thief
Zin Ga Zing 80 Necro

(edited by itiana.8417)

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Posted by: Artificer.3468

Artificer.3468

As much as i don’t like fighting against MM necros i have to agree with the OP, minions should be alot more resilient in team fights as long as you spec for it. and if we get turned to moa’s, make the minions little moas too

De Valkomm

(edited by Artificer.3468)

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Posted by: Blaine Tog.8304

Blaine Tog.8304

A very well-written post that cogently and calmly explains the problems with the MM build. Very interesting.

I main Ele and Necro, though I have an alt of each profession at level 80.
How to Condi Reaper on a budget
Everything I say is only in reference to PvE and WvW.

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Posted by: Bweaty.9187

Bweaty.9187

I concur.

Id also like to point out:

How come ranger pets don’t seem to ‘brake’ when walking over non-flat ground, or a rock, and need to be killed & re-summoned?

They are all wiped out in a AoE. (Even often by accident splash kitten ot directed at them)

Why is big guy scared of water?

Why do you need to do 2 auto-attacks to get them to attack? Don’t they trust your first?

A simple “COME BACK” button would do wonders. Players exploit this and drag them off over ‘invisible walls’ or area’s they know they bug out in sPvP.
And they wont get out of fire in PvE.

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Posted by: Greywolf.4857

Greywolf.4857

I am not an expert like the OP as I have only been playing GW2 for about a week, I decided to start with a necro and found leveling cool as a MM style setup, but way better since the patch with bone fiend and shadow fiend regenerating out of combat.

I think the AI on pets is pretty lame and if their movement speed was increased by about 20-30% melee minions would have more uptime on targets.

If there was a grand master trait that did something along the lines of:

XI – Minion Master: With all minions equipped minions gain toughness equal to master, 20% more damage, 50% more health and gain additional passive abilities:
-Bone Minions No Longer Lose HP
-Summoned Bone Minions always cast putrid explosion when dieing.
-Blood Fiend Passively removes conditions 3 every 10 seconds.
-Bone Fiend Speads Conditions after 5 melee attacks.
-Shadow Fiend casts 1.5sec fear after 5 attacks
-Bone Golem now cleaves but direct damage is reduced by 20% when cleaving.

Don’t know how OP that sounds especially for backloading the trait tree like that but I am a massive noob since I only started this week so I can have fun saying outlandish things.

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Posted by: Blaine Tog.8304

Blaine Tog.8304

I think the AI on pets is pretty lame and if their movement speed was increased by about 20-30% melee minions would have more uptime on targets.

This would make minions pretty obnoxious to fight against as it would pretty much invalidate kiting altogether, a standard tactic in this game. Furthermore, the Necromancer has way more than enough CC to ensure his minions can reach and stick to his target. If your foe is running, Chill/Cripple/Immobilize/Fear/knock down him. Two of your minions even have that sort of CC built-in.

I main Ele and Necro, though I have an alt of each profession at level 80.
How to Condi Reaper on a budget
Everything I say is only in reference to PvE and WvW.

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Posted by: ronpierce.2760

ronpierce.2760

I just wanted to touch up, based on the responses here and in a few other threads. First off, thank you all for your support and contributions to the thread. I really appreciate the community coming together to try to make something happen. Hopefully this will make blind eyes see again.

So, some new points were brought up here and otherwise, I just wanted to hit those so we can go from there.

@Greywolf; I agree with Blaine Tog. We really don’t need our minions to have any special handicaps. I feel like part of the art of playing a minion master is controlling the battlefield for your minions to do what they need to do. I believe in playing the Minions, not having the minions play me.

Next I’d like to quote myself from another thread. The discussion was on Reanimator and Protection of the Horde. I want to bring some more viable minor traits to this tree while making them more useful to more builds, but still leave a little in there for the minion masters since they seem to enjoy that aspect via design. So this is what I had proposed:
“5 point changed to “Spreading Corruption: Increases the area effect of weapon abilities.” (So greater marks goes away, unblockable goes to 20% staff cd reduction. Dagger 5 and Scepter ground target aoes get a little bonus to radius, but not as much as staff marks).

15 pt. “Deadly Strength” keep it the same, but lower it since it’d be more useful to most builds.

25 pt. “Reanimator: Increases Toughness by 25 per active minion. When a minion dies, summon a Jagged Horror in its place.” Doesn’t summon Jagged Horrors for dead Jagged Horrors (This works here since both Grand Masters are minion based, it at least makes a little more sense)."

