Guild Wars 2

Necro is not a Ranger. Has way more ways to survive and deal damage compared to Rangers, so it wouldn’t be fair to make minions like pets (a minion master could have 5-10 minions at the same time). Necromancer has Death Shroud, Ranger has the Pet bar.
Also, why do you care if the golem attacks mobs? Just let it die. It’s how it is.

Necro minions are still far better then the other types of minions (excluding ranger’s pets), also because they don’t expire like spiritual weapons, elementals or clones.

A little AI improvement doesn’t hurt, I agree, but a minion bar is far too much.

If you don’t like how minions work, just don’t be a minion necromancer. There are a lot of (better) builds that don’t use minions at all (or just have 1-2 to deal free damage and take some hits).

Death Shroud is your strongest weapon, not minions. You’re not Rangers.
If you want to control your minions, give up to Death Shroud (= be a Ranger and charm ugly creatures)

(IMO)

If we spec into pets they should be strong enough just like ranger pets. I would love a pet bar for them but if that’s not going to happen at least make them all in defense mode.

A basic petbar should be given to every class with pets/summons/turrets. This bar should have only the command attack. This command is given to all pets under the player control.

For the rest the pets should act like they are in a passive stand. Except for the ranger, they should get the control level they have now over their pet.

This should at least make the pet AI a bit more simpler for the none-ranger pets. And solving current bugs in the system.

Next to that a petwindow which gives an overview of the pets under the players command and their hpbar.

I quit Necromancer completely because of how bad minions are all-around. There are almost no redeeming features about minions, and in my eyes, Necromancer itself currently. It’s sad, because I felt Necromancer was the most unique class Guild Wars 1 had to offer, and now its just been tossed to the side and simplified to “Press 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0 to have pets that barely function and repeat on their deaths.”

I’m not interested in wells that have been turned into pseudo Ranger traps, or crappy, boring signets every class is plagued with, or self-inducing conditions (lol), I want Minion Master back.

PS: Death Shroud sucks.

CHunterX.4083:

I quit Necromancer completely because of how bad minions are all-around. There are almost no redeeming features about minions, and in my eyes, Necromancer itself currently. It’s sad, because I felt Necromancer was the most unique class Guild Wars 1 had to offer, and now its just been tossed to the side and simplified to “Press 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0 to have pets that barely function and repeat on their deaths.”

I’m not interested in wells that have been turned into pseudo Ranger traps, or crappy, boring signets every class is plagued with, or self-inducing conditions (lol), I want Minion Master back.

PS: Death Shroud sucks.

I wouldn’t call them useless, but the pet AI could definitely use tweaking, for example:

-Flesh Golem’s horrid ‘attack whatever I like’ behaviour
-pets not attacking or attacking what they’re not supposed to (they do assist on occasion, but sometimes do not react to being attacked)
-pet active abilities to be instant (at least the blind and charge)
-bone minion explosions to be ground targeted
-state what the max range for the flesh wurm teleport is (random teleporting isn’t as useful as you’d think)
-jagged horror: why does this even exist?
-blood fiend’s death should auto trigger the heal (which should be increased, imo)
-unwanted desummoning of pets when: zoning, turning into the plague form, being turned into a moa (most OP skill ever imo) or using quest items that transform you.

Overall I really enjoy necro (despite everything), but it definitely has more than a fair share of bugs.

PS I wouldn’t call a whole another health bar ‘useless’. I WOULD like to see my ‘actual’ health bar (and be able to be regen it), and energy bar, while in DS.

One more reason to NOT run minions.

They aren’t undead, they are dead!

To be perfectly honest, I don’t mind the low attack. The issues I’m having are well stated in that they DON’T attack (and since I’ve noticed it I’ve seen that this is well over half of the time)… I LOVE the necromancer class in all games I’ve played as a style of a caster who uses his/her undead servents as fodder basically. Whether they take the damage or deal the damage while I distract the mob never mattered to me, it made it more situational depending on what mobs I was fighting… it made the class unique!

I’ve noticed that GW2, however, has almost nearly taken a big dump on the necro class (this is my uber sad face…)… Cool rangers can “charm” pets in to liking them and becoming their ally… but the ranger is a ranged heavy damage combatant… not a pet master… the necromancer (necro relating to dead things… hello…) is supposed to be raising the undead to do his/her bidding… not to do the undeads bidding…

I’m currently considering dumping the class just got level 50 (another uber sad face) and going with something else… I mean I’m equiped with dual daggers… might as well play a class with more defense… heavy sigh… I’d play a ranger but to be honest I’m quite upset that they got our pets capabilities… it’s dumb…

