The exception being any conditions they apply, which scale with your condition duration and (for damaging conditions) your condition damage.
You’re essentially admitting its a problem, but because its a problem for other classes we should all just deal with it? That’s a cop out.
It would be one thing if the other four trees got less use than Soul Reaping did. But as a class mechanic it should have more baseline use for all specs. Be it damage, stronger shroud flashing effects, or a way to at least further spec into it for defensive uses.
Where’s the trait to let lifesteal work in DS?
Where’s the trait to take less damage in DS?
Where’s even a modest increased to Deathly Invigoration to make support more viable?
I never said it was a problem, its just a fact. A build that specifically takes a bunch of DS traits will have a stronger use for DS than others (GASP). A build that doesn’t take a single DS trait, has a lot of out-of-DS survivability, will not have as much use. That is going to be true for 100% of classes; a shatter build has vastly more use for shatter than a build with no shatter traits. A support thief build with all the steal traits or the P/D perma stealth build will have more use for steal/stealth than an S/D build. Those are just examples (hell they might even be bad ones, I don’t play those classes) but I think they make the point; a build that focuses on the class mechanic will always get more use out of it than a class that doesn’t, or even builds against it.
You listed a very specific build that gets less use of DS than others. That does not mean they should go through and try to balance DS to your build, it just means you chose not to take advantage of DS.
To the other stuff, I’d actually love if they changed things around a bit and made a new Grandmaster Blood Magic trait that made all our trait siphons work through DS.
How about well/lifesteal builds? You’re tanky enough out of DS, but using DS is a DPS downgrade compared to dagger. I really only use it to flash in for a quick dark path/doom or to eat a large hit. The other 90% of the time its useless. Even further so given the fact that lifesteal doesn’t work in DS.
It is still a defensive asset, you can still use the only gap closer and instant fear we have access to, and it still has AoE immob and AoE direct damage.
DS can’t be perfect for every single build, this is the case for every class; some are built off class mechanics, some get some use out of it, others get very little. But there is not a single Necro build that does not get decent use out of a second HP bar.
It already is, and has been useful to all builds.
Power builds get some of their strongest burst (minus WoC) from DS 1 spam using 30 in SR. Along with the only gap closer we have (DS 2), a decent AoE power ability (DS 4) a strong AoE immob (DS 5), and a fear (DS 3) to keep people off you if needed.
Condi builds have finally realized that DS is a huge part of their burst, with DS entry + DS 2->3->5->4 being massive burst (DS entry and 2+3 being a really integral part of bleed bursting).
Minion builds have the least use of DS (you lose your siphons), but it is still a really strong way to bunker down, and also has great control for minions, and if traited healing.
And that is, of course, on top of the defense anyone gets from DS.
I do really like the idea of offensive “buffs”. I think the rest could be changed depending on where they decide to go (long duration high uptime low effect vs low duration, low uptime strong effect), but I think Orders are a great way to buff support necros and still keep us in theme.
Not necessarily towards the idea of separate shrouds in general (it could be cool), but we aren’t going to get much mobility (leaps) or boons. Its just opposite to the class. The Support DS would essentially be Control DS (immob, fear, cripple, chill, weakness, blind, anything that makes the enemy less able to kill teammates, instead of making teammates harder to kill; debuffing enemies not buffing allies).
In a way, there is no such thing as a non-offensive Necro setup.
I wouldn’t mind more shrouds though, if they were actually well balanced, but I have a feeling it would be very difficult to balance. That is an extra 5 abilities added on top of our base.
New minions, both on off-hand weapons and on utility slots. Need Jagged Horrors that you can actually summon without trait/lich, condi minions, and tank/self sustain minions. Vampiric Horror that life steals for itself, a minion with really high eHP and low DPS, minions that give more condition damage based utility.
Also I want to see Orders (like auras but based on attacking), and HP cost skills.
while that might not seem to be as such an issue, but there are times, when by mistake button is pressed twice, resulting – you have to wait for CD to end, and also messing up your combo whatsoever
(this might be a problem for other ’’Classes’’ also)
L2P. Sorry but that is the end of it. We’re not going to ruin an entire strain of classes/playstyles because you fat-fingered DS.
Yes, you can only have two bonuses, but you are wearing 5 pieces of it. So you got the 2 pieces of bonus, but are wearing more.
You’re using 5 pieces of a rune that can only have up to 2 bonuses.
Its not locked in to allow for more strategy.
