Guild Wars 2

Captain Unusual.9163:

Mitch.4781:

To be honest, out of all the Elite’s, it is the only class that feels sufficiently different from the base class. Chrono, Tempest, Beserker etc, all feel just like a mild variation of their core classes. Reaper almost feels like a seperate class entirely from base necro and it feels a lot more powerful.

It’s a kitten shame that they abandoned that “make it feel different from the base class” philosophy after making the Reaper.

Though Daredevil manages to feel pretty different, too. Not as different as Reaper is from base necro, but moreso than any of the other elites.

To me base Necro seems to be more suited for condition build and the Reaper more power based one. Though both can be traited to go either way. I think most of the base Necro issues are linked to conditions being somewhat unbalanced yet and PvE being not suitable for condition builds (or condition manipulation builds, I should say). Reaper “fixes” it by just mostly ignoring damaging conditions and giving us more direct damage. The idea is good. It’s just that the context of this idea is bad. The game does not support the original vision of the Necro.

Basically you will be sacrificing your critical hits for healing support for your minions (Rapid → Settler), so you should alter your critical hit based choises (maybe get a sigil of renewal/water to help out your minions more?). Healing power helps a lot with minions due to them being relatively weak.

Holy Kitten. That’s Kitten, with a capital K. Been playing nothing but a MM necro ever since got the kitten game (shortly after release). And just when I am moving to a new apparment and have yet no internet there…

However, now I would like to point to an idea that I have been thinking about for the longest time now. Now that minions are reliable (confirmation needed), it changes the posiotion of the Necromancer quite a bit? I mean, the necro was pretty much mandatory damage dealer in 50% of the cases when minions were on a coffee break, right? So now, we can realy on minion damage more. That leads necro to more of a support role that damage role in my mind. Therefore Cleric gear, staff and AXE come to question. For me, axe has always been an interesting weapon. It has a synergy with power build, but it lacks the actual damage. However, it does provide vulnerability. Slowly but surely. So, I would like to ask what does the community think of a vulnerability/healing based build? Where the necro’s role is to support your minions fully (especially when you can now rely of steady minion damage). This would be very optimal for PvE, naturally.

4. 1 main (human) and 3 alts (human, charr, asura). Probably going to kick out my second human and get sylvari and norn to complete the set… All necros, naturally.

Main human necro is a MM.

meow one twenty.4376:

Tim.6450:

Death shroud is not a transform since the cooldown is completely different (cooldown doesn’t start at entering) and it doesn’t destroy minions.

It’s a class mechanic! If it functioned in a way that destroyed minions every time you used your class mechanic the class would implode out of stupidity.
—snip—

Bug Fixes:

• Death Shroud: Fixed a bug that caused minions not to die when entering into Shroud form.

Khristophoros.7194:

The way I see it each weapon has a clear purpose:

Dagger: Damage
Scepter: Conditions
Staff: Utility and AoE
Axe: messing around/handicapping yourself (lol its bad)

Pretty much so. I would also add that
Staff = long range
Scepter/Axe = midrange
Dagger = close combat

The staff is focused of long ranged AoE with both damage and conditions. It’s an ok versitile weapon.
Scepter is all about conditions.
Axe is supposed to be a LF/Vulnerability type of weapon. It should work well with MM build. In theory, that is.
Dagger is for close combat damage. DPS weapon.

For me, it’s all about the minions. Necro can pull it through better than any other class. In GW1, this was extremely satisfying and worked pretty well with the game mechanics there. In GW2 I find it a bit different, but still very much fun. Especially when I try and build my character like a fortress: in the centre of a mad, raging, fleasheating mob there stands the Master. Like a mountain. In order to fight the mountain, you need to survive the storm first. Now how cool is that?

Ansatsuken.8627:

So, me, as a veteran player that bought the game for $60USD just got the Vanilla version of the game, right?, but now a new player is getting the core+exp for $50 USD?

…ain’t that a kick in the head?

Pretty much my annoyance with the Expansion as well. They really are focusing on new players and IGNORING RETURNING CUSTOMERS. A good company knows how to keep both new and old customers happy. This is not good business practise in my mind. The fairest way (in my mind) would be to offer old players something extra, if no discount. Btw, a free character slot alone sounds almost an insult. “Here. Have a bone”. Why should I want to buy something I already have? For 45€ for an expansion, that’s a lot. I am ignoring the core game bundling, because it does not matter wheter the expansion comes with it or not. The core game has no value to me. To me, it’s like I am paying EXTRA for the content that should feel like I am adding extra to the core game, right? It’s all backwards.

