Why so much hate on minions…
Why so much hate on minions…
because players see minions (and any other kind of pet) as easy mode: the minions do the playing while the player is doing nothing (which is totally not true). The only way to solve this is to allow better response times to minions which would allow better/skillfull play.
Minion is easy mode? Dont make me laugh I run MM since beta and i can tell you that placing a golem charge on a constantly dodging ranger is a freaking pain. I have to make my bone fiend use immobilize spam fear and use my dagger 3 and my focus 5 constantly to prevent foes from moving. Minion attack like ranger pets and can be easily kited, you need to place constant slow or immobilize to deal damage to begin with wich is a complex chaining sequance. This is the defrence between a dead minion master and an alive minion master o.o
If anything MM is the most active spec the necro has in his whole array of builds when played right and while minion deals damage you actualy need to help them deal it to make it happen.
People don’t believe in skill required to micro manage and deal with multiple moving parts. People think the only thing that requires skill is full glass dps and randomly evading.
pah as if it was skill to begin with
pah as if it was skill to begin with
did you ever visit the Balance-Forum and read one of the kitten-threads about zerker-PvE and ferocity? It’s what an awful lot of ppl actually believe ^^
i laugh at them thinking its the end of the world because they nerfing zerk by 10%
i laugh at them thinking its the end of the world because they nerfing zerk by 10%
Nerfing by -3% (as in buffing), people seem to forget that you got a 1k base 1.1 power scaling sigils now enabled, that you can add 5% more damage, a aoe chill with damage (900-1.1k depending on might), triple the chill damage aoe but based on the enemy on crit and, same aoe on enemy torment and last but not least a on flavour proc 1k lifesteal!
Minion is easy mode? Dont make me laugh I run MM since beta and i can tell you that placing a golem charge on a constantly dodging ranger is a freaking pain. I have to make my bone fiend use immobilize spam fear and use my dagger 3 and my focus 5 constantly to prevent foes from moving. Minion attack like ranger pets and can be easily kited, you need to place constant slow or immobilize to deal damage to begin with wich is a complex chaining sequance. This is the defrence between a dead minion master and an alive minion master o.o
If anything MM is the most active spec the necro has in his whole array of builds when played right and while minion deals damage you actualy need to help them deal it to make it happen.
….. Please tell me you’re joking/trolling? It shows that you’ve played MM since beta if you truely think that MM build is the most active and difficult method of playing a necro. Swap to zerker amy 30/10/0/0/30 power necro and then talk about “active play”. Heck even condi necros take more skill than MM – talk about constantly dodging thiefs and rangers? As a condi if you don’t land some of your bigger bombs that all have big cast times (sig of spite, corrupt boon, epidemic, etc) its gg. As a minion mancer, if you miss a minion skill you still have a massive gang of AI to hold you up. MM is quite literally the EASIEST method of playing a necro with decent success for having no skill level at all.
You are right however that the AI is not reliable and that is another frustration. Thats why the playstyle of all AI based builds are just boring, stupid, unbalanced and lame imo. But some people love it so all the power to you.
The reason MM builds are getting nerfed is because in lower level or unorganized pvp they are extremely abusive. The baddies cry because they try to solo 1v1 an MM and get completely rolled. Unfortunately for the necro community, that lower level/unorganized play accounts for 98%+ of the pvp that occurs in game, and hence the crazy amount of QQ.
The problem with MM builds is that the minions in no way shape or form scale to your traits/amulet. You can trait to be massively tanky and your minions still pack a punch. Any build where someone wearing full tank gear can do that sort of damage is by nature unbalanced. We saw what happened to the warriors running hambow prior to the massive nerf bat they recieved. Now they have to wear a zerker amulet to get similar damage numbers, which completely makes sense – and they’re still amazingly viable and strong in pvp.
All they need to do is make the minions scale off the necro’s stats, play around with the balancing there, and it will be fine. Until they do that though, they will either nerf minions into oblivion or the qq train will continue.
