Guild Wars 2

Perhaps I missed the memo on this one, but does anyone know why most minions aren’t allowed to have health regeneration out-of-combat?

It puzzles me because Necros are still allowed to re-summon or use traited life transfer to get healthy minions again.

Was having full health minions so OP that we need this handicap? If so, why does Flesh Golem get out-of-combat health regen?

Especially in PvE, this lack of out-of-combat health regen for minions appears to serves no other purpose than to be an inconvenience/annoyance.

Did someone on the dev team ever explained the reason for this awkward design decision?

Actually you can’t resummon them until they die. They are designed to die to keep them weak.

The reason we don’t have it is because you need to save Death Shroud until you are about to die :P.

Seriously though it’s not that big of a deal, just a minor annoyance when playing. I am not sure why they don’t have out of combat regen, nor can I give you a real reason as to why.

I’m guessing it’s just a bug.

You can re-summon by switching skills and switching back (although it’s incredibly slow to wait for the cooldown).

Well of Blood also heals minions, as does deathly invigoration (for very little)

Yes, we need to kill off the minion in order to re-summon. This can be done with skill swaps. Again, an annoyance.

I don’t disagree that this is a minor point. Since it’s against the norm, a designer must have actively thought to put this little regen handicap on minions.

I just can’t imagine what they’re trying to accomplish besides trolling us a little.

Chickenbone.5918:

I don’t disagree that this is a minor point. Since it’s against the norm, a designer must have actively thought to put this little regen handicap on minions.

I see why that seems to be the case, but that’s not really how software bugs work (I’m a software developer). A small difference like this could easily be an unintentional bug. I agree it’s annoying, but I don’t think ANet is out to get us and expect it to be fixed eventually.

Necromancer minions do not regen hp as it is a concept brought over from gw1. GW1 necromancer minions though could be replenished via corpses and healed with a skill called “Blood of the Master”, which can’t be done in gw2. In other words it’s a broken idea brought from it’s predecessor.

@DelOnasai

I doubt this is a bug since most players don’t even view it as a bug. Most have just accepted it as how things work.

It’s not even included in the Necro Bugs Complilations sticky. I think the chances of it ever getting “fixed” are slim to none.

@The Primary

Your explanation probably makes the most sense. It’s also probably the most depressing. Of all the great things the GW1 necro had to offer, this is the dumb idea they decided to carry forth. =(

Actually in GW1 they lost HP, with it gradually increasing in severity, somewhat like Jagged Horrors (except even they have constant degen, not constantly increasing). Them not regenerating HP out of combat isn’t a bug, it was simply a design choice. Considering 3/5 minions are able to be put on CD at will, and 1/2 of the leftover ones is ranged (and thus takes far less damage). Flesh Golem needs the regen because he is an elite, and having your elite die from residual damage would be a significantly weaker elite.

Chickenbone.5918:

@DelOnasai

I doubt this is a bug since most players don’t even view it as a bug. Most have just accepted it as how things work.

It’s not even included in the Necro Bugs Complilations sticky. I think the chances of it ever getting “fixed” are slim to none.

For the purposes of the sticky, only mismatches between explicitly stated behaviors and actual observations are listed as bugs. (With rare exception.) Since there’s nothing to explicitly state that minions should be gaining regen, and the only precedent for necromancer minions regaining life outside of combat is an elite skill (the sort of skill that tends to break general trends / rules anyways), I’m disinclined to include it.

Yes this was a design choice. That’s what I’ve stated all along. I simply failed to see why it was a “Good” design choice.

From a balance perspective, there are far better ways to handle nerfs. This handicap is inconsistent at best. It doesn’t really stop necros from bringing full health minions to fights. It only adds an annoyance.

This isn’t a nerf, it is a direct buff from GW1, where minions would die very easily from degen alone if you didn’t nearly spam BotM or have a very consistent corpse supply.

Chickenbone.5918:

Yes this was a design choice. That’s what I’ve stated all along. I simply failed to see why it was a “Good” design choice.

It was not my intention to disagree, just to clarify on my practices regarding the bug list.

Bhawb.7408:

This isn’t a nerf, it is a direct buff from GW1, where minions would die very easily from degen alone if you didn’t nearly spam BotM or have a very consistent corpse supply.

Looks like we’ve found the reason why minions don’t have health regen out-of-combat. The reason is… We got buffed!.

