Okay, so I’m not here to really “defend” anything (for the record yes, I do play an MM Necro, but luckily that’s not the big hot-spot at the moment), I’m just curious as to why people get so upset over any class with AI or non-player controlled abilities? I’ll just explain why I feel this way so, please feel free to come back, just not aggressively, I’m not being aggressive, just offering a whole-hearted second side of the story, and a slightly different way to view the ones we have, which leads me to wonder why people are so against them.
AI-Abilities in a nut shell are:
Spirits – They’re much like sigils, which are just passive bonuses, except they require a long cast time (each) and have health/placement in exchange for being a better passive benefit. Ranger spirits are much like mobile shaman totems in WoW, and I can’t say that many people every complained about shaman totems, they were more of a hindrance than a benefit 9 times out of 10. (They don’t get 1 shot anymore, neither)
Spirit weapons – Already kittenty, so no one complains, so I’ll just lump these with minions.
Minions – Yes, they’re AI controlled damage. But look further, its a kitable, killable, totally CCable DoT that takes up the place of a utility and costs slots that could be CC breakers or better defensive utilities. Plus all AI-pets die in heavy aoe even to a single target, or are nulled my fancy terrain foot work. They require literally about 70-90% traits to be viable, and you feel like a traitless guardian/necro with them dead. And there’s no way to spot-avoid for them, even if you dodge, they just stand there and get hit by churnings (etc).
Phantasms – Here I can’t argue too much, most phantasms are garbage, but the 2 that stand out are Zerker and Duelist, Zerker is much like minions except it lungest to attack and stays further from combat, thus misses some AoE, but are generally easy to burst down in cleave. Duelist is the only one I can say needs toned down because its ranged, hits super hard and scales with stats, can’t be “kited” so, okay, I won’t argue, its not “fun” to play against.
So overall:
- AI Pets kitable/CCable/Glitchable/Killable/Aoeable dots that are pretty stupid that take up utilities, and generally only provide an issue against enemies in 1v1.
- Buffs/Aoe Buffs that require a cast time to have up, and that’s 1.5 per so most AI builds require a 3-6 second ramp up time of casting these abilities if they’re not ready at the start of the fight.
- Builds that require very heavy point allocation to make them viable, and are neigh useless once they AI is cleaved down.
The biggest fixes I see that need to be made are:
-Burning needs to do less damage. Those spirit rangers wouldn’t be so potent if they weren’t giving such a strong fire proc to all the condi builds in this condi-heavy meta.
-Tab targeting should “prefer” humans over AI.
-Players need to learn that you can turn off “Show all Enemies” and “Show all NPC Names”, and turn ON “Show all Players” and you won’t get all the name clutter from all the AI pets, and will only see the player’s name (This works against mesmers as well!)
I’ll be honest, as an MM I feel pretty weak right now in an aoe condi meta and CC meta, where most mm builds only have 1 really long CD CC break (if that), little to no AOE, no aoe buffs, and EXTREMELY weak to conditions, especially AOE conditions.
I don’t think its an AI issue, because spirit rangers aren’t using AI, they have attackable signets… It’s a matter of SOME stuff (like conditions) being too potent, and people not knowing how to properly handle multiple targets. Thoughts?
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