(edited by DirtyBird.6093)
Minions scaling will not fix MM builds, it will completely change the entire mechanic of how they are and break everything that works right now. Putrid Explosion will become insane, the rest of minions will be crap, and you’ll end up with glass MMs that have a single weak burst and nothing else, and bunker MMs that are as strong as wet paper.
Minions scaling will not fix MM builds, it will completely change the entire mechanic of how they are and break everything that works right now. Putrid Explosion will become insane, the rest of minions will be crap, and you’ll end up with glass MMs that have a single weak burst and nothing else, and bunker MMs that are as strong as wet paper.
that may be true, but as it stands they still do too much damage for how tanky they are, and i don’t foresee the QQ ending anytime soon.
Minions scaling will not fix MM builds, it will completely change the entire mechanic of how they are and break everything that works right now. Putrid Explosion will become insane, the rest of minions will be crap, and you’ll end up with glass MMs that have a single weak burst and nothing else, and bunker MMs that are as strong as wet paper.
that may be true, but as it stands they still do too much damage for how tanky they are, and i don’t foresee the QQ ending anytime soon.
For many builds scaling with armor wouldn’t change much IF YOU’RE FAIR, meaning with proper armor they’re not simply being kitten of stats, but more specialized. Most people who are mm run soldiers, so you’d still end up with hard hitting decent hp and toughness minions that don’t use conditions, don’t heal, and don’t crit very often… Point being, unless your actual suggestion is to simply nerf minions and make scaling so bad that they’re terrible, scaling won’t change them too much. And scaling would actually make zerker minions more annoying because someone could dive bomb someone with 6-7 minions with death nova, do ridiculous damage then let them die to aoe and the person would essentially kill themselves. Careful what you ask for.
Please oh please give me zerker minions!!!!!
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This is more realistic as to what actual scaling would give us. I just assume that everyone who asks for scaling really just wants minions to get nerfed into the ground because they have no idea what they are talking about.
snip
This is more realistic as to what actual scaling would give us. I just assume that everyone who asks for scaling really just wants minions to get nerfed into the ground because they have no idea what they are talking about.
That’s why I put in caps fairness. I know people people who say “make it scale” means they’ll make them useless, but in reality, they don’t have to scale to see what the basic outcome will be of done fairly (like Mesmer’s phantasms). So that’s just my warning to people asking for scaling, you might be shooting yourself in the foot if you’re asking for fair scaling. If you just want MM to be nerfed into oblivion, keep that to the MM qq threads.
Let’s see how it works out. Vampiric Master requires 20 in Blood Magic, anyway, so a nerf to base minion siphon and fixing it so it scales might even out. I guess this might be a way to join healing and minion siphons so maybe the healing scale will be improved in some following patch.
It’snot just vamp minions that’s getting the axe, they’re cutting the cojones off the minions altogether, and mark my words this most likely won’t be the last minion nerf patch. Vamp master, training of the master, next will be a revert to old minion hp levels and/or a damage chop to death nova. It’s coming, don’t be surprised by it.
TotM is roughly a nerf of 40-70 DPS (total, considering 6 minions up), and VM will be at worst a nerf of 2 HP/s and 2 DPS (per minion); final numbers will actually be slightly lower due to actual minion damage uptime vs theoretical, and whatever scaling gets added on to VM (realize that depending on the scaling put into the game, VM might end up with a healing buff with healing power investment).
Minion is easy mode? Dont make me laugh I run MM since beta and i can tell you that placing a golem charge on a constantly dodging ranger is a freaking pain. I have to make my bone fiend use immobilize spam fear and use my dagger 3 and my focus 5 constantly to prevent foes from moving. Minion attack like ranger pets and can be easily kited, you need to place constant slow or immobilize to deal damage to begin with wich is a complex chaining sequance. This is the defrence between a dead minion master and an alive minion master o.o
If anything MM is the most active spec the necro has in his whole array of builds when played right and while minion deals damage you actualy need to help them deal it to make it happen.
