Guild Wars 2

To quote Robert:

• Rise!”: This skill is now unblockable and instant cast. Damage increased. Now creates a shambling horror for each foe hit which lose health every second. These minions place Dark Bond on their master when they hit with attacks which causes 50% of the damage from attacks on the master to be redirected to the minion.

Not sure what a shambling horror looks like but it’s already an improvement on the previous version. The spell has very nice synergy with Death Nova with minions taking increased damage further expediting subsequent explosions. These minions also fit the thematic of Death Magic (i.e. tanky) quite nicely.

Couple of things I’d change:

• Remove the need for minions to attack to apply the dark bond. Have it apply instantly when they are summoned.
• Allow the damage redirection to affect party members.
• Fix minion AI

Thoughts?

Bacon.1835:

To quote Robert:

• Rise!”: This skill is now unblockable and instant cast. Damage increased. Now creates a shambling horror for each foe hit which lose health every second. These minions place Dark Bond on their master when they hit with attacks which causes 50% of the damage from attacks on the master to be redirected to the minion.

Not sure what a shambling horror looks like but it’s already an improvement on the previous version. The spell has very nice synergy with Death Nova with minions taking increased damage further expediting subsequent explosions. These minions also fit the thematic of Death Magic (i.e. tanky) quite nicely.

Couple of things I’d change:

• Remove the need for minions to attack to apply the dark bond. Have it apply instantly when they are summoned.
• Allow the damage redirection to affect party members.
• *Fix minion AI

Thoughts?

Not sure about the value of giving a constant buff on summon. It would be nice I guess, but I suppose it matters how exactly dark bond functions. We have only a basic description so far. On attack buffs were added to a number of traits for core specializations, probably in response to discussions among players about the lack of counter play or interest in completely passive buffs. If it stays as an on hit benefit, it’s roughly the same risk/reward as having the bleed on hit from the horrors.

As for making it a party wide buff, they have to give them crazy large health pools to last even a few seconds considering how much damage they’d take in a 5 person party situation. The immediate issue with that which comes to mind is that if you wanted them to last for any significant period of time as a party support skill, they’d have too much health when you run solo. Actually, how does Phantasmal Defender hold up in group situations? Should it be a better Phantasmal Defender that you can heal to prolong?

There’s a lot to consider but Necros have a hard time with personal defense as it is and it seems clear to me that Robert and co are going out of their way to avoid just giving necros evades, vigor, blocks, and invuln. If staying alive means not sharing Dark Bond, I might just take that.

Still iffy on minions. Still kitten y.

I love the sound of the skill, but yes it needs to apply instantly. Not only would it feel more responsive as a defensive skill but also you wouldn’t haveto deal with the wonky AI.

Being under pressure and using the skill only to have them stand there like morons, as minions tend to do, would probably break a few keyboards.

Dark Bond was a really strong GW1 skill. It redirected 75% of all incoming damage from yourself to the closest minion. Though the skill wasn’t that good. I ended up using it for Vanquishing because I couldn’t rely on henchmen to be skilled enough to keep me alive. I had to take my two healer heroes and one other. Usually I took a mesmer to give some control. The Henchmen at the time were just fluff. And I needed that reduction to keep myself from sucking up all the resources from my monks. Once 7 hero parties came out I didn’t need the skill anymore.

Though the only reason It was a good skill in the first place was because minions were easily spammable and the cost of losing one, two, tree, or even eight at a time was something I could shrug off since summoning them might have been costly, augmenting the costs and working with the system minions were not in short supply.

The issue I see with this skill is that I just see potentially 5 minions that are just going to die as soon or seconds after you cast them. And with a 20-40 second cool down its just going to act like a worse aegis.

Petrol.9086:

I love the sound of the skill, but yes it needs to apply instantly. Not only would it feel more responsive as a defensive skill but also you wouldn’t haveto deal with the wonky AI.

Being under pressure and using the skill only to have them stand there like morons, as minions tend to do, would probably break a few keyboards.

Yeah, that’s where the third point about fixing AI comes in. It’s an important point and I don’t believe it has escaped their notice. But, that’s the thing. You don’t design skills around bugs. At least, I don’t think you should design around bugs. Necros have some instant defensive skills already (stun breaks mostly) and it’s certainly not unheard of to have an effective form of defense that you have to work for.

