Guild Wars 2

Addendum (I cannot edit my post for a weird reason): To be fair, the problem would be not so severe if the pets wouldn’t despawn when you change forms. It may be also simply a part of crappy or lazy coding from ANet…well, seeing what utter garbage the minion control (non-existant) is and the AI (in GW2 its an acronym for “Artificial Idiocy”) minions have.

It is amusing that some people still defend moa morph.

Take a mesmer vs. a necro
Moa morph negates all elite skills of the necro which are on 2-3 min cd and gives the mesmer and free go on the necro on top of that.

If the necro uses other minions (e.g. a full minion spec) all other minions despawn as well.

You see: one button press an in the worst case you just negate the elite ability (there is none which isn’t negated) and all utility abilities of the necro AND get 10 sec of free beating on him. However, that’s not all. The minions are on a 30 sec cd, the elite skill on 2 or 3 min. cd.

If that’s not imbalanced I don’t know what is.

That a lot of mesmers choose time warp instead of moa morph says much about time warp also.

@Malakree: Yes, when necromancers get turned into a moa all minions despawn. These minions are on long cooldowns, especially the Flesh Golem. Basically you get a free “I-Win” button because with 1 press you disable all utility plus elite ability of a heavy minion spec.

And even if you do not run a minion spec, lich form and pestilence cloud gets negated as well PLUS you get your 10 sec free go on the necro.

I cannot comprehend how anyone can call that moa morph spell balanced. Given the amount of mesmer no one with their right mind would use a heavy minion spec and as said above it cancels out necro’s elite spells.

Therefore I am fed-up to read from the spoilt mesmer players “we are fine l2p”. No, maybe YOU should roll a class like the necromancer. Spec heavily into minions to see the whole picture of the imbalance in this game.

A spell like moa morph is simply imbalanced and that you won’t even use it says much about Time Warp.

And thus the Bugomancer was born .)

Disclaimer: If this type of villain appears in a new Starship Trooper movie, I have the rights on this name. So pay me haha

Kalar Meadia.8439:

Keep in mind that these pets you also look down upon compared to Mesmer Illusions also stick onto the real mesmer like glue.

Seriously, you have no clue what you talk about. Necro pets do NOT stay on the mesmer. Thieves’ vanish abilities make them bogus and unresponsive, too.
It gets even worse (if that is possible) when a Mesmer drops his clones and phantasms and then vanishes. Then you can be 100% certain that the pets lose their target (the mesmer) and attack the clones.

But hey, why bother? You have an I-Win button versus necros with pets anyway. Yes, just 1 button press is enough: transform him into a Moa and all pets are gone and the CDs are 30sec-2min

Brilliant balancing!

Regardless of that the necro pets have even trouble to attack anything at all /chuckle

Untouch.2541:

Wait

You think mesmer has the best DoT potential?
Do you even play mesmer?

Engineer and necro WAY outclass mesmer is condition damage.

I’d like to point out that during the beta that mesmer was considered one of the weakest classes in the game.

Barely anything changed in terms on balance, but now they’re considered one of the strongest.
Thieves too.

No, luckily the necros got no significant nerfs from beta to life /chuckle.

As someone said above, minion builds aren’t bad – at least no inherently. However, at the moment they are just the icing on the dung pile. Ok, let’s stay constructive and see why:

1. Lack of AI – often they simply do nothing or attack a target which they are not supposed to (e.g. when you need to switch targets) or simply seem to be in slow motion when they finally decided to switch to your new target (maybe also a bug)

In PvE the Flesh Golem is the wild card. Sometimes he pulls more and more and more mobs…and you cannot stop it.

2. Lack of play control over minions
Number 1 could be soooo much easier to cope with if the player had, like already in the WoW version of 2006, some basic control over the minions.

3. Pathing
Geez, just port the minions to the necro if they slack too much behind. They take routes which are just unreal. Also in PvE, if you decide to hop down a ledge, it is funny to see how many mobs your minions can actually pull.

4. Cooldowns for resummoning
This along with the 1+2 is already enough to kill the fun of a minion spec. If you play spvp and you get killed you sometimes end up with all minions on cd. Just reset their CD after the necro dies.