I’d honestly don’t care about the low damage of the necro pets, because when I can get the three of them to come up and actually attack the mobs we do a great job of cleaning up a fight! It’s when they don’t though, OR when every mob wants to beat on my mutated scorpion (no GUY who says that “some” mobs are designed to do this… this happens with EVERY mob) that my mutated scorpion has some kind of defense/hp if you’re going to make him the tank pet that I can’t pull threat off of… Don’t call it a dot if it lasts about half a second, gets two attacks off, and has a 40 second recast on it because that’s essentially every other fight if my other pets are attacking… if not well then I’m soloing as a necro with no other sustainable dps… so I guess I can sit there and debuff my enemies right? Oh no? Why cause we get 3s and 5s debuffs? Oh… oh okay… well I’ll just hang out over here and consider making a new class then

CHunterX.4083:

I quit Necromancer completely because of how bad minions are all-around. There are almost no redeeming features about minions, and in my eyes, Necromancer itself currently. It’s sad, because I felt Necromancer was the most unique class Guild Wars 1 had to offer, and now its just been tossed to the side and simplified to “Press 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0 to have pets that barely function and repeat on their deaths.”

I’m not interested in wells that have been turned into pseudo Ranger traps, or crappy, boring signets every class is plagued with, or self-inducing conditions (lol), I want Minion Master back.

PS: Death Shroud sucks.

I agree here… it seems that someone has taken rangers best qualities and given necros some slack version of it and taken it away from rangers all together… then taken the necros best qualities and given them to rangers with some weak version to replace it on the necros end… what is wrong with the necromancer? You don’t need to recreate the classes!!! You already created an MMO people enjoy… don’t break it by breaking the classes please.

Sad thing is, IF any devs read this, the response will be “You don’t know what we are trying to do (/ignore this thread)” and just like all other MMOs who’ve done that they will start losing gamers because they thought they new better then the players. It always makes me sad to see. WTB Verant back!!!

Kidel.2057:

Necro is not a Ranger. Has way more ways to survive and deal damage compared to Rangers, so it wouldn’t be fair to make minions like pets (a minion master could have 5-10 minions at the same time). Necromancer has Death Shroud, Ranger has the Pet bar.
Also, why do you care if the golem attacks mobs? Just let it die. It’s how it is.

Necro minions are still far better then the other types of minions (excluding ranger’s pets), also because they don’t expire like spiritual weapons, elementals or clones.

A little AI improvement doesn’t hurt, I agree, but a minion bar is far too much.

If you don’t like how minions work, just don’t be a minion necromancer. There are a lot of (better) builds that don’t use minions at all (or just have 1-2 to deal free damage and take some hits).

Death Shroud is your strongest weapon, not minions. You’re not Rangers.
If you want to control your minions, give up to Death Shroud (= be a Ranger and charm ugly creatures)

(IMO)

Dude… what are you talking about? The NECROmancer is the one who has a core functionality of using the undead in any way he deems fit… Rangers are more about traps and charming creatures temporarily… You’re thinking of a beast master type of class here buddy lol… get it right stud.

And no… I don’t want a MINION bar… I would LOVE to have a hp bar for my elite pet though! You know… since it’s my elite pet and all… I mean, we have nothing else in that elite build worth putting up. And death shroud is garbage… utterly garbage… It’s my “OMG I’m gonna die” hit it and run away as fast as I can hoping it doesn’t wear off before I can leash the mobs off of me.

Undead man… undead…

My pets attack even win I’ve run by someone who is attacking something else the Neco pets attack that player monster making me slow down but otherwise they work fine

Khiala.1476:

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.

Amen! I think they should just rename the class and build an ACTUAL necromancer class where it raises undead targets that can do his bidding (and maybe just ONE pet vs a horde of useless drool bots)… I’m often worried someone noobier than I is going to run by and report me for chinese plat farming lol

I know it is not like the original gw, but there the necromancer was very nice to play. It felt like a real necromancer.. how you could use the dead corpse and so on..
The number of minions were restricted, too, but that didn’t matter, because you could be powerful with your handful of minions.
They also had a very useful minion list (hp bar)!!! Why has that in gw lately added feature not been implemented in gw2, too?
The minions themselves had a reasonable AI: they (almost always) attacked foes near you (I think that is how they should work, the ranger pet can do that!!)
They also lived long enough to be of any use and benefitted you.

This is still happening – minion AI is bugged. Flesh Golem and Shadow Fiend just stand there and do not attack.

If I initiate the attack, both my minions will just completely stop and stand there. Even if I bring the enemy in close range to them, they continue to do absolutely nothing. Same thing if I use their special skills; they’ll use them on what I have targeted, then do nothing again.

Now if I do not initiate the attack, and let my minions in range of the enemy first, they’ll attack as normal.