….. Please tell me you’re joking/trolling? It shows that you’ve played MM since beta if you truely think that MM build is the most active and difficult method of playing a necro. Swap to zerker amy 30/10/0/0/30 power necro and then talk about “active play”. Heck even condi necros take more skill than MM – talk about constantly dodging thiefs and rangers? As a condi if you don’t land some of your bigger bombs that all have big cast times (sig of spite, corrupt boon, epidemic, etc) its gg. As a minion mancer, if you miss a minion skill you still have a massive gang of AI to hold you up. MM is quite literally the EASIEST method of playing a necro with decent success for having no skill level at all.
You are right however that the AI is not reliable and that is another frustration. Thats why the playstyle of all AI based builds are just boring, stupid, unbalanced and lame imo. But some people love it so all the power to you.
The reason MM builds are getting nerfed is because in lower level or unorganized pvp they are extremely abusive. The baddies cry because they try to solo 1v1 an MM and get completely rolled. Unfortunately for the necro community, that lower level/unorganized play accounts for 98%+ of the pvp that occurs in game, and hence the crazy amount of QQ.
The problem with MM builds is that the minions in no way shape or form scale to your traits/amulet. You can trait to be massively tanky and your minions still pack a punch. Any build where someone wearing full tank gear can do that sort of damage is by nature unbalanced. We saw what happened to the warriors running hambow prior to the massive nerf bat they recieved. Now they have to wear a zerker amulet to get similar damage numbers, which completely makes sense – and they’re still amazingly viable and strong in pvp.
All they need to do is make the minions scale off the necro’s stats, play around with the balancing there, and it will be fine. Until they do that though, they will either nerf minions into oblivion or the qq train will continue.
Your kidding right? 30 10 0 0 30 is the spec with the less active play in the whole of necro list. You seriously saying that running life blast spam is actualy active play? I have a Life blast spam necro alt to my minion master and i can tell you this spec is prety much brain dead (place wells spam life blast when you got life force please tell me you are not serious i run my 5 staff skill as well as at least 4 skill on my dagger all while managing my minion utility and chaining my crowd controls) in comparison to the possible chain you can do as MM.
It takes little skill to play… doesnt mean it doesnt reward the player highly for actualy chaining a crowd control combo right. I can easily fear immobilize knockdown fear again and freeze you all while placing my vulnerability and debuffing all your boons while you will technicaly still be running around aimlessly. Most MM will just rush for the damage and auto attack with staff. Playing MM with the correct skill can make this specialisation REALY good. While i do agree unskilled player shouldnt be rewarded you shouldnt deny the skill it takes to actualy play the specialisation to its fullest either.
While most MM necro will just swarm you and hope you get killed while dodging around, a good MM will block your movement and CC you so well you will be unable to act at all from behing constantly crowd controlled or immobilized. This is the actual defrence between good and bad Minion masters. Now now if my pet did hit harder my actual CC combo would become a death chain rather then an attrition battle and id be actualy able to kill player more effectively at the cost of actualy behing easyer to kill. That i dont actualy mind as long as my pet becomes damage viable (even if i did loose a lot of my armor lvl to the profit of some damage id still be able to heal quite well from Vampiric master if i can keep my foe well restrained within my numerous crowd control)
(edited by kyubi.3620)
Yeah, being weak and squishy doesn’t make something active and fun to play or whatever… It just means it’s not as good at taking hits. Power isn’t more complicated than MM by any stretch of the mind. Power doesn’t have to worry about:
-Their position in relation to their pets (so that their pets don’t get aoe’d during time’s that the master is being focused.
- Where their AI is, such as bone minions, or how much HP they have left, so that they can use their actives (sacrifice minions) before they die.
- Don’t have to try to get 5 different 1.5 second cast summons off frequently mid-fight in order to even stay remotely effective.
- Get forced out of play simply by fighting an enemy with AoE.
- Have to keep someone completely locked down in order for dumb AI to have any sort of meaningful uptime.
