Guild Wars 2

Khailyn.6248:

What if instead of having the minion summon and then switching to a minion ability (such as flesh golem charge), after the summon completes it starts its cooldown, and allows for the summon of more than 1 minion of each type (im thinking up to 5 total).

The problem is this is purely passive. There is nothing mechanically interesting about pressing buttons on CD, plus things like 2 Flesh Golems would be insanely OP, that is a 50% DPS boost alone to the entire MM build.

Khailyn.6248:

So in theory you could have 5 bone fiends if you wanted to wait the cooldown, or 2 flesh golems and 3 shadow fiends. I think this would would more resemble the playstyle of the GW1 version of necromancer.

The real playstyle of the GW1 MM had very little to do with spamming minions, the minion summoning was more of a power gating than it was the major point of the playstyle. The real strength and interesting part of MM play was managing your minions after they were summoned, which you also do in GW1. The difference is now you do this by managing the enemy and using more generic defensive AoE CDs instead of micro-managing enchantment spells on minions.

Khailyn.6248:

While I dont want the minion abilities to go away necessarily, a few like putrid explosion and burst heal (blood fiend) could become an on death effect.

Again, passive = boring. These changes would take MM which is actually becoming more active, and remove a lot of that activity.

Khailyn.6248:

Another idea is to add an ability that destroys all of your minions to give you a boon for each one. Might help for times when you really dont want a minion around. Whether it be in dungeons in tight spaces or jumping from ledges. Could call it ‘tribute’ or ‘sacrifice’ or even ‘return from whence ye came’ for all it matters.

just brainstorming here what boons they would give..
blood fiend – regeneration for 8 seconds
bone minion – 1 second of might for each (max 10 minions of these so 10 sec of might max)
bone fiend – stability for 3 seconds
shadow fiend – maybe increase in dodge regeneration
flesh golem – vigor for maybe 5 seconds or so.

Doesn’t really make sense, its basically shatters and has no real synergy with the MM playstyle.

Why am I not surprised I get the most pessimistic poster to respond. Obviously these are just rough ideas. Since you mention mesmers. clones and phantasms aren’t really interactive either. you cast them on cd just to let them do their thing until they are shattered or dye of ‘natural causes’. the sacrifice ability wasnt put in there to be synergistic to just minion masters. in WoW warlocks have an ability almost exactly like this. they sacrifice a minion to gain a damage boost. it wasnt meant for the pet line but to open up possibilities for power builds.
Obviously 5 flesh golems would be overpowered. I dont argue that. This would take a great deal of numbers balancing. if you think you could improve on my ideas you’re free to try.

I don’t think that it would be fair for the other AI using builds in this game. Minions benefit from many traits and you were able to get the full benefit by slotting just 1 utility skill, because in your version you are able to summon a “full minion army of 5 minions” just by using the same minion type.

The only way I could see this potentially working is if there were a cap of 1 flesh golem (with maybe a little buff) three shadow fiends and three bone fiends, and 4-6 bone minions (or 2-3 casts, depending on how you want to measure it) as well as 2 blood fiends. The caveat would be that there’s a hard cap of, say, 10 minions, so you get 4 more than you can right now (not counting jagged horrors) And that would give more variety to minion builds, at least in my mind, without making it insurmountable

Khailyn.6248:

Why am I not surprised I get the most pessimistic poster to respond.

Because I am by far one of the best MM players and theorycrafters in the game, with the only person I really consider an equal being Sikari/ronpierce, so obviously I would respond to an MM thread.

Khailyn.6248:

Obviously these are just rough ideas. Since you mention mesmers. clones and phantasms aren’t really interactive either. you cast them on cd just to let them do their thing until they are shattered or dye of ‘natural causes’. the sacrifice ability wasnt put in there to be synergistic to just minion masters. in WoW warlocks have an ability almost exactly like this. they sacrifice a minion to gain a damage boost. it wasnt meant for the pet line but to open up possibilities for power builds.

Clones and phantasms have a lot of play, and frankly your idea is basically “what if we made minions almost exactly the same as clones but not nearly as cool”. It doesn’t make them better for power builds, minions already have a lot of utility for other builds but due to AI issues and usability aren’t taken often. As an example Bone Fiend allows for eight seconds of immobilize, and since it is applied twice it is really hard to deal with. They don’t need massive changes, just tweaks here and there.

Khailyn.6248:

Obviously 5 flesh golems would be overpowered. I dont argue that. This would take a great deal of numbers balancing. if you think you could improve on my ideas you’re free to try.

I don’t want to improve on them because there is no point, in my opinion, of pursuing anything like what you are talking about. Sikari and I have made multiple massive posts on how we’d like to see minions changed. You are proposing we become Mesmers, basically,

i am the best mm by far. kneel before me
edit: bhawb is baddie necro

You can still relatively easily have a small army. Just equip all your minion skills and put on some armor with Rune of the Lich (50% chance for extra Jagged Horrors when struck, 60s CD) and grab a weapon with Sigil of Demon Summoning (Flesh Reavers after every 25 kills, no CD). In addition to that, when you take Death Magic trait Death Nova, you get one Jagged Horror when you kill things (15s CD).

After rocking an army like that you can start thinking about wheter numbers are better than quality. (Personally I love a massive army following me.) Perhaps the only thing I would love to see is more ways to keep such an army alive. That was one of the key things in GW1 too… Plus, it would be awesome to see the army aggro a but more aggressively. It doesn’t have to be smart, just effective.