Guild Wars 2

Having major issue with pets constantly blocking backstab and other melee attacks. Any half decent player knows it so they just stand on top of their pets and never get hit since for some reason melee attacks prioritize pets instead of players.

I tried to position myself in all possible ways, as long as enemy player is standing on top of the pet, pet will take the hit no matter what.

Necros and rangers are biggest offenders.

Could anything be done about it?

<- Avid MM, I agree, to an extent. Though I have always thought if the enemy TARGETED is in range, it should hit that person, but if you swing and I’m not around it should obviously still hit the pets. It doesn’t prioritize the pets, it prioritizes the closest enemy toward you, a player can body block as well. Its intended and cool, but I agree it can be harsh on low-mid tier players fighting things with a lot of AI entities in the field, and even cause issues with some higher tier.

That said; by the way. MM has a long of other glaring issues.I’m willing to trade :P

i am not asking for any nerfs to pet classes, i am just asking for melee attacks not to prioritize pets instead of players

Well, in a sense they don’t. And by fixing this it TECHNICALLY would be dumbing down the game, as purposefully using minions to body block is a skillful tactic, as many single target melee and ranged attacks hit what is closest to you, it has nothing to do with them being pets versus players. That said; I see why its annoying/frustrating. But my point is fixing this would leave classes like MMs even more vulnerable then they already are with their lack of defensive tools, and thus would likely need to be compensated.

ronpierce.2760:

Well, in a sense they don’t. And by fixing this it TECHNICALLY would be dumbing down the game, as purposefully using minions to body block is a skillful tactic, as many single target melee and ranged attacks hit what is closest to you, it has nothing to do with them being pets versus players. That said; I see why its annoying/frustrating. But my point is fixing this would leave classes like MMs even more vulnerable then they already are with their lack of defensive tools, and thus would likely need to be compensated.

you honestly think spirit rangers lack defensive mechanics?
and i personally think there is nothing skillfull of standing on top of the pet and spam your abilities because you know for fact pet will take all beatings for you

Spirit ranger has high defense but not because of spirits. Its because 5 points into wilderness survival + sword/dagger + short bow = a kitten ton of evades. Those “tools” are universal. Spirits themselves have an aoe 2 second immob and a blind on decent cooldowns, unusable if the spirit is dead, 0 stunbreakers and no on demand condition removal. Yeah, I’ll stick by my statement that SPIRIT rangers have little to defend themselves outside of what rangers can all do.

It is call body block, every1 can do it in-game.

Cynz.9437:

ronpierce.2760:

Well, in a sense they don’t. And by fixing this it TECHNICALLY would be dumbing down the game, as purposefully using minions to body block is a skillful tactic, as many single target melee and ranged attacks hit what is closest to you, it has nothing to do with them being pets versus players. That said; I see why its annoying/frustrating. But my point is fixing this would leave classes like MMs even more vulnerable then they already are with their lack of defensive tools, and thus would likely need to be compensated.

you honestly think spirit rangers lack defensive mechanics?
and i personally think there is nothing skillfull of standing on top of the pet and spam your abilities because you know for fact pet will take all beatings for you

Play a warrior and spirit rangers have no defensive mechanics as warriors cleave with every skill they do.

You as a thief just happen to suffer the issue necros also face with dagger mainhands for some reason not cleaving like all the other weapons.

^ Exactly. I play with dagger on my MM, its just a kittenty aspect of having melee attacks that hit only 1 target (skull crack, thief attacks, necro dagger, ranged projectiles that don’t pierce). Just part of the game and designed that way. I’d love if necro dagger would cleave though…. drool

ronpierce.2760:

Well, in a sense they don’t. And by fixing this it TECHNICALLY would be dumbing down the game, as purposefully using minions to body block is a skillful tactic, as many single target melee and ranged attacks hit what is closest to you, it has nothing to do with them being pets versus players. That said; I see why its annoying/frustrating. But my point is fixing this would leave classes like MMs even more vulnerable then they already are with their lack of defensive tools, and thus would likely need to be compensated.

“Skillful tactic”? Really? MM necro is skillful to you? Doing it with mesmers or rangers I can consider skillful but Necros? I personally don’t consider flooding my screen with minions “skillful”.

Because you’ve obviously never played it. Its easy to make biased judgments. I can show you the difference between a bad MM and a good one.

ronpierce.2760:

as purposefully using minions to body block is a skillful tactic

Hahahaha oh god my sides XD

Don’t be annoying. YES they can dodge them by sheer accident, too, but you can also purposefully do this (like hiding behind minions when a thief stealths to avoid backstabs) rather than standing around like a goofball waiting to get stabbed.

ronpierce.2760:

Because you’ve obviously never played it. Its easy to make biased judgments. I can show you the difference between a bad MM and a good one.