Power is pretty basic. It’s slow with life blasts and it can suck if your LF gaining abilities miss, and it’s definitely more squishy, but it isn’t HARDER to play… It’s just at a general disadvantage when under fire in pvp. That’s not a skill cap issue, that’s just a design difference. Power in team fights is pretty easy. Get some LF, lich or death shroud LB spam huge piercing attacks and lay down some wells… That isn’t complicated…
Ok i’m not going to comment on how you apparently play the zerker build (drop wells and lifeblast spam), but thats not exactly how i go about it… Are you refering to PVE, or PVP here? Because dropping wells, and life blast spamming will get your kitten pushed in by pretty much anything out there in a 1v1.
I’m simply saying that wearing a zerker amulet with no defensive trait lines is alot less forgiving than having a soldier amulet on, defensive traits, and 4+ minions as a buffer providing short casting time cc/blind/dps. Someone who knows basically nothing about necro play is going to be MUCH more effective running a minion mancer build and doing what you just said – popping minions, dodging around, and letting the minions kill the other player. Believe it or not LOTS of people do this and are semi effective at lower level pvp. The same does not go for full zerker necros.
I’m not necissarily saying i HATE MM play either. I have 2 necros for pvp, one speced for condi and one specced for MM and TBH i play MM more often now because i feel im more effective to the team by doing so. Absolutely you can refine your rotations and get better, and that there is a serious difference between a skilled MM and a non-skilled MM player. But the argument that MM is the hardest most active play style there is? I just don’t buy that. The casting times of the big hitting condi utilities all take way longer and are harder to get off than anything the MM necro has on his belt. You have to time your CC’s with your signet of spite, corrupt conditions, epidemic, and alot can go wrong in that rotation that can seriously impact your dps potential. Not to mention dealing with condi immunity classes, huge vigor uptime, and very little stun breakers on your bar… My success rate as a condi necro vs warriors im comparison to MM necro vs warriors is night and day. A decent hambow zerker stance warrior will completely nullify you as a condi necro currently.
I personally don’t have a problem with how MM necros currently operate. I don’t really enjoy having to rely on AI movement/pathing and actions for my success as a player, and thats my personal beef with it. I do however fear that MM builds are at risk of getting nerfed from other people’s constant QQ about the spec. My personal preference is condi necro, and i don’t like that i feel that i have to change my game play to MM because of where the condi necro is headed currently, and how much stronger i feel in an MM build.
To that I’d argue this:
- Power necromancer has a higher skill floor, but lower skill cap.
– By that I mean, Power necromancers basic combat isn’t very complex. You have 2 weapon sets (standard amongst many classes), most useful utilities are long cooldown, so you have to sort of manage them, then you have death shroud. Necromancer is EXTREMELY limited on escapes which is what most zerker builds use especially in PvP as an alternative defense (hit and run method in varying degrees and styles via leaps, teleports, blinds, cc). So the bulk of the skill for a power mancer is what every class has to do, manage basic skills, and even their utilities are long cooldown so you’re not using them as frequently as say a MM would have to watch their utilities, or press as many buttons as say a kit engineer would. The skill gap often comes from surviving and positioning things like wells and using them at times to get the most benefit from them. They lack the skill ceiling of classes with escapes because they really don’t have any.
- The minion master I consider to be a MUCH lower skill floor, but a higher skill ceiling.
– By this I mean, it’s certainly easier to be a fresh player and do some notable damage as a minion master because all skill aside you have some sort of passive damage going out. However, what most people don’t realize is much of what people hate about minion masters, minion masters REALLY hate about minion masters… Examples:
1. People hate the minion master clutter. MMs can’t even turn off their own pet’s name tags unlike enemies who can, so we are forced to have more clutter. Additionally, we have to CARE about the clutter. Where is it? How much HP does it have left? Is my golem CCed, thus would I be wasting it’s ability if I pressed it? We have to take in so much information to play effectively WITH the clutter as a part of our decision processing.