Explanations are in the quote.

I do like the ideas of all pets having a bit more aoe via chain attacks, however, I’ll just have to say, realistically that’s never going to happen. We’re treading too far on the line of having multiple ranger pets. That won’t hold up. I believe what we do needs is a cleaving slightly less damaging flesh golem, and a shadow fiend that does shadow nova aoes as an attack. The rest would be the same single target minions. Having each be unique is fine, but making them all ranger pets of their own is not a good direction.

That’s all for now, keep it up!

High Warlord Sikari (80 Reaper) / Lord Siekron (80 DH)
Warlord Sikari (80 Scrapper)

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Posted by: Pelopidas.2140

Pelopidas.2140

I don’t really have much insight in MM, but i have a quick suggestion…how bout we get a boost on something on minion death ?
example : Flesh Golem dies=>3stacks of might/or protection/or stability, Shadow Fiend dies=>swiftness. Or something cooler like Life Force Bar regen:P
and different cooldowns or armor or power in wvw pve/pvp would be fitting imho

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Posted by: ronpierce.2760

ronpierce.2760

I don’t really have much insight in MM, but i have a quick suggestion…how bout we get a boost on something on minion death ?
example : Flesh Golem dies=>3stacks of might/or protection/or stability, Shadow Fiend dies=>swiftness. Or something cooler like Life Force Bar regen:P
and different cooldowns or armor or power in wvw pve/pvp would be fitting imho

It would definitely be interesting, but I’m not sure if they’re looking for that type of synergy out of them (as there is no hint of it yet). Also some questions would have to be asked like, baseline? Through Traits? And how potent. Personally I feel like before taking MM to a new level and direction, fix where it stands currently, then we can ponder other ways to set it apart.

High Warlord Sikari (80 Reaper) / Lord Siekron (80 DH)
Warlord Sikari (80 Scrapper)

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Posted by: Xaragon.3520

Xaragon.3520

Good thread when i run minion master i run something similar to your vampiric build.

personally i have found consume conditions alot more useful pretty much purely based on the fact if your minions specifically blood fiend dies you are pretty much dead.

Have you tried it yourself?

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Posted by: ronpierce.2760

ronpierce.2760

Good thread when i run minion master i run something similar to your vampiric build.

personally i have found consume conditions alot more useful pretty much purely based on the fact if your minions specifically blood fiend dies you are pretty much dead.

Have you tried it yourself?

Yep when I do I run 20/0/30/20/0 instead of 20/0/20/30/0 though. Both work. Almost the same, just a matter of preference.

High Warlord Sikari (80 Reaper) / Lord Siekron (80 DH)
Warlord Sikari (80 Scrapper)

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Posted by: Luke.4562

Luke.4562

I congratulate with you for all the dedication you’ve put in (I stopped long time ago doing this kind of things).

I’d like to say something i noticed.
1) The changes you proposed are nice to make the spec slightly more viable, but after that it still needs a lot of work to become a meta-viable spec.
2) One problem with the Minions is that they aren’t useful like other utilities. Example, check the Wells: you can bring them in builds which aren’t forced into taking traits regarding wells and they still perform good. Minions (excluded the Golem and somehow the Wurm) are way too much dependant from Traits and Death Traits specifically. They have no real utility in other specs.
It’s like they cannot perform without determinate Traits. Note that too: Wells and some other spells aren’t dependant from traits because their related traits usually works on the cooldown, they doesn’t modify the spell itself that much.
3) Minions are presented as a special characteristic of Necromancer, but they have no synergy with Death Shroud, nor Conditions, nor Pressure, nor Life Force generation.
4) The design of the mechanic; the fact that they are an use-and-forget walking turret isn’t that great. They have no passive nice effects.
5) You didn’t mention the problems with Reanimator and Protection of the Horde being usel&ss both in whatever Death build not bringing minions and whatever Minion Master build.
I feel the Jagged Horror as a placeholder… it’s again a design flaw.
6) Vampiric Master. I don’t feel it’s that good. If minions would be near 8-9 and permament it would be somehow decent. As it is now it’s not worth a Master Trait.

Good Luck, and hope your message will reach the Staff.

ALPHA, BETA, several months, … 1 Year later…“When it’s ready”[cit.]

