Guild Wars 2

Unfortunately, vigor will never be something we get access to. Necromancer’s are not meant to have in-combat mobility, it would break our balance if we did. We are naturally tanky, far more so than the classes you see that need to use vigor to dodge everywhere (like elementalist’s). It makes things harder in certain parts of the game, but its just a reality of the way we are balanced; if we got vigor, they’d have to nerf our ability to face-tank.

If necromancers can use axes, so should mesmers! Oh… wait. Mesmer’s and necromancers have the same number of possible weapon sets.

MHS.2769:

I don’t want to be rude but are crit builds the only ones to benefit from “on crit” abilities? Everyone spec’ing into the Death Magic trait line does not have a good crit chance? Or that a crit build with points in the death magic trait line isn’t a viable spec? What’s your point?

1) Yes. If you have 4% crit chance (the base), you are not going to use on crit effects.
2) No, but it doesn’t synergize with the main goals of that tree: minions, staff, and defensive tools, none of which necessarily inspire crit builds.
3) It is certainly possible to make a defensive crit build that goes into this tree. I use a rabid glassy necro in PvE that has 20 into Death Magic and pretty high crit chance.

My point is that you would be adding a crit chance (a very, very strong one) into a build that will very rarely be taken by PvP crit builds, and doesn’t make any sense with everything else in that trait line.

Staff 1 and marks will get them to attack. Staff 1 counts as any other single target ability; if you attack a target only once, they will attack in 4-5 seconds, if you attack twice, they attack the instant the second ability begins to cast. Marks will get them to attack in around 2 seconds to one of the targets hit (haven’t found out yet if there is anything obvious in who they choose).

AoE in general though would just confuse them. It isn’t very difficult to just learn that you need to tell them who to hit, auto attack the right target once and then do all the AoE you want.

I agree they should have some kind of passive resistance in dungeons to the huge AoE since it is unavoidable for them, and completely destroys their damage. In WvW I don’t think it would work as well, they can’t take a flat or % based AoE reduction, it really needs to be more of a damage cap. WvW just will never be a place for pet/summoned creatures.

25 seconds on an ability that can do high damage in every build and will completely transfer every condition you have on you to an enemy is amazing. Fear needs the high CD too, its not supposed to be spammed. The auto attack isn’t nearly the issue people make it out to be. Yes it isn’t amazing in 1v1, but outside of that its a 1200 range piercing ability that can grant up to 15% LF every 2 seconds.

Relair.1843:

Why be penalized for using a staff or a well or life transfer or some other aoe? Its not that big of a deal, I am bothered by their frailty alot more than than the melee pets standing around derping for awhile sometimes. But to say there is no problem at all just isnt true, you make it sound like the 99% of people who say their minions have ai issues are crazy. Thats the only point I was trying to make.

Lets say you start a fight using well of suffering, and hit 5 mobs. You expect the computer to just randomly decide which one the minions are supposed to focus? Or do they all just randomly attack? Or do they hit the closest, furthest? What if you want to pull a single mob out of a pack, do you want your minions instantly running directly at the mob the second you attack it so you end up with 15 mobs instead of 1?

They have a delay on single target attacks because it is most likely you are pulling (makes sense). They don’t aggro on AoE because if they did you’d have no control over them, no way for them to know what to focus. They have strange aggro patterns on staff because of how the staff is used, and possibly because of the way marks are. They have patterns, the patterns are pretty simple, and they are very effective if you take the time to learn them. People who say minions have AI issues aren’t crazy, its just ignorance. I’m not saying I was any better, I only discovered the real patterns completely on accident, I just had a very general idea of what to do. But the reality is if you take the time to learn their habits they are one of the most reliable utilities we have.

As for frailty, of course they won’t be able to soak up huge amounts of damage, killing them is the only real counterplay to tanky MM builds. If they could take a lot more damage, it’d be impossible to kill them. Imagine if BiP was unavoidable, and the bleeds couldn’t be cleansed. It was a guaranteed 10k damage every time you pressed the button. That is minions with too much HP.

The problem is that most of the fixes people want are going to destroy the balance that we have right now. Minions are one of the best 1v1 builds in the entire game, and the buffs that people are asking for (there are some that make sense, like max-damage from bosses) are going to break them.

No. Staff as necro is fast and easy, unless you are terrible at aiming marks they are really reliable as well.

Yes, add a critical hit based ability on a tree that is almost never taken by crit builds…

Rune wise I personally use Dolyak. Sigils I use cripple duration +10% and steal HP after swapping weapons. However in WvW you could very likely go with a stacking sigil on one set.

chunx.9521:

…

Minions stay alive very well on their own without healing. It isn’t your job as an MM in GW2 to babysit your minions, it isn’t like GW1. You summon them, make sure they do their damage, then let them die for the poison and resummon them. If you are using a power build with minions you will have enough survivability on your own anyway.