That being said, I guess the question is are there too many balance points against the current shambling horrors to stay alive and provide their benefit? So far, they bleed out, take normal damage from enemies, and take additional damage from you when you get hit. Given that, they will probably die much faster than the current jagged horrors unless they have much higher health. In addition to that, they have to successfully land an attack to provide the dark bond buff. In PVE, that’s not a big deal depending on the scenario unless there is a lot of AOE. In that case, none of your minions are going to last long but your shambling horrors are going to be the first to go.

Actually, if you make Dark Bond an instant buff on spawn, you may kill the horrors before they even reach their target. Eh, too much to weigh in on and too many unknowns.

Considering it’s flat mitigation, it’s extremely potent. This also allows non-condition damage builds to utilize “Rise!” more effectively. Though it relies on the minions attacking, It’s fair to note that jagged horrors are rather responsive, so the same can be said of shambling horrors.

These minions will have a LOT of synergy with DM/BM/Reaper minion master builds, as the siphoning and redirection will have a large impact on the builds effectiveness. I can easily see more DM/BM/Reaper MMs running transfusion instead of unholy martyr once these new minions drop.

It is fair to note though, that and curses/DM/Reaper builds will have less access to bleeding by extension, thus this will nerf their damage.

Lily.1935:

Dark Bond was a really strong GW1 skill. It redirected 75% of all incoming damage from yourself to the closest minion. Though the skill wasn’t that good.

Speak for yourself, I used dark bond and infuse conditions on my fort aspenwood MM PvP build all the time. You’re basically unkillable once you get your minions going.

nightwulf.1986:

Actually, if you make Dark Bond an instant buff on spawn, you may kill the horrors before they even reach their target. Eh, too much to weigh in on and too many unknowns.

The shout spawns the minion on their target.

I was kind of hoping it would (the minion itself) be more like the GW1 version so it spawned a single jagged horror on death, but considering we have the ability to get 5 at once as well as damage reduction off them, I doubt that would happen. Would make for some good play though, I imagine if you used death nova only the jagged horrors would blow up. It’s still an idea I hope they consider. Anything involving minions though still subjects us to broken AI. I know they said AI changes were coming in the future, but it would be nice to know if they will not only be shipping with the expansion but also be applied to our minions as well. Perhaps it’s time we got some word on how that is progressing? I did watch the few videos they had from an AI conference but it really didn’t give us a whole lot to go on.

This skill is the (very) lesser version of our first BWE elite Phylactery (kitten , they remove the page from the Wiki T_T).
Oh how I miss that skill! That elite was so strong…
Anyway I like it because if you think about this skill can last up to kittens (one per minion), with a huge damage reduction. It’s not strong as the Revenant’s new protection but in-line with our class (Revenant’s protection is a buff that last so teoretically it can reduce as many hits as it lasts while this new Dark Bond can theoretical lasts indefinitely but it’s limited to up kittens/minions).

I want to point that the fact minions are squishy and wiped immediately is a myth more than reality, while we cannot define them tanky I think most of the Necro population didn’t use them enough. In PvE, usually, bosses direct hits kill them but many AOE skills don’t affect them at all or damage is greatly reduced. Sometimes they are even immune to some bosses skills

While some cases are still indecent for minions (like the Arch Diviner that kills all of your minion with hit’s “stun”) in some other minions are really useful (for example they do not fall in the Thaumanova Reactor’s fractal).

As usual we all hope in an AI fix.

striker.3704:

Lily.1935:

Dark Bond was a really strong GW1 skill. It redirected 75% of all incoming damage from yourself to the closest minion. Though the skill wasn’t that good.

Speak for yourself, I used dark bond and infuse conditions on my fort aspenwood MM PvP build all the time. You’re basically unkillable once you get your minions going.

Strong but not that good. Its not that it was bad. It was useful in some situations. I think I misspoke though. I didn’t intend on saying it was a worthless skill.

I think my post was more ranty than anything. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say right now.

do we still spawn multiple?

how damage reduction work on multiple spawns?

I like the change.

