Guild Wars 2

I never liked the way minions function in GW2. It just felt off to me when I first started, even though I imagined something similar when I was theory crafting about what GW2 might be like. But after some thought once I heard about all the nodes for crafting mats and loot being individual, I felt that the system implemented for minions in GW2 was unnecessary. It just felt hollow in its implication. A shadow of its former self.

Going off of what we have seen with node sharing in GW2, my first internal reaction to this was “OH! so Arena Net CAN have multiple minion masters summoning from the same corpse!” Oh how wrong I was. Despite that, I still hoped the Minions would be something interesting. Sadly, I still don’t see them as engaging as they were back in GW1.

We didn’t see too many Minion skills in GW1 that summoned minions without corpses, but one skill sticks in my mind when relating to GW2. Malign Intervention was an interesting hex that would summon a minion of your foe died before the hex ended. Although the minion was masterless and ultimately more trouble then it was worth, it did make for an interesting concept. After Fighting Loopy I couldn’t help but to be reminded of this skill once again. A debuff that knocked you down after a few seconds and spawned a maggot. Although an annoying skills, I felt that this would be in line with what the necromancer does and could be adapted for a necromancer skill that functions similarly.

More thinking about the minion master made me feel it should function differently then it currently does. Some minion skills, in my opinion, shouldn’t have a second skill. But rather be able to be spammed. This was one key feature that made the MM in GW1 so appealing. Although I wouldn’t suggest removing all the minions second skills. Such as Flesh golem or Shadow fiend. But the requirement for corpses is something I personally would like to see on a few minion skills. As well as alternative ways to summon minions outside of just popping them out of nothing.

Minions from Corpses, minions as a side effect from utility skills, Minions from weapon skills and even minions from minions I feel should all be considered for a recycling type of minion build. Rather then just the Minion Spam that feels only slightly more interactive then the GW1’s Spirit spammer.

I’m not suggesting to completely change all minion skills to fit this. Just a few so we can have more diverse minion masters. But what do you guys think?

I know what you mean, and many people agree with that I guess , but they won’t remove minion skills to get more minions at once that are spammable, but if you think about the traitsystem, MM’s would be OP and dominant over everyone else, some people even claim us to be OP now at PvP..
+ Would lead to a nerf anyway :p

minions in gw1 were a joke back then as they are a joke now . the only good use you could really get out of them in gw1 is to be used as meat shields for going to place to place and summoning as many as possible , in pvp they were frowned upon because at the time before the changes to aura of the lich were implemented you had to hope to have someone die before you could summon a minion , and once lich got changed the only places that they were used were for the big time battles for the kurzicks and luxons , try bringing in a mm into a random arena and people would chew you out . arena net knows this and still did nothing to make them effective in pvp , only pve were they ever sought after . looking at mms in gw2 , they still suck , nothing has changed except now you dont need a corpse , the minions health dont degen except the rats that spawn once you kill something , and you can only have 5 up at a given time . if anything mms are just as useless as they were back then in gw1 , just the way how arena net likes them to be, just a novelty , no substance , no bearing , just weightless bags waiting to be killed , and people who say mms are op are just bad players to begin with plain and simple .

lorndarken ill just have you know MM is likely the stronguest spvp necromancer spec in the game right now and that likely you dont know how to play a necromancer if you still think minions are weak.

1. Minions arent any weaker in pvp then they are in pve and deals the same damage as such minions tend to pose a serious danger in spvp versus what other class like warrior and thief can do with their ’’weakened’’ physical attack build.

2. If you run anything less tanky then a full regen warrior you likely gunna get killed by a minion master within about 3 or 4 second of the fight time out of a crowd control chain and a long immobilize

3. MM have the BEST sustain in the game out of all class, Surviving a MM is one thing but killing one? Unless you are a mesmer and the necro minion are spread about hiting your illusions (and even then its not impossible for the necro to lock you down with his flesh golem or his dagger immobilize /focus freeze) you likely will be the one to get outlived.