So I decided to reroll Necro as my third. Played it a whole day and I’m pretty dissappointed. Aside from the minion being dumb, the thing that make me pretty annoyed is

- Minions don’t regenerate health even though out of combat, is this intentional ?

and also my blood fiend always died. T_T Forgot the name, the two melee minions seems not attacking, or their attack speed is just too slow for me to notice or something.

Bugs:

1) Pets don’t attack. They just stand off at a distance almost 50% the time.
2) Flesh Golem attacks things by himself, mostly stationary objects like armor racks.
3) Lose all pets when porting maps. Please reset pet summon skills when changing maps.
4) Combat log does not show pet damage. How about a dps meter?
5) Combat log does not show bleed damage for anything.

Notes:
a) Only the flesh golem regenerates which is fine.

Still having this problem. I don’t even use minions now save for when I absolutely need to sacrifice one for health.. Spawn it and sacrifice. Pathetic.

How hard would it really be to make them behave just like weaker, potentially more numerous Ranger’s pets until they can be properly fixed? Eesh. It’s basically putting a band aid on the problem, but it would be a lot better than the crap necromancers are dealing with right now until the AI can be overhauled properly.

i still have the same problem .. Developers, kindly update

Ok, I went and packed my Necro for a while (leveled a guardian to 80). Now I came back to my necro, and this issue still persists. The melee necro minions are not attacking all the time.

Just make them attack whatever I attack, and attack whatever attacks me. Nothing more, nothing less. Or just give them the same AI as ranger pets. Those work as they should.

The screenshot below shows the behavior. The only minion that attacks regularly is the Bone Fiend, which attacks at range. The melee ones attack if they are attacked, and sometimes attack my target, but other times will just stand there, as shown. When the mob does, they will move closer to me. Also, in cases where a mob dies the minions will sometimes go and attack a nearby mob that popped into my auto-target but which I did not attack. The golem … well. I’ve since this scene stopped using him because he seldom attacks what I want him to, he often attacks things I don’t want him to, and his special ability “Charge” in many cases sends him far enough to aggro the next mob.

Came here to see if I was doing something wrong with my minions, good to know that it’s not just me. This is still happening, Flesh Golem being the worst offender. While amusing at first, it’s now just annoying.

Basically any melee based pets I use end up being a bit of a guessing game as to whether or not they’ll attack my target, run off and attack that weapon rack or that Champion mob that I was trying to avoid, or just stand there watching me get my head beat inside out while I kite things around.

Any chance on getting an update with this? I mean this is a pretty important core mechanic with Necromancers, we’re basically just Shadow Elementalists at this point.

28 days since the last update on this post. This issue is still going on, and just as annoying as ever.

Will this be fixed on the nov 15th patch? Is Anet even looking at this? Are they even aware? A little feedback would be nice

I would also very much like an update on this issue. What’s the deal?

Agreed, what’s up with this?

My necro is my primary alt, and as I was finishing up a zone, my flesh golem, who I’ve taken to calling Forrest Gump, stood there scratching his belly while a band of 5 separatists took turns beating on me. Forrest has also been kind enough to aggro mobs while I’m trying to do a view, so that the view gets locked out, and he’s also brought friends to visit while I’m trying to harvest or mine. He was nice enough to ruin some Orichalcum for me.

I’m having this bug as well, particularly with the Flesh Golem. It’s annoying to say the least.

Well, nov 15 went by, and we still have the same issue Really, how hard can it be to give it the same AI as hunter pets? I have not seen hunter melee pets having that issue… Come on Anet, at least a “Yeah, we know about it, but have not had the resources to fix it, and will fix it in 2-3 months”. I’ll take that…

Just to add in(and bump): it’s still a problem.

Personally, I’ve seen the melee minions not even respond when they’re being hit at range. Happens a lot in Orr where an annoying ranged risen will start lobbing attacks at them, and they just stand there getting blasted.

Same thing will happen with AOEs as well (mostly Preserver’s geyser attack)

Ya i have to agree that as i level i cannot even imagine using the necro like they are intended. The tougher the maps get the more often i find my pets useless and more hindrance than help. Match that to the lower AC and and you have a necro that i have ceased playing. She is currently a go’fer. She just collects resources. What a pointless class this is at the moment.

/cry

This is still going on. I use my necro as my main (have a lvl 80 guardian, but he’s meh… And my eng is nice, but not as nice as my necro…), and I use mostly summons. I’ve been playing with the exploder guys, and they are great!!!… If I could get them to run to the enemy! They suffer from the same problem as the other melee pets, and just stay hidden behind my skirts where I cannot blow them up!! It actually sounds pretty smart for them, but not what I need!

Please someone look at this issue. I’m not sure how simple or complex it is to fix this, but at least some feedback “We are looking into this, no ETA” would be nice…

Kal.2376:

/cry

This is still going on.