I admit I was having fun in Beta open world sustaining 10+ Jagged Horrors indefinitely with a condi MM. However that’s all Rise! was really good for: PvE. That Beta weekend it saved my MM build once or twice in PvP, but that had nothing to do with the jagged horrors or their bleeds. More to do with Death Nova, the free LF from their deaths and minion trait passives.

These new Shambling horrors will be useful in all game modes and on all builds with Dark Bond. It will be interesting to see if we can sustain these Shambling horrors with them taking 50% of our damage though. Minions up until this point have been very easy to sustain with invested healing power, Regeneration, Life from Death and Transfusion.

What can’t be denied is that Dark Bond will be a big swing in favour of healing effectiveness (Toughness + Healing Power). Splitting damage by 50% between you and a minion not only relieves a lot of pressure, but allows area heals to effectively heal your personal incoming damage twice.

For example: If you’re hit with 20K damage while Dark Bond is up, 10K of it will go to a Shambling Horror(or horrors?). That’s 50% more effective healing vs incoming damage right off the bat. You then enter RS to use Soul Spiral for a 7K area minion heal + self heal from siphons. Then exit Death Shroud to trigger Life from Death for another 2-3K area healing for you and minions. Even if only one Shambling Horror receives your incoming damage (I’m guessing in WvW/PvP they’re getting 8.7K base health like Jagged Horrors), there’s a chance to heal 15K health of the total 20K damage. Without Dark Bond you would take all 20K damage and would only be able to heal about 5-6K damage in the same instance/skill usage (since Transfusion wouldn’t come into play).

With the unblockable and instant cast change, “Rise!” is inching us ever closer to GW1 MM.

As a side note, making Shambling Horrors absorb allied damage would kill their effectiveness big time. It’s better for Dark Bond to only affect the Minion Master. It’s purpose is not team support. It’s to keep the MM/Necro alive when focused and that’s sorely needed. The same way MM in GW1 could create synergy with various enchantments that made it very hard to kill the Necro while minions were up and vice versa.

I’m ok with minions having to attack in order to trigger Dark Bond. Adds counter play with cc etc. What we do need is for them and all minions to get updated AI and allow them to survive transformations. Moa birding is out of hand vs. Necros. :P

It would be nice to have some clarification about how the reduction really works too. Is it 50% of damage to one Shambling or is it 50% of damage split among how many Shambling horrors you have? The former I’m ok with. The latter would be very nice. Basically it would force enemies to deal with minions first. Area Regeneration alone could easily heal that 10K transferred damage in my example if it was spread among 5-10 Shambling Horrors.

They also need to split into two Jagged horror on death cough cough

@Knighthonor: “Rise!” still spawns 1 minion per enemy hit.

Am i the only one that wants shambling horrors to also act like their gw1 version? As is, once a shambling horror dies a jagged horror is summoned from its corpse.

edit: in addition to the dark bond thing the shamblings do atm of course. Also just noticed the post above me, need more support for this!

They gonna get cleaved along with the “master” rendering the whole dark bond useless.

robertul.3679:

They gonna get cleaved along with the “master” rendering the whole dark bond useless.

For a reaper this is great since the reaper is a melee spec. It will give the reaper a significant advantage over the other player since the damage during this trading of blows is stil reduced due to dark bond.

Bacon.1835:

To quote Robert:

• Rise!”: This skill is now unblockable and instant cast. Damage increased. Now creates a shambling horror for each foe hit which lose health every second. These minions place Dark Bond on their master when they hit with attacks which causes 50% of the damage from attacks on the master to be redirected to the minion.

Not sure what a shambling horror looks like…

Possibly something like that if they want to keep close to GW1. We would have another chicken minion.

…but it’s already an improvement on the previous version. The spell has very nice synergy with Death Nova with minions taking increased damage further expediting subsequent explosions. These minions also fit the thematic of Death Magic (i.e. tanky) quite nicely.

Couple of things I’d change:

• Remove the need for minions to attack to apply the dark bond. Have it apply instantly when they are summoned.
• Allow the damage redirection to affect party members.
• Fix minion AI

Thoughts?