I am gladly going to just wait and see if ANet is going to release an expansion only pack. If not, then so what? I still have the core game to enjoy. To me, the core game still has value. Even if Anet seems to think the core game is worthless by their logic.

I think it’s the excess “toasting” that caused them to go braindead… No more drinks for you guys! looks angrily at my minion army Kidding aside, it would be nice to see at least some improvement on the AI. I remember them being a bit overly aggressive at one point… even that made more sense than them just standing there, staring at pretty flowers while their master is getting brutaly murdered a few feets next to them…

I fell in love with MM Necro back in GW1. Necromancer in general was the sole reason why I got the game and quickly learned the ways of Minion Mastering. MM was the sole reason for why I got GW2.

I have had regrets for understandable reasons but every now and then I come back to the game… It keeps changing and it is very much fun to me in the end. Despite some amazing flaws that MMs have. There is much more to the game though that balances it out.

You can still relatively easily have a small army. Just equip all your minion skills and put on some armor with Rune of the Lich (50% chance for extra Jagged Horrors when struck, 60s CD) and grab a weapon with Sigil of Demon Summoning (Flesh Reavers after every 25 kills, no CD). In addition to that, when you take Death Magic trait Death Nova, you get one Jagged Horror when you kill things (15s CD).

After rocking an army like that you can start thinking about wheter numbers are better than quality. (Personally I love a massive army following me.) Perhaps the only thing I would love to see is more ways to keep such an army alive. That was one of the key things in GW1 too… Plus, it would be awesome to see the army aggro a but more aggressively. It doesn’t have to be smart, just effective.

WinterWolf.7231:

Duleshna.7430:

I think they did hire a special AI consultant this spring to take a look at the code? Not sure how much they can fix it, but they are trying.

Would like to see evidence of this, as far as I know i have not seen anything like this.
Anet still has not said anything on either this post or the Minion-AI one.

I happened to stumble across it at the Necromancer forums: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Minions-AI-fix-in-the-Sep-future-pack/first#post4364109

Bhawb.7408:

http://intrinsicalgorithm.com/IANews/2014/04/now-consulting-at-arenanet-on-guild-wars-2/

Note that this is hardly anything solid. Hopeful wishing, perhaps? But if it’s true, that does show that Anet is taking this issue seriously. If people know more about this, please post?

WinterWolf.7231:

They still have not addressed Minion-AI yet.

I believe problem with that is that the AI affecting Minion behaviour is also tied to others as well (NPCs, mobs, pets ect.). So in order to fix Minion AI, they need to revamp the entire AI of the game. That is how I understand it and have read posts about it. Please correct me if this is false information. As you can see, the Minion AI issue is no small problem by any means. I think they did hire a special AI consultant this spring to take a look at the code? Not sure how much they can fix it, but they are trying.

However! I do think that they should communicate better with the community itself about the current state of the AI. Is it just bad programming? Are there still bugs in there? Are they going to do something about i? Can they do something about it? Because of the lack of information available, it does make it easy to come to the conclution that the issue is too massive to be fixed. And that the AI we (unfortunately) have to deal is at its best right now. The biggest fear that I have is that the AI will be ultimately fixed in Guild Wars 3… And that doesn’t really comfort me at all.

But who knows?

I can confirm this as well. The trigger seems to be the scaling, although not sure if it’s trait related as well?

This kills ALL of the minions I have running around with me. All 5 equipped + spawned Jagged Horrors.

Haven’t really noticed any difference. The big oaf has 50/50 chances of either attacking or stopping to smell the flowers.

But don’t worry, if they did indeed change something, I’m sure they’ll “fix” it back to where it was soon enough. Ok, kidding aside, what ever they did, I am most happy about the changes they did on Charge. Seems to hit more accurately and not as far away from the targets.

For me they die every time I step on to a new scaling area. I am not sure if it’s due to a trait bug or what. And it happens all over the world, not just certain areas. The trigger seems to be the scaling. Plus something else that I haven’t yet fiddled around with.

I see no real reason why Flesh Golem couldn’t swim. It really is annoying when you have to constantly resummon it, even after a quick (often accidental) dip. Once the dumb thing went into the water by itself as I was near the waterline and it died… Full 60s wait until you get back to the “normal set” (without trait). I try to avoid water as much as possible just because it annoys the beep out of me.

