Guild Wars 2

Traits

Last Gasp in the Soul Reaping Line – now categorized as a spectral skill and affected by spectral traits. Additionally, recharge reduced from 60s to 50s.

Unholy Sanctuary in the Death Magic Line – In addition to healing, this trait will now activate Death Shroud if you have enough Life Force when you take a lethal blow (i..e an attack that would kill you). This trait has 30s internal CD and even if your Death Shroud is on cooldown it will circumvent that cooldown.

Skills

Death Shroud – can now interact with things while in Death Shroud form. You can now rez allies or finish downed enemies.

Corrupt Boon – Cast time increased 0.25s, bringing the skill to 0.5s cast time. This change also reduces the aftercast of Corrupted Boon by 0.25s.

Signet of Vampirism – The active time of this ability has been increased from 5s to 6s.

Spectral Armor – Recharged reduced from 60s to 50s

Rending Claws – Aftercast of this ability has been reduced by 0.25s

Ghastly Claws – Damage increased by 10%

Necrotic Slash – Stab and Bite have all of their targets increased from 1 to 2. This means you will have a slight cleaving effect on your dagger abilities. The positive effect of these abilities can only occur once per swing.

Locus Swarm – Duration of swiftness increased from 10s to 15s

Lich Form – Transformation reduced from 30s to 20s. Reduced its power scale to the player’s normal power scale. To compensate for this, we have increased the damage multipliers of the Lich abilities to be about what it was before. This change ensures your Lich Form damage remains as high as before but Signal of Fire/Air and other outside activations don’t deal exponential damage.

Bas.7406:

Sodzilla.5239:

It’s not a load of BS. I farmed with minions for about an hour yesterday and they still display the same random stalling and sometimes not attacking at all during combat. I believe the problem is linked to pathing and this would explain why some people see the issue more than others. This would mean that obstacles and different ground geometry would cause the minions to display their buggy behavior more often and less often depending on where you are in the world. Also, I’d imagine if the AI issue is linked to minion pathing, it’s also the reason we see ranged minions, who are less dependent on pathing, working better than melee.

If you still believe that the minion AI issue is a load of BS, this is a video from about a month ago displaying the problem that I spent very little time making.

Except over the last month there have been two major minion patches to help improve their AI. Oh wait, all the videos showing bad AI are over a month old. Wait What!!!

I actually spoke with the player who did the first video, and he readily admitted that the water pathing could have been screwing it up. We also spoke about the various methods used and that the main culprit was the flesh golem. The flesh golem has seen significant improvement since that video came up, but it’s okay we know summoning the dead is one of the Necro traits so we forgiv eyou.

Bas, I’m not trying to start some forum war, I even enjoyed reading through the Minion Mancer guide you put together awhile back. However, the videos I linked to are my videos off my youtube channel. I was the one who originally posted the Southsun Cove video to this forum inside another players post about a Minion AI video. I encourage you to check my post history if you don’t believe me. I’m not sure who you were talking to, but there is no post where I ever “readily admitted that the water pathing could have been screwing it (Flesh Golem) up”, though, in a follow up post, I did state that it wasn’t the same flesh golem throughout the whole video. I also said that sometimes I have the flesh golem charge out over the water to kill him in hopes of respawning a new flesh golem that might attack a little more frequently.

The only thing in the last “two major minion patches”, that had anything to do with minion AI, not minion abilities, is “Fixed a bug that caused some minions to be overly aggressive." I’m sorry, maybe I wasn’t clear with just posting my videos. I thought the bug was fairly obvious watching them, but my issue isn’t about minions being “overly aggressive”, it’s about minion’s random lack of aggression during a fight. Yes, the flesh golem/shadow fiend video is from before the “overly aggressive” patch, but again the issue I had isn’t about over aggression. The bone minion video I made and posted to youtube on the 16th of February, after the aggression patch. Either way, I reposted the videos because the unresponsive AI is an issue I’m still randomly dealing with. Like you, I like using minions, it’s why I picked the Necromancer. Like you, I try using them in areas others don’t and I think it’s cool that you try and help others do the same. I tried being constructive in my other post, and do feel that the AI bug comes down to pathing issues that still need fine tuning. I think the bug is more related to where you fight with minions not how you fight with them and that is why some players experience the unresponsive AI more than others. I don’t think the Minion AI issue is the end of the world for Necromancers, but I do feel the minion’s random responsiveness does make them less reliable than they should be. I remain hopeful that sooner or later we will see a patch that directly addresses this problem. However, I don’t think it’s fair that someone “can pretty much guarantee all the stuff about minion AI is a load of BS” when I and others are still dealing with this behavior.