As for Dark Bond being applied after attack… I don’t know what it is meant to be. Counterplay? Because I think counterplay in terms of simply killing the minion, which – as a bonus – degenerates health is already the counterplay. Considering number of cleave and AoE our metas do use, I don’t wish them long life…but I hope that they’re loyal, unlike the Elite Chicken turning neutral sometimes.

Funny enough, I lately suggested functionality of these “Rise Minions” as a trait for my Elite Specialization show-off.

Their usefulness depends on their attack (melee/ranged) and simply amount of HP.

I really seriously hope they focus on fixing Minion AI first before touching any minion skills.

robertul.3679:

They gonna get cleaved along with the “master” rendering the whole dark bond useless.

You have to remember they spawn on targets hit. The minions were usually never bunched up that much if the skill was used optimally. In fact, I found “Rise!” caused a lot of confusion in PvP when all of a sudden 5 minions popped all over the place… Except for Moa bird transformationist… that’s their queue. :p

Even if they’re bunched together and get cleaved with you, with Death Magic they’re going to have assumingly 13050 health with 2.2Kish armor, will gain area Protection on RS exit. They also benefit greatly from Transfusion, Life from Death and MoE/MoB if traited for healing power. It’s fairly easy, at least with non-Dark Bond minions, to heal your minions 70-100% health in even the biggest spike/cleave fests if you’re not cced well.

Until your shamblings go down (which can be quickly), they’re going to be absorbing a lot of spike damage against you regardless, essentially wasting the spike if you’re hit with Dark Bond up. The better thing to do is to just go after the Shambling Horrors first so the Dark Bond effect doesn’t come into play. Going after MM at the same time just gives them a huge healing effectiveness opportunity (again, unless you chain cc).

Another thing to note is that sustain MMs that wins skirmishes in PvP rather successfully are always going to have like 5-10 Shamblings with them since we can now sustain minions indefinitely. You could have a situation where an MM has 5-10 Shambling Horrors, the extra 150-500ish toughness because of that and “Rise!” ready to go again.

All this adds more of a weird risk/reward dichotomy that was true in GW1 MM:

1. “Should I attack the MM directly and try to AoE cleave minions to the ground with him? If I try, I risk him transferring 50% of my spike damage to minions and Soul Spiraling them back to full health… A Soul Spiral/Life from Death that just got a 300 healing power boost because I got MM down below 50% health… There’s also that pesky RS damage reduction/absorption, self/minion protection on DS exit etc. On the flip side, I can always try to time CC so that I interrupt Spiral, but I still have to look out for possible Death Novas ruining my party.”

2. “Or do I kite minions, cleave/range them down first, avoid Death Novas and make the MM waste a Soul Spiral on only healing minions, rather than spiking me at the same time? The transfusion spike heal of 6-8K will not be healing damage already done to the MM, so the Dark Bond + Transfusion combo is rendered useless. However, will I be able to last that along not focusing on MM with all the minion pressure? Can I successfully interrupt Soul Spiral from range?”

3. “Maybe I should ignore MM/Shamblings and go for Blood Fiend? Let the Shambling Horrors stack on me/Blood Fiend, DPS/cleave them all down and then focus on an exposed MM for 15 seconds?”

Balekai.6083:

You have to remember they spawn on targets hit. The minions were usually never bunched up that much if the skill was used optimally. In fact, I found “Rise!” caused a lot of confusion in PvP when all of a sudden 5 minions popped all over the place… Except for Moa bird transformationist… that’s their queue. :p

Fun fact: Jagged Horrors are the only minions currently in the game that are never killed off by transformations. This is due to them not being tied to a chain skill that gets unequipped.

Given “Rise!” Is also not a chain skill, Shambling Horrors probably will not die to Moa either.

I will make sure to keep this in mind during the next Beta weekend. I honestly can’t remember whether that was the case or not with “Rise!” during the last one lol.

I’m betting it was and my Jagged Horrors were just getting killed off while being spiked in Moa. Probably too busy focusing on using Moa skills as well. Oh the “horror.” :p

Seems a lot better than the previous one, specially for minionmancer. But gotta wait and see.

Honestly the minions look awful, but that doesn’t mean the skill is bad.