I would like to re-iterate:

Yes, this issue still exists!

…3 months later.

I am running a full minion necro and this issue is quite annoying. It seems like all pets have issues with attacking targets when a fight starts. It happens quite often, they sit for a while before engaging or refuse to attack at all. It is also really annoying that you cannot tell them what to attack as they often seem to pick out their own targets or do odd things in general. I assume it all has to do with their AI. I am constantly popping a bone minion for their instant aoe dmg and finding that they are nowhere near the target I am attacking. It forces me to have to watch so many things at once and make sure they are even attacking anything at all! It’s not very fun.

Probably related, my summoned fern mastiff (Sylvari racial skill) behaves this way.

Quite often just stands around during a fight.

The summoned tropical bird from my Pirate runes on the other hand attacks just fine. He goes out of his way to attack things in fact.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

The summoned tropical bird from my Pirate runes on the other hand attacks just fine. He goes out of his way to attack things in fact.

So the flesh golem is a bird brain?

Wow, positive news on minion AI

Visionary.5681:

Wow, positive news on minion AI

Jeez, about time too! Really glad they’re working on a fix for this.

Fixing the attack delay will not suffice to make minions viable, but it is definitely an important step towards the goal.

Minion AI fix incoming? YEY!

Just when I finally get fed up and start another character, haha. Glad it’s getting a look at after so long!

Yep, making minions work is the first step to making them more viable in different aspects of the game

While your at it, have a look at making the bone minions run towards the target before popping, like the mesmer illusions do on shatter. Then we at least can use them as 30 second ranged (poison) bombs if nothing else.

+ for bone minions running at the target before exploding. Please. PLEASE.

Indeed this “sloppy fighting motivation” behaviour seems to apply to the 60second sylvari racial pets as well.
They cannot be commanded the way a ranger pet can, and probably are controlled just the same way as Necro minions. I have noticed quite often that my sylvari pet just sits there and inspects his surroundings while I fight mobs. It would be nice if a fix to necro minions would affect these pets similarly. Thanks.

Jason King.2647:

We’re working on the minions’ behavior now and will be testing some changes to see how they work. Thank you for your patience, everyone!

I’ll believe it when I see it. The last time we were promised bug fixes we got underwater combat combo finishers.

Jason King.2647:

We’re working on the minions’ behavior now and will be testing some changes to see how they work. Thank you for your patience, everyone!

I have not seen any improvement. I run my necro with pets all the time, but have not seen where there have been any changes to the pet AI at all.

Sometimes my Flesh Golem will attack, more often than not, he just stands there watching the enemy come for us. Occasionally, all pets will just swirl behind me and not do anything in the fighting except perhaps die.

I really like the idea of a pet necro build but am getting frustrated because I cannot do anything in this build.

I gave up the pet necro build because of the inoperance of the pets, and the refusal of Arenanet to fix it. Some of us can’t help but think that all this is intentional, to avoid a strong pet necro botting build. Because if they fixed (even if only halfway) the ranger pet AI, why wouldn’t they be able to fix necro’s?

lynspottery.6529:

I have not seen any improvement. I run my necro with pets all the time, but have not seen where there have been any changes to the pet AI at all.

Sometimes my Flesh Golem will attack, more often than not, he just stands there watching the enemy come for us. Occasionally, all pets will just swirl behind me and not do anything in the fighting except perhaps die.

I really like the idea of a pet necro build but am getting frustrated because I cannot do anything in this build.

We are 3 months away from the first anniversary and we have absolutely no improvement so my advice is: Let it go, this is not going to change ever.

Jason King.2647:

We’re working on the minions’ behavior now and will be testing some changes to see how they work. Thank you for your patience, everyone!

They have been working on them for a little while, so don’t go saying they won’t ever change when you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.

+1 here

Please, make these guys worthy.

Necro is my profession/class of choice in every MMO I have played, especially in GW1. After my initial necro when the game went live, and the subsequent deletion due to how disgustingly and horribly they’ve butchered necros, I’ve tried to run a necro again 3 times since and have barely got them over level 20-25 before deleting them again.

I keep hoping that maybe, one day, they will fix them.
I also only play Open World PvE, no PvP/WvW/Dungeons and as of now I’m sitting on 2xWarriors, 2xRangers, 1xMesmer, 1xThief, 1xGuardian, 1xElementalist (which I loved to play before their adjustments for the sake of PvP also destroyed it being fun in Open World PvE…so it sits at lvl 53…unplayed, sadly).

Fixing Necro would be like adding a new profession/class to the game which, I feel, is desperately needed to keep interest in the game, especially with that one other MMO going F2P in June.

Jason King.2647:

We’re working on the minions’ behavior now and will be testing some changes to see how they work. Thank you for your patience, everyone!

Any progress so far ?