And I brought up strategy because it was 100% the reason they lost. It had far less to do with their team comp (even with Caed’s difficulties they showed in the third game they could win if they played properly), and more to do with the fact that they got outplayed. That is an important thing to note, there is not a single build in this game that is so OP thakittens mere presence in a team guarantees them victory.
Also, both teams were using meta builds. It wasn’t like CC brought in something crazy and non-meta, their comp consisted solely of very standard builds that are considered very strong (“OP”) right now.
You aren’t locked in.
Those matches came down to map awareness/playing the map. Caed was losing every 1v1 and Twerp was constantly giving away home point for free. They got out rotated and outplayed, and it wasn’t so much about classes; although Caed and the two spirit rangers were essentially hard countered by the warrior.
It will be tomorrow at 12 noon PST, and we will be on with flow a WvW necro. After this we will be back to our normally scheduled time of 6pm PST every Thursday.
I am being reasonable. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying I can’t tell for sure anything from that picture. I’ve played with minions extensively, I’ve done a lot of actual testing to figure them out (probably too much). I know how minions act, and I know that right now their AI is working incredibly well.
Does it still flub every once in a while? Yes, especially due to pathing. Can I know what happened in your situation? No. All I have is you saying what you saw, which no offense, I can’t trust, and a picture that can’t really show me anything. If you can recreate that with a video or tell me how to I’d love to see it.
No, a single in game screenshot doesn’t prove anything, all I know from that is the direction your minions are facing; you can’t determine anything else except that.
You main weapon will be a staff, secondary is USUALLY Axe/Focus the secondary weapon can be swapped pretty fluidly for what you might want more of. Focus gives you a regen/vulnerabilty and a VERY crucial 3 boon burn + chilled… I’ve watched people melt after hitting them with that.
You can also run a warhorn for daze ((to interrupt heals)) and locust swarm for a tiny bit of damage + cripple and speedboost.
Dagger makes a great, albeit, subpar alternative to focus. You can transfer 3 of your conditions and blind to a target and a weak bleed + weakness, good for keeping your minions alive.
Just a note on weapons. I’ve had a lot of builds without staff. Staff is a good general purpose MM weapon, and you’ll want it in 90% of your MM builds, but dagger/axe is really strong, even more so now that minions can aggro regardless of your personal range (so dagger can aggro at like 2000 range).
I’d consider dagger generally subpar so long as you are using bone fiend (better immob) and aren’t doing a berzerker/self damage build (which is totally viable), however I like it in super-tanky builds (0/0/30/30/0 with 10 for whatever) and in personal damage builds with minions on the side.
The minions you’ll want are bloodfiend by default, bone minions ((These little kittens crush when you blow them up and if you have the death-nova trait with 30 in death magic they have poison tacked on)) bone fiend for oncall immobile then either shadow fiend of fleshwurm ((I prefer flesh worm because it’s VERY tank and has the stun-break warp tacked onto him))
Don’t run Blood Fiend in PvP until you are comfortable with minions overall. He can be really strong, but he is the hardest minion to use well, and the lack of a reliable big heal hurts most people. Once you know how/when to use him he can be great though (and in PvE go ahead and use him). Shadow Fiend is also really situational. Not bad, but he’s niche.
The gear you usually want to focus on is full invaders/sentinel gear Pwr/vit/toughness This gives you some decent frontloaded damage and a TON of survivabiltiy… Remember your death shroud is 66% of your MAXIMUM hp
Soldiers is the best all around, however minions are incredibly flexible. You can run zerker minions (not my cup of tea but fun), any gear can work with them (even condi, if you are running a condi minion setup), just throw together what works best for you. I generally swap between pow/tough/vit and pow/tough/healing.
Hao2b mastor MM:
1) Actually play with minions a lot. Out of every general build type, they are the hardest to really use well. They have the most nuances of anything, there is just a lot of special things that they have that you don’t see with other builds (due to them having AI, so many traits, so many skills etc.)
2) Do testing. You need to know the above to use them well. Just like a power necro needs to understand how to stay in dagger range and setup wells, you need to learn how to setup minion burst, CC chain, use their actives, keep them up, and the other stuff that comes with the build.
3) Don’t feel constrained to use the 20/0/30/20/0 build with all minions on your bar. They are still utility skills just like the rest. You can use minions without traits, you can use just one minion, you can trait just a little or a lot. They have the same flexibility of other skills, so remember it.
4) Playplayplay. Like everything you just need experience.
Doom, Spectral Wall, Reaper’s Mark, dunno about counterplay.