The minions are melee and presumably are rooted when they attack, which means that they will never hit anything in Pvp / WvW. The dark bond effect requires them to hit something, but that wolnt happen so its irrelevant, except for maybe pvE. In addition the minions naturally health degen, and disappear after 30 seconds, which is a pretty short time.

Since the reaper is probably melee, these guys are probably getting cleaved down too.

But the saving grace is instant cast. The skill will probably not get random dodged, and at least will probably hit and do something now.

That means at a minimum you will probably get a death nova proc and some life force as long as the minion actually dies. That’s not worthless.

You can also use the instant cast to turn focus 4 into a crappy version of mirror blade, bouncing off the minion. That’s nice because the skill isn’t strictly melee with this combo. (Focus is still too bad to use, but could get a buff someday).

Honestly i think the new rise skill is something you actually have to try out first in order to judge the skill properly.

We dont really know how good those minions will be and how reliable we will be able to get the dark bond buff from them.

Bacon.1835:

To quote Robert:

• Rise!”: This skill is now unblockable and instant cast. Damage increased. Now creates a shambling horror for each foe hit which lose health every second. These minions place Dark Bond on their master when they hit with attacks which causes 50% of the damage from attacks on the master to be redirected to the minion.

Not sure what a shambling horror looks like but it’s already an improvement on the previous version. The spell has very nice synergy with Death Nova with minions taking increased damage further expediting subsequent explosions. These minions also fit the thematic of Death Magic (i.e. tanky) quite nicely.

Couple of things I’d change:

• Remove the need for minions to attack to apply the dark bond. Have it apply instantly when they are summoned.
• Allow the damage redirection to affect party members.
• Fix minion AI

Thoughts?

Yes apply the bond as soon as they spawn as to spawn them you have to be in combat due to the fact that you have to hit a mob or character with the shout to spawn them.

No These things are already going to be losing hp over time do you really want to absorb party member damage as well i think it would make the summons pointless unless all your party member happen to be necromancers with the same shout. I say let it stay to where it can only work for the reaper and only the reaper who spawned them. He has other shouts to support party members and it seems like none of his shouts are really based on supporting anyways.

Yes Minion AI need to be looked at but this is not a priority thing not something im sure they would invest much time in at this current time.

As usual Anet is over doing it with the skill negatives. If damage is being redirected to the minion, what is the entire point of it losing hp every second?.

transfer pain in L2 how i miss you

Ragion.2831:

As usual Anet is over doing it with the skill negatives. If damage is being redirected to the minion, what is the entire point of it losing hp every second?.

To prevent you from having an army of 100 minions. Though they could just put a hard cap on that and call it a day… It seems like the entire skill is just bad imo. MMs already have high survivability I don’t understand the point of this skill.

Lily.1935:

Ragion.2831:

As usual Anet is over doing it with the skill negatives. If damage is being redirected to the minion, what is the entire point of it losing hp every second?.

To prevent you from having an army of 100 minions. Though they could just put a hard cap on that and call it a day… It seems like the entire skill is just bad imo. MMs already have high survivability I don’t understand the point of this skill.

It will still be useful for other builds who choose not to be MM. Having 5 minions out that can help you tank damage will be very helpful, and with the new chill buffs we should be able to have at least a couple minions land 1 attack. We’ll just have to see though.

Lily.1935:

Ragion.2831:

As usual Anet is over doing it with the skill negatives. If damage is being redirected to the minion, what is the entire point of it losing hp every second?.

To prevent you from having an army of 100 minions. Though they could just put a hard cap on that and call it a day… It seems like the entire skill is just bad imo. MMs already have high survivability I don’t understand the point of this skill.

The minion already loses hp from having damage redirected to it, having its hp also degrade is redundant and just ends up risking the skill’s usefulness. It would make a lot more sense to put in a flip over skill like the other pvp minions so the skill also has its use in small fights while preventing multiple summons.

One of the designers said live on twitch that it is always a good idea to start high then tone down from there, i dont see that happening, in fact they do the opposite way too often.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Lily.1935:

Ragion.2831:

As usual Anet is over doing it with the skill negatives. If damage is being redirected to the minion, what is the entire point of it losing hp every second?.