5. Survivability of minions in pvp
If an enemy melee player has 2 brain cell he just pulls them behind an object and out of your line of sight then kills them in 4-6 flat. If you try to help your minions you are in melee range and you are dead, too

Often the minions die in AoE damage which is not even meant to hit them so low are their hp pools even with Flesh of the Master

6. Regeneration
Why oh why is there no out of combat regeneration for minions? You really do try hard to make this class as cumbersome as possible.

7. Minions vanishing when you enter water or change into a form
It is brilliant game desing that your flesh golems, our elite skill, doesn’t work in water. It gets even greater, though. The minion spec is basically worthless because 1 class which is played abundantly has an I-Win button against that spec: the Mesmer. If you change form, your necro pets are gone. Hey, it is not enough to be a Moa bird for several seconds, no your pets are gone, too and are on their loooong cooldowns.

But it gets even more comic. Let’s see, we can use underwater…plague cloud. Woooo…if you use it your last minions which you can use are also unspawned. Now, let’s see: underwater you have to choice to either play without minions or without elite skill if you are specced in minion. Wow, seriously…that developer should be flogged.

Summa summarum:
I have played many mmos and I have never seen a worse minion design than yours. The mechanic is cumbersome, inefficient and simply no fun to play. On top of that 1 class has an I-Win button against that spec, and underwater you have the choíce to play either without minions or without an elite skill.
How, this went through the testings…I dunno. And then your dev has the audacity to say that people just need to learn how to Death Shroud. That reflects badly upon your company.

And this comes from a person who rolled a necro just for playing with minions.

@mouse: Well-said and pretty spot on.

Lewk.8359:

Mr. Big, where does a necro fall into this? Who should play a necro and for what purpose that isnt achieved BETTER by playing one of the top three classes? Who should play a warrior when they can play Guardian? Who should play any dps class when thief will outperform their dps and mobility?

hehe I thought the same. I just played a few spvp games and was attacked and I thought “oh luckily that’s just a warrior not a guardian” haha.

Also a good question of Lewk: Where does the necro excell and what role does he perfom so greatly?

Debuffs? Mesmer’s are better (especially in pve because warriors and thieves apply bleeds much faster) and seem to scale better.

Minions? Hey, Mesmer minions do attack, distract opponents and can even be blown up for various things and if killed there just come more. Necro’s…killed in seconds, non-existend minion AI, do often nothing, bugged like hell, if killed they are on a huge cooldown.

Burst? hahaha…sorry no, not even in a power spec. Death Shroud? Just prolongs the inevitable.

My biggest gripe so far when it comes to pvp is….
1. Burst damage
Some classes can kill you in seconds if your stun breaker is on cooldown

2. Class Balance
Just go into scenarios and you will see usually whole teams consisting of: thieves, guardians and mesmers. Some warriors and to a lesser extend an engineer. And at the bottom an elemantalist or necro. Whereas the the latter seems to become the Dodo of this game – a class which is going its way to extinction.

3. Minions in pvp
Terrible AI.
Die in seconds even and often are only collateral damage to aoe.
Uncontrollable – no “Attack this target” button…nothing. Often they do nothing, then they attack targets which they shouldn’t and bug out if they fight thieves or mesmers.

Seriously, whoever is responsible for minions should be openly flogged. Even WoW in its state of 2006 had some buttons to control pets and minions.

4. Downed Feature
Great idea. However, some moves are not balanced at all. A warrior can get back up and simply rip you a new one, a mesmer…oh well…good luck finding him, guardian can push everyone back and interrupt all attempts to kill him.
Now take (ironically) again the necro: 1 short fear to get 1 guy trying to kill him off him…then he dies. Hunter seems to be in the same boat if Iam not mistaken (I don’t play one, I just kill them hehe)

Actually GankSinatra pointed out what’s wrong with the mesmer class…so everyone has to focus every ounce of attention on the mesmer to kill him…yeah, good that he brings no team mates…and especially not to tournaments, eh?