(edited by Luke.4562)

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Posted by: ronpierce.2760

ronpierce.2760

I congratulate with you for all the dedication you’ve put in (I stopped long time ago doing this kind of things).

I’d like to say something i noticed.
1) The changes you proposed are nice to make the spec slightly more viable, but after that it still needs a lot of work to become a meta-viable spec.
2) One problem with the Minions is that they aren’t useful like other utilities. Example, check the Wells: you can bring them in builds which aren’t forced into taking traits regarding wells and they still perform good. Minions (excluded the Golem and somehow the Wurm) are way too much dependant from the Death Traits.
It’s like they cannot perform without determinate Traits. Note that too: Wells and some other spells aren’t dependant from traits because their related traits usually works on the cooldown, they doesn’t modify the spell itself that much.
3) The design. Minions are presented as a special characteristic of Necromancer, but they have no synergy with Death Shroud, nor Conditions, nor Pressure, nor Life Force generation.
4)You didn’t mention the problems with Reanimator and Protection of the Horde being usekitten th in whatever Death build not bringing minions and whatever Minion Master build.
I feel the Jagged Horror as a placeholder… it’s again a design flaw.

Good Luck, and hope your message will reach the Staff.

I completely agree about the synergy issues. The issue is, they don’t want our minions looking like Ranger pets. Their idea of keeping the Ranger “unique” is literally holding back their design potential.

Also, I do know this wouldn’t be “enough” to make full-meta, but I can preform relatively well with my current MM spec peeking at 615 and currently at 91% after some time off, which is acceptable for minimal effort, with these changes I could imagine a lot more fun coming from this type of build. Unfortunately, there is an underlining issue that to even have our pets we have to give up so much personal power, defense and utility that we cant ALLOW them to be dead, and that’s just not going to change easily. To be quite frank, we need a little more burst avoidance other than soaking up the hits, and some CC block, but I can’t really comment on how to work that in without telling them to redesign the class/build, and I really don’t want to be that guy. I’m just trying to help them go in the direction they already wanted to go.

Lastly, I did mention those 2 traits in a middle post somewhere in here. I just haven’t had time to work them into the main posts. They’re all near character max, so I’ll have to do some trimming.

Thanks for your post!

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Posted by: seraphenslaved.6235

seraphenslaved.6235

I think adding a AoE damage reduction to the Flesh of the Master trait wouldn’t be too over the top.

It would be nice if we had a little more control over them too, as someone mentioned a “Return” or “Call back” command. that would help keep them from standing in fire so to speak. Hell, I’d be happy with Attack and Return commands. just 2 buttons. the 2 auto attack thing feels buggy sometimes.

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Posted by: Nay of the Ether.8913

Nay of the Ether.8913

Good ideas and ty for putting in the time to brainstorm what I call “the necromantic elephant in the room” since no one wants to talk about it anymore in any serious sense. I like most of your ideas especially the reanimator change. It’s very reminiscent of the GW1 jagged horror skill, which was awesome and I think blending it with protection of the horde is brilliant. I think overall, in my personal opinion anyway, minions aren’t in a bad spot, but some of the things you talked about like their zero survivability in aoe’s and inability to leash them are two major concerns (shadow fiend too, that minion needs a total rework). They are just utilities though, and we can’t have them be summonable ranger pets but I am a firm believer a middle ground can be found. I also loved your idea about the splitting of minion types. In GW1 we had those types of minions too. The bone horrors were tanky grunt minions that you summoned one at a time. They did moderate damage but had high survivability, as well as the vampiric minion. But the bone minions summoned 2 at a time and were just disposable fodder. Then of course the bone fiends were like what we have now, pretty glassy but they did high ranged damage (and I think our current bone fiend now is pretty spot-on except for one flaw: it needs enough AI to keep it’s distance. Far too often I find it in melee range). Now I know GW2 is not GW1 and is governed by different rules, but seeing how successful the minion master was in GW1, I think they could take some from it’s playbook and apply it here. There’s no shame in using lessons learned in the past on current content.

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Posted by: Bhawb.7408

Bhawb.7408

I promised that I would respond and then I ran off to MLG without doing that :P

To give my two cents as someone who has run nearly exclusively with minions in PvP since GW1.

- Add optional minion HP bars to the UI. This change alone will make Blood Fiend vastly more viable (he actually has crazy good HP/s healing, if you are perfectly using his active, but that is darn near impossible with all the ranges of minions to track)
– I talked with Chaplan recently, and he explained very clearly why marks aren’t going to see size increases. I’ve run without staff plenty, and its fine, and I’ve run it with staff, its a trade off and mark size is too strong to be innate.