I play MM in both Spvp and pve dungeons as my main. There is a large defrence between a dude who just send his minion on the field while looking at them and a tactician who actualy control lock his foe down on all possible move while his minion destroy it.

I agree with the OP. While I do enjoy being a MM in GW2 (AI bugs aside) they are a far cry from the “horde of undead” feeling that made me love minions so much in GW1.

And in GW1 minions were my thing, I created countless MM iterations over my GW1 career, even had a hero MM team build that could maintain 30+ minions indefinitely (to the point they would start leveling up during vanquishes).

It’s interesting that you mention Malign Intervention as I actually made extensive use of it in my favorite Alliance Battle build. Essentially it utilized Malign intervention as an opening hex in a chain that inflicted persistent degen along with respectable direct damage. Once the target died I would catch the minion with Verata’s Gaze and have a free meat-shield/extra damage and be able to use them as potent self-healing with Taste of Death.

I would like to see more options for that sort of thing in GW2, namely new minion skills or traits that make going hybrid/half MM a viable choice. Currently many non MMs use Flesh Golem but that’s more on account of it offering a constant effect whereas Plague & Lich are more situational.

Lily.1935:

I’m not suggesting to completely change all minion skills to fit this. Just a few so we can have more diverse minion masters. But what do you guys think?

For a long time I’ve been asking for them to expand the minion system. I think the minions we have now are “fine” (disregarding some standing AI/balance issues), but I think we could use some new skills and traits that are designed to increase the type of playstyles available.

I don’t think corpses should be used, simply because it wouldn’t really do anything meaningful, except on occasion bar you from using the skill when you need it, and not really in a fun way.

However, I’d like to see:
1) A pistol off-hand that “shoots” jagged horrors
2) An ability that just summoned minions every time it was pressed
3) New minion types that expand on how MMs are played
4) New traits that accomplish things above

Some other ideas:
1) A skill that scales up. It has some negative effect (maybe sacrificing an increasing % of HP, or self-applying worse conditions), but summons progressively stronger minions.
2) Along with above, skills/traits that either make the Necromancer weaker or hurt the necro, but with the benefit of allowing more strength to the minion. Examples: reserving % of your HP to summon “infinite” amounts of minions (X% on each cast, each minion alive reserves it, so if you had 5 minions out with the skill and each reserved 5%, you’d only have 75% of your health available), giving your toughness to them, giving your boons to minions, giving your life siphoning to them, etc.
3) More types of minions/additional expansions of what they can do (Curse of the Master, adds conditions to every X attack, for example).

Basically, minions are a pretty significant part of the Necromancer identity. In GW1, we had a fairly large amount of options in how we wanted to play, both with minion types, and then your overall build (enchants, hexes, elite, etc.), and I’d love to have more ways to play MM in GW2. It also allows for more ways to balance minions, instead of every MM being a tanky DPS assassin buiser healer support bunker.

I concur.

They do have some diversity with minions in general just not a wide spectrum of MM builds. They can add some traits that even effect minions in a non-direct way sorta like Chilling Darkness with blind from shadow fiend/haunt.

Anyways the idea of a second skill is smart but does interfere with with having multiples of minions since directing them all through one skill is a bit difficult.

The ideas I’ve had which falls directly under attrition and benefits from both corpse and non-corpse relevance is a couple things:

Progressive/Evolving: Minions could start out a tad weaker than they are now as far as stats and allow for a passive stat and model size/appearance increase/change every time a nearby enemy died.

Passive “remains” stacks: Every time a nearby enemy died you receive a “remains” stack. These stacks would allow you to recast a minion you already have active. The amount of stacks required to recast would vary between minions and only for non-secondary active skill minions (currently are none :P).
- I actually wanted to note that this skill might be simplified by just reducing the recharge on your recastable minions every time a nearby enemy died. The only problem I see with that is it might be too strong XD. Then I though: If you recast one of your minions; your other minion recasts (XD) should be paused (disabled) for a short time (if that makes any sense)

Well those are really the only ideas I’ve come up with lol. But they are along the lines of what you’re talking about I think. The trouble with directly relating necromancy from corpses is, as we all know, the lore.

