Guild Wars 2

I haven’t had it this bad lately, but when I summon my flesh golem, it’s now starting to just watch me fight and cheer me on instead of, I don’t know, fighting. When I charge it, it fights for a bit, then goes back to rooting for its star summoner. Did something change with the latest patch?

This has always been a problem. It has to do with AI pathing for NPC type characters, which isn’t the simplest thing to fix.

But it was really funny how you described it lol. Its worse with a full undead cheer squad, with the bone fiend doing backhand springs instead of firing off whatever it shoots at the enemy. I’ve heard that its okay when you’re staying in one general area, but as you rotate to other points, and if you get in combat, their pathing will cause them to sniff the flowers instead.

Yeah, this is a super lame issue. We can build our spec around our pets, and yet the largest damage dealer of the group has a giant hole in his attention span. It does seem worse for me now than it used to be, but I can’t say for sure. All I know is that the past few weeks, it’s like it participates in 33% of the fights.

Its a pathing issue, and unfortunately minions inherit their AI from the same code that drives all NPCs, which apparently is “upon encountering any obstacle it is time to pick flowers”.

Also, if this has been a bug for a while, then there’s no excuse. ANet is big enough that it can find an AI guy to work out a debilitating flaw in a class’s main elite skill a couple years after the fact.

connvince.8061:

Also, if this has been a bug for a while, then there’s no excuse. ANet is big enough that it can find an AI guy to work out a debilitating flaw in a class’s main elite skill a couple years after the fact.

This would require a rework of the entire PvE AI system. This is a very high risk situation, its not as easy as just throwing money at it until its fixed.

I have the same problem , I go into a fight with multiple mobs and the minions just stand there and dont help , its so annoying !!

Mine just stands there, doesn’t even cheerlead… it must be very unimpressed with me

manveruppd.7601:

Mine just stands there, doesn’t even cheerlead… it must be very unimpressed with me

You need to roll your face over the keyboard faster then, that’s my strategy and he loves it.

It usually helps to use the active to get him going, and I’m also fairly certain that if you’re hitting more than one target it sort of confuses it. Plus, targets who kite throw it off too.

I consider mine a nice knockdown and some life force when it dies, nothing more.

The two workarounds I’ve used to help against this are as follows:

1. Ensure the golem is in melee range of the target before initiating an attack. This is really only useful against stationary stuff for the most part, but the golem will hit things if they are in its range. So for instance, if you want to bash open the door in Legacy of the Foefire, run up to the door and wait for the golem (or any melee minion) to catch up to you so that they’re standing beside it. Then when you attack the door, they will also attack it. If you’re attacking a moving opponent, you can try to kite it towards the golem, which should attack it once its in range, although it might not chase it down afterwards.

2. Let the enemy engage you. I’ve found that if you let the enemy gain the first strike on you, the minions tend to react defensively and don’t stand around. In contrast, if you initiate the combat, they’ll sometimes go into “cheerleader” mode. This isn’t always the case, but I found it does help. It might ultimately just depend on where the minions are positioned, and letting the enemy engage first perhaps allows a little bit of time for the minions to catch up to you compared to you engaging the enemy immediately.

It’s definitely a problem that’s been around for quite some time though. Hopefully it’ll get fixed up sooner rather than later. People complain about how minions are OP, but they’re extremely buggy at times.

Yeah, sometimes I wonder if Necros can call themselves Minion “Masters”… I mean, a cardboard cutout might do more damage in these situations (papercuts are painful!). At least ANet gave us some minion skills we can use to guide them to the general direction at least. I really miss the old GW1 MM. Minions just went apes*** on mobs, tearing them down mercilessly. Now it’s just… meh. Tame.

Maybe they could take another look on how the minions are positioned in relation to the Necro at the very least? If I remember correctly, they did change it once since the minions were too close to the summoner or something. Now it feels though that the Necro is very open ad vulnerable. The beauty (at least in my mind) in MM is to have a “living” wall of flesh in between you and your opponent. Not some ugly statues as it seems right now.

AI fix is pretty badly needed here… It’s such a shame they had to use such a difficult connection between NPC and minion pathfinding.

Clearly you didn’t earn the respect of Flesharizard. You have to remember that only by colecting badges you can earn he’s respect.

x)

Necro AI minions is broken since start and i dont see it being fixed in near future. It’s not easy..

