Guild Wars 2

I’ve recently joined the ranks of the Necromancers as a MM. Loving it so far, but I can’t help notice that many people dislike the Death Magic minor traits. This is due to the fact that it forces minion traits on you, mainly :

1.Reanimator
2. Protection of the Horde

Now I love the concept of Reanimator, but it is heavily flawed. Protection of the Horde seems cool too, but I’m pretty sure most people either find it too weak, or just seems so useless outside a MM build.

So I was thinking of a way to fix this, and here’s what I came up with :

1. Put in Deadly Strength as the Adept trait, and push the other two forward as the master and Grand Master minor traits (in whatever order, really.) This would allow for anyone to put in 10 points in DM without having a minion pushed onto them. Maybe the values for Deadly Strength would be nerfed, but I think it may be fine as it is.

2.Reanimator. Oh how everyone just LOOOOVES Reanimator and our oh so useful Jagged horrors. Yes yes, it causes horror to those who use it. Still, I think there’s a place for this trait in some builds, it just needs to be fixed. There’s the obvious “No life degen, no timer, no cooldown, bigger health pool, just remove it” and all of those other things people have said to fix the trait. However, I want to bring it further than that.

I was reading up on how MM in Guild wars 1 functioned, and it would seem that their minions did have degen, but they could have a heck load of them (well, probably a lot more than what GW2 MM can have). Jagged Horrors were also made by casting a Hex on an existing minion, and if that minion died, then it would come back as a JH.
So here’s what I suggest. Let’s take the JH concept of GW1 and put it as a trait.

This means that whenever a minion near us dies, we gain a JH. I think we should remove any timer and Degen, so as to keep this JH’s until they REALLY die. This would give us more of a “Foot Soldier” minion feel that many people have been missing from GW1. I think a cooldown should be in order, but not more than say, 15 seconds? Maybe a slight increase in Vitality for it, but I think we can do without. Whether we should gain a JH from dying enemies is optional too, but I don’t know if people would consider us having too many minions >.>

Now, I can’t quite give an opinion on PotH since I’ve yet to use it. And the Minion AI issue is still present, but we need to have Faith in Anet regarding when they’ll fix that

So, what do you guys think? Too OP? Not good enough to fix the horridness of our Jagged Horrors?

Eh, it’s as good a solution as any. As long as the minion isn’t forced down our throats like it currently is, I don’t care what solution it is.

Reanimator I think will be a fine trait once they fix the AI issues and the Vengence/Illusion of Life rallies off of minions. Boss targeting issues (Lupicus, Subject Alpha) are being resolved in this month’s patch, so I am not concerned with those.

Protection of the Horde just needs to be changed to a major trait or moved to the Grandmaster level (since both grandmaster major traits are minion-related).

I agree with moving Deadly Strength to either Adept or Master level. Nobody (should) ever complains about stat conversions for minor traits.

I’m still not a fan of minion-only traits being minors instead of majors, but I like the new (old?) take on Jagged Horror. Giving your minions one last gasp to get a stack of bleeding or two / take a hit for you seems like a pretty interesting dynamic. It do the two things I feel make a great trait: change how the game is played, and make the character stronger.

I’d like to see major changes to Reanimator that include at least:

Remove the ticking damage numbers.
Remove my characters comments when they die.

I find the reanimator trait extremely obnoxious and if they aren’t going to remove or change the trait at least remove the visual and audio obnoxiousness from it…

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Reanimator I think will be a fine trait once they fix the AI issues and the Vengence/Illusion of Life rallies off of minions. Boss targeting issues (Lupicus, Subject Alpha) are being resolved in this month’s patch, so I am not concerned with those.

I really hope it does fix it though =/ There are still problems with the usefulness of the actual minion, not counting how it can hurt you due to certain bosses and things like that. It does have better AI than our actual minions, however. Some people still have issues with how fast it dies and how useless it is since it’ll die before you actually get to the next enemy. I don’t know, but hopefully in the next patch, it addresses some other stuff too.

Softspoken.2410:

I’m still not a fan of minion-only traits being minors instead of majors, but I like the new (old?) take on Jagged Horror. Giving your minions one last gasp to get a stack of bleeding or two / take a hit for you seems like a pretty interesting dynamic. It do the two things I feel make a great trait: change how the game is played, and make the character stronger.

Yeah, that’s kind of what I was hoping for during the next changes for these traits. I don’t think this is what is planned for the JH and DM traits, but I mean, if we can get something like this, it may increase the effectiveness of the MM style.
Thanks for your imput on the matter though

Tarnsman.8092:

I’d like to see major changes to Reanimator that include at least:

Remove the ticking damage numbers.
Remove my characters comments when they die.

I find the reanimator trait extremely obnoxious and if they aren’t going to remove or change the trait at least remove the visual and audio obnoxiousness from it…

HAHAHA yeahhh, both of those changes would be welcome too ;P I’m always paranoid when I hear my character say my minion died, since I always think that I’m being attacked without noticing or one of my important minions just died xD

removing the jagged horror cooldown and degen while making them spawn off of minions dieing instead of enemies would be great. simply move it up to a (selectable) grand master trait and call it a day.

as for protection of the horde, I honestly wouldn’t miss it. swapping it out for something more generally useful would be great.

striker.3704:

removing the jagged horror cooldown and degen while making them spawn off of minions dieing instead of enemies would be great. simply move it up to a (selectable) grand master trait and call it a day.

as for protection of the horde, I honestly wouldn’t miss it. swapping it out for something more generally useful would be great.

If you don’t mine me asking, that seems to be the problem with PotH? Is the bonus simply enough? Maybe a % bonus seems to be in order then o.o
What do you think would be a good replacement for it? I do think there is a place for this trait for the semi-tanky MM out there.

I was thinking they should just merge the -20% minion recast rate and protection of the horde. 20% faster recast on minions and 20 toughness per minion on one trait would be neato, and it would free up the minor death magic trait.

Edit: Also I think making reanimator major trait, decreasing the ICD to 15 seconds, and allowing two to be up would make it worth taking. They honestly don’t contribute a whole lot, so I don’t see how having two up some of the time would be over powered.

Freedansan.3571:

If you don’t mine me asking, that seems to be the problem with PotH? Is the bonus simply enough? Maybe a % bonus seems to be in order then o.o
What do you think would be a good replacement for it? I do think there is a place for this trait for the semi-tanky MM out there.

It pigeonholes an entire Trait line into going one route for the optimal benefit. And even then, you’re nearly shooting yourself in the foot by taking every utility slot full of buggy Minions in order to receive a nearly negligible optimal benefit.

Quick fix? Make Reanimator not so glaringly horrible. Change Protection of the Horde to give Protection for 3 to 5 seconds upon Minion summon and/or death. Most preferred change? No, not really. It’s still RNG-esque and doesn’t -really- benefit a non-MM imho. But considering they already have the voicing in for when a Minion is summoned or killed, they -must- have some kind of flag for it, and tacking a short-lived Protection buff onto that would hopefully be a simple change.

But that would probably open up numerous more bugs that somehow make Minions even more inept than they currently are, would somehow manage to nullify our Dodge roll during the summon/death animation of a Minion, and would double the cooldown length of all Minion abilities. Because at this point, that seems to be about what our track record is.

The main issue with Protection of the Horde is indeed the pigeonholing. It’s a minor trait that doesn’t give any benefit unless you are running a specific type of build. That is failure of design.

Reanimator at least does something regardless of your skills. It has negative quirks right now, but those are AI problems and a known bug, both of which I’m sure are being worked on.