Other than that, minions are actually very close. They will never be meta because of the love/hate people have, but all that really needs doing is making Shadow Fiend more viable (just make Haunt instant cast, but keep the animation, and make it so that ability works properly and he’s good), the HP bars, fix the minion minor traits, and then the normal Necromancer sustain buffs we are supposed to see and we will be fine. It is just that you need to make builds around the idea of having an MM, and people don’t do that yet.

Comments to what you want specifically. I don’t think it would fix or break minions, I just think you are aiming to change them to being less disposable. I don’t think that is what ANet wants though, they are supposed to run the line between full uptime (like pets) and low uptime (the time-capped summons). I like your ideas, and we have talked plenty in game, we just have very slightly different opinions of what minions are.

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Posted by: Blaine Tog.8304

Blaine Tog.8304

- Add optional minion HP bars to the UI. This change alone will make Blood Fiend vastly more viable (he actually has crazy good HP/s healing, if you are perfectly using his active, but that is darn near impossible with all the ranges of minions to track)

That would be amazing.

- I talked with Chaplan recently, and he explained very clearly why marks aren’t going to see size increases.

What did he say, if you’re at liberty to repeat it?

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Posted by: Bhawb.7408

Bhawb.7408

His side for why the size should not be increased came down to staff is still a useable utility weapon without the size increase, just its uses are different, and that AoE in general (and ours in particular) is already so incredibly strong that this is too much of a buff to be seen.

Staff without marks is less of an AoE weapon and just down to utility. It isn’t that Necromancers need the size to use staff, its just that the trait makes the weapon so much stronger that almost everyone can find place for it in their build. Not sure if I explained it nearly as well as he did, but yeah.

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Posted by: Bas.7406

Bas.7406

High Warlord is the only MM Necro that I have ran into that has consistently beaten my MM necro. I tend to pretty easily stomp the rest or split the fights like when Bhawb and I fight, but for the most part I have lost to the warlord.

My input is simple. Minions will never be in the “Meta” so to speak simply because top players hate AI determining a kill. They may be viable, but they will always suffer in team fights for multiple reasons.

Necromancers who face MM in a team fight can stack conditions on a minion and then use it to spread conditions without ever worrying about it being cleansed.

MM die easily to any class with strong aoe. Once the minions are dead, you lose a significant portion of your ability to survive.

This means that an MM really can only be the back point defender or you have to drop full MM (which is always best). the problem is the Necromancers doesn’t have the ability or mobility to push far point and then retreat to back point as engineers, thieves, elementalists, Mesmers, and rangers do.

This means in team fights is where the necromancer is strongest and minions are exposed because they can be taken down, used as ways to project damage onto other teammembers without an out, and they are single target 1v1 destroyers, but thieves, Mesmers, and warriors all do it faster which in tournament pvp is more importants so AOE pressure from condi necros, and ridiculous damage from power necros are more necessary to teams.

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Posted by: Luke.4562

Luke.4562

That’s why it would be better if they would redesign the Minions.
The actual Minion system is flawed and compromised.
Trying to patching the actual system could end in a waste of effort and a dead end.

My input is simple. Minions will never be in the “Meta” so to speak simply because top players hate AI determining a kill. They may be viable, but they will always suffer in team fights for multiple reasons.

The AI from illusions and turrets then? They should just modify minions so the AI wouldn’t interfere too much. For example giving them some kind of threath not just depending on their target focus.

Necromancers who face MM in a team fight can stack conditions on a minion and then use it to spread conditions without ever worrying about it being cleansed.

Once there was this spell http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Verata%27s_Sacrifice.jpg

MM die easily to any class with strong aoe. Once the minions are dead, you lose a significant portion of your ability to survive.

Once there was this spell http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Jagged_Bones

This means that an MM really can only be the back point defender or you have to drop full MM (which is always best). the problem is the Necromancers doesn’t have the ability or mobility to push far point and then retreat to back point as engineers, thieves, elementalists, Mesmers, and rangers do.