Yeah, sometimes I wonder if Necros can call themselves Minion “Masters”… I mean, a cardboard cutout might do more damage in these situations (papercuts are painful!). At least ANet gave us some minion skills we can use to guide them to the general direction at least. I really miss the old GW1 MM. Minions just went apes*** on mobs, tearing them down mercilessly. Now it’s just… meh. Tame.

Maybe they could take another look on how the minions are positioned in relation to the Necro at the very least? If I remember correctly, they did change it once since the minions were too close to the summoner or something. Now it feels though that the Necro is very open ad vulnerable. The beauty (at least in my mind) in MM is to have a “living” wall of flesh in between you and your opponent. Not some ugly statues as it seems right now.

AI fix is pretty badly needed here… It’s such a shame they had to use such a difficult connection between NPC and minion pathfinding.

I think a lot of the traits (both minor and major) have this problem of inconsistency. All the connections seem random or non-existant. It’s much more fun when you build up your character and realize “Hey, this would work well with this, this and this!”. Rather than having very rare possibilities for synergy, it would be more interesting to have enough of them to start thinking about prioritizing instead of desperately finding one single link. Ok, maybe it’s not entirely the case, but the problem does exist and I do hope they will work on it in a later update.

Going back to the topic about Spite… I do agree that the minors aren’t too great, but I have found the first two to be useful for my build (MM Necro). While not great, it’s not utter beep. I have to also address that I run mainly in PvE, so the benefits from these traits are far greater. The last one… 5 trait points to get Might when close to death? I could work with it if it was a 3 point trait but 5? I dunno. For me it just feels a bit too much.

Cempa.3645:

Elmentcius Koronel.6234:

Link doesn’t work by the way.

Sorry I got fed up with this garbage web site not accepting Trait Builder links. www.intothemists.com is the best trait builder on the market today :/

copy and paste.

The reason why it does that is because the link has semicolons (;) and the forums don’t like those. The link is fine, just the forums suck.

Bug fix: The Flesh Golem no longer regenerates health after combat.

That would make my day… And I wouldn’t even be surprised if that happened.

For me, the Necromancer playstyle seems to fit the most (MM build). I prefer to overwhelm my opponents and not be in the first line of attack, being able to support when needed ect. Wheter this actually happens in GW2 MM Necros, I won’t go into… But yeah, ever since GW1 I fell in love with the class. Also, I haven’t really seen any good Necromancer classes in other MMOs.

Nevertheless, Necros FTW.

(…maybe in the future)

Rampage.7145:

im doing the same on my Razer mouse, i dont think is baneable, what would be the point to buy 100$ mouses and keyboards? Ppl do in on every MMO keyboard macros and stuff.

True, true. But what about the AHK system? Does it really give player an unfair advantage so that it makes one bannable?

Genreninja.8516:

I like this. My Noble Dignified and oh so serious Warrior doesn’t much enjoy shooting flower petals with her longbow.

Actually, let’s go a bit further… Since you described your warrior to be serious and all… what if the appearance also was affected by your hero’s personality as well? Just a thought.

Ok, so I stumbled a while ago to a post on the Necro page about Legendary weapons and how they don’t look too… right in the hands of a Necro. Especially Bitfrost seemed most amusing thing ever to be wield by a Necromancer.

Example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX378puQzgM
Just doesn’t… work.

So, I wanted to suggest that the Legendary weapons should have changing appearance depending on the profession of their current wielder. Like when a Necromancer holds his Bitfrost staff, his inner darkness starts to shine through the staff, making the rainbows and sparkles look sickly and distorted. Or instead of them, it spouts clouds of flies, dark matter ect… And when a Mesmer has it, it spouts out something else. Maybe making her look a bit more ethereal? I’m not going to suggest any particular looks, just the mechanics.

I have no idea how much work it would take from the devs, but this would be in my mind a realistically achievable thing in the future.

Edit: The appearance could also be affected by the wielder’s personality.

Still hoping for a possible answer.

Ok, so… I understood that GW2 is supposed to have like rock, paper, scissor -elements.

