Guild Wars 2

jwburks.9735:

It would be an idea to let us use lifeforce to heal our minions. Maybe with an F2 added ability. Would that be a fair tradeoff?

Yeah I think that works too. My main point is that I think it would be interesting if necromancers could summon a small army if left alone long enough (capped at, say, 6-8 minions) . You could do that now, but you’d have to devote all your utility skills to it and it’s not really designed to work that way. I’d rather see shorter summon times with a short cooldown. To compensate, they’d degenerate health, thus being limited to during fights, but would be something to contend with if you get them all up.

Yeah, the blood fiend would be a special case too, since he’s our heal buddy. He needs some way of regenerating health. It would seem too punishing to force us to spawn and support our healing minion.

I posted about this in another thread, but I think minions should be closer to a mesmer illusion, in that they’re summoned and used during a fight, not carried around with us everywhere. I see rangers as being the “pet” class, whereas ours are meant to be temporary minions.

So, if I had my way I’d suggest minions have a short summon time with an immediate cooldown of about 5-10s. The minion’s health would slowly degenerate, but can be healed through a number of lifesteal options and buffed with boons, etc. After the cooldown, you can spawn another one, so the longer a fight carries on, you could continue growing your army. Seems to fit more of a necromancer in my mind.

I think this would give an interesting hybrid between the ranger pets and mesmer illusions. Plus different minions would still have different uses, maybe aoe, stuns/slows, direct damage, conditions, etc.

We should still have the option of a permanent pet with the flesh golem, though…

Edit: In pvp, to counter the mass aoe to down all your minions, maybe have an ability to summon all minions back to you, so you can pull them out of something before they all die.

Yeah, closer to a mesmer illusion. Except rather than focusing on the finishing move on an illusion, it’s more about managing their health and spawning more and of different varieties to match the fight (aoe, slows/stuns, etc).

I don’t mean to suggest they degenerate in 3s either. Say, 20s or so without any healing.

I’m saying they degenerate health. I know that would be a pretty unpopular choice, but of course it means they would have to be made much more useful (like improving AI, but they do more damage too). That way during a fight, if they allowed you to keep spawning more and healing them with lifesteal, a long fight might allow the necro to manage a sizeable army (with some reasonable limits… say < 10 minions or so).

One example of how this could be balanced so that necros don’t spawn an army outside of combat would be something like you have to either sacrifice your own health to keep them up, or lifesteal to heal them (meaning you need to be attacking something).

I was not a GW1 player, but I’ve heard people mention how minions used to be something a necro spawned during a battle, not summoned as permanent pets.

Given that our current minions do not regen health, it’s clear anet wanted to distinguish them from Ranger pets to be a more temporary sidekick. Of course we all know the frustration of having a minion at 1% health that will die instantly in the next fight, thus resetting the cooldown.

Rather than having minions respawn their health, or start the cooldown immediately upon spawning, I personally would like them to be more like a jagged horror. Ok, not like a jagged horror that dies on its own in 3s, but is something that your use during a fight and can therefore be made more potent and if you could keep them alive, perhaps spawning more of them. This would play into the supposed survivability of a necro’s extra health pool by allowing him to eventually have a tiny army if he can manage his minions health.

Anyway, I just think this would be a doable shift and make necros infinitely more interesting to play.