They could work talents like Protection of the Horde giving movement speed, solving the problem of mobility of Minion Mancer without buffing the other specs

This means in team fights is where the necromancer is strongest and minions are exposed because they can be taken down, used as ways to project damage onto other teammembers without an out, and they are single target 1v1 destroyers, but thieves, Mesmers, and warriors all do it faster which in tournament pvp is more importants so AOE pressure from condi necros, and ridiculous damage from power necros are more necessary to teams.

That’s why they should implement a backfire system like Tainted Shackles: which is giving the opponent an opportunity of choice with an opportune threath; the backfire should work like this: destroying the pets would mean increasinging the pressure on the opponent self or giving buffs to the Necromancer itself, maybe multiple quantities of Life Force, Might Stacks, some aoe Dispelling effect, some conditions, like Torment or a prolonged Poison condition on the opponent.. Not like the actual Death Nova which is just ridicle.

This way it should synergize better with the overall design.

PS: Another thing regarding Shadow Fiend. Its utility, even with a lower cooldown would be useless in pvp, there isn’t space in the build for a single spammabile single target blind (which we yet have on dagger #4). It should be better if the blind would be aoe or maybe creating a smaller Darkness Well. (What i suggest, anyway, it’s to delete it definetly and put in a more useful minion, with a different utility)

ALPHA, BETA, several months, … 1 Year later…“When it’s ready”[cit.]

(edited by Luke.4562)

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Posted by: Blaine Tog.8304

Blaine Tog.8304

I wonder if the MM’s survivability could be fixed just by giving them bonus Life Force gain when a minion is killed by external forces. This would also make Reanimator a less contemptible trait for other specs.

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Posted by: ronpierce.2760

ronpierce.2760

I wonder if the MM’s survivability could be fixed just by giving them bonus Life Force gain when a minion is killed by external forces. This would also make Reanimator a less contemptible trait for other specs.

Currently its a double edged sword. They die and it counts as a death (the 3 that regen) so it also gives ENEMY necros LF, so if our other ones gave LF on death, we’d be helping the enemy out even more. Its a scary situation. Maybe the ones we sacrifice (other than fleshy cause it already does) should give LF on use, like Blood Fiend and bone minions.

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Posted by: Blaine Tog.8304

Blaine Tog.8304

That’s dumb. Mesmer clones don’t give LF and I don’t think Ranger pets do either. Necro minions should only give LF to the Necro who summoned them, and double LF if they are killed by enemies.

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Posted by: Flux.9784

Flux.9784

So I wanted to update my current situation, I posted up a while ago to upvote the MM build, and now I have more experience with it.

I do Tpvp with a team every night and we have gone undefeated for the last 10 games, granted this is not professional league or anything but we do really well (I think) and hopefully can play some better competition.

we run with a engi, war, guard, MM necro (me) and another (mesmer/ranger/Ele). I ALWAYS go mid point right away. and surprisingly I am normally the last one standing IN THE THICK of it. I Mean I am tanky with all these minions. I normally blast my little buggers when they are low and just do overall aoe dmg and CC.

Bas noted that the MM is not viable in team fights, but from my (granted, not as vast) experience I have been doing really well, I eat up 1v1s (especially non-MM necros), and can stay alive in 2v1 3v1s long enough for help. Almost always turn the tide in 2v2s. I have found that I can stay alive MUCH longer then my previous power style builds, as well as put out more dmg with my minions

I look forward to finding a non-minion master necro build that can kill me, I have watched the past couple mist league games and sadly the necros I saw were not MM, they seemed to be conditionmancers?

My build:
20-0-30-20-0
Axe focus/staff
rune of vamp
blood fiend
little buggers
well of power
bone fiend
flesh golem

My Issues/Questions
My issues with it are bone fiends rigor mortis is Incredibly hard for me to land? does anyone have any tips for landing this?

Lack of mobility

minions AI – duh.

Does anyone have a non-MM build that can beat MM builds 1v1?

thanks for reading

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Posted by: cyst.3108

cyst.3108

So I wanted to update my current situation, I posted up a while ago to upvote the MM build, and now I have more experience with it.

I do Tpvp with a team every night and we have gone undefeated for the last 10 games, granted this is not professional league or anything but we do really well (I think) and hopefully can play some better competition.

we run with a engi, war, guard, MM necro (me) and another (mesmer/ranger/Ele). I ALWAYS go mid point right away. and surprisingly I am normally the last one standing IN THE THICK of it. I Mean I am tanky with all these minions. I normally blast my little buggers when they are low and just do overall aoe dmg and CC.