Yes, axe/focus work really well because you stack a lot of vulnerability with focus 4 + axe auto attacks, potentially increasing minion damage by 25%, and also the cripple/chill from axe 3/focus 5 work really well together to keep people locked down.

In WvW MM builds are good for roaming, just realize that as a necro every fight is “all-in”, you either win the fight or you die, there pretty much isn’t any middle ground.

As for gear, I suggest either running a berzerker setup, which makes you a bit more glassy but with the damage to back it up, or soldier (power/vit/tough) for a tanky MM. Condition damage isn’t great for MMs because condition damage builds really need utilities like epidemic and BiP, which you won’t have. Healing power is okay if you are going for a tanky/support setup for a team, and are using well of blood and staff since you can get off some pretty huge heals with it.

It might be an issue of build vs build (guardians are in general quite easy for necros, but power builds don’t bring that in).

What I would suggest is to bring Well of Corruption, and using a huge burst with Well of Suffering, Well of Corruption, Focus 4 (maybe 5 as well if you need more boon stripping), and then blow them up with your dagger. Guardian’s without boons up are fairly weak to burst because of the generally low HP margin they have to work with. So I’d just suggest seeing if you can go a bit more towards burst/lockdown, this should help out for ele’s as well, and since those classes are big in the current meta, you need to be able to deal with them.

Relair, you are just flat out incorrect. I’ve done the testing, I know what their patterns are, and they all have logical reasons behind them. They aren’t a cheat code you have to enter by spinning 3 times in place, jumping twice, porting to LA and jumping, then typing out the lyrics to “Let it be”; they are all very easy, simple methods that ANet programmed in so that minions don’t over-aggro or become confused.

If you want your minions to attack, auto attack your target, never use staff (its aggro is obviously far too complicated for you), and you’ll be fine.

Bone Fiend crippling on every attack is too much. It means permanent crippling just from him/Flesh Golem, and once you factor in player CC as well, it ends up impossible to avoid minion damage without stealth.

Some of these are possibly good, I just don’t know what they could cause well enough to say.

Getting stuck 1 out of 20 times isn’t broken, it is more likely that Flesh Golem simply has an aggro-style different than the other minions (which has historically been true, he used to aggro everything in a 2000 radius) which I don’t yet understand. I added the end part because I do realize that 1.5 minions mess up sometimes, and as of yet I don’t know why. Loading up the game right now to see if it is what I think it is.

Guardians and Eles are really easy to kill for necros. Corrupt boon for condition builds, or the minion boon corrupt for minion builds completely wreck their boons, which are the only reason guardians and eles can bunker well.

They are 95% precise in their AI. There is a pattern to how they aggro, they follow that pattern almost perfectly every single time you follow it. You might not understand that pattern, you might not like that pattern, but it exists, and it works almost perfectly; with the only issues being aggro “sticking” to old targets sometimes.

The minion AI is not broken; period. I’ve spent probably 5 hours in the last few days just testing out their AI patterns. Just because you don’t understand how they work doesn’t mean they don’t work as they are supposed to. I’ll try to get a recording together, but in a general overall sense if you want your minions to attack, hit the target you want them to attack with two auto attacks, and if you ever want to change targets hit that target with a single auto attack; AoE won’t change aggro in general.

Flesh Golem sometimes gets stuck on old targets, and often one Bone Minion will stay on an old target while the other goes to the new one. Minion AI is very precise, they only have some issue in certain circumstances, and even that usually goes back to user error.

In PvE its fine, the 926 heal every 3 seconds is pretty good, and the heal itself is fine, plus conditions aren’t that big of a deal.

In PvP it is only good in an MM build, and it requires incredibly precise timing to make it worthwhile, and somewhat specific build (you will need to supplement the loss of condition removal). In general, unless you have spent a lot of time MMing in PvP and are really, really good, then don’t use it there.

All of the ones that are made to be killed often have 16 second CDs (traited); Blood Fiend and Bone Minions. Flesh Golem does not die easily, and still only has a 48 second CD, the longest of all the minion abilities. Flesh Wurm should just plain never die on his own, if he does its your fault for placing him in the wrong spot.

They aren’t supposed to be suicide bombers, but they are supposed to be expendable, which they are. An MM with minion abilities on CD is no weaker than a DS build that isn’t in DS, or a well build that has wells on CD. It isn’t like we rely 100% on minions for everything, they are just a tool to deal more damage and give us more battle control.

Minions are supposed to die. In fact if you do not purposely kill 3 of them, you are losing out on a huge portion of their potential. They are not pets (thanks to drarnor for the bold tip). Remember that, pets are supposed to be highly controllable creatures that can do as much damage as an actual person, you should care about them, try to keep them alive, etc.