Its generally whether you want to be conditions (CB/Epi) or power (wells).
No. It is one effect per pulse. Per pulse is 5 total boons converted over the 5 players, 1 each. First pulse 5 are converted, next pulse 5 total boons are converted etc.
And yes, wells have always been great in zergs.
It can only affect 5 players per pulse. If it pulses 7 times, it can affect 35 people in total, for one pulse each.
Minions suffer greatly from ai problems, that have yet to be fixed (in fact, the ai got worse after release).
Completely false. Minion AI at launch was very similar to GW1, except your own skills could override their aggro (to a degree, it was a complex aggro mechanic), then they removed the aggressiveness (because it was annoying as hell to try to do anything when Flesh Golem was 5000 units away murdering bunnies), which caused them to have a lot of aggro problems. They also removed the non-requirement to actually hit a target, and thus in a way reduced their aggro radius to your longest range ability that could cause aggro; they relied on some pretty wonky mechanics to acquire aggro.
However they have reverted that middle stage, while retaining the passiveness out of aggro. Essentially what they did was brought back the way minions originally acquired aggro from you (on beginning of any target-based spell cast, up to their max range), and kept the change that reverted their over aggressiveness.
Currently minions will actually already be on your target and attacking depending on the cast/travel time/distance of the skill you used.
I think minions are not nearly as good as they could be. Flesh Golem often stand around, doing nothing, or it charges the wrong target (and of course it dies underwater). Jagged Horrors often run away from the target, and the other minions often are very slow to attack an enemy. In a one on one battle, minions might give you the upper hand. But in general PVE and dungeons, I think they are rubbish.
If Flesh Golem charges the wrong target, it was 100% your fault. Without a target he charges in the direction he is facing, with a target he starts moving towards them as it casts, then at the finish of the cast he runs in a straight line at them. In other words, its an l2p issue.
Reanimator is essentially a skill that we get access to by trait. It does not mean that other classes cannot have it, they just don’t have normal access to it. Lich runes give them an access point, so they are then allowed to use it with Lich runes’ parameters.
Elementals are better on their own than individual minions because they have non-permanent uptime, no secondary actives, few (if any?) traiting improvement, and there are only two, so stacking isn’t an issue.
I’m fairly sure most of them are melee as well.
Any channel like that will continue channeling and doing damage even after they have entered stealth. Also if you aren’t moving while channeling your character will turn to track them.
DS 4 (maybe 5 not sure) also go completely through stealth regardless.
Flesh Wurm beats him there, sadly. Wurmie ignores stealth atm, he will attack regardless. Its kind of funny.
Yep. Minions have similar base defensive stats to player classes, its their lack of sustain/mitigation that makes it seem much less.
Yes, toughness values vary, did not do any specific testing on that, although that would have been smart (doh).
Podcast will not be tonight. There will be one this week, but we are re-scheduling because of time (he’s EU). I will update when I have the time locked down.
Utility minions = all minions on the utility bar. They had very similar HP values, I just listed Bone Minions as a special case because collectively they had ~10k, but individually less.
That was base minions, completely untraited.
Finishers are:
Staff 1/4 (20% projectile/blast)
Putrid Explosion (blast)
Auto attacks from Bone fiend (gets 2, as he fires two projectiles) and Flesh Wurm (100% projectile)
Fields are:
Staff 3 (poison)
Well of Blood (light)
All other wells (dark)
Corrosive Poison Cloud (poison)
Spectral Wall (ethereal)
Death Nova (poison)
Yes, you’re going to lose out on some healing because they will die faster, but while they are alive its still a lot of healing, plus having Fetid Consumption allows you to use blood fiend, who does some pretty impressive healing.
I liked it more when Putrid Mark pulled off allies, and you could cleanse them.
To PvP videos, there are some on my youtube channel from old profession tourneys (TheAdventuresOfBhawb) but they are pretty bad quality. I’m thinking of streaming/doing some videos soon though if I get time.
Andele was kind enough to help me out with testing minion HP values. We didn’t do Jagged Horror but who cares.
I’ll post the method and stuff below so you can check it, but the general values we got were:
~10k HP for Utility minions (5k each on Bone Minions)
~12k HP for Blood Fiend
~13k HP for Flesh Golem
The testing was done in sPvP, using BiP with 30s Bleed Duration, 0 condition damage, and 30% boon duration to give 15s of Might. This meant each BiP did 3090 damage total. If there were any cases of the minion dying before BiP was completed, I was watching the duration so it was estimated with about 1 second error. I also got the direct damage component of BiP from the combat log and included it.
