Guild Wars 2

Hi, great to have some forums up

Want to report a possible bug with necromancer melee pets. They will quite often just stand there when I’m attacking a target without attacking. Or even when I’m taking fire, they will not always attack. They just stand there while I get beat on :S

This affects the flesh golem, and the ghost-like minion (forgot the name). I may need to get too close to a target before they start attacking.

I also play a ranger, and I have not seen that issue with melee ranger pets. Even when not giving any commands, they seem to work as they should. Could we have the same AI applied to Necro minions?

Yep same problem here with the se pets. Flesh golem is just ignorant and most of the time he only stand and even when I coamd him to use his skill, he run into the foe and stand stupidly again.

I’ve been having this issue myself. I just thought my minions were fat and lazy :P But seriously this is an issue as a lot of a minion master’s survivability relies on their minions actually attacking, either to draw aggro or to siphon health. Being able to use putrid explosion effectively is just another problem related to this.

Yeah this happens to me all the time with my shadow fiend and it pisses me off. I would say this happens about 20% of the time so it’s not too serious but still. This needs to be fixed soon.

Since we are talking about Necro pets – how about they heal out of combat. – Other class pets do.

necro minions are total garbage as they are now…..ridiculously slow attack speeds, CRAZY low damage…low survivability, and long cooldowns.

The most awesome concept was the undead worm but then they went and made it immobile. Thanks for turning my minion into a turret. /sarcasm.

Players will learn to not use minions in this game and no one above level 25 will ever use them. Then maybe devs will fix the problem.

The Kin just wants to say that The Kin’s flesh golem has exhibited weird behavior. On top of not attacking, it sometimes does the -exact- opposite and will just roam from mob to mob attacking things randomly, thus leading THE KIN across the map rather than following the master. The Kin has noticed it typically only does this with aggressive mobs..

It’s quite amusing because, well at level 51, it seems like it can actually do something finally, and with well of blood (Healing spell) it can actually last a while. Though once it hits veteran mobs..Yeaah..GG Flesh golem. Game over man.

Yeah, I’ve had the same exact problem. They pretty much sit there and watch me fight on many occasions. I’m also really disappointed with how useless minions are. I loved playing MM in GW1, even after they nerfed the build. In GW2, I feel like I really can’t base my character around my minions and they’re just sort of an afterthought. They don’t attack reliably, they die very quickly even if I’m healing them with a Well of Blood or a similar skill, they don’t do much damage at all and the Jagged Horror summon is useless, seeing as they spawn with so much degen that they last for about 4 seconds. It’s a shame because I know a lot of people played MM in GW1 and I really miss it. Hopefully they do some updating to make MM a viable build again.

Agreed i got same issue.i submited a ticket but it didnt resolved..

I love Minions (and being a minionmaster), so please make them (a little bit) stronger (they really do low damage, in case that they attack)!

First time I plan to play a necromancer (and I focus for being a minionmaster) but when I play that I had some problem about my minion like everyone in this

- All minion (except blood fiend) very lazy, they only stand and looking me hit, down and die not attack or help me to fight.
– Jagged horror very very very useless. I must used about 1 min to killed a enemy for spawn it with much degen rate and let it die for about 3-4 sec before making the first hit to a enemy (or not attacking and helping me like its friends)
– All minion die very quickly (them have very little health) but their cooldown is about 20-40 sec (too long when compared with their health)

I’m a one who love minions
Please fixed the issue (not for me but for every player love minions)

I too have noticed my minions just standing around watching me fight. I’ve also noticed a graphical issue where the golem seems to stand at attention and glide over the ground … its kinda funny

Please improve minion AI/mechanics. Half of the time while i’m fighting my flesh golem just stands around doing nothing. When i try to just run past hostile mobs who aren’t aggro’d yet, he just runs at them and pulls. All minions instantly die as soon as they stand in an AOE (and they’re not doing anything to avoid the aoe damage) due to not taking reduced dmg. I’m scared to use my flesh golem’s charge because he will continue his charge another 100ft, often pulling other mobs aswell – but if i dont use the charge he just stands around doing nothing.
These issues really hamper the warlock’s gameplay; minions are a big part of the warlock’s arsenal but their AI and mechanics are simply lacking. Please make it a priority to improve this.