Minions are not pets. They are underlings, peons, disposable meat-shields. They are the little orcs to your Sauran. When one of them comes back and has failed you, you should extend your leather-clad hand and choke the life out of them via the force. If you are walking down the street and find a puddle, you should throw them face first into it, so you may trod across their backs, safe from any splashes.

Seriously though, stop acting like minions are your dog that you let sleep on your bed, and scoop up their defecation; they are disposable tools that happen to have just enough sentience to be useful.

Yes, putrid explosion works with the 30% extra damage, but do not scale with your own stats. If you are really good with it, it is okay to use in a power build to finish people off and do decent bursts of damage, although all minions are obviously much better in true minion builds.

I’ll be making a post hopefully today about minion aggro, it is actually a very simple, predictable, and controllable thing. It also makes a lot of sense when you think about it, but I am assuming that they have “random” AI more due to the fact that no one has ever paid incredibly close attention to their habits for long enough to recognize a pattern. I just happened to find it completely on accident when I was testing for minion attack speeds.

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.

Staff 4 transfers your own conditions regardless of where you are when the mark is triggered.

Just farm dungeon exotics. It isn’t worth it to buy them.

Just whatever you like to look at.

Alright guys, so stay tuned, but I think I might have cracked the code on Minion aggro. I was doing a lot of damage/regen testing for a guide, and I noticed a very, very consistent aggro if you do the right things. I’m heading off to the mist right now to check if it is what I think it is.

You need gear to be able to have the best statistical ability. That said, only tanks really need their build to work; a dead tank is a worthless tank. Other than that, damage builds then take a big hit because they will be doing a whole lot less damage. Support builds that scale off healing power will also hurt.

Any build that utilizes things with low scaling are the best without gear. Non-damaging conditions, boons, and anything with high flat damage work well. This includes ranger spirits, necro minions, banners, guardian/ele boons, etc. These all scale off traits/the utility themselves, and gear tends to just give minor increases compared to something like a rabid necro, who is nearly useless without gear because the crit chance isn’t there, crit sigils aren’t there, condition damage isn’t there, etc.

Well of Blood will heal them as well. And since the minions that need the healing are melee, they should be next to the heal anyway.

My bunker MM build wrecks ele’s pretty hard. The key for me is using focus to strip boons, and then either the minion’s strip boons as well (keeping them devoid of all their defensive boons, which completely wrecks them), or poison fields, which slowly wear them down because it really kills the healing. Once stability is off, you can use one of your CCs, and once you lock them down once you keep going: axe cripple, flesh golem charge, bone fiend immobilize, dagger 3, warhorn 4, warhorn 5. If you can get even most of that chain, they are stuck in one spot for a very long time, and any time you are standing still against minions is a death warrant.

I’m far too excited for this patch than I realistically should be for a video game. And I am definitely looking forward to playing MM more, it is going to be so much more enjoyable, and I might finally pick up using minions in PvE.

Actually the engineer’s needed a grenade nerf. It’s unfortunate they don’t have another good build, but grenades needed a nerf.

114 per minion hit, 926 per Blood Fiend hit. That alone is an absolute ton of healing. Including siphon on hit after swap, Blood Magic 15 trait, and healing for 316 per tick on downed 1, I can face tank Chieftain and come out of the fight with 15-20k HP.

I imagine the UI is a pretty difficult thing to change.

And in your scheme we get access to those abilities at the cost of an entire extra health bar that is pretty easily refilled? Yeah, no.

I love the changes to necros. They buffed some of our worse abilities, gave us decent damage buffs to axe/focus, fixed some bugs, and gave me a reason to use a healing skill other than consume conditions. Awesome job.

CHIPS.6018:

On theory maybe. But in practise necro don’t actually outlast. Necros are not welcomed/excluded from high end fractal because they don’t survive there. In WvW necros are often the priority target because they are easier (more straightforward) to kill than other classes. Just blow though their 40k hp and you get a dead necro.

A lot of people argued that necro is harder to learn but the skill ceiling is higher. Well if that’s true, you would expect necros to flood high end fractals and wvw since necros SHOULD BE stronger when the going gets tough. Not the case. Once the game gets tough and hardcore (high end fractual, wvw) necro under performs or disappears. What does that tell us about necro’s ACTUAL skill ceiling? Actual, not theoretical.

I had said this before. But necro’s solo defensive ability is having more health than other classes. Necro got no damage avoidance whatsoever. And you cannot learn to use your health better. When placed in high end fractuals, where every mob has super high damage, necro got no chance.

The game changer for necros, DS, is clearly not good enough. It requires at least major improvements, or a major overhaul.