Anyway, there you go. Let me know if you have any questions/comments. And thanks again to andele.
Can someone log on and test minion HP with me? It’d be really easy to test (BiP), and then we’d have better numbers than the crappy tests I’m getting now. I just need two people, and my guildies are being noobs.
Taste of Death would be 100000000000000000000000000000000000000x better if we had minion HP bars on our UI.
CoE is a big one because it has a lot of bosses that have more to do with working their mechanics 100%; and their mechanics are either unaffected by minions, or are made even harder by their presence.
2A: 5
2B: 5
They do their thing once per pulse, on up to 5 targets (AoE limit).
That is not direct from a dev, it was posted by Zombify (who talks with them). Its because they felt (mainly on Putrid Explosion) that a 1.5k (ish) additional direct damage on sacrifice was too much. It would have added 2-3k more damage to Putrid Explosion, which is hardly lacking already.
I don’t think its so big a deal on Blood Fiend or Flesh Wurm, either way. They are rarely going to trigger it in that way, so on one hand its why not? And on the other hand it makes sense for consistency and clarity (and it’d almost never hit anyway).
If I were to give Shadow Fiend any position, I’d probably put it into a Fetid Consumption build. Bone Minions aren’t really minions that can capitalise on Fetid Consumption as chances are they won’t live long enough to actually proc it, but the Shadow Fiend is one that you keep out permanently and I think has the tankiness to survive direct attacks as well as the conditions that it eats.
Haunt, though, is absolutely rubbish and really the animation should be either instant (like pretty much every utility you use primarily for blinding) or something tiny like .5 sec.
Again, though, I’m like rank 28 so don’t take what I say too seriously. I don’t even know how much HP Shadow Fiends and Bone Minions have.
All minions with the 50% higher HP trait sit higher than base HP for players on the lower HP classes (or very close), with some of them breaching 20k HP. I haven’t done all the testing though, I might do that today if I get time. But yeah, they are actually quite strong in that sense.
Haunt is great in the right build. I use it in my Fetid Consumption/Death Nova super tanky build. But even then, I never drop Bone Minions from my bar. The healing on siphon (triggers on Putrid Explosion for every person hit), the extra condition they take while alive (2 vs 1), and most importantly the big burst and downed pressure with their damage/poison field is awesome. I find it very, very hard to leave them out of any of my builds.
Back to Haunt though, it just needs its animation time reduced, and if necessary damage to compensate. But its just way too slow. Other than that I actually really like the ability, a blind plus massive LF gain every 20 seconds.
And Fetid Consumption is God mode against many sustained damage builds. 4 Rune of vampirism + 2 melandru, fetid consumption, dagger off-hand, full minion bar (including Blood Fiend), and you’re looking at massive condi removal, and massive HP regen.
(edited by Bhawb.7408)
In all honesty, the only things holding minions back are:
1. Death nova is bugged in that, when a minion is killed by an active skill (putrid explosion, fetid consumption), it doesn’t trigger the direct damage burst.
2. Minion AI is still a little wonky (bone minions hesitate for a moment) but behaves a lot better than how they did on release.
3. Reanimator IMO should also proc off of minions dieing.One thing’s for sure, Minions can’t be controlled directly and I don’t think they ever should. That’s the ranger’s class mechanic.
1. Not a bug, its 100% intended.
3. I just think they need to completely rework Reanimator’s mechanics. Summoning Jagged Horrors is cool, but one every 30s on death just isn’t good in many situations.
Haters be hatin up in this thread.
Minions are fine for dungeons, so long as you bring them into the right dungeon. Some dungeons have really anti-minion mechanics, some are just fine. Its all down to the dungeon itself. If your minions are always dying and you’re not in one of the supercrazymassAoE dungeons you’re not a good MM.
According to my tests, Shadow Fiend has an attack speed of ~1.65 seconds, Flesh Wurm ~4 seconds, Shadow Fiend does 350 per attack, Flesh Wurm 833, Shadow is then 212 DPS, Flesh Wurm 208. So yeah, it is really close, and in combat I’m sure most would argue that Flesh Wurm would out DPS shadow because of melee vs ranged (one reason why I think shadow fiend is very subpar in general as a minion).