Bhawb.7408:

Lily.1935:

I’m not suggesting to completely change all minion skills to fit this. Just a few so we can have more diverse minion masters. But what do you guys think?

For a long time I’ve been asking for them to expand the minion system. I think the minions we have now are “fine” (disregarding some standing AI/balance issues), but I think we could use some new skills and traits that are designed to increase the type of playstyles available.

I don’t think corpses should be used, simply because it wouldn’t really do anything meaningful, except on occasion bar you from using the skill when you need it, and not really in a fun way.

However, I’d like to see:
1) A pistol off-hand that “shoots” jagged horrors
2) An ability that just summoned minions every time it was pressed
3) New minion types that expand on how MMs are played
4) New traits that accomplish things above

Some other ideas:
1) A skill that scales up. It has some negative effect (maybe sacrificing an increasing % of HP, or self-applying worse conditions), but summons progressively stronger minions.
2) Along with above, skills/traits that either make the Necromancer weaker or hurt the necro, but with the benefit of allowing more strength to the minion. Examples: reserving % of your HP to summon “infinite” amounts of minions (X% on each cast, each minion alive reserves it, so if you had 5 minions out with the skill and each reserved 5%, you’d only have 75% of your health available), giving your toughness to them, giving your boons to minions, giving your life siphoning to them, etc.
3) More types of minions/additional expansions of what they can do (Curse of the Master, adds conditions to every X attack, for example).

Basically, minions are a pretty significant part of the Necromancer identity. In GW1, we had a fairly large amount of options in how we wanted to play, both with minion types, and then your overall build (enchants, hexes, elite, etc.), and I’d love to have more ways to play MM in GW2. It also allows for more ways to balance minions, instead of every MM being a tanky DPS assassin buiser healer support bunker.

Always the idea of a pistol shooting jagged horrors n.n I like it

An evolving minion would actually be really cool. It would highly reward the MM for keeping them alive, as well as give you a sense of pride. Not to mention it could really fix some issues for PvE (where minions could probably hit the kitten mode pretty often), but without being too bad for PvP (where if the enemy was smart they could just kill the minion). Mechanics would need thought for balance, but awesome idea.

Bhawb.7408:

An evolving minion would actually be really cool. It would highly reward the MM for keeping them alive, as well as give you a sense of pride. Not to mention it could really fix some issues for PvE (where minions could probably hit the kitten mode pretty often), but without being too bad for PvP (where if the enemy was smart they could just kill the minion). Mechanics would need thought for balance, but awesome idea.

Indeed, but since the flesh golem regens out of combat he could be one tough kitten sooo people will start to complain

Falcon.8713:

I know what you mean, and many people agree with that I guess , but they won’t remove minion skills to get more minions at once that are spammable, but if you think about the traitsystem, MM’s would be OP and dominant over everyone else, some people even claim us to be OP now at PvP..
+ Would lead to a nerf anyway :p

except the only spamable minion skills I suggested would require a corpse. So it wouldn’t be OP. Because it still would have a major restriction on it.

Bhawb.7408:

Lily.1935:

I’m not suggesting to completely change all minion skills to fit this. Just a few so we can have more diverse minion masters. But what do you guys think?

For a long time I’ve been asking for them to expand the minion system. I think the minions we have now are “fine” (disregarding some standing AI/balance issues), but I think we could use some new skills and traits that are designed to increase the type of playstyles available.

I don’t think corpses should be used, simply because it wouldn’t really do anything meaningful, except on occasion bar you from using the skill when you need it, and not really in a fun way.