Right right, so you skillfully sidestep into your minions all the time. None of it happens randomly it’s all skill. With about, 6 of them running around all the time, it’s totally all about skill nothing to do with you having 6 bodies running around… cool, I got ya.

Dirame.8521:

ronpierce.2760:

Because you’ve obviously never played it. Its easy to make biased judgments. I can show you the difference between a bad MM and a good one.

Right right, so you skillfully sidestep into your minions all the time. None of it happens randomly it’s all skill. With about, 6 of them running around all the time, it’s totally all about skill nothing to do with you having 6 bodies running around… cool, I got ya.

About as much as you skillfully dodge attacks with your dodge roll. #GW2ishard

Hmmm, you know I used to try to get my spirits to run at just the right spots around me to body block things… but… since I’ve recently switched to spider I’m just gonna stand on top of it. Can’t believe I didn’t think of that before. Thanks OP lol.

i don’t ask for cleave… it would be bad

but if i have player as my main target and he stops on top of pet, my melee attack should be prioritizing my target and not the pet >:(

I said I agree with that for single-hit melee attacks. My MM suffers the same issue as I run dagger, but I’ll be frank I don’t see it as much of an issue as you seem to. I rarely get body blocked. Sometimes actually if I see a flesh golem almost dead and I don’t feel like tabbing, I’ll try to keep my target on the necro so my pets attack him and try to swing at the flesh golem near him and I still hit my target a lot of the time, so I do think its blown out of proportion a bit.

ronpierce.2760:

I said I agree with that for single-hit melee attacks. My MM suffers the same issue as I run dagger, but I’ll be frank I don’t see it as much of an issue as you seem to. I rarely get body blocked. Sometimes actually if I see a flesh golem almost dead and I don’t feel like tabbing, I’ll try to keep my target on the necro so my pets attack him and try to swing at the flesh golem near him and I still hit my target a lot of the time, so I do think its blown out of proportion a bit.

well for me main dmg comes from backstab…it comes at quite high cost too….i already have to deal with CCs and condi spam, blocks and dodges… pet block is last thing i need and sadly it happens a lot whenever i fight any class with pet or even kitten rockdog

I can tell you, I agree backstab should prioritize target, especially since its a stab, not a slash (more precise), and work on flank as well (if it doesn’t already?) I never said backstab didn’t need help. I’m just saying body blocking isn’t as much of an issue as people in this thread have made it. It doesn’t stop cleave attacks in their tracks, doesn’t tone down the amount of AOE in the game. Most attacks will cleave with a very small exception, so I think people need to take a step back and realize this isn’t as much of an issue as they’re pretending. Like I said yes I run mm. But I played a dagger MM with a spirit ranger versus a condi MM and a spirit ranger and guess what… I had 0 issues following anything happening… Which ultimately makes a lot of the AI issues just L2P issues (save backstab thieves because stealth causes minions to return to the master).

ronpierce.2760:

I can tell you, I agree backstab should prioritize target, especially since its a stab, not a slash (more precise), and work on flank as well (if it doesn’t already?) I never said backstab didn’t need help. I’m just saying body blocking isn’t as much of an issue as people in this thread have made it. It doesn’t stop cleave attacks in their tracks, doesn’t tone down the amount of AOE in the game. Most attacks will cleave with a very small exception, so I think people need to take a step back and realize this isn’t as much of an issue as they’re pretending. Like I said yes I run mm. But I played a dagger MM with a spirit ranger versus a condi MM and a spirit ranger and guess what… I had 0 issues following anything happening… Which ultimately makes a lot of the AI issues just L2P issues (save backstab thieves because stealth causes minions to return to the master).

well at least you understand

By the way, you can have backstab prioritize the player the day you stop getting free cloak and daggers off pets that can’t dodge.

Pets have benefits and drawbacks.

Zenith.7301:

By the way, you can have backstab prioritize the player the day you stop getting free cloak and daggers off pets that can’t dodge.

Pets have benefits and drawbacks.

when was last time you saw d/d backstab thief in tpvp?

Cynz.9437:

Zenith.7301:

By the way, you can have backstab prioritize the player the day you stop getting free cloak and daggers off pets that can’t dodge.

Pets have benefits and drawbacks.

when was last time you saw d/d backstab thief in tpvp?

When was he last time you saw a dagger mainhand thief compared to s/d?

ronpierce.2760:

Spirit ranger has high defense but not because of spirits. Its because 5 points into wilderness survival + sword/dagger + short bow = a kitten ton of evades. Those “tools” are universal. Spirits themselves have an aoe 2 second immob and a blind on decent cooldowns, unusable if the spirit is dead, 0 stunbreakers and no on demand condition removal. Yeah, I’ll stick by my statement that SPIRIT rangers have little to defend themselves outside of what rangers can all do.