To prevent you from having an army of 100 minions. Though they could just put a hard cap on that and call it a day… It seems like the entire skill is just bad imo. MMs already have high survivability I don’t understand the point of this skill.

It will still be useful for other builds who choose not to be MM. Having 5 minions out that can help you tank damage will be very helpful, and with the new chill buffs we should be able to have at least a couple minions land 1 attack. We’ll just have to see though.

Would you take this over Spectral armor out side of MM builds? I wouldn’t.

The fumbling minions might be more distracting than Spectral Armor.

Anchoku.8142:

The fumbling minions might be more distracting than Spectral Armor.

With diminishing returns, can’t give you the bonus without attacking(if they attack at all), do nothing for your life force and doesn’t stunbreak. Basically, no.

Lily.1935:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Lily.1935:

Ragion.2831:

As usual Anet is over doing it with the skill negatives. If damage is being redirected to the minion, what is the entire point of it losing hp every second?.

To prevent you from having an army of 100 minions. Though they could just put a hard cap on that and call it a day… It seems like the entire skill is just bad imo. MMs already have high survivability I don’t understand the point of this skill.

It will still be useful for other builds who choose not to be MM. Having 5 minions out that can help you tank damage will be very helpful, and with the new chill buffs we should be able to have at least a couple minions land 1 attack. We’ll just have to see though.

Would you take this over Spectral armor out side of MM builds? I wouldn’t.

Depends. If I don’t have augury probably not, but if I do I’d probably take it.

Lily.1935:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Lily.1935:

Ragion.2831:

As usual Anet is over doing it with the skill negatives. If damage is being redirected to the minion, what is the entire point of it losing hp every second?.

To prevent you from having an army of 100 minions. Though they could just put a hard cap on that and call it a day… It seems like the entire skill is just bad imo. MMs already have high survivability I don’t understand the point of this skill.

It will still be useful for other builds who choose not to be MM. Having 5 minions out that can help you tank damage will be very helpful, and with the new chill buffs we should be able to have at least a couple minions land 1 attack. We’ll just have to see though.

Would you take this over Spectral armor out side of MM builds? I wouldn’t.

Why not both? Chances are, you’re aiming for a bunker build in this case, but I can see it being handy.

No i mean if we have 5 of these minions up. How will the damage reduction function? Is it spread out over all 5, or will one at a time take the damage?

Knighthonor.4061:

No i mean if we have 5 of these minions up. How will the damage reduction function? Is it spread out over all 5, or will one at a time take the damage?

Short answer, we don’t know. My guess is each minion attack will give you a stack of Dark Bond (or w/e), and the next instance of damage you take will be shared 50/50 with whichever minion sourced the Dark Bond that was used up by that attack. So if all 5 minions attack in a row, you get 5 stacks of Dark Bond, and then the next 5 attacks you take will be shared 50/50 in order of application with one minion at a time until the stacks are used up.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Lily.1935:

Ragion.2831:

As usual Anet is over doing it with the skill negatives. If damage is being redirected to the minion, what is the entire point of it losing hp every second?.

To prevent you from having an army of 100 minions. Though they could just put a hard cap on that and call it a day… It seems like the entire skill is just bad imo. MMs already have high survivability I don’t understand the point of this skill.

It will still be useful for other builds who choose not to be MM. Having 5 minions out that can help you tank damage will be very helpful, and with the new chill buffs we should be able to have at least a couple minions land 1 attack. We’ll just have to see though.

Would you take this over Spectral armor out side of MM builds? I wouldn’t.

Why not both? Chances are, you’re aiming for a bunker build in this case, but I can see it being handy.

Would rather take a second stun break. And also need some boon corruption. There is no room for it.

Lily.1935:

Ragion.2831:

As usual Anet is over doing it with the skill negatives. If damage is being redirected to the minion, what is the entire point of it losing hp every second?.

To prevent you from having an army of 100 minions. Though they could just put a hard cap on that and call it a day… It seems like the entire skill is just bad imo. MMs already have high survivability I don’t understand the point of this skill.

There is a hard cap on minions.

These minions get damage redirected to them, naturally health degen, and disappear after 30 seconds. Thats overdoing it.

nekretaal.6485:

There is a hard cap on minions.