However, I’d like to see:
1) A pistol off-hand that “shoots” jagged horrors
2) An ability that just summoned minions every time it was pressed
3) New minion types that expand on how MMs are played
4) New traits that accomplish things above

Some other ideas:
1) A skill that scales up. It has some negative effect (maybe sacrificing an increasing % of HP, or self-applying worse conditions), but summons progressively stronger minions.
2) Along with above, skills/traits that either make the Necromancer weaker or hurt the necro, but with the benefit of allowing more strength to the minion. Examples: reserving % of your HP to summon “infinite” amounts of minions (X% on each cast, each minion alive reserves it, so if you had 5 minions out with the skill and each reserved 5%, you’d only have 75% of your health available), giving your toughness to them, giving your boons to minions, giving your life siphoning to them, etc.
3) More types of minions/additional expansions of what they can do (Curse of the Master, adds conditions to every X attack, for example).

Basically, minions are a pretty significant part of the Necromancer identity. In GW1, we had a fairly large amount of options in how we wanted to play, both with minion types, and then your overall build (enchants, hexes, elite, etc.), and I’d love to have more ways to play MM in GW2. It also allows for more ways to balance minions, instead of every MM being a tanky DPS assassin buiser healer support bunker.

See, I think requiring a FEW minion skills to use corpses would actually promote diversity rather then create an unfun restriction. GW1 required corpses for almost all of the minion skills and the Minion master was one of the most fun, challenging and engaging builds in the game. And I never said all minion skills requiring it.

…And stop with your kitten Pistol joke…

Bhawb.7408:

An evolving minion would actually be really cool. It would highly reward the MM for keeping them alive, as well as give you a sense of pride. Not to mention it could really fix some issues for PvE (where minions could probably hit the kitten mode pretty often), but without being too bad for PvP (where if the enemy was smart they could just kill the minion). Mechanics would need thought for balance, but awesome idea.

See, I’m coming at this from a different angle. I think that having a few spamable minion skills would actually solve this problem in PvE. And Having evolving minions would only complicate things too much.

They could just put a limit on the number of minions that could be summoned with the skill (which they would do no matter what). It requires you to keep the minions alive consistently.

Also, all ideas for that were presented with significant drawbacks. In Lily’s case the need for corpses, in mine making a Necro weaker.

Bhawb.7408:

They could just put a limit on the number of minions that could be summoned with the skill (which they would do no matter what). It requires you to keep the minions alive consistently.

Also, all ideas for that were presented with significant drawbacks. In Lily’s case the need for corpses, in mine making a Necro weaker.

Again, only a few skills would require corpses. Another suggestion was on weapons. Personally, I would like a weapon that is dedicated to minions but can function on its own. A weapon we don’t yet have.

Lily.1935:

Bhawb.7408:

They could just put a limit on the number of minions that could be summoned with the skill (which they would do no matter what). It requires you to keep the minions alive consistently.

Also, all ideas for that were presented with significant drawbacks. In Lily’s case the need for corpses, in mine making a Necro weaker.

Again, only a few skills would require corpses. Another suggestion was on weapons. Personally, I would like a weapon that is dedicated to minions but can function on its own. A weapon we don’t yet have.

Using weapons to summon a minion would make it a bit like a mesmer using a weapon to summon a clone or a phantom – there is a bit of a overlapping machanic in there.

Jagged Horrors (with trait) in a sense do require corpses to summon.

I like Minionmancer too but I think we need to be a more creative here…

They should give the Necromancer the ability to actually raise a dead opponent to do their bidding, just like necromancers typically do in RPG lore. If any of you have played League of Legends, I’m talking about Mordekaiser’s ult. For each ghost you control your maximum health could be lowered by a certain percentage, which would limit the number of ghosts you can have at a time. Stronger ghosts would reduce your maximum health even more so that way you will have to play strategically and choose whether it has better to have 1 strong ghost (veteran/champion) or a bunch of weak ghosts up. This would make the MM a valuable addition to dungeon teams and this would be the one standout mechanic of the Necro, just like mesmers have portals and TW, eles have ice bow and FGS, thieves have group invis, guardians and mesmers have reflect. Ideally this is how the Necromancer class should have been designed because as of now they don’t really have a mechanic that stands out (any class can be built to spam conditions) but I understand this would be difficult to implement and balance.