Too much damage combined with a too good defense mechanic.

Thanks for your answers. Too bad, I had a tiny sliver of hope that there is a hidden key combination with which to assign targets for the pets.

BCDragon.5614:

then don’t play the necro…sounds like you don’t like it…..pretty simple huh.

Very constructive. I wonder if you really think that the life leech stuff is in any way in its current form useful when you easily eat 5-10k damage from 1 attack by a melee.

Well, I guess your answer basically answered that.

Yup, instead of creepy Dawn of the Dead we are more like Dead Zoo Walking hehe. And with all those bugs and issues I wonder when the enemy will throw us out of mercy some peanuts ^^

I rolled a necro because it is usually a class where you can control your fights through minions and by spreading suffering (read: debuffs).

However, the necro in GW2 is rather a Frankenstein’s monsters. You know, many parts put together, held by stitches, but all in all not fitting very well and the overally thing works somewhat somehow but not well. That’s why I would like to rename my character to Frankn’mancer.

Well, it could be worse and we could have Frank N. Furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

A defensive specced warrior smacked me with a 6.5k eviscerate. Doesn’t sound great but if you consider it was a survival spec…oh well.

Surprise, surprise that our minions die in seconds.

Wasn’t the game advertised that the burst would be controlled…if your stun breaker is on cd you are dead versus some classes.

Also, I think death shroud isn’t all that great. I often cannot use it when I need it most…and I am really not wasting life force. Anyway, lately the melees seem to beeline lately for elementalists and necros.

I think the wish of scaling for the pets stems from the fact that minions die in seconds by aoe or when they get attacked directly to get rid of them.

Personally scaling wouldn’t interest me much if their survivability (at least for minion specced necros) get a substantial buff. And no the 50% health trait is nowhere near enough if a defensive specced classes can wreck your 4 minions in about 4-5 seconds when they pull them behind an obstacle.

The damage which they can dish out is quite ok imo.

Compared to a necromancer’s dps healing specced guardians do still too much dps. However, the reason is more a combination of horrible design, tons of bugs, absence of any minion AI and simply not working traits (it is golden when corrupt boon doesn’t work…except for the self-poisoning part).

Elementalists seem to be sitting in the same boat.

However, these classes and pet/minion AI should just be fixed and skills get buffed up to the level of other classes instead of nerfing them (maybe reduce some of the burst of some classes somewhat). Then I think the game is pretty much fine.

First of all I rolled a necromancer to have some minions and found a spec which works OKish. However, there are some things which just make playing a MM sometimes a sado-maso experience. Nevertheless maybe someone of you has some advice (apart from rerolling or speccing to conditional builds hehe).

My problems are unfortunately mostly minion related:

1. Attack Something else or doing nothing
Sometimes minions just watch how I get beat up doing nothing or start to react when the fight is nearly just over. A similar case is that they just attack something, just anything but not what they should. This is especially true when clones, pets or a vanish of a thief is involved.

And even if they react…they react so terribly sluggish.

Is there a kind of keyboard command which allows me to give the little critters again the command “stop doing what you do andkittenattack THIS target”? I mean, even WoW had such a command when it was released…and that was 2006

2. Squishyness
Melee players with brains (and if the terrain allows it) do either…
a. Pull the minions around a corner and just aoe them down what seems in 2 sec. If I try to help them…I get in melee range which leads to a very dead necro usually. Also there is not command which allows me to countermand their attack or set them to passive.
b. Jump over/down obstacles which causes the horrible pathing of the minion to go bogus.

So if anyone of you has an advice (or a key command) to control minions better or another approach to the problem I am all yours .)

3. Stats
Do any stats influence minions’ performance? It seems only traits like flesh/training of the master do something. Again…a minion master which has pets which get that easily AoEd down is a huge problem. I also tried “Death Nova” to punish the melee for doing it…but the damage seems to be a minor annoyance.

Oh, and dear Jon: I also use DS as a minion mancer .)

There should be a deserter debuff. I literally went “wth?!?!” when we lead 200 to 100 and suddenly several peeps had to leave the team to fight on the losers side.