And yes i did mean necromancer when i said warlock ^^. Altho i feel warlock would be a much better name considering what the class can do. Most of the weapon skills dont have anything to do with necromancy; debuffing/cursing/marks/whatnot is what warlocks do, not necromancers.

Not only do the minions not attack when you want them to, they often run off and attack things far, far away when you don’t want them to. Necros need more control over their pets.

Also, there are several issues with pet skills and traits. Using the flesh golem’s charge skill will often not work if there is a small rock in front of him, but it will use the skill and he will stand in place. If you have the Minion Master trait in the Death Magic tier, all minion skills are supposed to be reduced to 20%, but the Flesh Golem’s summon cooldown remains the same at 60 seconds, even though scrolling over the skill says it should be 48 seconds.

I have this same issue but on the other hand mine will just attack anything within range sometimes. They attack yellow targets as well which doesn’t make sense! I have just not been using them as they are useless. Wish we had some sort of attack button and recall button on them.

Actually, I think we can zone in on the melee minions that are severely affected by this bug. The Bone Fiend, Blood Fiend, and the Flesh Wurm attack just fine. In fact, because they’re the only ones attacking, I almost always see a dead Bone Fiend during battle because it has all the aggro. In contrast, my Flesh Golem is typically just there at full health staring at the sun.

Another issue i find is that some minions (bone fiend) do not heal up even out of combat. Running into the next fight with minions at 10% is no good; they should heal up when out of combat like other minions (flesh golem) do.

Agreed on this issue with the lazy pets.
But there is also the opposite, especially with the flesh golem, running off in a direction and attacking a mob that is no where near me, and I did not have the mob targeted, and the mob was not attacking me.

big things the Necro needs for his pets:

• Display pet life
• Pet Control: Ability to call off pets or send to attack specific target
• Consistent healing out of combat. Sometimes they heal, others not.

Guys let’s keep this bug related first, I’m sure ANET won’t focus on profession balancing for now, they must have every single developer and tester working on bugs.

So for Necromancer bugs:
Please for the love of god make our pets attack only what we attack, Flesh Golem was funny at first being a super brain damaged sack of meat but now it’s not being funny anymore… well…. sometimes it is when my wife is watching me play and says “look honey, there goes your stupid pet again, going to hit that ugly two headed guy”, but any other time it makes me die it stops being funny, we lose gold from repairs and waypoints thanks to this bug.

Well I am talking about Necro pet because thats what I play. Dont know if hunter is the same.

Issue 1 : Sometimes pets dont attack when I attack… They take a lot of time… I mean they should attack when someone attacks me?

Issue 2 : Flesh Golem attacking other mobs without me attcaking them… He just aggros mobs… This is very annoying, he is always dying…

Issue 3 : Will you make a pet bar?

I would also like to see the bone minion explosion skills changed to the minion running to your target and exploding instead of just exploding when you can’t locate it in a big battle. This may be a bug, because i remember seeing the necro class video before beta and the necro pointed to the target and the minions ran to it and exploded (this makes more sense).

Kurrupt.9743:

I would also like to see the bone minion explosion skills changed to the minion running to your target and exploding instead of just exploding when you can’t locate it in a big battle. This may be a bug, because i remember seeing the necro class video before beta and the necro pointed to the target and the minions ran to it and exploded (this makes more sense).

Agree! I would like to see “minion running to your target and exploding instead of just exploding” feature too. I am ranger and my spirits often sadden me: it quite hard to navigate their movement, possible but still hard.

Speaking of Necro pets – i think they are fine. What else can you expect from mindless abomination? =)

Anyway OP you can forget about pet bar – it is only Ranger privilege.

