Guild Wars 2

So, I have a baby Necro (36) ATM, but played a Ranger to 50+ and have 80 Guardian. I was so excited to get the Elite pet @30, but OMG is it bad! I have been reading since release about how bad the Necro is broken, but really until I used this pet, I didn’t realize how bad their pet status is.

Pet will either stand around whole fights and not do a thing, or after fights will run off 2k+ units and agro mobs I want to bypass. So my question is this; Why can’t Anet just apply the Ranger pet AI to the Necro? I know Ranger pets aren’t perfect ( better now post patch), but at least they attack the Rangers target. Never had a Ranger pet stand around ONCE. Also, add a pet recall button like the Ranger has!

Please, game has been out for 6+ months, this seems like a easy-ish fix?!

There are numerous topics already posted about this, and it’s not that bad. They don’t stand around whole fights, and they don’t charge off 2000 meters to fight someone who isn’t attacking. Overreaction and exaggerations have been around for thousands of years and people still do it even though it solves nothing. Go figure

The pets will always attack the person you attack. The problems you see are as follows.

1. The pet when summoned during a battle will stand still for several seconds before attacking. This is the annoying part. It is easily remedied by either hiding behind said minon at which point he is hit and then attacks or simply using his utility.

2. When traveling across terrain you begin an attack while changing pathing such as dropping from a cliff leaping over a wall. The pet will stall for a few minutes and then turn and attack. This has to do with all pet ai including ranger pets. The same remedy applies.

3. Your pet randomly attacks someone who isn’t targeted. This only happens with the flesh golem and it will only happen if withing 200-400m during his aggressive state. Remember he stands a good 20-30 feet behind you so when he goes to his spot after a battle a spawn may trigger his attack.

4. We are better off than rangers who have zero really good utilities outside of traps, and whose pet will die faster than ours unless it’s a bear, drake, or dog, and thereby they will lose 30 percent of their damage.

Finally, you aren’t even 50 yet which is when Minions start to come into their own. At 36 your minions are still dying an awful lot because you don’t have Flesh of the Master. So listen to me and relax and read the minion Q and A, and the minionmancer tips and tricks on the forums.

The flesh golem stands around like a drooling doofus 50% of the time, and the shadow fiend behaves in the exact same way. The blood fiend and bone fiend are okay. But the other two need to be fixed. Darc isn’t exaggerating. The flesh golem will attack things in the surrounding area as you are passing through, who were just minding their business. The script that runs them is obviously broken, but what else is new in GW2?

I agree flesh golem does indeed stand around half the time. And because it gets delayed reaction couple with slow movement speed, it’ll never catch any moving target in combat.

I also agree with Darc, I’ve been playing the necro since beta here (lev 80 since a while ago) and have always wanted to try the minion master, but every single time i try after every major patch i feel like i had wasted my time. The minions will run off to a nearby enemy (it seems like they are aggressive and their aggro range is larger than that of the enemy, making them run into combat without you even wanting to do this), and since you are in combat, you begin to move slower, so you cant just ignore it, its extremely frustrating.

I also experienced on several occasions how the minions, especially the flesh golem, just stand around and do nothing while you enter combat…this happens at random for me, using minion abilities sometimes help, but thats clearly not the point here! Its completely broken and I dont want to send my flesh golem charging into another enemy nearby just because he refused to attack.

See what i think the problem is, is that the minions might have a similar AI to that of the ranger pet, but since the ranger has the pet command bar, it constantly has a certain ‘behaviour’ assigned to it (i.e. passive, aggressive or defensive), and it would check to see what the pet’s current status is before it makes a move, but with the necromancer there is no such control, making it invalid… i could be completely wrong here but im just throwing ideas around…

I’m not saying a pet control bar should be added, but if the pets could always just attack what you attack, or attack the enemy that hits you or them first, then that would be great! But it also feels like pet pathing is an issue here as well…

I understand fixing AI is actually a pretty difficult task (my brother who worked in the gaming industry always complained about it), so it might take a long time to fix, but I never once heard Anet say that they recognise this as an issue and that they are working on it, and thats what worries me…

unless you want to run around killing mindlessly, minion master builds are completely useless to me, its unplayable, its really that bad! I’m a burden to others in groups because I just pull everything at random…

I can understand why making/fixing AI can be difficult, but I CANT understand why (like the OP said) they can’t just cut/paste the Ranger pet AI onto Necro minions. I’ll admit I haven’t played the Ranger much (level 25) but so far I’ve hardly noticed any issues with it. Even without using the “attack” and “follow me” F1 and F3 buttons on the Ranger the AI is still exceptional.

Literally the only two things I can think of – First, A-net tried to make our minions dumb, since they are just flesh constructs. Second, they may not realize we actually have Minion AI issues, although I don’t know how that’d be possible.