Also it is not fun to join a game which got screwed up by some peeps which, of course, were the first to bail out.

I have tried a lot of builds and used DS. True, DS can be great. I usually soak up some initial damage and use fear and (if viable) use life drain. Then switch right back to use my heal (alternatively I heal first when I already ate some damage and use DS to bride the cooldown of my heal).

I can survive quite a time that way and it is pretty cool to “stance dance” unnerving your enemies and wittle them down. However, that’s also the problem: often you have to kill someone fast – that also applies to group pvp.

In the end you have to ask yourself: do you want a character who can survive nearly double as long as an other clothie but need double as long to kill anything?
Also, Guardians offer sick survivability as well, have tons of dps and I dare to say outdps us.

Then you can add some cumbersome mechanics of the necro class:
1. Minions
No control – why can’t I assign a target for my minions, put them into a passive or an aggressive mode or send them to a spot to stay there. Especially when you need to change target the minions do what they want. It is like watching an episode of the Benny Hill Show. Also, WoW released in 2006 had these options…why can’t an mmo released in 2012?

Minion AI – Sorry, they have none. My flesh golem watches how I get beat up

Flesh golem – you jump into the water and your elite minion is gone and put on cd

All minions – you get turned into a bird by a mesmer and all your minions are gone.

All minions – you can use only plague cloud underwater as an elite skill…which dispels
all minions you have summoned. Now you can decide to either play without an elite skill or without minion underwater. Brilliant class design.

I guess the abbreviation MM doesn’t stand for Minionmancer but Masomancer

2. DS
It has its ups, as mentioned and can be -pretty- cool. I really have to give Mr. Peters that. However, also several downs: low dps, a fear which is ridiculous like our other fear, primary attack is too slow. And you should not forget that you often do not have the life force when you need it.

3. Bugs
We know the tons of them. I don’t want to get into that again.

Last but not least I think that this class will stay the red-haired stepchild. DS is a good and nice mechanic. However, the necro has to sacrifice too much to balance it. Add to that the cumbersome pets…and well…October is coming soon and X-Com and King’s Bounty. Let’s say I can wait and shelf GW2 for quite some time if necessary.

@Kayotik: I am sorry, but I have heard this argument “it is a support class and not meant for 1v1” over the last years in many mmos simply to justify the existence of an underperforming class. Your example ignores that there is also a lot of cleansing going on (and that most classes have a 1-button cleaner as well).

And as a sidenote: a class which needs to be babysitted has been always a failure regardless how much sugar-coated you it.

Imo however, the necro tries to do too many things at once and that’s why they will stay subpar simply because Anet fears that they get too strong. I wouldn’t mind for example a trait that boost conditional damage significantly and as a trade-off prevents you from summoning your minions or keeps you from enter DS. Well, you get what I mean.

The class has a steep learning curve with that I agree. However, I like complex classes because they are rewarding. Nevertheless often it is not about a “learning curve” but about a cumbersome class which is often so easily countered that it is not even funny anymore.

E.g. Death Shroud (snare the necro & run off or simply LoS). If you start to drain life you eat a knockdown.

Your minions? No problem: a mesmer just transforms you in a bird and your minions are gone and you cannot recast them becuase of their long CDs making MM builds next to useless.
In WvWvW just pull the minions into the waiting mob of friends which kills the minions in 2 sec flat. Again: too bad that the necromancer cannot call them back nor put them in a passive mode

Even the environment counters Necromancers. Heck, which necro with minions enters water voluntarily?
I mean your flesh golem is gone in an instant and your only elite skill you can use is pestilence cloud…which dispels all your other pets as well (brilliant game design btw. But I guess this all was necessary to counter the OPness of the necros).

Ok, so back to conditional builds. Too bad that other classes are much better in spreading suffering and sorrow than the “master of the dead” /chuckle

Basically if a dev calls out a whole community something is wrong (just remember what happened in Warhammer Online). However, if a whole community is too stupid to play a class properly, then it begs the question why Mr. Peters doesn’t come down from heaven and gives us a guide explaining to us how to spec and some tactics in pvp to make us nasty killing machines he is talking off or at least implying us to be.