In addition to this, they should also allow minions to regenerate health and scale based the Necromancer’s level and traits. The fact that they don’t is one of the reasons why in PvE the MM is considered strong at low levels but falls off at higher levels because minions don’t scale.

actualy this sounds like a necromancer elite spell there

Animate dead
Type: minion
Effect: Reanimate a DEAD ally to full health for 60 second, the target possess all the ability it had in life save for its elite spell but cannot move more then 1800 range away from the necromancer.
Cooldown: 180 second

or

Signet of death pact
Type: signet
Cast time: 1 second
Effect: Revive a targeted dead ally to full health but if the ally is slain within 60 second of the use of this signet the necromancer dies as well.
Cooldown: 180 second

people in pvp would have a serious reason to fear the necromancer now for they can raise teamates back from the dead right on the cap point defence and pve necro would have a mean to bring back dead players in the middle of a boss fight. I agree on the necesity of minion scaling, still i can run this build in high end pve without problem and even get my dungeons and fractal done

To the above: we do not raise the dead themselves. While it is technically within our power, its a big no-no. The need for corpses stems from the need for raw materials to build our golems with; if we were building a golem of stone, we’d need a mass of stone to work with, in the same way.

Re-corpses. I’m not saying its a terrible idea, or that it’d be put on all minion skills, but I don’t see it generally being a meaningful limiter or play mechanic in this game, unless the corpses had some meaning to them. For example, a skill that used corpses to raise minions, and the corpse itself has a meaningful impact on the minion raised (trash mobs give you trash minions, boss corpses give you a bigger more kitten minion). Otherwise, if the corpses are used solely as a resource, it doesn’t end up doing a lot for you. In PvE/WvW there are corpses (or easy to kill things just waiting to be turned into one) literally everywhere, and it wouldn’t really limit anything. But in PvP/some dungeons, there is no way to reliably get corpses to use your skills, and now the limit is just keeping you from using your skills. It wouldn’t really be fun or interesting, just an arbitrary way to keep you from using your skill.

So I’d love it if corpses were used as a possible buffing mechanic or had play, but not if it became like GW1 (although only for certain things). However, this is all in the idea of skills. Traits can certainly be niche, and I could see corpse-based traits being just fine.

signet of death pact actualy existed as a regular ritualist ability back in guild wars 1 and used the above fonctionnality

Minions are just utility skills, and have no synergy or relevance with Death shroud. I’m glad that after the patch we will not have an entir trait line devoted to them.

Hell, they could be described as reskinned guardian spirit weapons. A minion on a weapon skill would go a long way to changing this perception.

meh maybe not an entire traitline but MM will still remain a spec in itself

Bhawb.7408:

To the above: we do not raise the dead themselves. While it is technically within our power, its a big no-no. The need for corpses stems from the need for raw materials to build our golems with; if we were building a golem of stone, we’d need a mass of stone to work with, in the same way.

Re-corpses. I’m not saying its a terrible idea, or that it’d be put on all minion skills, but I don’t see it generally being a meaningful limiter or play mechanic in this game, unless the corpses had some meaning to them. For example, a skill that used corpses to raise minions, and the corpse itself has a meaningful impact on the minion raised (trash mobs give you trash minions, boss corpses give you a bigger more kitten minion). Otherwise, if the corpses are used solely as a resource, it doesn’t end up doing a lot for you. In PvE/WvW there are corpses (or easy to kill things just waiting to be turned into one) literally everywhere, and it wouldn’t really limit anything. But in PvP/some dungeons, there is no way to reliably get corpses to use your skills, and now the limit is just keeping you from using your skills. It wouldn’t really be fun or interesting, just an arbitrary way to keep you from using your skill.