Actually untrue, much of a spirit ranger’s survival is tied in to the protection spirit and protection on dodge roll with dodge grants protection. The reason this is different from “other rangers” is that WS tree is also the tree the grants 30% boon duration with forge runes this is 50% duration giving 3s protection on every dodge (7~s dodge regen) and kitten with a 10s CD. This is 13% more protection on dodge rolls, and an with the addition of spirit around an 85% uptime of protection (plus dodge time isn’t factored in). This is all in addition to the body blocks of projectiles that happen to randomly hit one of the spirits or the elite spirits constant heal.

I find it saddening that instead of hitting the spirit ranger directly for its survival craziness, the changes are to make the elite spirit more accessible with spirits move. This also will be coupled with an overall arching ranger survivability nerf to endurance regen. Sad days.

Yeah, well that’s the case always. They nerf BM via nerfing pets, all rangers get crappier pets now.

They nerf quickness on pet switch by switching it with a worthless pet haste on downed that isn’t even used because when the pet is switched it stands kitten ing for like a second before it does anything. All rangers nerfed.

And now they will nerf ranger dodges so once again power spec rangers will have to make do with supposed buffs that are way overshadowed by the blanket nerfs considering already that power spec ranger survival is pretty low.

Abusing faulty mechanics isn’t supposed to be an exploit? And aren’t exploits bannable? Just saying…

wait, wait, what?! XD Body blocking is intended, pet classes have the ability to defend themselves with them by hiding. Are you absolutely serious? I can get the criers but that’s absolutely ridiculous. xD

Zenith.7301:

Cynz.9437:

Zenith.7301:

By the way, you can have backstab prioritize the player the day you stop getting free cloak and daggers off pets that can’t dodge.

Pets have benefits and drawbacks.

when was last time you saw d/d backstab thief in tpvp?

When was he last time you saw a dagger mainhand thief compared to s/d?

i play d/p in pvp and saw quite few as well

body blocking isn’t exploiting lol just fail in mechanics imo
if i have player targetted, my melee attack should be prioritizing my target and not pet that player is standing on

Archaon.6245:

Abusing faulty mechanics isn’t supposed to be an exploit? And aren’t exploits bannable? Just saying…

Banning people for being smart would be a bit harsh, I think.
Question is: Is body blocking really intended to be a valid tactic? I remember JSharp explaining long time ago in sotg that spamming mesmer greatsword #1 wouldn’t do great damage to MM because of them having their minions around. So body blocking is actually a considered tactic to an extent. Only problem is that standing inside your pets gives you a huge advantage when it comes to fighting backstab because they rely on that one attack hitting. So, next Question is: Is standing inside your pets considered to be a viable, defensive tactic? Answering this question is the real Problem. In my opinion it isn’t. All classes have enough defensive mechanics that help you against backstab thief.

Mesmer has staff #2, blink, invis, blurred frenzy.
Ele has mist form, blink, arcane shield, insta-blind scepter #3
Engi has Elixir S, insta-blind flamethrower #5, invis-skills, rocket boots
Guard has a lot of blocks, elite-invuln.
dont think I need to talk about warrior.
Necro has death shroud, plague, blind well, and many fear-skills (<=4x).
Ranger has lots of evade skills (<=3x), roll, pet-cc.
Thief has S/D evades, blind field, blinding powder, a lot of stealth.

If you take into account that every class has additional stunbreak-utils and dodge rolls, all classes have enough defensive mechanics and standing in pets shouldn’t be an option when facing melee opponents. These are my suggestions to fix this:

- melee attacks can’t be body blocked anymore
or/and
- specific attacks hit multiple opponents (maybe a bit overkill with backstab)
or/and
- increase distance between players and pets and don’t let players be able to stand in their own pets (ploblem with non-moving spirits/turrets)

Archaon.6245:

Abusing faulty mechanics isn’t supposed to be an exploit? And aren’t exploits bannable? Just saying…

Vertical teleportation is the result of a faulty mechanic, just saying…

ronpierce.2760:

as purposefully using minions to body block is a skillful tactic

AI spam is just ridiculous kitten in this game. It has nothing to do with skill.

Not only target breaking By npc spam is totally broken also some npc’s like pets/phantasms are totally out of balance more or less depending on situtation/build.

helplesssoul.6920

Mesmer #1

Which is one of the still totally ridiculous skills totally ignoring los or whatever. I’d call pet blocking that a heavenly justice.

jalmari.3906:

ronpierce.2760:

as purposefully using minions to body block is a skillful tactic

AI spam is just ridiculous kitten in this game. It has nothing to do with skill.

