Guild Wars 2

Just started playing Guild Wars 2 and I’ve decided on being a Necromancer, but one thing I don’t understand is why we can’t control minions? Shouldn’t we have the option to control minions? Isn’t that the point of being a Necromancer? Ordering and Controlling minions?

Strictly speaking, the necromancer isn’t a pet class like the ranger is. So no, the point of being a necromancer is not necessarily to order and control minions. Necromancer minions are more similar to a guardian’s spirit weapons, or an elementalist’s summons. They’re something you can choose to put on your utility bar, but aren’t a a core component of the profession like death shroud.
That said, I’ve heard that minion AI could use some touching up. I personally don’t use them, so it’s not much of an issue for me.

They aren’t meant to be fully controlled. They are just adorable little machines of death that run around murdering what you attack until they die. They do, on occasion, get tired and refuse to attack, but activating their ability will fix this issue, reminding them who the boss is. It isn’t really a pet class, they are minions in the sense that every evil overlord loves and hates: mindless little buggers that don’t think much for themselves.

Yup they sometimes refuse to attack, and other times just attack everything in sight drawing unnecessary argro…

being able to command your pet is the ranger’s bit. Also it wouldn’t make much sense in the GW2 world for a necromancer to be able to directly control his minions.

Though the minion Ai is being progressively addressed, in the “perfect world” scenario when the AI is fully functional, minions will attack the targets you attack without failure, putting priority on the ones targeting you. As of right now you only have a 50% chance of the melee minions doing that.

The whole ‘oh we can’t control them because rangers can’ bit is stupid and makes no sense. Almost every mmo has multiple pet classes that can at the very least make pets attack and return, because an AI, as we can see in gw2’s case, doesn’t get the job done. Rangers have a massive selection of pets they can customize their playstyle with, and can make them passively follow, guard a spot, etc. That’s plenty unique to me, its ridiculous that we can’t have a simple attack and retreat function. Is it part of ranger class mechanic? Sure. But a fear is part of our class mechanic, other classes get that. A teleport to target spell is part of our class mechanic, others get that. Engineers have their kits but elementalist can summon weapons too. Thieves have that steal ability as their mechanic but ranger pigs can forage many of the same items. On and on and on. There’s plenty of crossover in other classes mechanics that the ‘rangers have it’ excuse is wearing pretty kitten thin.

If they were thinking of giving portal to other classes (instead of keeping it a unique mesmer ability) the least they can do is make the Necro actually be able to rule over his minions a little more, like a Necro should.

DeathenShada.6397:

other times just attack everything in sight drawing unnecessary argro…

Fixed in the last patch, please don’t spread misinformation. Thanks.

I’m surprised not a lot of other necromancer players are concerned about this and voicing out their opinions more…

Search here on minions, many people (myself included) have proffered solutions to the problems with them- since the game was in beta.
The response from Anet has been nil, except for some ‘vague’ note in the last patch about ‘adjusting their aggression’ or whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.

You want my opinion from someone with a lot of hours on this class?
Don’t put them on your utility bar, because they are beyond worthless and crippling your character performance, in lieu replacing of something that does actually work. I’m not being mean or disrespectful to new players, that’s just how it is.

lettucemode.3789:

DeathenShada.6397:

other times just attack everything in sight drawing unnecessary argro…

Fixed in the last patch, please don’t spread misinformation. Thanks.

Not really, its much better but its by no means totally fixed. Good old flesh golem now just seems to have a smaller murder radius but I’ve seen him prance off to fight stuff on his own since the patch.

Rok.5260:

I’m surprised not a lot of other necromancer players are concerned about this and voicing out their opinions more…

This has been covered before, but I also agree there should be more control of the minions.
If you don’t think Necromancers are about minions, look up the definition of Necromancy.

Hidyman.1956:

Rok.5260:

I’m surprised not a lot of other necromancer players are concerned about this and voicing out their opinions more…

This has been covered before, but I also agree there should be more control of the minions.
If you don’t think Necromancers are about minions, look up the definition of Necromancy.

Funny, your source mentions virtually nothing of controlling undead minions, but instead equates necromancy to divining by summoning dead spirits to foretell the future. Don’t know how that supports your argument, might try reading your source before using it. On top of that, people who site wikipedia as a source lose most of their credibility instantly.

Second these are brainless dead minions, what makes you think we can control them.

Third, they are meant to be a source of extra damage for a necromancer.

Fourth, controlling their pets, is a core mechanic for the ranger. Each class has their own core mechanic, ours in a second health bar for survival. We are very difficult to kill if we are played properly. Also, remember that a ranger can only have one pet out at a time, we can have multiple minions. Giving us more control would make it overpowered in many cases.