So I’d love it if corpses were used as a possible buffing mechanic or had play, but not if it became like GW1 (although only for certain things). However, this is all in the idea of skills. Traits can certainly be niche, and I could see corpse-based traits being just fine.

actually MMs in GW1 were very capable of maintaining a good number of minions on a small number of corpses even with their natural health degen. The reason Minions were ever useless in some situations in GW1 was because a few select enemies didn’t leave corpses behind. This seriously limited their viability in all areas of the game.

However, considering GW2’s design it isn’t a stretch to think that corpses wouldn’t just be on fleshy creatures. We would have elementals, skeletons, ghosts, machines that could be summoned off of as well. And also removing the Degen restriction from gw1 the minions will be able to survive traveling(something that I found to be the biggest killer of minions in GW1).

To add, I don’t have any trouble finding corpses in dungeons. They seem to be plentiful with how many trash mobs are thrown at us. The only dungeon this might be a problem in is TA. But not all builds need to be good at 100% of the content, especially with the revamp of the trait system. And providing the skills can be swapped out at any time out of combat I don’t see any issue.

I know you enjoy minions as they are, Bawb. And I’m not suggesting to take away your play style with minions. My suggestion is only to expand on what could be done with minions.

Which kind of adds to my point. I’m not necessarily against the idea of corpses as a mechanic, I just don’t really see the point to it. If, like you said, corpses are everywhere, then when does the corpse mechanic actually matter? It wouldn’t really change anything from how they work now.

I’m all for corpses if they have something tied to them, like Jagged Horror currently. Or, potentially, summoning minions with special features based on the corpse they were summoned from. I just personally find it bland to only use them as a resource, and not have any other impact. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with it, since as you said in most cases it’d work just fine, I just don’t see the point.

Oh My God.8423:

Lily.1935:

Bhawb.7408:

They could just put a limit on the number of minions that could be summoned with the skill (which they would do no matter what). It requires you to keep the minions alive consistently.

Also, all ideas for that were presented with significant drawbacks. In Lily’s case the need for corpses, in mine making a Necro weaker.

Again, only a few skills would require corpses. Another suggestion was on weapons. Personally, I would like a weapon that is dedicated to minions but can function on its own. A weapon we don’t yet have.

Using weapons to summon a minion would make it a bit like a mesmer using a weapon to summon a clone or a phantom – there is a bit of a overlapping machanic in there.

Jagged Horrors (with trait) in a sense do require corpses to summon.

I like Minionmancer too but I think we need to be a more creative here…

not all weapons. I’m not even suggesting changing any of the weapons we have to fit the minion play style. A new weapon that may or may not be given to us in the future should have this synergy with minions.

And there is already overlap in the game if you want to compare minions with illusions. Minions function far more like spirit weapons or turrets then illusions.

Bhawb.7408:

Which kind of adds to my point. I’m not necessarily against the idea of corpses as a mechanic, I just don’t really see the point to it. If, like you said, corpses are everywhere, then when does the corpse mechanic actually matter? It wouldn’t really change anything from how they work now.

I’m all for corpses if they have something tied to them, like Jagged Horror currently. Or, potentially, summoning minions with special features based on the corpse they were summoned from. I just personally find it bland to only use them as a resource, and not have any other impact. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with it, since as you said in most cases it’d work just fine, I just don’t see the point.

GW1 had such a interesting counter play with corpses. You wanted to use them up before competing necromancers used them. It was interesting. Diablo II hand multiple enemies that revived each other and summoning skeletons would destroy the corpse.

Minions don’t have good staying power. Not in PvE. Their impact is minimal at best and at worst they bug and remove your utility. The point is to give them staying power while preventing them from just dominating ever thing. Corpses are not hard to find in Dungeons however at the same time all the corpses will most likely be used in a single fight because of how fragile minions are. This makes the build very active and requires the player to pay attention.

And like anything in the game. The point is and always should be enjoyment. The biggest point I can make is it would be fun.