2. AI spammers. Yes, we have AI. But guess that, as much of a blessing it seems like for us, and it certainly IS cool! I love having my horde. V-teleporting, any bumbs in the road, cliffs, stairs all severely kill my ability to have ANY pet uptime. It takes a tremendous amount of skill to kill a good terrain juggler because you MUST land your CCs or you’re just going to die off slowly. And, leading to my next point, they are other entities and as such, have HP. They die to splash without ever even being looked at…
3. AOE. People complain they hurt the AOE hard cap, and are too strong against AOE. AOE is already WAY too strong in this game. In sPvP, we’re forced to stand in a circle empowering AOE abilities in ways they simply should not be encouraged. One counter to the AOE spam fest isn’t a bad thing. Especially when you consider this, AOE is the MMs biggest weakness. If you can aoe chill/cripple and DoT our pets, they’ll mostly die about the same time and we will be VERY vulnerable to anything without them. MM relies so much on having them out, your precious AOE is not going to waste by killing the pets. Also, what people don’t consider is in a team fight, these fleshbags don’t just count toward your AOE cap. think of all the stability/protection and regen denial pets cause on the MMs allies! It’s a trade off, once you start thinking on both sides of the battle field, you’ll get why MMs fear being nerfed. If they’re under par so the enemy can feel comfy in battle, we’ll end up doing nothing but bringing our team mates down… AKA, bad design.
To that I’d argue this:
- Power necromancer has a higher skill floor, but lower skill cap.
Bla bla bla bla
You kinda got things reverse… low, and with that very low, like warrior low skill floor, but with a skill cap right next to engie. Do you even frign know how hard it is to time entry and exit of ds, properly not to get curbstomped by and marginally good player from any other profession (if on a proper build ofc).
Why so much hate on minions…
because players see minions (and any other kind of pet) as easy mode: the minions do the playing while the player is doing nothing (which is totally not true). The only way to solve this is to allow better response times to minions which would allow better/skillfull play.
Wrong.
ANET (not the players, ANET) sees AI based damage (even AI damage that takes tons of micro) as easy mode.
By this time, ANET has almost a 10 year history of discriminating against AI based damage.
Why are warriors king? No pets.
To that I’d argue this:
- Power necromancer has a higher skill floor, but lower skill cap.
Bla bla bla blaYou kinda got things reverse… low, and with that very low, like warrior low skill floor, but with a skill cap right next to engie. Do you even frign know how hard it is to time entry and exit of ds, properly not to get curbstomped by and marginally good player from any other profession (if on a proper build ofc).
Being squishy as hell, like I tried to explain, isn’t a skill issue… It’s just a nature of the beast, and yes, I DO know. I play power from time to time. From kitten skill level to max, squishy is squishy, but much of it comes to luck and LOSing or using maybe a daze to heal. My point was we don’t have active escapes, so our ability to get that heal off relies less on our personal skill but being in either the right place at the right time, fighting a bad player, them choking, or something along those lines. It’s not like we can quick teleport out of the fight 1200 range, heal and go back in like thieves, some warriors (gs/sword/using Hammer burst as an escape) to stall fights for our heal, we basically just need to pray they don’t decide to daze us as the shadows wear off. CC is also a pretty long cast that’s VERY obvious. Again, not much of that has to do with skill but the build just being super kitten squishy. Skill doesn’t make it less squishy, unfortunately, and skill has LESS of a factor in surviving when needing to stall for heals, than any class with real mobility. If you ask me, power necro is sort of a broken idea. Glass and 0 mobility just doesn’t seem to settle right in this game. :/
To that I’d argue this:
- Power necromancer has a higher skill floor, but lower skill cap.
Bla bla bla blaYou kinda got things reverse… low, and with that very low, like warrior low skill floor, but with a skill cap right next to engie. Do you even frign know how hard it is to time entry and exit of ds, properly not to get curbstomped by and marginally good player from any other profession (if on a proper build ofc).