Anyway, that said, if you are playing as an MM and you don’t have Bone Minions I have major questions. They are your only meaningful source of real “burst”, dealing up to 4-5k total every 18s when traited. If it wasn’t for them, I’d lose a lot of my 1v1s simply because you very rarely can wear someone down with otherwise meh DPS, especially when you’re on the later half of a fight when it is difficult to have all minions up at once, giving you the chance to have full AA pressure plus your own DPS. Bone Minions forgo all that, you press a button twice and they’ve dropped people a significant chunk of HP.
The above is why Shadow Fiend rarely finds a place on my bar except in very specific hybrid builds that are super defensive and have Melandru runes (lolstuns?). They are matched in DPS by other minions, their “utility” is subpar in most situations (compared to the amazing burst/escape/lockdown of the other 3), and most of what he can do on paper is even harder in reality because he is melee and his active has a HOLYCRAPWHATWEREYOUTHINKING long animation.
I think there are plenty of reasons to not want a ton of control over them; lore and gameplay, both from the side of not wanting to step over Pets (I think Pets should be a unique mechanic) and from the side of not wanting to muddle minion control. I don’t want to play MM to play an RTS. I do enjoy meaningful and strong actives, and having them as a secondary mechanic, but I feel like getting more control starts dipping more and more into it being more annoying than fun.
There are also reasons to want control over them. Mainly QoL things, like pulling them away to control aggro, and other things relating to keeping them from messing you up, I just don’t see them as big enough reasons.
Also I want to keep up that part of the tradition. Minions are undead servants, and as they are currently implemented into the game they are extensions of you. Pets can act independently because they are independent creatures that have a bond with you (you can even name them), and thus both have the independence to not be mindless, but also a good reason to listen to you. Minions on the other hand are more like living spells. You create them, they track your target, and then can be ordered to do something, but at their core they are nothing more than living single target spells.
(On a side note I don’t think we actually have much of differing opinions, I just wanted to point out that Pets actually differ quite a bit from summons, as it irks me when people call them pets.)
LOL, sounds like the mods. Even though we’ve found stealth changes all over the place.
Actual scythes, not little smokey things we put on top of our staff. And I was talking lore. ANet decided to throw it on for flavor, but I don’t think there is any lore-based reason that would link scythes and Necros any more than pistols and necros. Dhuum used a scythe, but that is the closest I see.
^It can be, but it isn’t required to play MM, nor does it have to be the main weapon as an MM. If you’re specifically looking for a staff build I wouldn’t suggest MMs because it always falls to a secondary thing behind your minions themselves.
OP is probably going to end up in a support build of some sort. Shaman gear is probably a good choice btw.
I think Enfeebling blood was too strong on its weakness duration post-weakness buff (in PvP). It gave pretty ridiculous weakness uptime for a single skill cast, AoE.
Disregarding Pet Control, Ranger Pets aren’t that different from Minions. Pets have a larger variety, various AI-controlled abilities, can be swapped, and you can have only one out at a time. Other than that, they’re more or less the same (please correct me if you can think of anything else).
In my opinion they are quite different. Minions are definitely a step above all other summons, but still below Pets. What Pets have that minions don’t:
1) They can take actions completely separate from the ranger. This means they can be called back, told to attack something completely separate, etc; but they aren’t tied to the current target like minions are.
2) They actually have abilities and the AI to use them. Minions just AA a target, pets actually have a set of abilities that they use, and generally speaking know how to use.
3) They have an entire stat devoted to them. Minions get a shared tree that is part minions, part defense, part staff, Pets have their very own tree that is nearly full of traits that enhance pets, along with a specific stat boost that does nothing for the ranger, it only boosts their pet’s stats.
The specific and important parts of that is that while Ranger Pets are bound to their ranger and are commanded by them, they are still individual entities that can take their own actions. They “think” on their own, they can take offensive or defensive actions separate of the ranger (although via commands), and have an entire tree devoted to them. Minions don’t. You can play Necro without minions quite easily. They are entirely bound to your actions, they can do nothing but attack the one unit you are attacking within their aggro radius. And they are still secondary mechanics to Necromancers; even in an MM build Minions are secondary, being used to augment the MM’s power.
And you don’t think the weapon used by the grim reaper himself would fit the necromancers style?
The Grim Reaper is a Western (essentially white people) thing. It doesn’t fit with anyone that wasn’t raised in Western culture (NA, Europe), because they have their own symbols of death that use their own weapons. Also, this isn’t “real life” we go off of the game’s lore.
Scythes aren’t, to my knowledge, associated with Necromancers in any way. Its just people raised in Western culture that want to RP as Death.