Not only target breaking By npc spam is totally broken also some npc’s like pets/phantasms are totally out of balance more or less depending on situtation/build.

I honestly get tired of repeating myself a lot. So to keep this simple:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Sikari-s-MM-Duscussion-Suggestions-II/first#post3244609

Read this to understand pros and cons of MM, and why I find that they’re not imbalanced nor cheesy, just a different way to play. Finally the only advice I can give you (assuming/hoping you’re not just a hard head like most people) is play MM in high-end pvp even for just a little bit. You’ll realize there is much more to it than you give it credit. Blanket statements are easy to make without actually playing them.

Point in case: (Sarcasm) It’s so hard to play GW2 spamming hammer attacks on warriors or spamming stealth on thieves, and spamming walls/blocks/invulns on guardians and spamming condies on engi/necromancer.

Point is, the game isn’t hard and the draw backs of having pets often outweigh the benefits unless you’re fighting nublets who stand still and take it.

You can’t land your skills, therefore I have no skill and should be nerfed. Sounds legit.

You’re in stealth, this means that the minions have de-aggro’d from you, and are returning to me. Even if you’re using your immense skill as a thief to come in from stealth when I can’t see you at all and backstab, minions don’t stand on top of me.

Or, all you need to do is attack me once, to aggro them, as they run away from me towards you, you stealth to me, and boom all of my minions are still 900 units away, and you don’t have to worry about landing such a difficult skill shot.

Bhawb.7408:

You can’t land your skills, therefore I have no skill and should be nerfed. Sounds legit.

You’re in stealth, this means that the minions have de-aggro’d from you, and are returning to me. Even if you’re using your immense skill as a thief to come in from stealth when I can’t see you at all and backstab, minions don’t stand on top of me.

Or, all you need to do is attack me once, to aggro them, as they run away from me towards you, you stealth to me, and boom all of my minions are still 900 units away, and you don’t have to worry about landing such a difficult skill shot.

Don’t speak to others about skill! Apparently they don’t understand it if they assume anything that beats them takes no skill to play. They haven’t had time to practice and become good with all the QQing effort they’ve put forth. :P

Bhawb.7408:

You can’t land your skills, therefore I have no skill and should be nerfed. Sounds legit.

You’re in stealth, this means that the minions have de-aggro’d from you, and are returning to me. Even if you’re using your immense skill as a thief to come in from stealth when I can’t see you at all and backstab, minions don’t stand on top of me.

Or, all you need to do is attack me once, to aggro them, as they run away from me towards you, you stealth to me, and boom all of my minions are still 900 units away, and you don’t have to worry about landing such a difficult skill shot.

if it was really that easy
you assume that thief can instantly teleport to target back at any given time
in reality thief is mostlikely chilled, snared, poisoned etc. by mark spam and any half decent necro either stands or runs around own pet so pet soaks all dmg

it was absurd to the point where even though i had necro targeted my character turned to the side and hit pet instead

ronpierce.2760:

Bhawb.7408:

You can’t land your skills, therefore I have no skill and should be nerfed. Sounds legit.

You’re in stealth, this means that the minions have de-aggro’d from you, and are returning to me. Even if you’re using your immense skill as a thief to come in from stealth when I can’t see you at all and backstab, minions don’t stand on top of me.

Or, all you need to do is attack me once, to aggro them, as they run away from me towards you, you stealth to me, and boom all of my minions are still 900 units away, and you don’t have to worry about landing such a difficult skill shot.

Don’t speak to others about skill! Apparently they don’t understand it if they assume anything that beats them takes no skill to play. They haven’t had time to practice and become good with all the QQing effort they’ve put forth. :P

please point out where i said in this thread that pet classes take no skill to play

Not referring to you, Cynz. I was talking about Jalmari.

Cynz.9437:

if it was really that easy
you assume that thief can instantly teleport to target back at any given time
in reality thief is mostlikely chilled, snared, poisoned etc. by mark spam and any half decent necro either stands or runs around own pet so pet soaks all dmg

it was absurd to the point where even though i had necro targeted my character turned to the side and hit pet instead

I agree that changes should be made so that you actually strike what you are targetting, unless something is very obviously in the way. But that doesn’t have to deal strictly with pets at all, it is a related but separate issue if attacks that should hit are not, and it isn’t one that only affects you either.

Also, it is on you as the thief to avoid the MMs CC. If you allow yourself to get continuously stacked with control effects, and end up being unable to fight, that is a separate issue.

But you know…sitting on minions and pets require skillzz…..roflmao

Honestly op pet blocking is one of good counters when vsing high burst thiefs.

vincecontix.1264:

Honestly op pet blocking is one of good counters when vsing high burst thiefs.

because classes don’t have enough counters for thieves already?