Yeah, I was just observing my pets. I had 2 bone minions up, the flesh golem,the blood fiend, shadow wraith and the bone fiend. Which looks like a small and cool personal army. I was just standing there, talking with a person while a poor seperatist attacked my bone fiend. And then I got the best example of the issue at hand, only my bone fiend proceeded to defend itself. The other minions were not even caring. I do not think this is supposed to happen. But sometimes only the ranged ones attack, i can force the shadow wraith to attack by using its skill, and the golems charge sometimes works, SOMETIMES though. But the bone minions are always near me when i need the explosion burst. I do not know if this is intended, but I really hope it is NOT. But then again, they chose to not give us the duel feature, which in an MMO is very important imo, so everything is possible in my eyes.

Could we get some sort of response wether this is a high priority that will be improved on soon, or wether we should just accept these betatest-melee-minions are as good as it’s gonna get, and forego an important part of our arsenal / start over on a diff class / go play a game where minion AI works?

That’s why the only one I use is the Bone Fiend.

Sometimes they just don’t attack and sometimes they wait incredibly long after I attacked a creature to join the fight.
I always thought of the minions as a way to divert mob aggro away from my Necro so I don’t care as much about the low damage output but what I care about is the health of the minions.
Often it’s very hard to see how much life my Blood Fiend has. The health bar is very small and when there is a lot going on or I have to move around it’s impossible to pinpoint a good time to kill it and get a healing boost. I would LOVE to have a central place in the UI which is always visible with all the health bars of my minions. Kind of like Hunters have but it can be placed somewhere else so all the minion health bars won’t clutter the screen too much.

Prime.9450:

Kurrupt.9743:

I would also like to see the bone minion explosion skills changed to the minion running to your target and exploding instead of just exploding when you can’t locate it in a big battle. This may be a bug, because i remember seeing the necro class video before beta and the necro pointed to the target and the minions ran to it and exploded (this makes more sense).

Agree! I would like to see “minion running to your target and exploding instead of just exploding” feature too. I am ranger and my spirits often sadden me: it quite hard to navigate their movement, possible but still hard.

Speaking of Necro pets – i think they are fine. What else can you expect from mindless abomination? =)

Anyway OP you can forget about pet bar – it is only Ranger privilege.

the thing is, if you listen to some of the male charr dialogue, it implies that the minions are controlled directly “Come to me my puppet”
in which case, it would make MORE sense to give necros the pet bar than rangers, your pets are still alive and can think for themselves, we’re making fleshy remote controlled things. (or maybe at least for the flesh golem, it is our elite after all)

as for necro pets being fine, when one of your elite skills refuses to work half of the time, and when it does work, it pulls half of the map and ends up killing you, you’ve got an obviously broken skill.

Feathers.7261:

Well I am talking about Necro pet because thats what I play. Dont know if hunter is the same.

Issue 1 : Sometimes pets dont attack when I attack… They take a lot of time… I mean they should attack when someone attacks me?

Issue 2 : Flesh Golem attacking other mobs without me attcaking them… He just aggros mobs… This is very annoying, he is always dying…

Issue 3 : Will you make a pet bar?

1: Im running into the same problem. This is really anoying in WvW where you partly depend on your minions to hit your enemy and all they do is stand still doing nothing. (which unfortionatly have costed me too many fights that would otherwise have resulted in wins for me…)

2: The random agroing of the flesh golem is really frustrating, pulling a pack of 2-3 knowing you can handle those only to find out your flesh golem has ran off the opposite way and pulled another pack of 2-3 which you then get rampaging in your back.

3: Pet bar would be nice with the options for passive (do nothing) / agresive (attack anything in sight) / guard (attack your target or whatever is attacking you) or just a window displaying all the health bars of the minions (click on a bar to select the minion) would be great too, then we have an indication when to use Putrid Explosion on the bone minion instead of blindly blowing them up seemingly in random order.

4: Minion agro, pets that by all means should be tanky (flesh golem / shadow fiend?) just cant seem to hold agro from other minions cough bone fiend cough

Other then these points im quite enjoying the minions on my necro.

any GM- admin can help for this problems ? 2 weeks already passed but minions still bugged

In traditional games, you decide where your minions go and what your minions fight. A-net felt this was outdated and a bit boring, so in GW2, your minions will decide where you go and what you fight!

Adding my name to this. I have lost count of the number of fights I have had in pvp which were so close and I lost because my flesh golem did nothing the whole fight or didn’t start until half way through the fight.