So as not to be “summoning the dead “, this video is current build. To be clear, the issue in the video is the minion’s random responsiveness during a fight.

Bhawb.7408:

Palmski.6419:

Don’t want to turn this into another minion AI thread but I found that running around Frostsound Gorge last night farming Colossi with the golem, shadow and blood fiends (just for the lulz) the only minion who attacked reliably was the good old Jagged Horror. It was as though he realised he only had limited time in the world and had multiple Leroy Jenkins moments, especially amusing considering their relative sizes

I did over an hour of AI testing yesterday, I will go into PvE today just to confirm what I got against “real” mobs, but I can pretty much guarantee all the stuff about minion AI is a load of BS. In all the time that I was testing with them, they predictably aggro’d according to a few pretty simple rules.

It’s not a load of BS. I farmed with minions for about an hour yesterday and they still display the same random stalling and sometimes not attacking at all during combat. I believe the problem is linked to pathing and this would explain why some people see the issue more than others. This would mean that obstacles and different ground geometry would cause the minions to display their buggy behavior more often and less often depending on where you are in the world. Also, I’d imagine if the AI issue is linked to minion pathing, it’s also the reason we see ranged minions, who are less dependent on pathing, working better than melee.

If you still believe that the minion AI issue is a load of BS, this is a video from about a month ago displaying the problem that I spent very little time making.

and here is another that shows one or both bone minions screwing up

Saw this posted on the Thief forum the other day but thought some here might find it an interesting read. It’s broken into three parts.

http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/210/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson.aspx

It covers a few different topics. In the third part there’s even some discussion about condition caps that might interest a few Necromancer.

There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25. In a scenario where you have two thieves attacking a boss and one of them can achieve a stack of 25 by themselves, the other one essentially becomes useless because they’ve got nothing to stack on. Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?

Colin: Currently no. Interesting statistic for you: every condition in the game costs server bandwidth. ‘Cause we have to track how often the condition is running, what the duration of that condition is and what the stack is. So the more stacks we allow them more expensive it gets because we’re tracking every additional stack on there. And so we could, say, you can have infinite stacks. Number one: that becomes really unbalanced. But number two: it’s actually extremely expensive for us, on a performance basis. That’s one of those weird, kind of back-end server issues that can help make game designer decisions regardless of what you want to do with it.

One of the things people have been talking about is having their own individual stack limit that they can apply, rather than an infinite amount on one boss.

Colin: Yes, it’s tough. It’s certainly something we can look at, it does drastically change the way that the professions play, right? It does say “you can no longer stack all of one type of condition”. It might change the skills on each profession if we were to do that. It would encourage a little more group play to some extent. It’s not something we’re really talking about, but it’s an interesting idea. I’d have to think a lot about what the effects of that would be overall, but it’s an interesting… interesting idea.

“What we got here is …. failure to initiate … combat. Some Minion they just can’t reach… the mob you’re fighting. So you get what we had here last week, and every week since beta, which is the way the minion wants it. Well, he gets it. I don’t like it any more than you Necromancer.” – Cool Hand Luke

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Something that just occurred to me…the ANet class philosophy for necro from 12/14/2012:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-December-14-2012/999247

The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necromancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

The word “minion”, or even the idea of summoning undead, is not even present in that description. I don’t mean to read too much into that, but I found it interesting, especially if you contrast it with the Ranger description in the same post.

As a rebuttal to our one paragraph class philosophy, I’d just point people to the actual in-game implementation of our Death Magic line. As long as traits like “Reanimator” and “Protection of the Horde” are forced on those who spec in Death, I believe someone at Anet at some point in time must have considered minions an important part of Necromancer design. As far as I can tell, we’re the only class that has traits catering to one specific spec (minions) forced on a player for choosing a specific trait line. Because of this, I don’t believe it’s a stretch to consider minions part of the class philosophy even if not written. Until Anet chooses to make those traits an option or adjusts them to be useful to all Necromancer specs, I’ll continue to believe that someone at Anet must consider minions an important part of being a Necromancer.