Swadow.6213:

Asmodean, ANet actually has released a class breakdown but it was most likely missed by many. Here at the bottom of the post is an image with class, gender, race and crafting breakdown and it shows that Mesmer and Engineer hold the least played class while Necro comes as the 2nd least played class

Thank you very much. I was not aware of it.

Were have I seen that before that a dev accuses the community to need to l2p..mmm…ah yes: Warhammer Online. Specifically the magus class players were accussed of being too stupid to play the class.

We all know how well the class did and how it was avoided. This way of dev thinking was unfortunately also dominant when it came to general gameplay. Ah well, we all know how Warhammer ended.

Currently I’d like to see a class breakdown. I bet necro is the least played one and I feel history repeating.

Point is: never think all your players are too stupid to play a class.

Personally I am shocked about the pets. A necromancer which has next to zero control about them…even WoW in the state of 2006 had pet commands.

Demonical.1039:

If those patch notes made you queasy enjoy reading what JonPeters opinion of Necro atm is, I wouldnt get my hopes up about us being balanced DPS wise anytime soon. I was getting depressed playing necro in Group PvE seeing evry other profession doing things we could do just much better but hey i was just gonna wait for that “love” they promised . It seems unlikely we are getting that in the future unless its in another form of “love nerf to the scepter”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/I-play-a-necro-but-I-traid-a-warrior-for-one-play-session/first

I am sorry, but there is not much to master when it comes to the class. You can go condition spec and do sub par dps. You can try a DS spec and basically have the same problem especially because DS may not be available to you when you need it most and minions…well, you have more or less next to no control over your minions. They just attack anyone. And this is actually the worst problem when you want to play with minions – this and that the flesh golem gets killed by water (it is fun when you jump down from the “Raid on the Capricorn” red team start location to see your pet vanish – or to switch into plague form underwater to see ALL pets vanish…kittenthis is so idiotic it hurts)

It doesn’t matter so much for me, however. I play less and less and in October there are games like King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North and X-Com. Why should I invest a lot of time then to level another character, level his crafting and so on only because I was unlucky enough to choose a bug ridden, semi-complete underpowered class?

Minions are a bad joke. Let’s see
PvE: You play an Aggromancer. Aggromancer? Yeah, jump down a ledge and lean back and take bets which path your minions will take and how many mobs they will pull along in their wake. Of course, minions cannot even be dismissed…and even if they could there would be an abominably long cd on them. But nevermind…I mean jump into the water with a flesh golem and see what happens to your elite skill minion haha.
Of course this design is so great that when you play “Raid on the Capricorn” and are on the red team, jump down from the start location and summoned your flesh golem before…well, then you have to fight a VERY long time without your elite minion. Great, great, great design.

PvP: Actually you bring no minions with you to a fight but just a bunch of brainless hulks. Often they do not attack your target nor do you have the means to tell them: stop attacking and go for this guy now. Sometimes it ends like in the Benny Hill Show: flesh golem chases guy A, bone fiend fires at B and shadow fiend attacks the ranger’s pet. Oh well, sometimes the flesh golem just stands next to me and watches how I get beat up.

Last but not least the lack of control is just a joke. I mean even a certain well-known mmo from 2006 had the options to give pets the commands to attack a certain target, be in an aggressive or defensive or passive mode. or even tell them to go to a certain spot and wait there. Sure, it didn’t always work, however, it is lightyears away from this disaster – especially on a minion class.

Hey guys,

among the myriad problems my neco has some more seem to have materialized. Whenever I play scenarios like Foefire some traits vanish randomly from their slots when I die or when a new scenario starts. It is terribly annoying. Do you have the same problems?

When I play scenarios (e.g. Foefire) with my necromancer selected traits vanish randomly and their slot is empty. This happens -often- when…
1. a scenario end and a new one starts
2. when my character dies

Honestly, my patience with this game runs out. First I had the bad luck to choose the most buggiest class, the necromancer, which is on top of that also underpowered and now this. This way pvp is certainly not fun nor is the game.