Just as an anecdote, the other day we were in wvw and attacking a gate, there were about 3 necromancers all at the back using staff autoattack. Joining us were a whole bunch of minions all standing around doing nothing. All of them doing nothing. We lolled but it’s really not acceptable. Please fix this.

I didn’t get very far with my Necro for this reason. Stopped playing since the AI just stood around well over 60% of the time.

+1 confirm. I’ve lost count of the number of times my Flesh Golem and Shadow Fiend have sat on the side lines sharing a bucket of popcorn while I’m getting my head bashed in.

Then, of course, immediately after a battle, while I’m trying to take a breather, Fleshy suddenly decides to give the nearest veteran, champion, or non-hostile swarm a hug without my input. At this point I am firmly convinced that the Golem is made of the reconstituted remains of Leeroy Jenkins .

So for elite skills, we’re either stuck with a doorstop of a minion or two shapeshifts which have a duration-to-cooldown ratio of 1:6 and 1:9, but kill off all the minions on activation, anyway.

The necro minions really do have bad AI right now. My necro is a lowbie alt, but I have already given up using my Bone Fiend on her. It doesn’t even make good fodder, considering it wanders around the mobs and they tend to just ignore it since it isn’t attacking them. If it does bother to fight, the mob is half dead and it gets maybe two attacks in if that.

Now.. my main is an Ele.. and whatever AI the necro minions has is sure not the one my Ele minions have! They love to fight stuff. My glyph of elementals minions will run off and pull that veteran the milisecond the mob in front of it dies. They attack anything and everything in sight, pretty much.

Now.. my main is an Ele.. and whatever AI the necro minions has is sure not the one my Ele minions have! They love to fight stuff. My glyph of elementals minions will run off and pull that veteran the milisecond the mob in front of it dies. They attack anything and everything in sight, pretty much.I don’t really understand why necro and ele minions are both uncontrollable, yet one is highly hostile, attacks everything it can til it dies (they will run up the hill and into the mine because theres a dredge way over there and it must die), and the other might as well be on sedatives.

yeah same problem here but i think got a temp solution for it… if minions are not attacking try switching weapons… you’ll notice minions will start attacking. But in the future hope they fix it…

I actually came here to post exactly about this! My Flesh Golem should have a pet bar since it IS an elite skill… It is very irritating and costly when you are in the mid level range and you have to keep pumping out silver to repair armor that wouldn’t have broken in this pet would just do as it’s told… or at LEAST give me the capability to tell him to calm down!

I get that having control of all pets is impossible, and I wouldn’t even want that. What I don’t understand is that we don’t one shot stuff like elementalists do or other hard dps classes do, we, as necros, primarily deal in damage over time (which is why I love the class… and the pet!) but since our pet is a “dot” type of damage I’m finding it hard to find real value in something I have to heal constantly. Essentially if my heal is on cooldown, my pet dies, putting my pet on cooldown and having to go at it with mobs with the rock chucker getting beat to snot. URGH! We’re necromancers! We use spells to revitalize the dead to do our bidding! How can we make them do our bidding if they can’t be ordered to do anything?

And don’t sell me that we can tear down a mob with our debuffs because they aren’t that great lol

Primary Request: Make our pets work right if we’re not going to be able to control them please!

Secondary Request: Give us a pet command bar for our elite pet (Flesh Golem)!!! (I don’t even mind the wait until you’ve gotten enough points to get it, makes it funner to get up to that point!!!)

Game still rocks! Would just be better gameplay if one of these two items could be provided.

Love ya GW2

i’m really surprised the necromancer was released in such a state tbh. The top level 400 tailoring is missing a recipe that makes condition necros worthless, and then the minions are worthless.

currently the only necro you can half way play focuses on attacking like a warrior and precision/crits. basicly necros are a joke and a shadow of what they were in the first game.

I have this issue all the time. The pets just stands around doing nothing while I am attacking a mob.
And the most freaking anoying thing is that when Im done fighting the mob, my minions (mostly the golem) suddenly runs off and start attacking other mob way out.

The AI is just totaly kitten.