Mesmer with Moa beats Necro with MM build… and MM beats what exactly? Anyone?

striker.3704:

minion master (20% cooldown reduction), flesh of the master (50% more minion health), training of the mater (+30% more minion damage), fetid corruption (minions each can take off one boon on attack, 10 second cooldown individually for each minion), death nova (minions release a poison cloud on death), vampiric master (minions siphon health on hit), and fetid consumtion (minions draw conditions from thier master) all boost minions in some way.

Minion base stats are based on your level. (However putrid explosion damage from bone minions scales off of your power, and taste of death from the blood fiend scales off of healing power.)

Yes, so what I have understood is that no matter what you wear/wield, it will not affect the stats on your Minions. You could be naked or fully geared for Condition Damage (kinda odd but whatever), Powerbuild ect… and Still no effect on Minions statwise. Only the level you are matters. (Even attributes themselves don’t matter, only the Major Traits you choose?)

I do hope I made mistakes on that one… Honestly, if that is really the case, I should probably just go and shoot myself in the leg. That is just… kitten

Necros have a pretty ok set of weapons, so I don’t really see a need for a greatsword. IMO it just doesn’t fit Necro class. Necros are light armored, weak, sneaky little maggots that should use dark arts to defeat their enemies. Not brute force. Brute force comes from death and despair, not from metal. I can’t even imagine my Necro wielding anything heavy. He would probably swing it one and then fall down. If you want a sort of a dark knight character, why not try a warrior instead?

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

Reiterating what everyone said with the Flesh Golem. It even attacks structures you don’t command it to.

Especially when there are real, dangerous enemies around attacking you… (-.-)

Hmm.
“The base size of your life force pool is based on your current max health, meaning it is indirectly affected by your Vitality attribute, and can be further increased by the Life Force Pool attribute linked to the Soul Reaping trait line. The life force bar (located above weapon and off-hand skills) displays life force level. "

So… I assume your staff increases your vitality, therefore making the pool bigger and less full… and when you go back to A/W your vitality drops as well as your life force pool, making it fuller. My 10 cents.

Anyone? Any thoughts/comments?

The real problem with the MM build is the bugs and the AI. It’s kinda hard to say if the build is as good as it was (or as I remember it was) in GW1. Of course, the mechanics are way different. My advice to you is to try out other builds if possible while waiting for the ANet to fix the minion AI… among other things. The Necromancer traits are horribly bugged, so it’s not really that easy to create a build that works perfectly in the game’s current state.

However, that does not mean MM is a bad build. In theory, it should be a fun, efficient build for solo PvE. If the traits worked as they should, the build should be a solid one. Of course the minions seem a bit squishy… From what I have understood, they do not scale from gear, only from traits. That would be a thing for ANet to fix too… But yeah, mainly I’d like them for fix the AI and the bugs, so we could see how the build works on its intended level. THEN we can figure out if it needs buffing.

Hi, I am sure this has been asked a lot of times already, but I’d rather face grumpy answers than a perma ban on my account.

So, I stumbled across this little post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/fangen/Action-RPG-Key-Script-Attack-with-your-mouse

(tl;dr Basically it’s a hotkey script that locks on the right mouse button making the camera move as you move your mouse and then releasing the right mouse button for other use. So even when you press RMouse again, it does something else. I know it is a 3rd party program but not sure if it’s considered a gamebreaking effect or not.)

And also… I am using a Logitech mouse with 9 buttons. Currently I am still configuring out the use of it, so I am using only about 5-6 buttons. With it came Logitech’s own program (basically a 3rd party program in view of the game) that allows me to redefine keys. For some reason I cannot use M5 and M6 buttons corretly within the GW2 option settings, so I used the program to change the PC to think I’m pressing V(M5) to dodge and §(M6) to change weapons with the mouse buttons. Is that technically allowed either? I am using a 3rd party program after all…

So are these mouse hotkey controlling programs considered bannable 3rd party programs or not? Logitech program changes keys and the AHK program would lock the button. I still need to press the buttons myself so it’s not really automation, is it? I just thought I ask it myself before doing anything (possibly) stupid.

Xym.9417:

I consider my minions my personal cheer squad. They stand around watching me play the game and when the mob is 75% dead they figure what the heck, lets pile on and have some fun too. Now only if they had some interesting emotes/animations while standing around and watching.

Omg, I can almost imagine them in cute cheerleader outfits, equipped with pompoms…

It would be nice if the legendary items changed their look according to the class of their wielder. Like a Mesmer would have a bit different look with his/her weapons than a Necro.