Although there is also the minion counter play idea that GW1 and Diablo II had. But that would require a lot more then just a suggestion about giving minions staying power and their recycled feel back.

On the point of cosmetics of the minions:

I just don’t feel they are “scary” enough in a sense of that they do not relate to anything afterlife or the decaying of a fresh. Honestly they look weird.

There are ghosts and undeads NPCs in the game. They look more like the minions a MM ought to proudly have. I think I said it else a long time ago where I suggested each race should have their own unique racial minions using the respective race ghosts and undeads.

Bhawb.7408:

1) A pistol off-hand that “shoots” jagged horrors

No offence, I liked most of your other ideas, but ^THAT^ is just plain silly.
HOWEVER, I would totally go along with it if rangers got a bow skill that shot chipmunks!

In all seriousness, I really do wish they had given us weapon skills (or death shroud skills, or both) that summon weak, short-duration minions, like the mesmer’s clones and phantasms. Or at least traits that modify said skills to summon minions. Only having them as utility skills seems so half-hearted, seems forever consigned to be a niche build. I do appreciate that our minions are more powerful than mesmer illusions (even phantasms, which do a lot of damage, tend to die if you blink at them whereas necro minions have a bit of meat on their bones, albeit rotten, and can take a few hits), but I would rather have had weaker, temporary minions that were a more central part of the class design. Mesmer illusions can be specced to do anything: they can be a source of direct damage in themselves, they can be just fodder for shatter skills, they can be just meatshields, or they can create an effect on death. In many ways, mesmer is therefore closer to GW1 minionmancer, who, rather than having a skillbar full of minion-summoning skills like we do now, would have 1-2 summoning skills and the rest would be minion EXPLOITATION skills. Having spammable(ish) minions on weapon skills would allow for more interesting minion skills in the 5-10 slots (eg utilities that destroy a minion to create an effect, ranging from heals to gaining LF to putting condis on your target etc), and therefore bring it back closer to GW1 necro. That doesn’t mean that the utility skill minions need to go, as the sort of spammable minions I’m envisioning would be much weaker than those, and a full-on MM would probably invest in both.

I agree that corpse exploitation for minions shouldn’t return, as cool as it was fluff-wise. Firstly because in pvp it would suffer from the same problems it did in GW1 (you only get to use your summoning skills after the fight has been swung one way or the other by a death, which is disempowering), and secondly because in GW2 corpses tend to stay on the ground for less time.

However, you could have MINION CORPSE exploitation! Like the Death Nova trait. How about more traits like that? eg a master-level trait that summons 1-2 jagged horrors whenever a utility minion dies? Or a grandmaster blood trait that heals you whenever a minion dies (not by a fixed amount though: something like 5% of the minions original HP, to avoid people spamming lots of jagged horrors and getting infinite top-ups).

I also liked the idea of skills which sacrifice health to create a minion, and I would extend the idea to: how about skills that sacrifice health to buff minions in some way, like Order of Undeath from GW1 ? TheDevice’s idea of gaining “stacks” with deaths that you can use on minions was also interesting, but why not simplify it: how about minion summoning skills which consume Life Force instead?

CORPSE EXPLOSION

Know what might be fun? just make a grandmaster trait that enhances minions to a beefier version of it’s former self or in this case a more gruesome version with an enhanced ability allowing your Flesh Golem to have two charges but with double the cd, Haunt from shadowfiend not only blinds but passes on 3 conditions the Necro has, bloodfiend can sacrifice half it’s health to restore 25% of health and causes stability, Bone fiend’s can cause Immobilize and fear, bone minions can explode causing bleeding poison and weakness and finally Flesh Worm causes the Master and minion two switch positions breaks stun, poisons and fears foes while removing 2 boons. Flesh Worm is sacrificed and it’s more utilized worm causes it’s damage to foes while master switches unharmed. Most of the added effects are already on some skills but means the enhanced minions give more diversity besides the durations for them is on a fixed time of 60 seconds the cool downs on them are increased and the skills they use are on fixed timers as well. the bone minions can explode when killed as well.