Bas noted that the MM is not viable in team fights, but from my (granted, not as vast) experience I have been doing really well, I eat up 1v1s (especially non-MM necros), and can stay alive in 2v1 3v1s long enough for help. Almost always turn the tide in 2v2s. I have found that I can stay alive MUCH longer then my previous power style builds, as well as put out more dmg with my minions

I look forward to finding a non-minion master necro build that can kill me, I have watched the past couple mist league games and sadly the necros I saw were not MM, they seemed to be conditionmancers?

My build:
20-0-30-20-0
Axe focus/staff
rune of vamp
blood fiend
little buggers
well of power
bone fiend
flesh golem

My Issues/Questions
My issues with it are bone fiends rigor mortis is Incredibly hard for me to land? does anyone have any tips for landing this?

Lack of mobility

minions AI – duh.

Does anyone have a non-MM build that can beat MM builds 1v1?

thanks for reading

would like to try this, wich accesories are you ussing there?

After June 25 im like… 90% happier

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Posted by: Bas.7406

Bas.7406

we run with a engi, war, guard, MM necro (me) and another (mesmer/ranger/Ele). I ALWAYS go mid point right away. and surprisingly I am normally the last one standing IN THE THICK of it. I Mean I am tanky with all these minions. I normally blast my little buggers when they are low and just do overall aoe dmg and CC.

Bas noted that the MM is not viable in team fights, but from my (granted, not as vast) experience I have been doing really well, I eat up 1v1s (especially non-MM necros), and can stay alive in 2v1 3v1s long enough for help. Almost always turn the tide in 2v2s. I have found that I can stay alive MUCH longer then my previous power style builds, as well as put out more dmg with my minions.

I noted that they are not as good as a power or Condimancer in a team fight. 1v1 the MM can be ridiculously good. I used to be a part of a top tPvP team as an MM. I ran 20/0/30/20/0. I ran mid point and my job was to kill the bunker quickly. You can run MM, but your team has to be built around the fact that you have zero aoe pressure. Your team seems to be built around your deficiences as an MM.

Is it viable at most levels of play? Absolutely, because people don’t know how to kite. I was in mid fight one day with a guardian, and he just dodge rolled and avoided most of my damage. This is the downside to it.

My Issues/Questions
My issues with it are bone fiends rigor mortis is Incredibly hard for me to land? does anyone have any tips for landing this?

Cripple, Chill, than hit it when they are close. You don’t have to be on them just withing 200-300.

Does anyone have a non-MM build that can beat MM builds 1v1?

thanks for reading

1 v 1 against an MM is tough, but a good power Necro running 30/10/0/0/30 would blow through one if he was smart.

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Posted by: Flux.9784

Flux.9784

@cyst I run with soldiers

Hey Bas, thanks for the reply, couple more question that hopefully you can answer -
1.what kind of conditionmancer are you running for your team fights?

2.You stated that when you ran MM you would do a similar thing and go straight to mid to defeat the bunker-
-You also said that a good power necro would blow through a MM.
Therefore (heres my theory) Do you think its safe to say that the same power necro would do just as well with your previous MM’s job of running to the center?

3.I honestly do not like minions and would love to ditch them, but I have had great success with them in terms of tanking,1v1, 2v1, and others. Its hard for me to switch when i absolutely burn through all the necros I see? I’m hoping that if you elaborate on your conditionmancer build or power build I can adapt those to my play style and achieve better result (since thats what I am seeing in mist league)?

(edited by Flux.9784)

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Posted by: Nay of the Ether.8913

Nay of the Ether.8913

PS: Another thing regarding Shadow Fiend. Its utility, even with a lower cooldown would be useless in pvp, there isn’t space in the build for a single spammabile single target blind (which we yet have on dagger #4). It should be better if the blind would be aoe or maybe creating a smaller Darkness Well. (What i suggest, anyway, it’s to delete it definetly and put in a more useful minion, with a different utility)

The blind is aoe, just thought I’d point that out. It doesn’t state it in the tooltip, but it is. The problem is, it’s a single blind and we have a melee range minion with virtually no toughness and low hp on a very slow attack rate. Changing it’s skill cd does absolutely nothing to address the core of it’s problems. If it can’t even get to it’s target in one piece, there’s no point in bringing it at all. At least the bone minions can be exploded. I’ve said many times that having it do a short blind pulse similar to a mini darkness well like you mentioned (just without a combo field or ground target), would benefit this minion sooo much that it might actually be viable to bring along.