These minions get damage redirected to them, naturally health degen, and disappear after 30 seconds. Thats overdoing it.

What number is that hard cap set at? I had 11 jagged horrors out plus a blood fiend, a bone fiend , 2 bone minions, and a flesh golem. That’s 15 so far. How many more could I obtain? After looking at the wiki discussion on minion caps, I don’t think there was anything conclusive about what the cap actually is. It was just based on what we could test within the scope of minion generation as was available at the time.

There is no true “hard” cap on minions, it is only limited by how many you can summon through the skills in the game.

There may only be a hard cap to Jagged Horrors from Death Nova. Like you Nightwulf I was easily running 10-15 Jagged Horrors during BWE in PvE using Death Nova + “Rise!”. Having minions stacking 20+ bleeds 24/7 was kind of nice with 10-30 stacks of poison now and then from chain explosions. My Condi MM was doing like 5-6K damage from minion conditions alone. :p

So it looks like Death Nova Jagged Horrors are still capped at 8 (or was that removed?), but “Rise!” does not share this same cap limit. I didn’t actually notice a cap on “Rise!” period save for the soft limits of AoE healing so many minions + combat. 10-15 being about the max possible from the shout.

I doubt “Rise!” will share said cap in the future once the minions are changed to Shambling Horrors. The only cap I could see is if the skill proves to be very strong so only 5 or maybe 10 are allowed at one time.

Again doubtful, because Jagged Horrors are hard enough to keep up at the 10+ mark from “Rise!” in HoT PvE (where they have 70%+ more base health compared to PvP/WvW).

Shambling Horrors will assumingly be sharing the same base stats as Jagged Horrors except for damage (2125 Armor, 8700 Base Health, 3.5% degen compared to Bone Minion’s 2125 Armor, 5000 health).

So they will be as tough, but will go down faster with Dark Bond than their Jagged cousins do. At least the one(s) actively absorbing damage will. A sustain/support MM build will get a lot of mileage out of these guys I think, taking less overall damage and being able to counter the degen/damage absorption they take.

I still just can’t see myself using this spell…. ever

Maybe its just the general uselessness of minions or perhaps its the fact of putting a damage redirection on a pet with already degenerating health.

What if it summoned minions that after a short delay would run up to an enemy and explode? Jagged horrors already sound pretty expendable so this would play to that fact.

Exploding overlaps with Bone Minions and makes the two skills directly compete with each other. Bad design.

What the minion master really needs in my opinion is the snow ball effect for them. Which doesn’t seem to work all that well since you don’t have a reliable way to heal jagged horrors and your numbers are limited by your skill slots. This has been a heavy burden for the minion master in pve. As much as Bhawb likes them, they’re not optimal in this game type.

I’d have rather seen this skills spawn a jagged horror when the shambling horrors died. Each. So it functions just like it did in GW1. They could have done something really cool with this which gives the minions some staying power and also works with bursts. Hard Cap the Shambling horrors at 5 minions don’t have them degenerate and call it good. Let me be the zerg lord!

Lily.1935:

What the minion master really needs in my opinion is the snow ball effect for them. Which doesn’t seem to work all that well since you don’t have a reliable way to heal jagged horrors and your numbers are limited by your skill slots. This has been a heavy burden for the minion master in pve. As much as Bhawb likes them, they’re not optimal in this game type.

I’d have rather seen this skills spawn a jagged horror when the shambling horrors died. Each. So it functions just like it did in GW1. They could have done something really cool with this which gives the minions some staying power and also works with bursts. Hard Cap the Shambling horrors at 5 minions don’t have them degenerate and call it good. Let me be the zerg lord!

As far as I remember Guild Wars 1, Minions were present in PvE there because they were acting like easily replaceable horde of meatshields which poke with some damage, distract and trigger some effects.

Guild Wars 2, not even going into combat, contains hardcounters to almost every AI (pre-HoT, one can hope) – that’s jumping, gliding, sliding, kiting, teleporting, attacking on move and what not.
Going into combat, we have more fun stuff – PvE is about dealing with single mobs or couple npcs clumped in one place which have absolutely no synergy with each other and either use 1 hit K.O.‘s or 2 hit AoEs K.O.’s, and role of players is to click the dodge button, which AI doesn’t possess.