Being squishy as hell, like I tried to explain, isn’t a skill issue… It’s just a nature of the beast, and yes, I DO know. I play power from time to time. From kitten skill level to max, squishy is squishy, but much of it comes to luck and LOSing or using maybe a daze to heal. My point was we don’t have active escapes, so our ability to get that heal off relies less on our personal skill but being in either the right place at the right time, fighting a bad player, them choking, or something along those lines. It’s not like we can quick teleport out of the fight 1200 range, heal and go back in like thieves, some warriors (gs/sword/using Hammer burst as an escape) to stall fights for our heal, we basically just need to pray they don’t decide to daze us as the shadows wear off. CC is also a pretty long cast that’s VERY obvious. Again, not much of that has to do with skill but the build just being super kitten squishy. Skill doesn’t make it less squishy, unfortunately, and skill has LESS of a factor in surviving when needing to stall for heals, than any class with real mobility. If you ask me, power necro is sort of a broken idea. Glass and 0 mobility just doesn’t seem to settle right in this game. :/
a) power necro incudes minion mancers which are like the lowest skill build in game, i know i used minion back in their idiot days to pretty much afk my way to level 60 in the first 2 of the 3 day pre-release window.
b) Exactly the lack of direct/instant oh crap escapes increases the importance of decision making/skill needed to play the other 3 base power builds (vakyre, zerker and soldier) th
c) Shade…
PvE is not a good basis for difficulty when the conversation is being framed within PvP (which is the only reason MMs are being nerfed). Playing suddenly gets harder when your opponents actually attack you; as do most builds, incidentally.
PvE is not a good basis for difficulty when the conversation is being framed within PvP (which is the only reason MMs are being nerfed). Playing suddenly gets harder when your opponents actually attack you; as do most builds, incidentally.
Yeah, and actually move away from a kitten AI/cripples it and you. Eh, its whatever. I get tired of arguing with people on the forums. Can’t see past their nose. Biases over everything and can’t think outside of the box. It still astounds me that people relate being glass with skillful play. Trying to out kill your enemy in <2 seconds or dying isn’t skill. Random evades are not skill. Yada yada. I’ve explained what makes mm thought-provoking in high end, people don’t deny it they literally just ignore it so whatever. They’re not worth my time discussing with.
No… not really, you still got 8s immobs, 1.8s knockdown and a teleport which unlike most necros actually helps you all the way trough the fight instead of having to put it off behind walls… and thats pvp not pve, also i just ment the stats on minions being op since they could, even in their days of stupidity, solo all pve content to 60/starting arah missions, same thing for the other “minion” profession, you can confusion line + duelist/swordsman your way to 50 if you are to lazy to work on how to use staff and going in melee/doing the chaos armor combos.
Also yep, squish =/= skill, good DS usage so that you dont need escapes and a bar with 3 stun breaks to do kitten = skill, but didnt we pass that like ages ago? Main point of it is that necros, without removing their mobility or cc weakness, have a 3 times harder time getting the same survival rate of other professions, which in itself is fine (look at ele), but its not good without being able to properly reply to whats causing that problem in itself (as in no long source stability, lacking reactive teleports and being locked off from most defensive effects in our “defensive/power cannon” mode).
TLDR: Minions deserve rework to make them actually good in all pve and ok/niche in pvp, same for phantasams on mesmers, skill is related to surprisingly skillful usage of skills/abilities not your hp/armor value which means fix DS.
In the end, all that really matters, skill-wise, is knowing which build is the most appropriate for which activity and being able to play it. Twisted Marionette comes to mind as a recent example. I am running a Rampager/hybrid variant with as much power, condition, and AoE damage as I can because the event is a turret defense game with a couple of burn-it-down-asap boss battles thrown in. Sometimes the deal is bad and I get focused down so my glassy build bites me.
Zerker is not the right solution to every problem. Niether are Soldier’s or any other build.
It’s because minions count as extra players and upscale events to be harder… No wait.
It’s because the elite minion dies when wet and get’s a full CD… No wait.
It’s because the heal is suppose to be extra damage with power, not a heal.
^ First thing Bweaty said, god.. running MM in fotm fighting Mai Trin i s a pain..
Anyway let’s face it bros, anet hates necros, our dps can get to maybe 12-15k max, while other class’s dps can get to 30-40k..
Damage =/= dps
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