Or you can have a grand master trait that benefits the necromancer, aside from gaining life force on minion death each minion does a different thing.
Flesh Golem – when killed creates an Unstable Well the Master gains Stability for 3 secs and foes gain fear for 1/4 sec, Radius 450.
Shadow Fiend – When killed by players creates a Ring of Darkness all foes that pass through gain blindness and master gains Vigor for 6 sec.
Bone Fiend – killed by enemy players it creates Burning Ground radius 450 causes burning for 2 secs and gives Fury to the master.
Flesh Worm – when killed by foes creates a Noxious Gas that poisons and Immobilizes foes while granting Swiftness to the master.
Bone Minions – when killed by players they create a bone yard causes bleeding to foes and grants Might to the master.
Blood Fiend when killed creates a Aura of Grenth grants Regeneration to Master and Chill to foes standing close to the Necromancer, also siphons health and life force of a max of 2 enemies while standing near the Necromancer.

granted they can opt to use or not use it. just makes the MM have a different trick or treat to benefit or destroy your allies and enemies. All negative effects works only for enemies and all benefits are only granted to the Necromancer. The only time that the trait works though is when they are killed it forms underneath or when nearby the necromancer. Blood Fiends was kinda hard to think of mainly because it heals you but i thought meh give an Aura of Grenth.

Alright people enjoy this one. don’t think devs will use it but hey who knows it might be a fun idea if you think about it.

To the above, I think traits to augment minions would work if they either buff them at some sacrifice (makes all your minions have additional strength, at the cost of doing something negative to the Necromancer), or are just small changes to their actives (Charge now cripples whoever it hits, Blood Fiend explodes and heals in an AoE, etc.), that make sense with how they already work, and add new functionality that requires some kind of skill to use.

Examples of minion stuff:
Blood Fiend: Blood Fiend now stores life energy with each attack (a max number of charges, and a visual indication of what is happening), when sacrificed this stored energy bursts forth, healing allies in an area around the minion.

Bone Minions: Putrid Explosion now rends the enemies it hits, ripping one boon.

Bone Fiend: Rigor Mortis now causes the minion to fire rapidly into the air barraging the area around its target; immobilizing its target and crippling those around it.

Shadow Fiend: Honestly no idea. Never use him really.

Flesh Wurm: The area around you explodes as you leave, chilling enemies in the blast.

Flesh Golem: Flesh Golem charges with more strength, weakening enemies hit.

They could do the same thing for conditions, with a trait that makes the actives more suitable for a condi build (put it in Curses at the master level).

I think the key to good changes come down to adding functionality into the active skills that supports the intended playstyle, or weakening one party (the minions or the necro) in a noticeable way while buffing the other.

But honestly, I’ve been posting ideas for minion changes since the day I hit these forums, and thousands of posts later, we’re stuck with on-and-off AI that is fixed and broken in cycles, and a set of minions/traits that are largely unchanged in meaningful ways since the game was launched (at most QoL changes have been made, which while good, don’t actually expand anything).

I like the minions because of the life siphon and utility/cc, and I used them up until about level 70,
but I got really sick of them constantly blocking my camera view and having to constantly keep track of them, and the fact that I felt useless if they died;
so I changed my build, and now I just use the elite minion and maybe the worm, sometimes.
Minions are so annoying to keep alive, granted there’s traits and skills for that, but they just feel really squishy, anyway,
and not to mention I’d rather use my traits and skills to make my own character stronger, instead of minions.
I don’t know, maybe I’ll playing a mm again someday,
I just feel more useful being any other necro build, for some reason.

MM is still bad even with the AI changes because you can’t control who the minions go after so it’s viable at a competitive level no matter what you do unless you are trying for a close/far node 1v1 against a class that doesnt do as well against AI like a thief or warrior unless he’s hambow of course

They are supposed to be single target, there is no need for them to attack anyone except your own target.