As sarcastic as I may sound, I actually do think Bhawb is right here. That was probably all that went through the dev’s head when making this decision. Oh well, time to close the thread.

Honestly I see no reason why they shouldn’t. If you are out of combat it only takes time to either replace them or heal them. If it’s possible to do these two things out of combat to give us full hp minions before the next fight, then having out of combat regen does nothing but saves us down time between fights.

If you could trait a decent passive minion regen or share boons with them (grandmaster tier possibly?) I would be fine with them lacking natural regeneration outside of combat.

They do if you have a staff and a decent supply of ambient creatures. ;P

I could never understand why only the Flesh Golem could regen health while out of combat…

Since it shows that it’s not a technical issue with it (Well, Jagged Horrors may cause some issues, having regen and degen…).

Perhaps they wanted to keep the FGolem as the only one to have it to make it actually seem elite compared to the other minions (Aside from the elite cooldown and the high damage active ability)

At least they don’t despawn the moment you get your toes wet like old fleshy. Count your blessings, eh?

But yeah, it’s just dumb and tedious. Would be much better if minions simply went into an inactive mode of sorts upon defeat which would hinder them from participating in combat while their health slowly regenerates back to full. Would fit splendidly with the whole necromancer motif too. Constantly having to resummon your pets really doesn’t add much to the experience.

Fungalfoot.7213:

At least they don’t despawn the moment you get your toes wet like old fleshy. Count your blessings, eh?

But yeah, it’s just dumb and tedious. Would be much better if minions simply went into an inactive mode of sorts upon defeat which would hinder them from participating in combat while their health slowly regenerates back to full. Would fit splendidly with the whole necromancer motif too. Constantly having to resummon your pets really doesn’t add much to the experience.

Necro minions are not the same as ranger pets and should never be treated as such. For those that want a pet class, try a ranger. GW1 minions had constant degen, could not be controlled in any way, and had to be constantly summoned from fleshy corpses. They could not be summoned from things that did not leave a corpse (e.g. elementals).

The experience was also way more interactive because of this – you had to constantly monitor minion count and keep an eye out for corpses in the middle of combat. Minions in GW2 are already too much like ranger pets — you summon them and they stay around for a long, long time with little interaction, making minion builds pretty boring to play. We don’t need them to dumb down the skills even more with regen and auto-revive of minons. That would effectively make them a “summon and forget” utility skill… horrible idea.

Edit: What would be nice are more interesting secondary abilities on minions. Maybe give flesh wurm a targeted AOE and lower the CD on other minion secondary skills (while balancing condition durations/power and such). Minion builds need to be more interactive.

@Kharr

Are you suggesting that having no health regen on minions is somehow making it more interesting to play? Is deciding between waiting a few more secs to get your minions back to full health vs going into battle with damaged minions really such an interesting of a game mechanic that it would be horrible to live without?

I agree that Fungalfoot’s auto-revive suggestion is unnecessary. Plus there’s no way we’ll get that anyways. Although I disagree that having minion health regen will dumb down gameplay.

Personally, I don’t think making minions interesting and having health regen are mutually exclusive ideas. While GW1 minion management is indeed far more interesting, I feel it’s unproductive to compare the GW2 minions to GW1 minions because the mechanics are too different.

The minion health regen design decision should be looked at on its own merit within the GW2 context.

Chickenbone.5918:

Personally, I don’t think making minions interesting and having health regen are mutually exclusive ideas.

Exactly.

Ways to incorporate these ideas could include -

• Giving active abilities to more minions that kill said minion (See: Bone Minions and Flesh Wurm)
• Give more traits that activate on pet death (See: Death Nova)

This would mean that having full health minions before combat would be beneficial since it’s more likely they’ll live long enough to get into good positions to be killed off.

It could even go a step further and tie damage done by these effects to the percentage of health the minion had, giving a mechanic that allows you to choose to insta-kill your minions to get 100% of the death effect or leave them up longer while risking them losing health during the encounter (So they either do instant damage or damage over time with the possibility of doing burst damage later)

As it is at the moment, there are more traits that favour keeping minions alive than there are for actively killing/having minions die:

Traits for killing minions:

• Death Nova
• Training of the Master – Affects Bone Minion explosion

Traits for keeping minions alive:

• Training of the Master
• Protection of the Horde
• Flesh of the Master
• Necromantic Corruption
• Fetid Consumption

Kinda see why people treat Minions in a similar way to Ranger Pets when looking at it, also why it feels strange that playing a Necro makes you want to keep your minions alive rather than sacrifice them at any opportunity…

I do wish there was some way to have the old MM ways where you could be a minion build; and that was what you did, manage minions, but I have a feeling it is unlikely to happen.