Softspoken.2410:

Sodzilla.5239:

I’ve been playing as a Necromancer since the headstart. I know there are tricks to get Necro minion AI kind of working, but these tricks don’t always work and sometimes make fights worse. If the death magic line didn’t encourage minion use as much as it does I might understand Anet’s decision to ignore the AI issue as long as they have. As it stands, I’ve played quite a few mmos and playing as a Minion Master Necromancer feels like I’m testing a game that’s still in beta.
I know my words won’t mean much to many. I’ve never used Fraps before, but I thought I’d try my hand at it to give a better example of what I see running around as a Necromancer with minions out. This footage was from about 15 minutes or so of me in game and only showcases problems with the shadow fiend and flesh golem. These two minions seem to be the ones that exhibit problems the most, though I’ve seen these same issues at times with any minion that moves including jagged horrors. Maybe it’s just my minions that are “special”, but this is a fairly typical depiction of me running around with minions solo. Perhaps some of the Captain Hindsights on this forum can tell me what I “should’ve” or “could’ve” done better after watching it. I just don’t believe Necros should have to jump through hoops to “maybe” have a chance of minions just attacking targets.

Oh and I’m not going to apologize for the music in the video. I’ve found the song often helps at times when running with minions out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yWgn_Pwa2s

Much better.

On the bright side, Bone Fiend and Blood Fiend were very consistent, and Shadow Fiend only really messed up twice.

On the dark side, Shadow Fiend was still screwing up sometimes. And Flesh Golem… Once or twice it looked like all the sand/water beach borders might have been messing him up (hey, if I despawned the second I hit deep water, I’d be nervous too) but he could also be on the same landmass as the Karka and not rush in to attack.

Out of curiosity, do you remember if that was the same Flesh Golem throughout the entire video? Or did you ever have to re-summon it? It seems to me that sometimes once a minion gets ‘stuck’ the only solution is to kill and re-summon it, which is a bad solution, but I’m interested to know if it would / wouldn’t have worked here.

It wasn’t the same Flesh Golem the entire video. I believe that was the second one I was on by the last fight recorded. It had died something like two fights before that while I was trying to rebind the key for Fraps. I follow you on the killing it off resets it’s AI though. If its behavior has made me mad enough, occasionally I’ll have it charge out over open water and drown just for an extra go at summoning one that attacks again. Another thing I’ve noticed with minions is that if you summon any of them during fights, most of the time the bugged ones will reset and fight too. You can notice the Flesh Golem almost working again the last fight in the video after I summon Shadow Fiend, but unfortunately, he didn’t quite fix himself and stayed broken.

Regardless, though not the most pressing issue in the game right now, this issue should be fixed. It’s very noticeable, very much hinders an entire playing style of the Necromancer, and makes the class look neglected to its player base. The worst of it to me, is when I use minions and put up with their bugs, I often feel just as dumb as my minions for using minions when I could be using a spec that’s consistently reliable. I started the Necromancer because of it’s minions, and continue to use them off and on because when they’re working, I have fun with them.

And to Bas.7406, about the Engineer, I completely understand your pain. My first alt after hitting 80 with my Necromancer was an Engineer because I thought turrets would be good group support and the kits would offer a fun playing style. While still fun at times, the Engineer is parked just below 50 now.

Even with it’s faults, I still very much enjoy playing my Necromancer. I’m sure Anet is aware of our minion issues, I just don’t think it hurts for them to occasionally be reminded that the issue is important to the players that play the class. I do remain hopeful that minion AI will be fixed, though I’m a little less hopeful with each patch that it will be addressed in a timely fashion. Who knows though, maybe we’ll see some sort of start with fixing it in the patch tomorrow.

I’ve been playing as a Necromancer since the headstart. I know there are tricks to get Necro minion AI kind of working, but these tricks don’t always work and sometimes make fights worse. If the death magic line didn’t encourage minion use as much as it does I might understand Anet’s decision to ignore the AI issue as long as they have. As it stands, I’ve played quite a few mmos and playing as a Minion Master Necromancer feels like I’m testing a game that’s still in beta.
I know my words won’t mean much to many. I’ve never used Fraps before, but I thought I’d try my hand at it to give a better example of what I see running around as a Necromancer with minions out. This footage was from about 15 minutes or so of me in game and only showcases problems with the shadow fiend and flesh golem. These two minions seem to be the ones that exhibit problems the most, though I’ve seen these same issues at times with any minion that moves including jagged horrors. Maybe it’s just my minions that are “special”, but this is a fairly typical depiction of me running around with minions solo. Perhaps some of the Captain Hindsights on this forum can tell me what I “should’ve” or “could’ve” done better after watching it. I just don’t believe Necros should have to jump through hoops to “maybe” have a chance of minions just attacking targets.

Oh and I’m not going to apologize for the music in the video. I’ve found the song often helps at times when running with minions out.