Guild Wars 2

Hello Folks,

I play on Isle of Janthir server and have a L79 Necromancer.

I did couple of searches for Necro minion problems and found nothing.

He is currently running with a Shadow Fiend, a Bone Fiend and a Flesh Golem.

Of these three minions, only the Bone Fiend will reliably attack whatever the character attacks/is being attacked by.

The Shadow Fiend will usually (eventually) wake up and attack. But, it’s pretty slow at starting.

The Flesh Golem will often stand around while a monster/player is killed and not do anything at all. In addition, the Flesh Golem has a somewhat annoying habit of deciding to attack random creatures for no apparent reason. This will include yellow text beasts which are not supposed to aggro unless attacked first.

Several questions:

Has this or something similar, say with range pets, been reported before?

I expect better of a 10 point skill like “Summon Flesh Golem” He looks really mean and his charge/stun can be very useful both against bosses and in PvP, but having an uncontrollable minion which randomly attacks things isn’t worth 10 skill points. Just my opinion.
The Shadow Fiend’s AI is really slow. If you get something down to 50-60% health before the minion moves that’s not good.

BTW, while playing GW2, I usually have no other processes running on the computer other than the security stuff. There are a few stubs from Yahoo!, nVidia, Logitech, HP and my ISP but I doubt these are going to impact the game much, if at all.

I’m sure this sort of stuff has been discussed elsewhere, whether you were able to find it or not. Having said that, I concur with your complaints about the AI. It’s absolutely terrible.

Mobs summoned by other mobs don’t seem to labor under the same disability. Wolves summoned by other wolves have no compunction about pouncing on me the second they show up. Summoned barracudas and sharks don’t sit around sharpening their teeth once called, they charge me and bite my face off. Our so-called ELITE golem should be a high-priority bug fix, not something relegated to the same station as a text error (which is to say, pretty much never gonna be reached).

And while we’re on the subject—I’d love one of the devs to please tell me why a flesh golem can’t be used underwater, but all the other types can? Not enough art/animation staff to make a proper anim for it? I don’t care. Make me a Flesh Barracuda or a Bone Shark instead, I won’t complain if the skin isn’t too awesome—assuming it actually attacks something it should and not things it shouldn’t. You gave Mesmers a Tuna for Moa Morph to be used underwater (thanks from my Mes, though he’d like to kick you in the head for the Phantasm bugs/changes), so I hope Necros are going to get some sort of satisfaction sometime soon on at least some of these issues.

For the love of God, please fix the Necro minions once and for all…

Flesh Golem (Elite) and the little Bone Minions (x2) like to pick and choose targets, often standing around doing nothing while I attack/get attacked. The Golem in particular will often (and I DO mean OFTEN) run to random mobs and agro them, effectively pulling enemies I do not want pulled and endangering my life.

Minion AI needs a serious overhaul ASAP, especially considering the Flesh Golem is one of our Elite skills. Come on.

We could also benefit from a pet bar, so we Necros could at minimum put our minions on passive or agressive mode. That should really be in the game IMO. I’d be fine with a tiny toggle button [passive/agressive].

Completely agree with this! I use all of my 6-0 slots for minions, and usually, 3 out of the 6 summoned are actually attacking (sometimes I get lucky and they all attack, but that is quite rare, and sometimes none attack at all!). The flesh golem is definitely the worst! It attacks a LOT of the time, and (almost) never what I am attacking or is attacking me! I would be okay with it being the stupid aggressive one, and attacking anything that would aggro me, because hey, he regenerates life and all, so if the concept is that he is a dumb flesh bag of awesome, that is fine by me. But, at least have him attack what I am attacking if I pick a fight. Also, as stated above, he needs to learn how to swim and needs to not have such a passion against inanimate objects!

PS: The golem, as much as he likes to attack when and what I don’t want it to, if there is only one thing around, and I am attacking it, he decides that he feels lazy and like a rebellious teenager, just hangs around and lets me do all the work.

Yeah, minion AI is extremely buggy at the moment. I still use minions on my Necromancer because I like having them as meat shields, but the Flesh Golem constantly running off to attack random enemies is getting very tiresome.

I also noticed that my new elite pet I just got just sits there an picks his nose too, then he decides on what he wants to attack lol. Also, I have noticed my life force bar cuts in half, then in again in half every time I zone in to somewhere. Is that something new or is it another bug?

Yesterday my bone minions were once again standing around idle, while I was frantically hammering the attack button, hoping that it would catch on. Same for the Flesh Golem, simply standing around, sometimes literally running in the opposite direction of what I was attacking, to aggro something else. And there are also some enemies that apparently cannot be attacked by minions at all.

This is not only Necro’s problem. Mesmer’s illusions usually attack anything but player’s target (especially one created on dodge roll), sometimes even invisible/despawned targets (for example: some destroyed crates/tables) or something underground/inside textures. Engineers have same problem with turrets.

I do not know what you are talking about. Just an hour ago I was fighting some Young Karka and my Flesh Golem joined the battle against the third one. He was obviously learning how to do it by watching me kill the first two. Clearly working as intended.
Although I have to admit he does have a terrible short term memory and apparently needs to learn how to kill every single fight. Sometimes he dies before that happens. :P