Bhawb.7408:

manveruppd.7601:

Mine just stands there, doesn’t even cheerlead… it must be very unimpressed with me

You need to roll your face over the keyboard faster then, that’s my strategy and he loves it.

Finally! I’ll no longer suffer the crippling insecurity my golem’s disapproval causes me!

I find that the golem is more likely to stand around when I use staff; if I run up and use a dagger or something, it’s more inclined to realize it should hit that target.

AI tend to realize that you actually want them to attack when you get hit as opposed to when you attack. If you run runes similar to Rune of the Golemancer where they spawn anything, it’s especially bad because you’ll get hit, drop a summon, and the summon will go retaliate against whatever hit you, forcing you to get in combat (if you weren’t already before, I think that they can summon off of Aegis breaks).

Our minions are pretty good about not getting into combat before you are, one of the few good QoL changes they’ve made.

I’ve noticed that what works is autoattacking. Doesn’t matter what else you do, they just stand there, but if you hit with 2 AAs they’ll move. That’s why I never got the hang of the dagger variants of the mm build.

If they could only make emotes work for summons..

Honestly this is something I have only noticed recently, I used to play necro a TON, and recently came back to it, and previously, my fleshy would ALWAYS be attacking, the problem would be getting it to stop attacking and leash, this is something I paid a lot of attention to, so when I got back on necro and all of a sudden he won’t attack anything anymore, it definitely stood out.

It’s also something i had never seen happen when fighting other necros either, when fighting i would always have to down their flesh golem because it was doing such good dmg and crippling me, so idk what has been up with all of your flesh golems if they have been doing this since start, but it has NOT been the case with mine, or anyone i have fought. Until recently…

In store for a limited time:

Flesh Golum Pom-Poms In three colors, blushing pink, roar red, and yolo yellow get them while quantities last.

/sorry couldn’t resist

Tommyknocker.6089:

In store for a limited time:

Flesh Golum Pom-Poms In three colors, blushing pink, roar red, and yolo yellow get them while quantities last.

/sorry couldn’t resist

Shut up and take my money!

I have not noticed a problem with mine =s but I use daggers alot

Fistful Of Bacon.3046:

Honestly this is something I have only noticed recently, I used to play necro a TON, and recently came back to it, and previously, my fleshy would ALWAYS be attacking, the problem would be getting it to stop attacking and leash, this is something I paid a lot of attention to, so when I got back on necro and all of a sudden he won’t attack anything anymore, it definitely stood out.

It’s also something i had never seen happen when fighting other necros either, when fighting i would always have to down their flesh golem because it was doing such good dmg and crippling me, so idk what has been up with all of your flesh golems if they have been doing this since start, but it has NOT been the case with mine, or anyone i have fought. Until recently…

this, well mostly, I know you guys are saying this has been an issue, but honestly I have never had it this bad before, like it is BAD now

Anet recently hired an outside company to work on their AI system. Not sure how long until we see the results, but it seems something may eventually happen about it.

Of course I can’t seem to find the link and the search is worthless… anyone else have the link? It didn’t get a whole lot of attention.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Anet recently hired an outside company to work on their AI system. Not sure how long until we see the results, but it seems something may eventually happen about it.

Of course I can’t seem to find the link and the search is worthless… anyone else have the link? It didn’t get a whole lot of attention.

I did not hear about this, but this would be an amazing change and if it is true I applaud them for doing so.

It’s not worse than it was at launch tbh, but it’s definitely a lot worse than it was before the patch. I don’t know why either, I didn’t realise there were any AI changes in the feature patch.

A few weeks ago (after feature patch) I dusted off my (Condition-)Necro to test with minions, just to see if they fixed the horrible AI-issues. And it was abysmal… they just didn’t do anything most of the time. Also since launch the Bone Minion wont approach the enemy upon using Putrid Explotion which is annoying.

This is such a class breaking issue. Since almost 2 years they are not able to fix this kittening problem. It is embarassing and never EVER should have made it out of Beta like this. I played a lot of MMOs and never saw such horrible pet AI. And best is they obviously aren’t able to fix that.

Good I am on a break for this game. Hope the game will be out of beta phase in about 1-2 years…