Nope, the Minion AI is still not there yet. Let me list how they work for me.

• Blood Fiend seems to work. The healing it “gives” when attacking an enemy is non-existant though. Killing the Fiend gives health pretty little. I don’t really use Blood Fiend.

• Bone Fiend and Shadow Fiend tend to work the best. They usually attack the correct enemy in question.

• Bone Minions… They just usually stand casually on both sides of the attacking enemy facing away from it. If I’m lucky, they attack it when it’s about to die. Perfect. And they are never close enough for the Putrid explosion to work either.

• Flesh Wurm works well I guess, but I personally don’t like stationary minions, so I can’t tell if it really works or not.

• Jagged Horrors are a joke. A bad one. They never last enough time to hit anything and really… the enemy is usually dead anyway, so why again do I need them?

• Flesh Golem is just a big aggro-machine. It usually attacks the enemy… though often the ones I don’t want it to. And also it seems to hate anything it can destroy. I have had it attacking weapon racks when I am being killed with some other, more dangerous things. Charge does good damage and it interrups nicely, but usually the kitten oaf runs so kitten far away from me and into another group of enemies, either starting a fight with them or bringing them to me. Neither of which I desire particulary.

Sometimes all of my minions just regroup and attack someone else, leaving me alone for a while to defend myself, until after several seconds realizing that their Master is in danger and then rushing back. They spend most of their time traveling between me and different enemies, doing nothing else. sighs

I got so used to playing Necro in the GW1 so it’s kinda heartbreaking to see GW2 Necros being so crippled with bugs… I still believe that Arena can and will fix them. Even if they are taking their sweet time…

Yeah, minions are not even nearly as useful as they were in GW1… I am at the same time glad and sad that you don’t have to kill anything to get a nice little army going. Now you have a special squad of minions with “different” set of skills. Too bad even a rock has more intellect than they have. I think that once Anet fixes the AI, MM becomes a viable option. Death Shroud is ok-ish, sort of a panic button atm. What I’d like to see is DS as a sort of a ultimate weapon. When you spill enough blood of your enemies, you are able to leash hell on them. Now it’s like… a very tamed hell. Lol. Oh, well. Just rambling while waiting for new pathes to roll in.

Try going full Minion Master… (-.-)

At the moment I’m utilising Death Shroud to help me and my minions turn the tides, so to say. Since Bloodthirst trait is bugged and the siphoning doesn’t really work correctly (plus Well of Blood actually HEALS ENEMIES) I am using Transfusion trait as an emergency heal for my minions (and allies). So, death Shroud for me is a panic button. Jump in, Trasfer Health, Jump out. Rinse and repeat.

Yeah, the necro fixes were kinda slim and disappointing… but the total list of things they applied to this patch is massive. And yeah, Halloween is a nice little event for all of us. I hope at least, since I haven’t really played today yet. Anyways, I am sure Arena will get to patching as soon as possible. Right now, necros are not the most important thing. They will get us fixed eventually, I’m positive.

Keep your heads up high, fellows. We will be strong…. someday. :p

Thanks. This clears up a bit of my strategy. The mean reason why I decided to try axe/focus was because of vulnerabilty and, like I said, this build assumes Arena will fix the Minion AI.

So… I guess what I am seeking is kind of a tanky Minion Master with not really a high DPS, but rather enough tricks to make the enemy weak and easy prey for my little critters. Toughness makes sense, combined with Power and Healing.

Hi all. Yes, I am aware that the necros are a " bit" bugged atm, but regadless of that fact, I have a question about my gear. ASSUMING that the minion AI and bugs in the life siphoning ect. are fixed, what kind of armor/weapon stats would benefit me the most?

Currently I plan on getting
20 Spite
30 Death Magic
20 Blood Magic
with the basic traits: Training of the Master, Minion Master ect. So I get
+200 Power
+300 Toughness
+200 Vitality
I was running first with D/D and Staff, but I decided to now try A/F + Staff.
(Actually, here’s link to my build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAndWjEat6la2a07JApHRT90TK4GcIF7KNA)

Now… what should I wish from my armor? Shoulkittenep pumping up my toughness? Or should I focus more on Power? That being asked, what runes and sigils would you recommend? Should I pay attention to critical damage dealing? Or condition damage?

I focus on PvE, mainly going solo, occationally bumping to people. I don’t care for PvP.
(And for the success of this build, I HOPE they FIX the current bugs necros have.)