IMO there shuld be a pet controll system for your minion like the ranger have. Attack, deffend, passive, return. And the special attacks is controlled by the same way as it is today.

I was very disappointed to see minions hit release in this state. They have had serious AI problems since the first BWE. I know I’m not the only one who submitted a ticket during just about every beta phase, and any improvements are marginal at best. Minions either stand there and watch you get beat on, or they run off and attack something that looks at them funny.

An observation I cannot seem to find another post about.

The minions for necros seem to slow down your run speed. For example, running along and my stupid flesh golem goes off and attacks something (i know its stupidity at attacking targets at will has been mentioned on other posts).

When this happens, my run speed appears to slow down by i guess 10%, its hard to quantify, but you feel like you are tethered to the beastie. If the minion dies then you speed back up again.

Anyone else experience this?

Could be that it is the same with other minions, but its more noticeable with the flesh golem probably because he is always wandering off attacking for no reason.

When your pet attacks something if puts you in combat and movement speed in combat is reduced. Rangers have a similar problem with our pets but fortunately we have the ability to put them on passive.

ah wasnt aware movement speed was reduced in combat, seems rather strange behaviour to me…

thanks for your reply though

I just wanted to add something to this:

So the super low hp/defense pet of ours that constantly has agro does 20% less damage than I do in JUST our basic attacks. To add to this I’m opening each fight up with Mark of Blood which is doing even more damage… there is NO reason that I can tell of that this thing should even be pulling threat off of me… ???

Incubus.2701:

To add to this I’m opening each fight up with Mark of Blood which is doing even more damage… there is NO reason that I can tell of that this thing should even be pulling threat off of me… ???

So you’re saying that because the pet isn’t really doing as much damage as you.. that he shouldn’t be pulling the mob’s threat? Every mob is different in terms of what grabs their attention depending on what kind of mob it is. They have varying priorities whether that be “Attack pet first”, “Attack Warriors first”, Attack Light Armor users first", and the list goes on and on.

Lets wait and see… maybe they are workin on it as of the moment…

Considering I have played MMOs for 12 years and generally (with the exception to EQ1 where if someone was sitting down they became top threat priority or if they were below 20% hp) yes I’m saying that if I do more damage I expected more threat. Not really all that irrational. If you’re telling me that some mobs in this specific game are designed to attack a pet (for instance) first then why just this one pet? I have three out at the same time and this one is second in damage to all three. I’m all for “kill at random” but I’m going to need more than “… this is how it is… ignore the gaps that cause it to be an unstable process…”

Feathers.7261:

Issue 1 : Sometimes pets dont attack when I attack… They take a lot of time… I mean they should attack when someone attacks me?

this is also a ranger pet issue.. I just made a post on this on a ranger pet thread.

adding this to this thread as well, this is also a ranger pet issue. They do not always attack even with our more control and being able to “force” them to attack.. they wont. Its mostly environmental objects like turrets but it happens to regular mobs as well.

X The Manimal.5293

So you’re saying that because the pet isn’t really doing as much damage as you.. that he shouldn’t be pulling the mob’s threat? Every mob is different in terms of what grabs their attention depending on what kind of mob it is. They have varying priorities whether that be “Attack pet first”, “Attack Warriors first”, Attack Light Armor users first", and the list goes on and on.

LOL

Proof or you’re just talking out your ‘other hole’.

As far as my experience goes, mob aggro in GW2 works like this:

1. Initial threat. Pulling the mob usually grants the largest amount of aggro in one action.
2. Distance to target. If you’re closer, you’ll build more threat. After a period of time, you’ll have aggro.
3. Damage. Damage is still a factor in the ‘changing of hands’ for the threat system. Depending on how the numbers work, you may be able to pull threat by damage alone. Nobody has put out any numbers on this so don’t even try do debunk it.
4. Skill type used. The mobs in this game sometimes have specific skills that are used on players based on their distance from them. If the mob has a “minimum distance” AoE skill, you’d be better off walking into melee range to avoid it.

ichyboy.2315:

Lets wait and see… maybe they are workin on it as of the moment…

Agreed, but an acknowledgement of the issue, whether it be a bug or intentional design would be good.