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Posted by: Blaine Tog.8304

Blaine Tog.8304

What if the Shadow Fiend’s animation were instant? Press the button and your target is instantly blinded and has the Shadow Fiend up in their grill.

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Posted by: Bas.7406

Bas.7406

@cyst I run with soldiers

Hey Bas, thanks for the reply, couple more question that hopefully you can answer -
1.what kind of conditionmancer are you running for your team fights?

I don’t like condition builds, but I think the standard builds are 30/30/10 or 0/30/10/0/30 (Gibbly)

2.You stated that when you ran MM you would do a similar thing and go straight to mid to defeat the bunker-
-You also said that a good power necro would blow through a MM.
Therefore (heres my theory) Do you think its safe to say that the same power necro would do just as well with your previous MM’s job of running to the center?

Yes and no! Yes it could do it faster. No in that you will get trainwrecked if you make a mistake. The MM gives you a great opportunity to stay alive longer.

3.I honestly do not like minions and would love to ditch them, but I have had great success with them in terms of tanking,1v1, 2v1, and others. Its hard for me to switch when i absolutely burn through all the necros I see? I’m hoping that if you elaborate on your conditionmancer build or power build I can adapt those to my play style and achieve better result (since thats what I am seeing in mist league)?

If you adjust your build, your team needs to know you will be more squishy, and your Mesmer or Ele needs to be ready to peel off you when trouble arrives.

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Posted by: Laserbolt.6731

Laserbolt.6731

Sikari,

Which build of the 3 currently-effective MM builds would you say is the strongest for PvP?

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Posted by: ronpierce.2760

ronpierce.2760

I’ll make a bigger post soon, on the road, but Laserbolt, I prefer the first others prefer the second and will change 20% reduced cd for death nova. Try the first one first, though. However try 5x Vamp Runes 1x Ogre. The Dwanya gets eaten by DS too much and was an attempt to help Minions last but currently Aoe is out of hand. For the same reason 6/6 vamp isn’t really useful. (Condies)

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Posted by: Bhawb.7408

Bhawb.7408

There are many, many versions of MM builds, more than 3.

MMs are fine in mid fights, just make the right team for it. Shadow fiend, if they buffed his active and survivability would find a spot in some of my builds guaranteed. He has the second highest attack speed (more life steal, more boons stripped), second highest DPS, and the blind is AoE on a low CD.

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Posted by: seraphenslaved.6235

seraphenslaved.6235

This deserves to be back on page one.

Make MM viable in high tpvp, Anet. puuuleeeez

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Posted by: ronpierce.2760

ronpierce.2760

I just wanted to stop in and say, that yes there are builds that work. However I’m still very strong on the need for more AoE survivability especially for long-lasting minions (Bone Fiend, Flesh Golem and Shadow Fiend.) and in general the Necromancer has to be able to heal in DS. DS is one of the few actual NEGATIVE abilities in the game when used, in that, if a guardian aoe heals people to full, we miss out, we miss out on traits, sigils, boons and Blood Fiend ticks, overall its just a sad situation. Instead of balancing mechanics around numbers, they should try to balance numbers around fluid mechanics. I refuse to believe healing while in DS where your heal is disabled puts our defenses over the top THAT harshly, but it looks really lazy to not let us heal in it.

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Posted by: Bhawb.7408

Bhawb.7408

It isn’t “lazy” it is a purposeful exclusion. We used to be able to heal in DS, this, paired with a highly defensive setup, made us impossibly strong bunkers. This was back in beta, where you literally had trouble killing a Necromancer 3v1 if they were using this setup. They had a ton of healing and LF generation, and every time they got a bit low they’d just go into DS, heal back up to full while essentially being immune to damage (for the duration of the LF pool) then come back out, generate more LF and repeat ad nauseum. The more you know.

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Posted by: ronpierce.2760

ronpierce.2760

It isn’t “lazy” it is a purposeful exclusion. We used to be able to heal in DS, this, paired with a highly defensive setup, made us impossibly strong bunkers. This was back in beta, where you literally had trouble killing a Necromancer 3v1 if they were using this setup. They had a ton of healing and LF generation, and every time they got a bit low they’d just go into DS, heal back up to full while essentially being immune to damage (for the duration of the LF pool) then come back out, generate more LF and repeat ad nauseum. The more you know.