Necromancers outlast fine, we do not survive burst damage well, we also lack burst damage. That is our problem in high end PvE, the bosses all do huge burst damage we can’t avoid easily, and we can’t do high burst damage to end fights quickly. It is the inherit shortcomings of an attrition based class with our defensive set.

WvW is a completely different issue. If you play correctly, you will never die in WvW as a necro. It is the same style you use if you are WvWing on a low level character (I often WvW on characters below level 10), you use high range weapons, stay in the back, and use supportive AoE mindset. Again, the reason we die easily here is due to huge burst damage.

In PvP however, necros are the absolute kinds of outlasting. I have had multiple 1v1 fights against what are considered the “best” bunker builds in the game, where the match never finished because the game ran out of time. D/D bunker eles and bunker guardians, with tons of boons and healing, cannot outlast necromancers.

Necromancers being a class of attrition, need to be weak to burst. If we are stronger the longer a fight goes, then obviously our counterplay will be ending the fight quickly (aka bursting). No change to DS will do this without completely overpowering us.

To what Skyro brought up, I would be less surprised if they gave us a skill that actually teleported at long range.

Necromancers are not going to ever get much in combat mobility, it would make us too powerful. However teleports are out-of combat mobility, and would be great. It would fix one of necros greatest roaming weaknesses, that we can’t get around very quickly. In tPvP we cannot fill the role of roamer very well because of this, same in WvW. Giving us a teleport doesn’t give us much in way of power, but at least gives us better mobility.

I could see a single person teleport being added to Flesh Wurm (hopefully with better range), and if we’re really lucky DS 2 will be changed back to a targetted teleport.

I think it is unlikely that we will be the next portal, and even more unlikely that they will put it on Flesh Wurm, who is already a very good utility skill.

I honestly don’t think that it would be a good use of time for them to post in all the profession forums. That opens up 8 forums that they would be expected to keep track of and post in, and that means more time spent away from… you know, doing things that are actually important.

The profession isn’t unfinished because of a single change they made and didn’t have the resources to completely realize. You can’t really say because DS still has a downed UI that the entire class is unfinished, they just saw a problem, did a fix for it, and did not have the programming resources to finish the transition fully yet.

The PvP was unfinished, they have made posts about it before. It is being improved, and people are still playing PvP. But PvP doesn’t really have the capacity for monthly events like PvE does. They can’t have world-changing events in PvP, can’t have santa come visit us in the mist, there is really very little they can do like that for PvP.

Underwater fighting really isn’t that big of a deal. There is only one sPvP map where it is important (and that isn’t part of the tPvP rotation for good reason), and very limited importance in WvW. Even in PvE, underwater is more of a side thing. It is in some of the main story and is part of levelling/exploring, but to my knowledge it isn’t in the more “hardcore” PvE, and as such I don’t see it as too much of an issue.

That isn’t to say that it is perfectly done, it could use a lot of work (although allowing a different trait set would pretty easily fix most of it, as with the correct build the classes are far more balanced), but I’m guessing it isn’t anything near high-priority for them.

SOME bosses, it is only a few very specific ones where minions are useless. Most of the ones I can think of are bosses where it is all about the boss mechanic (like the CoE boss where you use the exploding golems to hit the boss), and in those cases your own build is pretty unimportant anyway.

I wouldn’t say protection is OP, it is just strong.

Outside of Fractals, minions are generally useful in dungeons, although there are a few boss fights where they can run into trouble (pretty much only boss fights). Besides that, they are incredible in sPvP, I use a bunker MM build that completely destroys people.

Shhh, you aren’t supposed to know that.

I have 3000 armor on my bunker necro build. In PvE toughness really isn’t necessary (or in WvW for that matter, if you are ranged), but in PvP it can be very good.

Edit: the bunker necro build I use strictly for tPvP, in PvE I have 0 toughness from gear, just the 200 I get from Death Magic.

Not to mention that Epidemic has a 12 or 15 second CD, meaning even if you do have the ability (and few builds do) to cleanse every Epidemic, you are completely open to every other condition in the mean time.

CHIPS.6018:

When you DS you cannot use any of your regular skills. You cannot be healed. Your whole skill bar is replaced by 4 DS skills, which only benefits one specific build of power and critical.

Do you have any concept of CDs? I can blow all my CDs, go into DS, use its abilities (and also take no “real” damage while this is happening) and then pop back out in a few seconds when my abilities are back up. The lowest CDs we have even on big abilities like epidemic are still at least 10 seconds long, if you can’t plan your DS use around big abilities like that, it is 100% an l2p issue.

I have been instantly killed on being downed before. It wasn’t so much an issue of a rally debuff and it not taking much to kill you, but literally you hit the floor and you were already dead.