Guild Wars 2 theoretical design of minions is that you have fewer ones and you can’t easily replace them, but he hey! Now they’re a deep concept with active skills. As we know, their amazing skills are as effective and reliable as “spray & pray” tactic in FPS-es.

I’ve been a huge advocate of having lots of mindless minions which die often and are spawned often and if we want more depth to that AI, let’s give that depth to Necromancer supporting his minions in their actions and making stuff easier for them rather than trying to command dumb AI.

I’m all for having lots of mindless minions and you could see that in Necromancer Elite Specialization design not long ago. In exchange, make Minionmancer less of a freaking T-34 tank, but rather a support for his teammates and minions.

Rym.1469:

Lily.1935:

What the minion master really needs in my opinion is the snow ball effect for them. Which doesn’t seem to work all that well since you don’t have a reliable way to heal jagged horrors and your numbers are limited by your skill slots. This has been a heavy burden for the minion master in pve. As much as Bhawb likes them, they’re not optimal in this game type.

I’d have rather seen this skills spawn a jagged horror when the shambling horrors died. Each. So it functions just like it did in GW1. They could have done something really cool with this which gives the minions some staying power and also works with bursts. Hard Cap the Shambling horrors at 5 minions don’t have them degenerate and call it good. Let me be the zerg lord!

As far as I remember Guild Wars 1, Minions were present in PvE there because they were acting like easily replaceable horde of meatshields which poke with some damage, distract and trigger some effects.

Guild Wars 2, not even going into combat, contains hardcounters to almost every AI (pre-HoT, one can hope) – that’s jumping, gliding, sliding, kiting, teleporting, attacking on move and what not.
Going into combat, we have more fun stuff – PvE is about dealing with single mobs or couple npcs clumped in one place which have absolutely no synergy with each other and either use 1 hit K.O.‘s or 2 hit AoEs K.O.’s, and role of players is to click the dodge button, which AI doesn’t possess.

Guild Wars 2 theoretical design of minions is that you have fewer ones and you can’t easily replace them, but he hey! Now they’re a deep concept with active skills. As we know, their amazing skills are as effective and reliable as “spray & pray” tactic in FPS-es.

I’ve been a huge advocate of having lots of mindless minions which die often and are spawned often and if we want more depth to that AI, let’s give that depth to Necromancer supporting his minions in their actions and making stuff easier for them rather than trying to command dumb AI.

I’m all for having lots of mindless minions and you could see that in Necromancer Elite Specialization design not long ago. In exchange, make Minionmancer less of a freaking T-34 tank, but rather a support for his teammates and minions.

yeah I remember that one. It was an interesting idea. Though I wasn’t too keen on it. Not because it was a bad idea, just that it wasn’t my style. I still think it has some good ideas in it.

Personally though if an elite specialization is going to focus and improve minions I feel it should be called the Lich, use a shield and focus heavily on corruption, summoning, survival and disease. But that’s just me.

After playing around with the new “rise!” I’m still not convinced its worth putting on my bar for any build outside minion master. There is also a substantial delay (~2 seconds) from when minions spawn to when I’m receiving the damage reduction bonus.

Honestly believe it should just summon kamikaze minions (which seems to be the most popular suggestion) because its current iteration is quite lackluster.

I like the new “rise!” even without playing a mm. i often use it when engaging group fights or when someone summons minons. gives me more time to load up my shroud if it’s empty or beeing very tanky when it’s full and i use shroud with valkyrie stats.

Well after a bit of testing in a lvl 1 uncategorized fractal to this shout; I came to the following conclusions:
-The health of the shambling horror is too low, I have cases where the ettin slaughtered them in one hit, The fire fields from the shaman killed the horrors at the start (or it was the rabid but I’m not sure), Old Tom slaughterd (or it could be very close not sure) my horror as well with his discharge move. They did survive for a hile in the asure fight if some luck with agro.
- the on hit mechanism need to go : During my fight with the raving asura I realized that my horror switched targets to the invulnerable raving asura farewell dark bond. It didn’t help I couldn’t cold shoulder him on top of it.