This is why I said balance around mechanics, not numbers. I understand this was an issue, but that isn’t an excuse for poor class synergy and mechanics. Other things needed to be changed. That is why I said it’s lazy. It was a lazy fix. No reasonable argument, regardless of if it was poorly scaled before, will lead me to believe that our “Defensive mechanism” having the possibility to hurt us far greater than help us, is not a very bad thing. Again this is why I said they need to balance numbers around mechanics and not mechanics around numbers. Taking away fluidity and class synergy to avoid changing some numbers is never a good thing.

High Warlord Sikari (80 Reaper) / Lord Siekron (80 DH)
Warlord Sikari (80 Scrapper)

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Posted by: Blaine Tog.8304

Blaine Tog.8304

I wonder if healing effects granting us more Life Force while in Death Shroud would be an ok way to do it. It would potentially allow us to stay in DS indefinitely in some niche situations, but we really shouldn’t be doing that anyway so it might be ok.

I main Ele and Necro, though I have an alt of each profession at level 80.
How to Condi Reaper on a budget
Everything I say is only in reference to PvE and WvW.

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Posted by: ronpierce.2760

ronpierce.2760

I’d prefer allowing healing for clutch plays. Under focus fire I’d only be in Ds for maybe 3-6 seconds but Blood fiend and leeching could potentially take me from 1k to 8k allowing me to ACTUALLY use my defenses to come back a bit, currently if I use DS too low leaving it, I’m doomed to die anyways with a 1 sec utility bar lag and having to cast heals. I’m sure there is something they could fix to prevent any perma tank builds rather than putting a brick wall on our defense mechanism.

High Warlord Sikari (80 Reaper) / Lord Siekron (80 DH)
Warlord Sikari (80 Scrapper)

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Posted by: Bweaty.9187

Bweaty.9187

Id like to say, I did a PvE Dungy with minions. Faster CD, More Life & More Dam traits.

They didn’t totally suck like they used to!
We even ‘jumped’/skipped some mobs, and the minions didn’t pull them all down on top of us!

They odiously died to splash damage on boss’s over and over.

Moril of the story, didn’t actually ‘hurt’ the group for taking them. Which is a huge step. Still not as useful as say wells & big marks, and rather pointless on boss’s.

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Posted by: Nay of the Ether.8913

Nay of the Ether.8913

Id like to say, I did a PvE Dungy with minions. Faster CD, More Life & More Dam traits.

They didn’t totally suck like they used to!
We even ‘jumped’/skipped some mobs, and the minions didn’t pull them all down on top of us!

They odiously died to splash damage on boss’s over and over.

Moril of the story, didn’t actually ‘hurt’ the group for taking them. Which is a huge step. Still not as useful as say wells & big marks, and rather pointless on boss’s.

The minions can still be used on the bosses, just need to know which ones and how to place them. Flesh wurm, for example, can usually be placed up out of the boss’s reach and now you have some strong raged damage as well as a free stun breaker, the bone minions, if you time it right, can be cast close to the boss and immediately blown up for some burst dmg as well as blast finisher, and depending on the boss and how it acts, I love using blood fiend because it’s a great heal for sustained fights if you’re using vamp minions and have a little extra healing power on you for it’s active (again that’s boss-situational, so do it at your own discretion). As far as the minions not pulling anymore, they did some changes to all the pets recently, so that they don’t “yank mobs” as I call it if they didn’t already agro. Makes a huuuge difference trekking through Orr too. So yeah, minion are getting to a pretty good place, but they still rely on a lot of personal skill to pull it off compared to other “easier” builds like wells and such.

http://almunns.wix.com/elitedeathsociety
~Surrender fiend and you will get an easy death
~I could promise you the same…but it would be a lie…

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Posted by: Luke.4562

Luke.4562

they still rely on a lot of personal skill to pull it off compared to other “easier” builds like wells and such.

It’s not a matter of skill.
It’s not a matter of difficulty.
It’s a matter of bad design.
It’s a matter of enjoying playing with broken stuff.

ALPHA, BETA, several months, … 1 Year later…“When it’s ready”[cit.]

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Posted by: VonKreep.6598

VonKreep.6598

I love my vampiric Minion build, I commend you for this post.

I’d also like to see some sort of change when we revive someone, our minions cut the rez strength in half if they are in combat. Also, I am forever slowed if one darts away and is hit by a glancing blow from some random enemy.

Minion <3 Anet