What the minions truly need is more durability so they are not one shot by every AoE. That is all I want for the minions.

All that aside, I despise the minions in this game, they clutter up the screen and just utterly annoy me.

Also if we get to control our minions, then they would likely have to allow mesmers to control their clones and phantasms more. Do we really want that?

I’ll have my take on minions, it’s about time I did actually so thank you OP for bringing this up.

I agree that Necromancer minions aren’t supposed to controlled in the same way as Ranger pets do but they do respond to it’s command to perform their specified attack on a marked target. Which really sets the distinction between pet and minion, major problems arise in execution.

In essence minions are the necromancers cannon fodder, used to perform tasks and distract (crowd control of sorts if you must). What is worrying to watch is that the Mesmers clones are much better at doing this, I started out on launch with the aim of levelling an MM Necromancer when it ended up Conditiomancer for lack of alternative builds (pls don’t bring “power” builds into discussion, been there, done that) and alted on a Mesmer and I am now essentially doing exactly what I set out to do in the first place, extremely successfully I must add.

In fact I ended up wondering if fixing the Minion master is actually presenting a dilemma to Arenanet, if this would make it too much like the Mesmer illusion functions, the one thing I wish Arenanet to come clean about.

The only thing I may suggest is to introduce the ability to reanimate an enemy (perhaps 2 ta a time) in a mob to fight on your side and have this as a summon in PVP.

Relair.1843:

Not really, its much better but its by no means totally fixed. Good old flesh golem now just seems to have a smaller murder radius but I’ve seen him prance off to fight stuff on his own since the patch.

Honestly, although it was somewhat annoying in certain situations, I love Fleshy’s personality; running to anything attackable in sight and murdering it is great. Yeah it pisses you off when he pulls tons of aggro you didn’t want, but I still like that you can 100% count on him to ALWAYS be attacking enemies.

What? My flesh golem stands around like a complete idiot MOST of the time, not just some of the time. When he’s lollygagging so are all my other ground troops. Clearly they share the same broken AI. While his hyperactive KILL KILL KILL (stuff you don’t want him to attack) tendencies have been curbed somewhat, he still does this from time to time. The other minions don’t seem to do it, so that part of the AI is apparently not shared.

I have no clue what ANet’s devs in this department have been doing for the last several months, but I really have to question their determination to fix this general “playing statue” bull. As has been noted, Ranger pets can be controlled to attack, but they also ALWAYS ATTACK THE TARGET YOU’RE ATTACKING (unless commanded not to). I can’t for the life of me figure out why the devs can’t manage to apply the same basic methodology to Necro minions as they do to Ranger pets and…oh, I dunno…EVERY OTHER MOB IN THE GAME. (note: caps are for emphasis, I’m not having an anxiety attack. ;-))

I started out all giddy about playing a MM in this game, anticipating it for years, and for all that patience and confidence in an awesome MM’ering experience in a beautiful, fresh world…and I got this. Worst of all, it’s been broken for months, and it is one of the core builds for Necros, yet virtually nothing has been done about the most egregious problem related to it. This should be a top priority skill functionality fix, not something categorized along with fixing typos.

just a passive, guard and a asist button that controls the state of your minions would help.
also all minions should regen when out of combat not just the flesh golem.

Relair.1843:

lettucemode.3789:

DeathenShada.6397:

other times just attack everything in sight drawing unnecessary argro…

Fixed in the last patch, please don’t spread misinformation. Thanks.

Not really, its much better but its by no means totally fixed. Good old flesh golem now just seems to have a smaller murder radius but I’ve seen him prance off to fight stuff on his own since the patch.

Yup, the “fix” was just a reduce of the distance they will fight unwanted enemy, the issue with the agro it’s still there :S

It’s good to be optimistic, but we don’t do anyone a favor if we deny the reality.

RoadKill.7459:

just a passive, guard and a asist button that controls the state of your minions would help.
also all minions should regen when out of combat not just the flesh golem.

This I would like a lot.

RoadKill.7459:

just a passive, guard and a asist button that controls the state of your minions would help.
also all minions should regen when out of combat not just the flesh golem.

As stated before that controls like those would be overlapping too much on the ranger class mechanic, and would only be a matter of time for the guardians to demand the same for spirit weapons as well.

Everytime I see/play a ranger I feel like necro minons are just the biggest crap ever. So less love in designing this feature! It would habe been so awesome if we had some kind of features like the ranger and could have various risen creature like running around in orr. Imagine your “pets” are the undead npcs from orr. That would be so awesome. But currently it just is no fun at all – at least for me…