With sPvP being the focus for balance, anything involving corpses is highly unlikely.

What I would like to see is something reminiscent of Jagged Bones (Grandmaster level trait?) and more sacrifice skills. Especially Shadow Fiend. They could do so much with Shadow Fiend. I could see having it explode into a large cloud of darkness for a blast finisher and Blind, but no (or low) damage.

I would prefer an option to kill all minions instant and blind foes near those minons.

you guys are looking at the reason why minions have no regen all the wrong reasons

the main reason why they have no regen is so that players would not park their character near a spawn point and go afk for hours of end allowing them to come back and pick up as many loot bags what ever your pets killed , think about it

you trait minions to have 30 % more damage , 50% more health , trait to get the 50% more life siphon and Trait to get when minions attack they Life siphon and transfer it back to you . if all your minions also regained their life you could literally go afk at some spot where a npc spawns and once it attacked you your minnions would then start attacking it and killing it , after that their health would regenerate back to full health to then kill again and they would never die . you have a blood fiend , bone minions , shadow fiend , flesh golem , flesh worm , bone fiend , granted you cant summon all of them together but still . even with shadow fiend bone fiend blood fiend and flesh golem and flesh worm they would never die , you would get free xp , loot bags . that is why they dont regen , and the flesh golem on it on can take 1 npc , imagine all of your pets . it would be a no contest .

Didn’t someone do that exact thing as an Engineer near launch to reach 80 in the first week?

Of course, the turrets are much more proactive than our minions. Will they even fight back if you don’t?

Not to mention the whole thing about even with 50% extra health minions can still be taken out by most if not all mobs…

Especially if the mobs have AoE’s which will decimate a lot of your minions you have out.

At least turrets could spam out immobilize and had in-combat health regen…

lorndarken.3702:

the main reason why they have no regen is so that players would not park their character near a spawn point and go afk for hours of end allowing them to come back and pick up as many loot bags what ever your pets killed

A very sensible reason. Although I feel that there are plenty of better ways to address this. i.e. stop minions from auto-attacking near by enemies if player afked for more than 5 mins.

Given how unresponsive minions could be at times, I have a feeling that if people try to abuse this afk leveling, they’d find their own corpse waiting more often than not.

As other have pointed out, engineers had already abused the afk leveling for months before they implemented the 5min despawn for turrets in the recent patch. It would seem unlikely that they stopped necro’s minion health regen for this purpose yet completely overlook Engineer’s ability to do the same thing.

Furthermore, why doesn’t this apply to ranger pets or flesh golem? Those two can easily take down a few mobs on their own.

lorndarken.3702:

you guys are looking at the reason why minions have no regen all the wrong reasons

the main reason why they have no regen is so that players would not park their character near a spawn point and go afk for hours of end allowing them to come back and pick up as many loot bags what ever your pets killed , think about it

you trait minions to have 30 % more damage , 50% more health , trait to get the 50% more life siphon and Trait to get when minions attack they Life siphon and transfer it back to you . if all your minions also regained their life you could literally go afk at some spot where a npc spawns and once it attacked you your minnions would then start attacking it and killing it , after that their health would regenerate back to full health to then kill again and they would never die . you have a blood fiend , bone minions , shadow fiend , flesh golem , flesh worm , bone fiend , granted you cant summon all of them together but still . even with shadow fiend bone fiend blood fiend and flesh golem and flesh worm they would never die , you would get free xp , loot bags . that is why they dont regen , and the flesh golem on it on can take 1 npc , imagine all of your pets . it would be a no contest .

You would need to be botting, or not actually AFK in order to get loot before it despawned. Otherwise you’d come back after hours and only get the last handful of bags.

And if you had enough health/toughness you could sit there with the flesh golem anyway, and have the bone fiend or shade-thing on ‘auto-attack’ which means it’ll use its ability whenever it can, and be replaced when it dies. Or just have some other utility like that, if it seemed more useful. Only the ones that kill themselves wouldn’t work out.

I’ve tried it before, yes it is “possible”, but it isn’t very good, and wouldn’t be any better with minions getting HP out of combat (you need to come back and grab loot bags anyway, might as well resummon them at the same time). You are much better off just leveling the normal ways.