Mesmer clones have pretty decent AI. Ranger pets have great AI. Ele’s elemental summons all have good AI. Same with Thief’s Thieve’s Guild elite. Why is ours broken?

This is exactly what puts me off the MM build. I never use it, and when I decide to try it, I regret it in the first fight. There are a few tricks and tips, but this should NOT be necessary to make a build work. Not to mention that some of our Minion related traits don’t work (but that’s another topic I guess).
It’d be very nice for them to work a bit on this (if they are not).

Agreed, simple Attack/Passive buttons would suffice, anything to rile such pathetically idle creatures.

Because THEY ARE NOT PETS! They are minions, meaning you are not supposed to control them. If you want a pet go play Ranger!!

Cempa.5619:

Because THEY ARE NOT PETS! They are minions, meaning you are not supposed to control them. If you want a pet go play Ranger!!

Exactly! It drives me crazy that people compare minions to ranger pets and clones. Btw, mesmers complain infinitely about dumb clones or that when they change targets all clones disappear. I am glad minions aren’t like that.

Ranger pets are their iconic class trait. Like our Death Shroud, if you want to give up death shroud for minion control you need serious help.

Comparable traits to minions are Ranger spirit pets and Guardian Spirit weapons. I can guarantee you that both of those classes would easily trade with us. Are they perfect? No, but considering they are the only utility skill you can drag into any part of the game without losing effectiveness it’s a win. Corrupt boon is crap in pve and questing. Epidemic is a waste in 1v1 and in a majority of small fights. Most of the spectral skills are either horribly long CDs or buggy. I have yet to see anyone run full signets.

My point stands most of you over exaggerate and are just on here to whine because you have no clue how to play effectively with minions. It’s ridiculous some of your requests and claims of broken mechanics. The standing still not attacking is a little annoying, but its not game breaking.

Buggy fear, conditions being useless against burrows, plague signet not passing conditions, the complete worthlessness of most signets and some spectrals, and our complete lack of any form of cleave effect on power builds are way more pressing issues.

Lets not even take into account that rangers are in a way worse position than we are with every utility being completely underwhelming except traps and quickness.

I know asking for rational thinking here might be tough, but come on, big picture people.

Corrupt boon is crap in pve and questing. Epidemic is a waste in 1v1 and in a majority of small fights. Most of the spectral skills are either horribly long CDs or buggy. I have yet to see anyone run full signets.

Buggy fear, conditions being useless against burrows, plague signet not passing conditions, the complete worthlessness of most signets and some spectrals, and our complete lack of any form of cleave effect on power builds are way more pressing issues.

I know asking for rational thinking here might be tough, but come on, big picture people.

Erm, why do you play a Necro?

First off, thanks to those who supported my VALID complaints about the Flesh Golem specifically. After Bas’s first reply I thought I was being overly dramatic. Yes, a simple return to me/ agro/ defensvie button would make it much better.

And to Cempa’s point, please don’t try to let Anet’s off the hook for its bad AI and pathing on some sort of Lore excuse. Yes, they are Minions, but that does not excuse the way an ELITE skill is semi-broke. All I’m saying is that it’s 6 months after release and no word on fixing Necro’s pets and Anet admitted within a short time that Ranger AI had major issues.

I am really enjoying the class, so don’t cry go play a Ranger. I am asking for the most basic fix.

Thanks!

While yes, some people are asking for a simple attack and follow button, most of us would be happy with properly functioning minion AI. Just as it was stated, the AI that Ranger’s pets have.

Let me reiterate that for everybody – NOT asking for Ranger’s f1-f3 skill mechanic, JUST a working, functional AI similar to Ranger’s pets

Ranger’s Pets AI is not their profession mechanic – that’s the “attack” “Pet special attack” and “follow” buttons. So please, Bas and Cempa, and people like you, stop criticizing for a minute and think rationally. What would be so OP, so broken about asking for minions that function properly? Nothing at all, because they should never have been broken from the start.

Bas.7406:

There are numerous topics already posted about this, and it’s not that bad. They don’t stand around whole fights, and they don’t charge off 2000 meters to fight someone who isn’t attacking. Overreaction and exaggerations have been around for thousands of years and people still do it even though it solves nothing. Go figure

The pets will always attack the person you attack. The problems you see are as follows.

1. The pet when summoned during a battle will stand still for several seconds before attacking. This is the annoying part. It is easily remedied by either hiding behind said minon at which point he is hit and then attacks or simply using his utility.

2. When traveling across terrain you begin an attack while changing pathing such as dropping from a cliff leaping over a wall. The pet will stall for a few minutes and then turn and attack. This has to do with all pet ai including ranger pets. The same remedy applies.

3. Your pet randomly attacks someone who isn’t targeted. This only happens with the flesh golem and it will only happen if withing 200-400m during his aggressive state. Remember he stands a good 20-30 feet behind you so when he goes to his spot after a battle a spawn may trigger his attack.

4. We are better off than rangers who have zero really good utilities outside of traps, and whose pet will die faster than ours unless it’s a bear, drake, or dog, and thereby they will lose 30 percent of their damage.

Finally, you aren’t even 50 yet which is when Minions start to come into their own. At 36 your minions are still dying an awful lot because you don’t have Flesh of the Master. So listen to me and relax and read the minion Q and A, and the minionmancer tips and tricks on the forums.

I’m sorry, but pets do not attack half the time for me. This is not an exaggeration, at all. I shouldn’t have to stand behind a minion for them to actually attack. That’s Anets fault for the crappy minion AI lol.

Cempa.5619:

Because THEY ARE NOT PETS! They are minions, meaning you are not supposed to control them. If you want a pet go play Ranger!!

Nobody is asking for a control panel for Minions. We are ASKING for the SAME IA. Did you see this video?

Can you honestly say that this AI is minimally acceptable?

Actually folks I started a ranger recently and can confirm that pet AI is pretty much as bad as minion AI Yeah the command buttons sometimes help, but tbh sometimes they even ignore the commands, or lag up to 10" before executing them.

Bas.7406:

The pets will always attack the person you attack. The problems you see are as follows.

This is incorrect.

On occasion, the Flesh Golem will not attack the target that i attack and have targeted.

I have a level 80 Ranger and Necromancer (among others)

The Ranger pet AI is light years ahead of the Necromancer minion AI – it’s not even close. Also, the Ranger pets have great damage/utilities etc… Raven’s blinding slash cuts glass cannon thieves in half.

Ninein.4782:

I agree flesh golem does indeed stand around half the time. And because it gets delayed reaction couple with slow movement speed, it’ll never catch any moving target in combat.

Well, Doc Frankenstein’s monster was pretty borked, but somehow I don’t think that’s what Anet had in mind.

Levian.6742:

While yes, some people are asking for a simple attack and follow button, most of us would be happy with properly functioning minion AI. Just as it was stated, the AI that Ranger’s pets have.

Let me reiterate that for everybody – NOT asking for Ranger’s f1-f3 skill mechanic, JUST a working, functional AI similar to Ranger’s pets

Ranger’s Pets AI is not their profession mechanic – that’s the “attack” “Pet special attack” and “follow” buttons. So please, Bas and Cempa, and people like you, stop criticizing for a minute and think rationally. What would be so OP, so broken about asking for minions that function properly? Nothing at all, because they should never have been broken from the start.

Actually, that’s where you are wrong. Read some of the minion posts people are complaining because tehy don’t have the attack and don’t attack buttons. The main reason the pet ai works is because when it sticks (and it does) you simply command them to attack.

I am not trying to break this conversation. I would like some small adjustments to the AI. When I switch targets, I would like for them to switch sometime during the fight or not freak out and stop attacking. I would like for them to attack a target when I am attacked and not stand there watchign them beat me until I command them to attack.

But there are some broad changes and ridiculous assumptions to the class that are being requested, and that’s what I would like to see stopped. Quit comparing them to ranger pets or mesmer clones. Trust me mesmer clones are awful ai, and if you change targets you lose them. They are comparable to Engineer Turrets, Ranger Spirit Pets, and Guardian Spirit Weapons. If you compare them to those options you will come out going okay there are worse options.

@Bas

I know some people are asking for this. In another thread a few months back people were asking for the Ranger’s F1-F3, and I made a similar argument, about how it would be in no way fair, us getting their profession mechanic as well as our own.

By asking for the Ranger AI, I (and I assume most others) just meant something functional. Something that attacks your target when you attack it. Something that attacks an enemy who attacks you first when you are out of combat. Something that doesn’t run off to attack enemies who aren’t even close enough to draw aggro from you OR your pet.

Personally, this is all I want. I just want it to work =\

Levian.6742:

@Bas

I know some people are asking for this. In another thread a few months back people were asking for the Ranger’s F1-F3, and I made a similar argument, about how it would be in no way fair, us getting their profession mechanic as well as our own.

By asking for the Ranger AI, I (and I assume most others) just meant something functional. Something that attacks your target when you attack it. Something that attacks an enemy who attacks you first when you are out of combat. Something that doesn’t run off to attack enemies who aren’t even close enough to draw aggro from you OR your pet.

Personally, this is all I want. I just want it to work =\

I wholeheartedly agree. I love the Minions, and find them to be a lot of fun to work with. I think they need some tweaking especailly their repsonsiveness when switching targets or moving while fighting.